9. Jamie

There's a quiet knock on my office door, followed by Mina's muffled voice. "Sir?"

"Come in," I call as I sit up from my office couch that's barely big enough for me to lie down on.

She pokes her head through a crack in the door. "Riley made a pot of coffee. Do you want some?"

"Last I checked, getting me coffee wasn't on your list of job duties," I say as I scrub a hand over my face, trying to wake myself up a bit from the half nap Mina had all but forced me to take an hour ago. I try not to make a habit out of napping in my office, especially at 11:00 a.m. Some congresspeople don't care, sometimes practically living out of their offices, but it's always felt unprofessional to me. I'm barely functioning on nine hours of sleep spread across the past two days, though, so when Mina gently shoved me into my office after spacing out for the fifth time, I didn't fight her on it. I didn't fully fall asleep, but at least my headache is gone.

"No, but it falls perfectly within friendship duties," she says.

I offer her a tired smile. "No, thanks. As much as I want the caffeine, it'll probably make me feel sick—or sicker."

She nods, and I can tell she wants to say something about that, but instead lets the comment drop as she slips into the room and closes the door behind her with a soft click. She makes her way over to the couch and sits, one leg tucked under her, pivoted to face me. "I wanted to check in before Adrian gets here."

"Has something happened in the past hour that makes us need to change the plan?" My heart rate kicks up a notch, and now I'm wide awake.

"No, we're good on that front," she assures me. "I more meant check in to see how you're doing. We haven't really had a chance to talk."

"Oh." I shift to match her posture, relaxing a little. "I'm fine, considering," I say with a shrug.

She levels an unamused look at me.

"I'm not minimizing anything," I say defensively. "I just haven't really had time to process things yet. I'm too on-edge."

It's why I haven't slept. The only time I've felt any sort of reprieve from that was last night while I was at Adrian's. His presence calmed something in me—barely, but enough that I felt like I could breathe. I'm not going to admit that to her, though.

Thankfully, she moves on. "Have you heard from your parents?"

I wince at the reminder of the ball of guilt sitting in my stomach. "They called last night, but I didn't answer."

"Why?"

"I don't really know what to tell them," I admit.

She frowns slightly. "You're not worried about what they're going to say, are you? Jamie, these are the people that wore ‘free parent hugs' T-shirts to Raleigh Pride last year. Your mom gave me a les-bee-an cross stitch for Christmas that year I stayed with you because my parents were visiting my Mamani in LA, and I couldn't get the time off to go with them. You know they're going to be nothing but supportive, right?"

"No, I know they will be. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if my mom starts looking for some sort of bi pun cross stitch while I'm on the phone with her," I say with a nervous laugh.

"Oh! My money is on a bi-rannosaurus rex." She grins.

"And I want to talk to them, but when I thought about how I'd come out to them, there wasn't this added complication of a fake boyfriend," I continue. "Like, I could tell them it's fake. But then that's basically admitting that Adrian was a hookup, and they're supportive, but they're not that supportive. Also, I feel like the fewer people that know that this relationship is fake, the better. Or do I lie to them and play it off like I was waiting for the right time to tell them?"

"I don't think that I can answer that for you," she says.

I can't help groaning.

"You make a good point about keeping the number of people who know about this as small as possible. But I also understand not wanting to lie to them. However, you should probably talk to them sooner rather than later because we're going live with your coming out post later this afternoon, and I know you'd rather tell them yourself."

"Yeah, I know. I'll call them after lunch."

"Also, speaking of fake boyfriends, how was seeing Adrian last night?" she asks, her voice laced with a strange mix of worry and teasing.

"I told you how it went," I remind her.

"No, you told me how the conversation went," she says slowly. "You didn't tell me how you felt about seeing him. Actually, we haven't really talked about him at all."

"Mina, is now really the time to talk about my love life?" I ask incredulously.

"Well, he's going to be here soon, and I wanna know how much of a buffer you need me to be," she points out.

I shrug. "It was… I don't know. It was different—he was different, at least from the other night."

"How so?"

"At the bar and after, he was all smooth and confident. He took the lead with everything, which I'm not used to at all, but…" I trail off, feeling my cheeks heat as I remember my body's reaction not being the one in control.

Mina smiles knowingly. "You liked it, didn't you?"

My eyes dart to the door, which I know is closed, but I can't help checking. "Yeah," I say before quickly moving on. "Last night, though, he was—well, he seemed about as anxious as I was, honestly. I didn't really know what to do with it, at first, but I think it actually put me more at ease. Seeing him yesterday kind of made me feel better, even if I was there to have one of the most awkward conversations of my life."

She looks at me for a long, appraising moment. "Do you like him?"

A sharp knock on my office door saves me from answering her question.

"Come in," I call out.

The door creaks open, revealing Daniel. "Hey boss, your, uh… Mr. Wilks is here. Do you want me to bring him back?"

"No, I'll come out. Thanks." I take a deep breath to steady myself before standing. I glance at Mina. "You coming?"

"Right behind you," she says, standing and smoothing out her pants. "I'm just going to grab Ben out of the conference room."

The office is no longer the chaotic mess that it was this morning when I came in. The phone is no longer ringing off the hook, and the main area is empty save for the intern in the corner making copies and my legislative director sitting at her desk pouring over the collection of law books that always cover the surface. Adrian is standing by Riley's desk when I get to the front, his hands shoved into the pockets of the gray quilted jacket he's wearing over teal scrubs. He must be coming from the clinic.

He smiles at whatever Riley says, and I'd be lying if I said seeing that smile—even directed at someone else—didn't make some of the tension in my shoulders dissipate. Well, that is probably going to be a problem later, but it's too late now.

I'm keenly aware of the handful of people in my office that don't know Adrian isn't my real boyfriend. During the strategy meeting yesterday, we decided that only the people in the room needed to be in on the plan, so I'll need to keep up appearances.

Before I can overthink it, I stride over to him. "Hey, darlin'," I say with an easy smile plastered on my face.

His head snaps to me at the pet name, and his eyes widen as I rest a hand on his elbow and lean in to kiss his cheek.

"Not everyone on my team knows the truth," I whisper in his ear before pulling back.

He still looks a little bewildered, but then he nods slowly. "Hey," he says.

"Hey, so change of plans. Ben isn't coming, so it's just us for lunch," Mina says as she approaches the front. Then she holds out her hand to Adrian. "Hi, nice to meet you in person. Mina, press secretary and best friend."

"Oh, hi," he says as he quickly extracts his hand from his pocket and takes Mina's hand to shake. Then he looks at me. "I thought we were meeting here," he says, his voice lowered.

I drop my voice as well. "Technically, we can't talk about anything election related on government property, so to be safe, we're going out."

"Right, makes sense," he says, shoving his hand back in his pocket.

"I'll just go grab my coat."

Hawk n' Dove is just around the corner from the Cannon Building, so it doesn't take long for us to walk there. It's only about fifteen minutes before we're being shown to a table in the far back. It's probably a cliche that this is one of my favorite places to eat, but it's basically a Washington political landmark, and I love the vibe. Thankfully, there's no one sitting near our table, but we will still need to be careful to talk quietly. That was going to be the case no matter where we met, though, seeing as we don't have a lot of time before Adrian has to get back to work, and I have to get to a meeting.

Mina slides into the booth side of the table before starting to wiggle out of her coat. When Adrian starts to shrug out of his, I step behind him to catch it out of reflex. Then, I drape it over the back of one of the chairs and hold it out for him. He stiffens slightly, clearly not expecting it, but doesn't say anything and slowly sinks into the seat.

I catch Mina trying and failing at suppressing her amusement as I shed my coat, so when I drop into the chair next to Adrian, I nudge her shin with my foot and give her a pointed look. The last thing I want is for her to make Adrian feel uncomfortable, and she has a terrible habit of instigating and meddling.

We're silent as we peruse the menu, then once the server takes our order, Mina breaks the ice.

"Alright, so Jamie said you had some questions about the plan," she prompts.

"Yeah," he says, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. "I guess mainly, I want to know what the expectations are—what you'd need from me to make this…"

"Convincing?" she supplies, and he nods. "Well, today, all I need is a cute photo of the two of you to use for Jamie's coming out post. We're handling the coming out portion of this in two phases—an Instagram post, and an interview with District Buzz."

"District Buzz?" he asks, and if I'm not mistaken, he sounds a little pissed about it. "Aren't they the ones that…"

"Yeah, they're who broke the story. Normally, I wouldn't want to give them the satisfaction of also being the only official news outlet to interview Jamie. But I have a friend who works there, and she actually tipped me off that her slimeball of a coworker had the story. She's queer, and I trust her," she explains. Then she smirks at me. "Plus, our dear Jamie was feeling a little petty and wanted to send a little southern passive aggressive ‘fuck you' to the original reporter."

"I'd be petty, too." The corner of his mouth ticks up. "So would you need me for the interview?" he asks, looking at me this time.

"No, not unless you wanted to be there," I say.

He quickly shakes his head. "That was actually one of my hesitations that I wanted to talk to you about. I…" he pauses for a moment and takes a deep breath before continuing. "I don't do well with people's focus being on me. I have anxiety. It's not something I typically share with people, but I figured it would be important for you to know now because if part of the expectation here is that I would need to be super visible, then I don't think I can help you with this."

He looks down at his lap, where his hands are twisting the cloth napkin. My impulse is to reach out and take his hand to offer him some comfort, like I did last night, but I'm not sure if it'll be welcome. So I settle for pressing my knee against his.

"I understand, and thank you for tellin' me," I say, offering him a soft smile when he looks up.

"We'll do everything we can to ensure your privacy. It may be a little difficult at first, but I'm hoping that in a few weeks, this'll all be old news," Mina assures him.

"So the interview…?" he asks.

"All you need to do for that will be help to Jamie get your story straight," she says.

He nods, his shoulders relaxing. "Okay. Now, you said you hope that in a few weeks this all will die down. So how long do you envision the charade going on for?"

"Ideally, through the election. A public coming out followed too soon by a breakup might look suspicious."

"That's assuming my name even makes it on the ballot," I point out bitterly.

"Which it will," she insists. "Have a little faith."

"I'll have more faith once I see some positive polling results."

"Which I'll have by tomorrow," she says before turning her attention back to Adrian. "Anyway, unless Jamie doesn't win the primary, you two would need to keep this up until probably late November early December at the earliest. If we lose the primary, we can phase this thing out earlier, just not too early or else, again, it'll look suspicious. As for everything else, it'll be up to you and Jamie to figure out."

"I understand," he says. He looks at me, and I can't help holding my breath waiting for his decision. "Okay, I'm in."

I let out my breath in a rush. "Thank you. Again, anything I can do to repay you—" I'm interrupted by the server delivering our meal.

"Actually, can I get a box for mine?" Mina asks before the server can walk away.

The server nods, and I give Mina a questioning look.

"Once I get this photo, I'm gonna head back to the office and let you two hammer out some of the details while you eat," she explains. Then she pulls her phone out of her bag. "Okay, we're going for a candid lunch date during the work day with friends sort of vibe. I want this post to say ‘this is a photo I already had on my phone,' understand?"

Adrian looks at me, and I nod.

"Jamie, why don't you put your arm on the back of Adrian's chair, and Adrian, kinda turn toward Jamie and lean into him."

We move into the pose, keeping our eyes on each other to sell the candid aspect. But even though Mina says it's good, I can feel how tense Adrian is.

"Hey, Mina, can you give us a second?" I ask.

We lock eyes and after a moment, she nods in understanding. "Yeah, I have to use the bathroom anyway. Be right back."

Once she is gone and the camera is no longer on him, he relaxes a little.

"You okay?" I ask.

"Sorry, I'm not really used to people taking photos of me. I don't put my face on social media a lot," he says.

"That's alright. We can work with that," I say, moving my hand to his shoulder to give it a reassuring squeeze. "We can try something that hides your face a bit, kind of like the photos already out there."

"What do you have in mind?" He sounds skeptical, but he still relaxes a little more into me.

"Maybe you could tuck your face into my shoulder a bit, or like, pretend you're whispering something in my ear," I suggest.

"Like?"

"I don't know, darlin'. But you didn't seem to be at a loss for words the other night, so I'm sure you could think of something," I tease.

He raises an eyebrow, and I can't help grinning.

Then he leans in and puts his lips next to my ear. "Do you really want to open that can of worms right now?"

My breath catches, and although I know it's probably a bad idea to fuck my fake boyfriend, an enthusiastic yes is on the top of my tongue, anyway. But Mina and her impeccable timing interrupt.

"Oh, that might be the one. Hold on," she exclaims.

Adrian freezes, and I tip my face closer to him to block more of his face as she snaps the picture. We hold the pose as she checks the picture, then she gives us a thumbs up.

"Got it. This will be perfect."