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-------She isn’t quite sure how the math works -- does a double count as one more or two more drinks? -- but by the time she and Dan are on their third “one last” round, it’s safe to say that they’re both considerably closer to shit-faced than they are to sober.Amy must be getting old, though, because these days, alcohol doesn’t seem to do anything more than make her sleepy. If she folded her arms over the sticky tabletop and put her head down, she is sure that she could fall asleep on the spot. She looks over at Dan, trying to judge how far gone he is -- there’s a faint hint of redness along his cheekbones, and his eyes look a little glazed too, and the grin that he shoots her is lazy as all fuck.(And seriously sexy, too, though she refuses to linger on that for too long.)“This is nice, huh?” he says, “Just like the good old days.”She snorts, tilting her glass on its edge to watch the amber liquid inside surge toward the rim. “Worrying about going to prison, fucked over by a completely avoidable mess that shithead Mike created? Yeah, just like the good old days.”Dan shifts forward, dropping his elbows on the table so he can lean in close. “Oh, come on, Ames. It wasn’t all bad. We had some fun.”“Working in TV obviously kills more brain cells than I realized. Because it wasn’t fun, Dan. None of it. It was a Goddamn shit show from start to fucking finish.”He shrugs, swirling the contents of his own glass around before throwing back the rest of his drink. “Well, I had some fun.”He slides even further toward the edge of the bench he’s sitting on, closing the remaining gap between them. It’s late enough in the night that he’s taken off his jacket, loosened his tie, and undone the top few buttons on his shirt, and Amy can’t stop staring at the faint sheen of sweat at the base of his throat. For a brief, fleeting moment, she wonders what his skin would taste like if she flicked her tongue against it, but her thinking has gone all fuzzy and soft so she can’t really be held responsible. “I missed you, you know,” Dan whispers, the corner of his mouth lifting in that annoyingly sly grin of his that he thinks is so damn charming.She rolls her eyes. “Bull-fucking-shit.”Of course, his grin only widens. “I did. I really--”“There’s this amazing invention, Dan… I’m not sure if you’ve heard of it,” Amy says, trying to slow down in case she is slurring the words. “The phone? You can call and text someone even if they’re not in your immediate vicinity. It’s a real modern marvel.”“Yeah, and I hear it even works both ways.” He is smirking, so there’s no confusion about just how much he’s enjoying himself. “Besides, you’re the one who ran away to Bumfuck, Nevada. What the fuck were you thinking?”She isn’t about to discuss any of that with him, to try to explain her reasoning in a way that remotely makes sense, to admit that she sometimes missed him with something that felt like a physical ache and hoped she’d never see him again all at the same time, so she just stares back with a blank expression and shakes her head. Dan moves even closer, his knee rubbing against hers beneath the table, and Jesus, their skin is separated by the layers of his pants and her stockings, but a jolt goes through her that sets all of her nerve endings singing in harmony, and it hits her just how desperate she is for any kind of human contact after so many months of feeling like she’s been on an island alone. “Sometimes I thought about flying out there,” Dan continues, his voice low and husky so she has to shift closer herself to hear him properly. “Dragging you back here over my shoulder to return you to the civilized world …”Why didn’t you, Amy thinks almost plaintively for a moment -- but then, she knows why. It’s because she never once crossed his mind in all those months, because he was too busy getting off on TV stardom, because he was too busy screwing his way through every woman on the Upper East Side with even the tiniest bit of clout. And it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway because she wouldn’t have gone with him, wouldn’t have listened to a word he had to say. So it’s just a romantic line to toss out there in a rapidly emptying bar, with last call approaching faster and faster, when they’re both too far gone to confront the truth.Which is that she dragged herself back, but only when she was good and ready. “You remember,” he whispers, curling a hand over her knee so his fingertips slip just beneath the hem of her dress. “How good we were together.”Amy isn’t entirely sure whether he’s alluding to their working relationship or their even more ancient personal history, but the answer is the same. “It was a long time ago,” she says, and he is so close that she can feel his breath warm on her cheek, that she can see the freckles scattered across his face like constellations, that she feels something sharp and hot prick at the center of her chest -- and then, almost without warning, he is sinking into her, pressing his mouth to hers, kissing her in an excruciatingly slow, languid but unmistakably thorough way that leaves her feeling so dizzy and woozy that she has to wrap her fingers around his wrist as his hand disappears fully beneath her dress just to steady herself. Somehow, she forgot that Dan kisses like no one she’s ever known, like he wants to devour her whole but take his sweet time with it, make her lose her mind but only as fast as he wants it to happen. When he nips at her lower lip, his teeth as sharp as any wolf’s, she makes an embarrassing gasping sound that she can only hope is lost in the noise of the bartenders trying to wind down the evening. “Fuck,” she mutters, because she knows she is probably 30 seconds away from letting him finger her in this bar, because she’s reacting to him so easily that it’s obvious there’s nothing wrong with her, that all the shit that went down in Nevada had nothing to do with her.Dan laughs into the curve of her neck, his fingers brushing against the lacy edge of her underwear. “Come back to my place,” he urges, “And I’ll remind you.”Amy knows all the reasons that she should say no, why this is the worst idea in the history of the fucking world, but once again, her life is in shambles, and every time she thinks that maybe she’s turned some sort of corner, she finds herself back at square one, scrambling to hold onto some semblance of control as more shit is flung her way, and she is so fucking tired of all of it.She throws back the remainder of her drink, carefully sets the glass down on the table.“You’ve got an hour,” she says, all full of false bravado and faux impatience, but her voice stays surprisingly steady, so she can almost believe that she is bored by all of this. Dan just smirks, though, not believing it for a second.So even though he’s lost yet another job, she makes him settle the tab.-------If he’s completely honest, he has no fucking clue how he’s pulled this off.Of course, he’s fully aware of how charming he is, how damn persuasive he can be when he really wants something -- but none of his usual tricks have worked that well on Amy in recent years. Maybe absence really does make the heart grow fonder, (well, not just the heart; a region a little further south, too) but more likely, some time and distance have softened the edges of her annoyance (it’s never really been hatred, however much she might want to pretend that it is. He knows that with a strange kind of certainty) just enough to let him back in.(The booze hasn’t hurt either -- they’re both too buzzed to think about any of this that carefully.)And yet, he’s still pretty fucking surprised by the evening’s turn of events -- not only has he managed to convince her to take the kind of stroll down memory lane that ends with them naked and sweaty in his bed, but he’s somehow coaxed her into his lap in the cab, his hand in her panties and her ass rubbing against his dick in a serious way that suggests either or both of them might come before they even make it to his apartment, like she hasn’t given a second thought to the cabbie in the front seat. Dan’s checked on the guy a couple of times, but he must be used to this kind of shit from late-night fares in his backseat because he doesn’t seem fazed -- or even particularly interested -- in the least. Which seems fucking crazy to Dan because Amy’s making the kind of sounds as she kisses him and presses against his fingers that would have him ready to blow a nut even if he wasn’t an active participant in the whole thing. Because maybe even more surprising than the fact that she’d let him touch her like this in the first place is how fucking hungry she seems for it. Desperate, he might even say -- and he will, tomorrow when he gloats about it just to see her lose her shit. (Even if it sort of goes both ways, because she smells just the way he remembers, like some perfume with the warmest hint of vanilla -- but not that sugary sweet, cheap crap that teenage girls buy at the mall. It’s richer, muskier, and it leaves him feeling fucking ravenous, like he wants to take a bite out of her, leave nothing behind but her bones.)At his apartment, he pulls out all the stops, getting fancy enough to crouch on his knees at the foot of his bed so he can take her underwear off with his teeth -- because he wants her to remember all of it, wants every fucking detail burned into her memory, so that later, when she lies about how lackluster and mediocre the whole experience was (and she will, because she lives to bust his balls just as much as he does hers), she won’t be able to sell it well enough to convince anyone, least of all herself. It makes sense to do it up right anyway because there’s definitely been a time or two when he was sure he’d burned this bridge for good, that she was serious about never letting him lay a finger on her again -- but then, Amy always sees him for exactly who he is, never has a single illusion about him, is never really surprised by anything he does, so she can probably get over shit that regular women couldn’t. Maybe she even realizes that none of it is personal (except when it is), that he’s never really gone out of his way to hurt her in particular (except when he has), that sometimes there just happens to be some collateral damage when he goes after the things that he wants, and that’s just the way it is. He manages to tug her panties to about mid-thigh with little effort, but she must be more sensitive there because she laughs and squirms against the sheets when he drags his teeth along her inner thigh, clipping him in the ear with her knee so he loses his balance and falls flat on his ass on the floor. Amy laughs again, all throaty and deep now, but his coordination is already slightly off because of all those extra rounds, so he’s not embarrassed in the least. He wraps his hands around her ankles, tugs her all the way to the edge of the bed toward him, and she obviously knows what’s coming because she pushes her underwear off the rest of the way and spreads her legs wider without any prompting from him. She fists her hands in the bedding too, like she’s trying to brace herself so that when he finally licks a slow, deliberate stripe between her thighs, flicks at her clit with just the tip of his tongue, she doesn’t go flying off the bed altogether. “Oh, fucking hell,” she gasps, sounding almost outraged.It’s Dan’s turn to laugh, and the vibration must be enough to do it for her because she moans again, pulling at the sheets so hard that the pillows topple down around her. He makes her come that way, with just his mouth and tongue and the strategic nip of his teeth, because it lets him take in all of her reactions without the distraction of chasing -- or trying to hold off -- his own orgasm. So he doesn’t miss a single whimper, groan, or sob, doesn’t miss the way her fingers thread through his hair in an iron grip when she’s close, doesn’t miss the sharp clench of the toes on the leg she’s draped over his shoulder when she finally gives in all the way. Feeling Amy come apart like that and knowing that he’s responsible is almost, almost, as good as coming himself. Which is why, when he suddenly stops licking her through the aftershocks and pushes himself to his feet, the look on her face is fucking priceless -- with the way she’s furrowing her brow, biting her lip, and breathing so heavy, her expression is equal parts confused, frustrated, and horny. He grins as he reaches for his belt, finishing the task of undressing himself that she abandoned earlier, but he takes his time with it, moving slowly and methodically just so she has to watch, wait, fidget in his bed because she can’t take waiting anymore.“You’re such a fucking bastard,” she says, but not without some trace of amusement, something warm and pleased that might almost be affection.“Yeah,” he agrees, finally kicking off his pants and working a little faster to get his boxer briefs out of the way. “But you’re here anyway.”Of course, she has no response to that, so Amy just boosts herself back up the bed, and Dan crawls over her, following her all the way, so they fall back against the scattered pillows together. He fits himself between her legs, just slides his dick against her a couple of times because Jesus, she’s so fucking hot and so fucking wet that he can’t help himself from rutting against her like a Goddamn high schooler who’s never laid a hand on a woman before. She clutches at his shoulders with all she’s got, her blunt nails digging into his skin in a sharp, biting way that hurts so damn good.“Come the fuck on,” she demands, but somehow he’s already feeling winded so he needs a minute before he can move. She must think he’s just torturing her again, though, because she whispers, “Please,” so quietly and roughly into his shoulder that he almost misses it.Fuck, he wishes that he’d some kind of warning, some small inkling, that this was going to happen tonight, so he could’ve set up a fucking camera in his bedroom and captured it all for posterity. Because he might do something shitty tomorrow (he fucked her sister once and made a point of needling her about it every chance he got; it’s not like there’s much he isn’t capable of) and it could be another ten years before she lets him touch her like this again. Besides, she’d hate knowing that he had a video of the whole thing -- it would drive her fucking crazy and is anything in life really that much fun if it doesn’t make Amy go all red in the cheeks, doesn’t make her tits heave in outrage, doesn’t make her bite at her lip until it’s raw?Well, maybe this, he thinks, as he slides into her so sure and fast that it almost feels like falling, and it seems like he’s punched all the breath out of her for a moment before he feels her raise her legs, wrap them around his hips to help direct the show. But then again, Amy’s always been pretty fucking pissed about how badly she wants him, so maybe it’s all one and the same. When she comes again, having flipped the script so she’s on top, riding him into oblivion (and fuck, her tits look amazing bouncing right there in his face, and she’s milking him in a relentless, take-no-prisoners way that fits her personality perfectly, and who really gives a fuck if he just got fired yet again?), she groans so raw and deep that she almost sounds like a wounded animal, and there’s definitely some anger in there. Maybe even rage.It’s the hottest thing he’s seen in a long time.-------Her first thought when she slowly regains consciousness is that she’s surprised her headache isn’t worse.Dan gave her a bottle of water to chug at some point before she fell asleep, but she can’t believe that’s all it took to ward off what should have been one of the worst hangovers known to mankind. Of course, the inside of her mouth tastes and feels like sawdust, and she is alternately nauseated and desperate for an egg sandwich with cheese and bacon, so she hasn’t emerged completely unscathed.And then, there is the other, more devastating hangover symptom -- all six foot one inches of it, naked and passed out cold beside her in bed. She slept with Dan Egan, and she isn’t quite sure what to do with that knowledge. After every shitty, unforgivable thing he’s ever done, she fucked him again (and not just once, twice!) like none of it really mattered. Amy is torn between a desire to kick her own ass and the need to plead her case to herself -- it’s not her fault that he looked so good, smelled so good, felt so good, for fuck’s sake. He is a fucking menace to society -- but neither option is particularly productive.Besides, escaping the scene of the crime is the most pressing concern at the moment.They aren’t cuddling by any definition of the word, but Dan’s thrown an arm and most of his shoulder across her, so she is practically pinned to the mattress, and he is heavy as Goddamn fuck. She’s shifted at least a half dozen times in an attempt to get him to move but with zero luck. When she catches a glimpse of his alarm clock, though, sees that it’s almost twenty after five and she still has to get home, shower, and change, she’s fucking had enough. Amy digs her fingers into his forearm and squeezes as hard as she can until he groans.“S’too fucking early,” he mumbles, like the ridiculous, overgrown child that he is.“Dan,” she prods, when he still barely moves. “Dan, come on. I’ve got to go. I have to be at Selina’s in less than three hours.”It takes a good thirty seconds, but he finally, reluctantly, raises his arm, and she hurries to slide out of the bed before he can fall asleep on her again. Her clothing is scattered all around the room, a breadcrumb trail back to sanity, and she has to get down on her knees to retrieve her underwear from beneath the bed and her stockings from under the dresser. She refuses to feel awkward about any of it, though. It would give Dan the upper hand, and she isn’t about to allow him any more damn ammunition than he already has after last night. So Amy holds her head up high as she slides her panties back on, like it doesn’t mean anything at all that he’s the one who took them off her. When she’s finally got most of her clothing back in place and looks back at the bed, Dan is awake, pulling his own underwear on -- but his back is to her, so she doesn’t think that he is paying her much attention. She grabs her bag from the floor just outside the bedroom door and steps into her heels. “Okay,” she says, glancing back at him. “I’m gonna go …”He is smiling when he turns to face her, even if he looks a little worse for wear with his terrible bedhead and sleepy eyes, and she knows that there are million shitty, arrogant, fucked up things that he wants to say, so she is only hoping that she can get out of here before he really gets himself going.“We should do this again,” he says, and his smile shifts, becoming more of a smirk than anything else. “You know, get some drinks, catch up...”Amy huffs out an unamused laugh and shakes her head. “Goodbye, Dan. Good luck with the job hunt.” She is relieved that he doesn’t follow her to the door, that he doesn’t try to have a conversation about what happened, that they can both just go back to their lives the way they were twelve hours before, the two of them in some delicate, tentative truce where they can almost be friends.Of course, that does mean that she has to return to Selina and her special brand of bullshit, deal with the fucking fallout of Mike’s stupid diary on less than three hours of sleep, so her life is still an utter fucking disaster -- but at least she can escape Dan and the knowledge that she slept with the last person on earth that she should have. The universe isn’t completely cruel. And then, as she’s hurrying to make herself presentable for the workday ahead, in the middle of trying to straighten her hair without burning her clumsy fingers, the news about Tibet breaks on CNN, and the world shifts on a dime. There is definitely an extra spring in her step as she breezes into Selina’s office because for the first time maybe ever, the ground isn’t sinking beneath them and there might possibly be a light, however dim, at the end of the tunnel. (Getting laid and having three pretty spectacular orgasms that reminded her exactly why having a vagina isn’t so bad probably helped a bit too, not that she’d ever admit that to Dan. But the fact is that three orgasms are more than she had over the previous year combined, and she almost forgot how good sex could actually help let off a little steam, relax her just enough that her muscles don’t feel like they might snap in two like a rubber band pulled too far.)Dan texts later that evening, and she considers ignoring him, but since he refrains from making any douche-y references to their encounter, she resists the impulse.Dodged yet another fucking bullet, he writes. We’re invincible.Dumb luck to the rescue once again. Countdown to the next Selina crisis in 10, 9, 8…, she writes back, trying desperately not to remember the look of utter delight on his face when she managed to roll them over so she could ride him or the low, desperate way he moaned both times he came or how his stubble felt against her thighs when he threw her leg over his shoulder and licked her until she nearly screamed. He goes on to tell her about Ben and Kent starting their own consulting firm and how they want him to be involved, but he is apparently still committed to some sort of TV career for himself so he’s bowing out. She thinks it’s a mistake, but doesn’t tell him because it’s really none of her business. Besides, she’s got her own shit to deal with now that Selina’s library is a go and she needs to get on top of the project if she wants to make sure Richard doesn’t snake it out from under her. Of course, she does hear through the grapevine that Dan changed his mind barely 24 hours later and is going into business with Ben and Kent, but she doesn’t ask him about it. He texts her just a week and a half after their night together and mentions that they’re headed down to D.C. to set up shop and does she want to a grab a drink on his last official night in the city? She tells herself that she just doesn’t feel like dealing with Dan’s bullshit, his smug satisfaction over the fact that he’s rising from the ashes yet again, but there is some part of Amy that just doesn’t trust herself around him. She let him fuck her without a condom for fuck’s sake -- Dan Motherfucking Egan, who’s a likely carrier for every STD known to medical science and a few they haven’t discovered yet. Even if she gives herself a pass for the first time (they were both way too hazy from the scotch and lust to think about anything as practical as protection), she realized the mistake just afterward when she rolled over the fucking wet spot, freaked the fuck out, and only calmed down when Dan assured her that he’d been tested recently and his slow sperm wasn’t up to the task of impregnating anyone, so they were in the clear -- but it’s not like he offered up any proof of either of those facts and she still let him talk her into a condom-less second round (probably because he’d gone down on her with a level of skill and expertise that made her think he should be giving how-to seminars and her brain had clearly short-circuited right after that first orgasm), which was, hands down, the stupidest thing she’s ever done in her entire adult life.Besides, it’s one thing to sleep with him when the walls feel like they’re closing in and he’s a little pouty because he just got fired again, but she can’t make a habit of it. She can’t let it become some kind of routine that they fall into when they don’t have anything better to do, like it doesn’t mean anything at all. She doesn’t want to burn any bridges, though, because she definitely needs a plan B in case things with Selina fall apart yet again -- or maybe even a plan A. Maybe it’s time to really shake things up and start fresh somewhere else, and she suspects that it wouldn’t take much to get Ben, Kent, and Dan to offer her a job if she expressed any interest.Stuck with Selina, Amy writes back. Rain check?You know where to find me, Dan texts back. Yes, she thinks. Because he always seems to be lurking on the periphery of her life, turning up again and again like that one mistake she can’t stop herself from making. But there’s no point in dwelling on Dan-related bullshit.So she rolls up her sleeves and pours herself into the library crap, trying to convince herself that it’s important work. If it all feels as empty as her life in Nevada did, she just tries not to think about it. -------Ben finds them an office in D.C. with minimal fuss. It isn’t really surprising considering he’s older than fucking dirt and has the connections to go with all that experience, but it still happens more quickly than Dan’s expecting and he’s on the shuttle down to Washington barely two weeks after he agrees to go all in with Ben and Kent to start working full time. It’s kind of a whirlwind, but he likes it that way. He likes his office even more -- it’s not the biggest (fucking seniority), but it’s spacious enough to make him feel appropriately important. The wall of floor-to-ceiling windows lets in a shit ton of light that bounces off all the slick, sleek metal and glass and gives him a premium look down onto K Street -- and damn if it doesn’t make him feel even more fucking superior to the rest of the schmucks in this town than usual.Dan might have loved being on TV, gotten off on the idea of having millions of pairs of eyes on him every morning, but D.C. is where the real power is, always has been. Which is why it’s where he belongs. It all feels pretty perfect as he sits in the conference room with Ben and Kent, drawing up a list of potential targets. Ben’s already been in touch with a few people interested in talking to them, so they’ve got some meetings lined up, but it’s always good to have more options.There’s only one thing missing. “You know who we should think about bringing on board?” Dan asks, just as they’re about to wind down. Ben looks up from his phone with a smirk and Kent cocks his head thoughtfully, but it only takes a few seconds for them to answer in unison, “Amy?”Dan points at them across the table. “Exactly.”It’s an idea he’s had since the moment he decided to go back to D.C. because he’s always liked working with Amy, has always thought they make a pretty good team, and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that her talents are being wasted on Selina’s fucking library project. (And maybe, in the back of his mind, he’s thinking that if he can get Amy down here, away from the stress of constantly having to clean up after Selina, she might even stop pretending that the two of them having sex whenever the mood strikes doesn’t make perfect sense. That night in New York broke all the ice because she’s already given in in her own mind, so what would fucking him again really matter? They’ll be spending so much time together, and it’s such a convenient -- and satisfying -- way to relieve a little stress that they’d be fucking fools not to take advantage of the opportunity. It might even keep him from replaying that last time over and over again in his head too, because it’s starting to drive him crazy every time he remembers the heat of her skin when she held him in the palm of her hand, the bite of her nails when she clawed at his back, the way the scratches stung every time he showered for a week afterward, the fucking perfect tightness of her body as she kept him locked in place. He just needs something new to think about to clear his head.)“You really think she’ll leave Selina?” asks Kent.“She’s never managed to cut that cord before,” Ben points out.“I think she’s ready now,” Dan tells them, and he’s only partially faking his confidence, because Amy definitely seemed fed up Selina and her bullshit when they talked that night in the bar. “Sure that’s not just wishful thinking?” Dan shakes his head. “I’ll talk to her. I can convince her.”“You really think so?”It’s impossible to keep from grinning, so Dan doesn’t even try. “You’d be surprised at what I’ve been able to convince her to do.”Ben shrugs. “Fine, fine. Talk to her. Have her come in for a meeting.” This isn’t a discussion that should be had over text, Dan decides, so he heads back to his office, props his feet up on his desk, and calls. Amy picks up right away, but she definitely sounds annoyed when she answers with, “What do you want, Dan?”“Guess where I am right now?”“Dan, come on. I don’t have time for this… I’m fucking knee deep in library blueprints and about ten seconds away from slitting my wrists with a ballpoint pen.”“You’ll want to make time for me.”She laughs half-heartedly. “I never have before.”“What about that hour you gave me a few weeks back?” he says, grinning. “You know, the night we had all those drinks and--”“What the fuck do you want, Dan?”“I am sitting in our brand new offices on K Street, Ames,” he tells her. “The ball’s rolling pretty fast down here.”“You guys already have an office?” she asks, sounding surprised and intrigued and even a little bit envious. His instincts are dead-on: he can convince her without even breaking a sweat.“We do and we’re going to have some candidates pretty soon too. You know what we don’t have, though? Someone with your expertise and workaholic tendencies and fucking cutthroat instincts and--”“What are you saying exactly?”“I’m saying that Ben, Kent, and I think you’d be a great part of the team… and we want to talk to you about that.”Amy laughs again, but it’s a warm, almost giddy sound now. “Yeah, I mean, that’s … I would definitely … we should do that.”“Good, good. So how soon can you get down to D.C.?”She’s silent for a long moment, and Dan almost thinks she’s hung up on him until he hears her sigh. “Things are kind of crazy around here right now,” she says, “I’m not sure if I can--”“Amy, come on. If this is gonna work, you’re going to have to make a clean break. Get away from Selina before she drags you, kicking and screaming, into the next disaster.”“I know, I know,” she groans, “It’s just all so fucking complicated. Can you… Give me a few weeks? Just let me get things settled here and then I’ll meet with you guys whenever you want.”“Promise?”She laughs again. “What are you? Twelve fucking years old?”“Is that really the way you want to be talking to the guy who has the power to help you escape the nightmare that is Selina Meyer once and for all?”“Fine,” she huffs, “I promise.”She’s practically gritting her teeth as she says the last word, so he knows exactly how annoyed she is. “That’s what I like to hear, pumpkin. This is good, Amy. We’re gonna have so much fun.”“It’s already been established that we have very different ideas of fun.”They both know that’s not entirely true -- even Amy can’t pretend that they both didn’t enjoy the hell out of that night together -- and he wants to point that out, but it’s probably not the best time. “We’ll see,” he tells her instead. He hangs up only after she promises again to keep him updated about when she might want to take the meeting. He’s done the whole white knight act a few times when it served his purposes, but he’s never been particularly interested in playing the hero for a woman for its own sake-- and yet there is something immensely satisfying about being the man who’s going to save Amy from Selina Meyer and her trainwreck insanity. Actually, he deserves some credit for rescuing Amy from that inbred dickhead from Nevada too because his interview with them was clearly the beginning of the end. He’s practically her fucking savior, now that he thinks about it, which is a kind of a rush.For a moment, Dan considers texting her to share the revelation, but ultimately, he decides against it. It’s the kind of thing he should point out in person because he wants to see the look on her face when he tells her, how she’ll get all flushed and her nostrils will flare and her eyes will burn with that special brand of fire that she only seems to show when she’s good and fucking pissed at him.He can’t wait. -------Amy is at her fucking wit’s end. She is so Goddamn tired of this shitty library, tired of indulging Selina in all manner of things, tired of Richard constantly underfoot, tired of Catherine whining about one pregnancy complication or another, and it’s impossible to ignore all of it. She screams at one of the architect’s assistants over the phone because they keep promising to deliver the model, and every day there’s some new excuse as to why it’s not quite ready. Selina is getting impatient, and of course, that means Amy has to listen to her bitch about it constantly. It doesn’t help that Amy’s had a low-grade headache for three days straight, that she’s been tired all the way through to the bone despite averaging more than five hours of sleep a night for the past week, (which she is sure has to be some kind of record), or that she’s been eating Cool Ranch Doritos like they’re going out of fucking style because stress eating is the only way to get through the day.It’s no wonder that she feels like fucking crap all the time.(She is trying to get out of going home for Christmas by citing Selina’s crazy schedule and fragile state of mind, but if she was interested in being honest, she could just own up to her own volatile emotional condition. Fortunately, she gave up telling her parents the whole truth somewhere around her fourteenth birthday.)Dan’s offer to join him and the guys down in D.C. was tempting from the start, but it’s becoming more and more appealing with each passing minute. She daydreams about telling Selina, about delivering the news coolly and calmly and strolling out of her office without a look back. All Amy knows is that something has to give or she’s going to snap. Again.Because she is sick to fucking death of the current trajectory of her life, and if she doesn’t do something soon, she fears that it’s just going to be another ten or so years of more of the same. Nevada was one of the biggest, shittiest mistakes she’s ever made, but she had the right idea in theory -- carving out a path for herself that doesn’t have Selina Meyer and her particular brand of insanity at the heart of it. It can be done. It has to be done -- because there was to be more to Amy’s life than this.(Sometimes, she thinks about the night with Dan, how good, almost exhilarated she felt afterward, and she wishes that she was the kind of person who could just have sex and not think about it too much, without it really meaning anything. If she winds up back in D.C. with Dan, he would almost certainly sleep with her again, and sex with him has proven to be an effective stress-reliever. He hasn’t even been a total dick about the last time, has barely brought it up beyond a few vague references actually, so she thinks that she could live with giving him the satisfaction of knowing he can reliably make her come as long as he doesn’t try to use it to get the upper hand. But Amy knows herself -- she could never sleep with him and ignore what’s happening between them when they’re not in the middle of it. She would never be able to sleep with him on any kind of on-going basis and not feel something about it, about him, about who exactly he is to her. She’d be pulled back into his thrall no matter how hard she tried to fight it. Because she just can’t do the whole casual thing that Dan is so good at -- though her ability to do serious hasn’t been that great either, so maybe it’s all a lost cause. )Gary meekly makes his way out of Selina’s office as Amy waits on hold for the architect to actually address their concerns. He has a bowl in one hand, a splattering of shiny, beige flecks across the top of his sweater, and a solemn frown that makes him look even more pitiful than usual. “The new yogurt was not a hit,” he declares.Amy squints at him in annoyance. “What?”“I tried this new Icelandic yogurt… orange ginger. She hated it, spit it halfway across the room.” He lowers his head glumly, and Amy rolls her eyes so hard that her headache throbs anew. “I should’ve known better. She only likes ginger when the flavor’s more subtle. I should have checked how far up the ingredient list it was …”“You realize that you’re never going to please her, right, Gary? I mean, you understand that all of this is completely and utterly futile?”He stares back at her, as wide-eyed and dim-witted as ever. “What do you mean?”“She treats you like a fucking lap dog,” Amy says, “She doesn’t appreciate a fucking thing you do. I get that you’ve wasted years of your life with this sick, little devotion to her, but it’s probably getting to be time to cut your losses, don’t you think?”Gary shakes his head with determination. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know anything about… Just because you can pick up and abandon all the people who are counting on you for greener pastures doesn’t mean the rest of us are that disloyal.”Amy laughs, and for a moment, the headache and fatigue and fucking horror of what her life has become fades into the ether. The mere notion that she’s been disloyal is almost amusing -- she has been loyal to Selina Meyer to a Goddamn fault. Sure, she was desperate or stupid or pathetic enough to think Nevada might be the path to something better and it turned out to be just a different pile of steaming shit, but it had nothing to do with disloyalty.It was fucking self-preservation.Gary scurries off to the kitchen like the little mouse he is, so she devotes her full attention to her phone call once more. The hold music is some slowed-down version of “Love Will Keep Us Together,” and she scratches a pen across her legal pad aggressively, wanting desperately to wrap her hands around someone’s throat and squeeze as hard as she can.That’s it, she thinks. She’s definitely stopping to get a box of Magnum Bars on the way home -- she’s fucking earned it.-------Things are falling into place for BKD so quickly that Dan starts to look for a new apartment in D.C after a few weeks. There’s no rush because they’re still in the early stages, so it’s easy to stay in hotels and commute back and forth from New York as needed, but they’ll be more settled eventually, and even he might get tired of stepping over room service trays and tipping housekeeping.Otherwise, the transition back to life in D.C. is pretty fucking easy. At his favorite sushi restaurant, he bumps into Carrie, a redhead who used to work as an aide in some Senate office or another and he slept with to open a door once upon a time. This time around, though, it’s her idea to fuck him because she thinks it might mean a job at BKD. He has no intention of even mentioning her to Ben and Kent because she’s got a big mouth and probably only has a handful of IQ points over Jonah, but she’s still pretty hot, and it’s a decent way to spend a Wednesday night. He’s got to admit that it makes for a nice change too -- someone sleeping with him because of what he might be able to do for them. It’s a rush for sure, something he might be able to get used to actually. But as much fun as he might have on Wednesday night, Thursday afternoon is even better because Amy finally keeps her promise and comes in for a meeting. They haven’t seen each other since the night they slept together, and when their eyes meet for the first time, he knows that they’re both remembering it, every hot, fucking detail, and he can’t stop grinning no matter how hard he tries. He hadn’t just been feeding her a line back then: he did miss her all those months that she spent wasting her time all the way on the other side of the country -- he just hadn’t realized how much until he saw her again, until she was beside him and they fell back into rhythm with one another like no time had passed at all. He feels it again when she sits across the conference room table in the BKD offices and smiles, looking confident and determined, just the way he likes his Amy. It’s the best belated Christmas gift he can think of. He’s already picked out her office -- it’s on the small side, but right next to his and, best of all, entirely Selina-free -- and can’t wait to show it to her, to keep his own promise about their having fun together again. Still, it’s not really a surprise when she blows the whole thing.Ben was right -- she hasn’t been able to make a clean break from Selina in all these years because she’s too fucking loyal. Dan’s never understood why, though -- like him, Selina would sell out anyone in a Goddamn heartbeat if it meant she could have something that she really wanted. That’s never going to change. But he follows Amy down to the lobby afterward, where he finds her pacing in front of the revolving door with her phone pressed to her ear. He would bet big money that she’s calling Selina, promising that she’ll be back just as soon as she can like the dutiful employee that she’s expected to be.“Amy,” he says, and she turns, looking a little strange. “Seriously?”She disconnects the call and throws her hands up. “I’m sorry, okay? I need a little more time to get things resolved.”“You gotta get out of there,” he tells her. “For the sake of your own fucking sanity, and come on, you know…” Amy’s eyes widen suddenly, and she clamps a hand over her mouth, going as pale as a damn ghost. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”She shakes her head, fingers still pressed to her lips for a moment. “Sorry… I just got really nauseous all of a sudden.”“The thought of leaving her that hard to stomach?”“Shut up,” she says, pulling a bottle of water out of her bag and taking a small sip. “I’m going to talk to her. At the groundbreaking. This is not … I’m going to take care of it.” “For your sake, I hope you do. But don’t wait too long … who knows how long we’ll still be interested?”Amy laughs. “Oh, fucking please. I know you boys will keep a seat warm for me as long as it takes.”Dan grins, because she’s probably right that they’ll always be able to find a place for her -- but he doesn’t need her getting too sure of herself, so he reaches out and pats her arm in as patronizing a manner as he can. “Yeah, but right now, you’ve got to go running back to Selina like a good little girl, right?”She huffs in annoyance, tightening the belt of her coat around her waist. “Screw you.”There’s a joke on the tip of his tongue about how that’s exactly what she did the last time they saw each other, but he resists the urge with everything in him -- he doesn’t want to give her any more reason to drag her feet about joining them. Once she’s down in her D.C., he’ll remind her every chance he gets, because he can already imagine how worked up she’ll get, the flush that will go all way from her hairline to the tops of her breasts. “I’ll call,” she says as she steps toward the door. “Or text. Whatever.”Dan watches her go, hoping like hell that she actually follows through. Best not to leave it completely up to her, though, so in the elevator back up to the office, he pulls out his phone and texts her.
Sooner not later, Ames
-------The wheels really start to turn in her head when she throws up for the second time in the bathroom on the New York-bound Acela. There have been plenty of signs over the past few weeks, even if she didn’t bother to recognize them -- the overall rundown feeling that made her regret not getting the flu shot her mother was always nagging about, exhaustion so deep that she fell asleep on some college student’s shoulder on the subway the other night, cravings for all sorts of foods that she doesn’t normally like (there’s no other logical explanation for the fact that she ate a lamb gyro from a street vendor for lunch last week), and mood swings that are a little extreme even for her. All those little details make a pretty persuasive case, but when she consults the period-tracking app on her phone (why does she have the fucking thing installed if she never actually checks it?) and realizes that her period is 16 fucking days late, she flies into a full-fledged panic.She hasn’t had a pregnancy scare in years, because her sex life has been so sporadic and she’s always insisted on condoms on top of the birth control pill that she too frequently forgets to take -- but when she’s back in New York, she goes into autopilot mode, running into the nearest drug store in Penn Station and grabbing pregnancy tests from a few different brands to cover her bases. As she’s waiting in line to pay, the memory of picking up a test for Selina once upon a time, with Dan playing her unwanted shadow, hits her like a brick to her chest, and she tries to shove it back down as hard as she can.(He thought it was career suicide when he assumed the test was for her, she can’t help remembering. He thought her life was over.)In her dingy bathroom, she lays the tests side by side, and the results are all slightly different -- a plus sign, YES, two parallel lines, pregnant -- but they all mean the same thing. For a moment, she appreciates the irony of the situation, because while she certainly anticipated that fucking Dan without a condom might lead to a nasty case of gonorrhea or chlamydia, she sure as shit never imagined that she’d wind up with a damn kid. He wasn’t supposed to be able to knock her up, and while he’s a self-serving asshole, she doesn’t really believe that he’d lie about that. It’s a Goddamn fucking miracle.Which is probably why it’s impossible to comprehend, to accept. So she undresses without turning on any lights, crawls into bed, and pulls the comforter over her head, the way that she used to when she was a kid and wanted to hide from the world. Wrapped up in a cocoon of bedding, she can almost pretend that none of this is happening, that she hasn’t marooned herself in a corner with nothing but impossible choices surrounding her. In the cold light of day, though, there’s no ignoring it, so she calls the OB-GYN practice where she knows Catherine is a patient and name-drops like it’s going out of style to score an emergency appointment. It’s ridiculous to think that four different home pregnancy tests are all wrong, but it’s a possibility, Amy assures herself. When a fifth test, done all professionally in that sterile doctor’s office, comes back positive as well -- and she grits her teeth through a pelvic exam -- she thinks that the shock has mostly worn off, but she must still be pretty foggy back at the office because Selina notices in her usual callous way. “What the fuck is wrong with you today?” she demands, “Get your head in the Goddamn game, Amy.”Amy makes some excuse about coming down with a bug, which is only a sort-of lie. She hasn’t actually thrown up again since yesterday on the train, and she is grateful for that because it’s an upsetting experience under any circumstances, but right now, it would force her to confront the reality of her situation, and she doesn’t want to deal with any of it.She’s not an idiot -- she knows that she’s probably not really cut out for motherhood. She doesn’t have any of the warm, fuzzy traits that good mothers usually do and doesn’t really have any interest in trying to develop them either. She thinks of her own mother, who is nowhere near perfect but who is soft and gentle and knows how to put on a brave face and say the stupid, cliched, meaningless things that kids need to hear in a way that’s almost convincing. That isn’t her. She thinks about Selina and Catherine for a moment, about the complicated mess that is their relationship, about how Selina has always prioritized personal pursuits over family, about how Selina’s always seen her daughter as a liability rather than a blessing, about how Selina has always cared more about being President than she ever has about being a good mother. That is much more like Amy.For God’s sake, she doesn’t really like children, hasn’t seen Sophie’s kids in over a year and even avoided them again at Christmas, because kids are needy and loud and pretty much useless. She knows what her mother will say -- it’s different when it’s your own child -- and maybe that’s true, maybe Amy won’t mind all the screaming and crying and shit-filled diapers when it’s her kid, but it’s impossible to know for sure.There’s her career to consider too, which, despite being utter shit at the moment, has always been the center of her universe, her pride and joy. She just doesn’t see how a kid could possibly fit into her life with work and all that it entails taking up so much space, not with the way it’s presently constituted, not when she’d have to do it all on her own.Because of course there’s the added complication of this being Dan’s kid, which can’t possibly be overstated. Forget about the terrifying quirks of his DNA that might be passed onto a child -- the idea of being tied to him for the rest of her life is overwhelming, to say the least. There would be no escaping him, no place that she could run to where the tether could ever be fully cut. But then, she has no illusions about Dan or the kind of father he would be. She wouldn’t be like other women, going into this situation wishing and hoping that their baby daddy might come through in the end, that fatherhood might change him, make him a more reliable, stand-up kind of guy. She knows that she’ll get nothing from him, so there’s no rug to be pulled out from under her when the kid is born. Single motherhood for a woman who isn’t good with children and is hopelessly devoted to her career seems like a pretty terrible idea all the way around -- but fuck, if not now, when?She is getting to an age where it’s only going to get harder and harder to have a child, and there will always be some election just around the corner that makes for lousy timing or keeps her from meeting a halfway decent guy she would even be willing to have a kid with (she knows that Dan doesn’t meet those standards -- he’s not even a quarter-way decent -- but on a purely superficial level, she could definitely wind up with worse genetic material). If there’s the smallest part of her that might want to be a mother, now is the fucking time. (And maybe there is the smallest part of her that’s thought about it, off and on, over the years. She thinks that she even accepted that it would eventually be part of the deal with Buddy at some point, if that hadn’t turned out to be a fucking disaster -- but that’s not really the same. It’s different to be doing it with someone else, to be starting a family with a partner, even if the thought of sharing a child with Buddy makes her feel nauseous all over again. Thank fucking God for small favors, because Dan may be the biggest prick she knows, but he is not Buddy Calhoun.)For weeks, she’s been drifting, looking for some way to change her life, some way to shake things up, and here it is, the biggest fucking change that she could possibly ask for dropped into her lap just like that. The fact that she didn’t even ask Dr. Klein about her options tells Amy plenty -- keeping the kid is the default that her head (and maybe even her heart) has already gone to. At her desk, she tries to catch up on the calls, emails, and texts that she’s been too distracted to even acknowledge since yesterday afternoon. The groundbreaking for Selina’s library is in two days, and she needs to get her shit together. But she sees the text from Dan, apparently sent just a few minutes after she left him in D.C., and freezes. Sooner not later, he wrote, and God, everything in her life is completely up in the air, and she has no idea what to do next, and it feels like she is about to jump headfirst off a cliff. She closes the message without replying.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
-------When Ben tells him that Selina is ready to get back on the presidential campaign horse, Dan isn’t surprised. She would never be able to resist an opening if it presented itself, and the Tibet story gave that to her on a silver platter. It doesn’t even surprise him that he’s kind of excited about the idea of working on her campaign again, of seeing this thing through once and for all. He does feel a little bad about not giving Amy the heads up, but she seems excited enough by the news that it doesn’t really matter in the end. (It conveniently solves the problem of how to get her on board at BKD too. They’ll be working together for the foreseeable future, and once the campaign is over and it’s evident that Selina’s had her last hurrah in one way or another, it should be much easier for Amy to finally say good riddance once and for all.)He sidles up to her in Selina’s office, not bothering to reign in his grin. “Didn’t I tell you we’d be having fun together again?”Amy shoots him a tight-lipped smile. “That Dan Egan, he’s always right.”He cocks his head like he’s considering the idea. “Well, maybe just 99.9 percent of the time?”She’s acting a little strange, fidgeting beside him, avoiding his eyes, nursing the same glass of champagne that he handed her almost 15 minutes ago, but this is probably a lot to take in so it makes sense that she’s a little off her game. “What do you think her chances are?” she asks, lowering her voice like she’s afraid that Selina, who’s in the middle of a heated exchange with Ben and not paying them the least bit of attention, might overhear. “I mean, I know it’s so early… there’s so much fucking time, I know, but…”Dan lifts a shoulder, draining his glass. “Good,” he says, “I mean, she came as close as you can without actually winning last time. Now, we’ve got Tibet … and enough mistakes to learn from to win at least five fucking elections, conservatively speaking. So I’m in a pretty bullish mood.”Amy nods, watching Selina across the room. He wonders if maybe she has doubts about the whole thing -- she has to be feeling at least a little confused, especially since he’s spent the last couple of months trying to convince her to get the hell out of Dodge and ditch Selina for good. Now, he, Ben, and Kent ride in, all ready to hitch their wagon to Selina’s star yet again -- he can see how it might be something of a mixed message. “This is a good thing,” he assures her. “You weren’t really ready to walk away right now anyway, and this--”“You have no idea what--”“...way, you don’t have to. You put off all those hard decisions for some undetermined future date.”She snorts, and there is something almost terrifyingly manic in her eyes -- but honestly, he likes it because she looks so much like herself, not bored and dull-eyed like she did when she hanging off Buddy Calhoun’s arm. It actually has him turned on enough that he wonders if she’s in a good enough mood that he could talk his way into an invite back to her place. “Right,” she says, “Some future date.” He leans in, close enough to whisper in her ear. “And you get to spend all your time with me again. You’ve hit the fucking jackpot.”When he looks down at her, Dan expects to find her rolling her eyes or frowning with purpose, so her expression throws him -- her eyes are wide and strangely bright, giving her a vulnerable look that he’s not sure he’s ever seen from her before.“What’s the-”“I should talk to Selina,” she says, shoving her champagne glass back at him and charging across the room. He watches her chat with Selina and Ben for a moment in what looks like a pretty animated conversation, and she seems more like herself again so he assumes that any weirdness is the result of not having settled her role yet. Of course, he has the advantage of knowing that Selina plans to name her campaign manager, and he can’t lie -- he likes being a few steps ahead of Amy for once. He sips from her discarded glass and makes himself comfortable on the sofa, so he has a front-row seat when she gets the news, when she smiles all big and intense and grabs Selina in a bouncy hug like a game show contestant who just won the big prize. And for once, Dan is sure that everything is falling into place exactly as it should.-----For nearly a week after Selina reveals that she’s tossing her hat back into the presidential ring, Dan, Ben, and Kent are constantly breezing in and out of her office. There are plenty of pre-campaign campaign details to hammer out, so it makes sense -- but as far as Amy is concerned, the timing couldn’t be worse. She already has the nausea as a persistent reminder that she’s pregnant; having to see Dan’s smug face on a daily basis only adds insult to injury. She massages her temples, a little too violently to really be therapeutic, and thinks about the potato skins at the diner two blocks over -- how they somehow manage to be so perfectly crispy and saturated with grease at the same time, covered with melted cheddar and Monterey jack cheese, studded with chopped up bacon instead of a single piece, so there’s a little bit in every bite. If she doesn’t have them immediately, she might seriously go on a rampage, smash every breakable item within a five-block radius. Across the room, she watches Dan through Selina’s office door, nodding at something that Selina’s said, and it suddenly hits Amy, in a way that it somehow hasn’t before, that she is actively walking around with Dan fucking Egan’s DNA inside of her, growing and expanding, putting down its motherfucking roots. It’s one thing to have some random cluster of cells playing parasite in her gut, ready to take over the whole damn thing like it owns the fucking place -- it is another thing entirely to have Dan’s kid hijacking her body, freeloading its way to birth. It’s fucking intrusive, is what it is. If Selina hadn’t decided to take this fourth, final run at the presidency, Amy might never tell him, even with her decision ultimately being to go through with the whole thing. He’d hear about the pregnancy eventually, of course, and if he did the math, he could easily figure it all out -- but out of sight, out of mind was how Dan operated. With two hundred miles between them, he’d be able to live very comfortably in denial, and she wouldn’t force it on him because what would be the point? But seeing him all the time, working with him day and night in the crazy world of a campaign, it just seems ridiculous not to tell him. She knows him -- at some point, he won’t be able to resist needling her about the father, maybe expecting her to lie, and then she’d probably wind up making a scene, blurting it out in the middle of some critical meeting or another, so she’d wind up looking like a crazy, unstable mess once again.And that will happen over her dead fucking body.Actually telling Dan, though, is like opening the bottle of prenatal vitamins that’s sitting beside her bathroom sink -- once she breaks that child-proof seal, once she says the words to him, then she is definitely having this baby, and it all becomes very real, and everything in her world changes in an instant. Right now, if she tries hard enough, she can still pretend that it's not actually happening.Inside Selina’s office, Dan laughs, looking so Goddamn pleased with himself and the world at large -- and he is so obnoxiously good-looking that she either wants to throw acid in his face or kiss him until he forgets his own name, and he is nowhere near as smart or charming as he thinks he is, but he is just smart and charming enough to fool people who don’t know any better, and there is nothing inside him resembling a conscience or a soul at all, but depending on her mood, that’s either the best or absolute worst thing about him. All that is to say that he is the last person on earth that Amy would choose to father her child -- he’s the kind of guy who’ll not only sleep with your sister, but taunt you about it afterward, for fuck’s sake -- and yet, in some weird, fucked up way, he is also the only person in the world who makes sense as the father of her very inconvenient, interfering, refuses-to-be-ignored kid. Which just goes to show how fucked up she is herself. Ben stops beside her desk as she’s staring Dan down and frowns. “What the hell’s wrong with you? You look seriously fucking constipated.” She scowls, though it’s directed more at Dan than Ben. “I’m just … I’m still processing all of this. It’s pretty fucking crazy.” “Yeah, you know, you think the ship has sailed, and then the fucking Titanic plows through your living room.”“The Titanic? You think that’s what we’re headed for?”Ben shrugs. “We all know Selina courts more disaster than a relationship with one of those fucking Kardashians. It’s going to be a whole lot of crossing our fingers and IV-hookups with straight scotch from now until wherever the finish line winds up.”Amy narrows her eyes, appraising him carefully. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think she had a shot, a good shot even…”His expression is nothing less than inscrutable, but he cocks his head, unable to disagree. “Dan’s not usually known for his good ideas,” he says, “But I’ve got to admit, his instincts about you were right on. You’re like the missing piece in all of this, you know.”After months of feeling like a failure, after weeks of wasting her talents and intellect on library bullshit, she can’t lie -- it’s nice to feel appreciated (and there is some foolish, desperate part of her that warms at the knowledge that Dan was the one who had the idea to bring her on at BKD, that he is the one who really wanted her there). She might even preen a little as she shifts in her desk chair -- even if she knows Ben is just feeding her a line.“You just want me around to do the dirty work of reining her in.”He almost smiles. “You do have a gift for it.”“Yeah, well, let’s see if I actually make it all the way through this time.”“You and me both, kid.”It’s Ben’s idea to grab lunch, but he must be reading her mind because he suggests the diner with those magical potato skins -- which has the added bonus of getting her out of the office and away from Dan for at least a half hour.So she eats the potato skins, forgets about the vitamins, and avoids Dan -- and her life stays exactly the same for one more day.----There are still a few months left on the lease for his New York apartment, but his realtor found an art history professor who’s doing a research fellowship at Columbia to sublet the place, which means Dan has to finish cleaning it out, packing it up, and sending everything down to D.C. He’ll still be spending time up here to work on Selina’s campaign, but he’s fine with staying in hotels for quick trips back. (He wonders briefly how it would go over if he asked Amy about staying at her place when need be. But he has a pretty good idea, since she’s been acting like that night they fucked a couple months back never happened --which must mean that they’re back to their old status quo. That’s fine for now, because he’s pretty sure he’ll be able to persuade her to give him another go when they’re working side-by-side again on a full-time basis. So he can save that for all the cold, lonely nights ahead of them in Iowa, New Hampshire, wherever.) When Brie hears he’s back in town, she wants to grab dinner, and she’s all full of questions about whether he’s done with TV for good and what candidates he’ll be working with and whether he really prefers D.C. to New York. He’s purposefully vague because he doesn’t really trust her and he’s not about to put the upward trajectory his life is headed in at risk for no good reason.Still, he fucks her on the sofa in her apartment, because why not? His mind is on other things, though, like the fact that Leon West is obviously an upgrade over that fucking dimwit Mike but he’s still a total dick who won’t budge on the wording in the third and fourth paragraphs of Selina’s speech for the Madison Monroe dinner, whether he likes the rowhouse in Georgetown or the two-bedroom condo in Dupont Circle better for his next place, or Amy, apparently in the midst of some uncharacteristic health kick, announcing that she’s giving up caffeine -- and fine, if she wants to torture herself, that’s her business, but fuck, she’s a raging bitch before her morning coffee, which means she’s been a bitch all day, every day, since the caffeine embargo, and that’s just torture for everyone. Brie tells him to text the next time he’s in New York, and he says he will, but the truth is that boredom has already set in, so there’s no point in seeing her again. He’s dragging as soon as his alarm goes off the next morning and has to make a stop at the coffee shop around the corner from Selina’s office for an Americano.“You have decaf?” he asks on a whim as he watches the barista fill his cup. “Or any kind of decaffeinated shit?”He decides to go with lemon herbal tea because he remembers Amy drinking a lemon drop way back in the day when Dan barely knew her and took her to some swanky martini bar he thought might impress her, so it seems like a safe bet. At the last minute, he adds one of the toffee chip cookies he saw her eating the other day because hell, if she’s not going to have any caffeine, maybe some sugar can help take the edge off for at least part of the morning.When he gets to the office, she’s already at her desk, head in hand as she scans her laptop, so Dan drops the cup of tea and the cookie in its noisy cellophane wrapper down beside her. She looks up sharply, like he’s startled her, and frowns. “What the hell is this?”“Herbal tea. And one of those cookies you like.”She glances down at the food again and then back up at him, looking so rabidly suspicious that it seems like she might think he’s poisoned them. “Why?” she demands.“Because your lack of caffeine is starting to affect innocent bystanders. I thought this might help dial back the bitchery just a bit.” She huffs out an unamused laugh. “You’re the only person I know who can be such a dick when he’s doing something that’s almost considerate.”“And you’re the only person I know who can be such a bitch when she’s almost saying thank you, so we’re quite the pair.”Amy tentatively reaches out to press her finger against the edge of the cookie’s wrapper, and the crinkling sound almost seems to rattle her. She doesn’t meet his eyes but offers up a tight smile. “Thank you,” she says, without any of the cutting edge he’s expecting. He grins. “You’re welcome.”She bobs her head, and then immediately launches into a tirade about Leon West and how he’s still refusing to change the wording in those problematic paragraphs for Selina’s speech, which is only two days away now. Of course, Dan agrees with her, so he sits on the edge of her desk and they sip their coffee and tea while commiserating over the fact that even though Mike was a fucking moron with the intellectual capacity of a five-year-old who’d been dropped on his head every day since birth, at least they could usually bully him into doing what they wanted. And it feels just like all those good old days that Amy swears didn’t exist.-------Timing is everything, as Amy well knows after all these years in the political game, so she finally tells Dan just before Selina is about to deliver her speech. They have to go right into professional mode afterward, so they’ll both have some time to process the whole thing before he inevitably wants to talk it out. She knows exactly how he is going to react to the news, though, so she expects him to spend most of Selina’s speech outside, punching walls, howling at the moon, babbling incoherently into the night. That’s why she is caught entirely off-guard when he stalks up next to her just a couple of minutes after she comes inside -- but the rigid line of his back beneath his coat and the hard, clenched set of his jaw are a good indication that her instincts were dead on about his reaction, so she studiously ignores him, her eyes focused entirely on Selina, even if the actual words of the speech barely reach her. Dan isn’t shy about demanding attention when he wants it, though, so he leans in after a minute, his hand curling over her shoulder. “You’re keeping it?” he whispers.She glares at him. “This really isn’t the time to--”“You fucking dump this on me out of the blue like this and you expect me to have nothing to say about it?” he hisses.“I expect you to act like a fucking professional. We’re in the middle of--”In front of them, Gary turns sharply, shushing them in a stupidly dramatic way that’s louder than anything either of them has whispered. Amy wants to punch his stupid, fucking bland face in the worst way, but it’s really herself that she’s pissed at because she knows that Gary isn’t out of line for scolding them. She turns on her heel and strides toward the door, back out to the fresh, cold air and starless sky. She feels slightly nauseous and also, paradoxically, starving (in particular, she is craving pizza, though she doesn’t think Iowa will offer up too many appealing options in that regard), so she isn’t entirely sure whether she wants Dan to follow after her or not.He doesn’t give her time to decide, slipping out behind her before the doors even swing shut. “What the fuck, Amy?”“Obviously, I’m keeping it,” she says, “Why would I tell you if I was just going to get rid of it?”He sneers, nodding a little manically. “Okay, sure. But another question then… have you stopped for even a fucking second to consider what that means? It’s completely out of… Despite your sham of an engagement to that shit-for-brains cowboy, you’ve never seemed particularly interested in all that white picket fence, happily-ever-after bullshit. You’re not patient, you’re not maternal… fuck, you don’t even like kids!”“Well, thank you very much. I really hoped you’d respond to the news by telling me what a fucking terrible mother I’ll be.”He throws his hands up, almost like he’s at a loss for words -- but Dan has never been particularly good at keeping his damn mouth shut when he should.“Jesus, I’m not trying to insult you, Amy. Fuck, those are some of my favorite things about you. Because I’m the same. I’m not patient, I’m not fucking paternal. So what exactly is this kid getting out of the deal?”It is almost eerily quiet out in the parking -- if she strains, Amy can still hear Selina inside, vaguely paving the way for the campaign that comes next -- and Dan’s question seems to echo in the air around them.She is still going to ignore it.“Look,” she says, with a calmness she doesn’t feel. “I only told you out of courtesy.” He snorts, but she ignores that too. “I don’t expect you to debate baby names with me or put together a crib or hold my hand when I push the damn kid out. I don’t expect you to attend a single piano recital or school play either. And I don’t even want a penny from you. So you can just relax and stop trying to talk me out of it, okay?”Dan paces a circle around her with his hands in his hair, like he is trying desperately to process all of this, but the neurons and synapses in his poor, overloaded brain just can’t possibly keep up. He skids to a halt right in front of her suddenly, his eyes narrowed and sharp like he is ready to go in for the kill. “So why tell me at all then?”Leave it to fucking Dan to ask all the questions that she doesn’t want to answer, that she has steadfastly refused to ask herself from the minute she found out that she was pregnant. She put off telling him for as long as she did because it would make the whole thing real in just this way, and she is kicking herself for biting the damn bullet, for ripping off the band-aid, without thinking it through a little more carefully.It’s because she’s had to see him so much lately, Amy thinks. There hasn’t been any distance or space to give her time to think -- and then he brings her a fucking cookie and her hormones are apparently so jacked up that she finds that ridiculously insignificant act persuasive enough to do something as stupid as telling him the truth. But then, she’s been pretty fucking stupid where Dan is concerned before, even back when she didn’t have the excuse of pregnancy hormones to send her common sense packing, so maybe she is just an idiot when it comes to this asshole.“I don’t know,” she finally tells him, which feels as close to the truth as she can get. “Because we’re working on the same campaign and I’m going to start showing at some point and even you could probably do the fucking math and realize the timing worked out. And then you might start wondering... so I thought if I was just upfront about it, we could get all the awkwardness out of the way.”Dan laughs without an ounce of amusement. “Yeah, sure. Mission fucking accomplished.”“Weren’t you going to be a sperm donor for Catherine and Marjorie? Just think of this as the same kind of arrangement.”“That fucking doctor,” he mutters, almost under his breath. “I should sue for fucking malpractice.” She knows that he wasn’t supposed to be able to get her pregnant, at least not so fucking easily, but she really doesn’t want to think about what it means that it did happen, against whatever odds, so she just lowers her head and studies the damp pavement beneath her feet. “Okay, but this isn’t like the Catherine and Marjorie situation. You and I, we… work together. I’m going to see you every day, and I’m just supposed to … what? Ignore that you’re having my fucking kid?”She sighs. “Jesus, Dan. You’re not supposed to do anything. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”He tips his head back, like he is gazing up at the night sky to take in the stars but she doubts that he’s looking at anything in particular. “Okay,” he says, “Fine. So what about you then? What about the campaign? You’re finally done with that stupid fucking library bullshit and now you’re going to throw it all away to have some snot-nosed kid? Really?”If her head wasn’t throbbing before, it is now. All she wants is a warm bath, a few slices of pepperoni pizza, and a solid eight hours of sleep, but Amy is pretty sure that she’s not getting any of those things in her immediate future.“I get it, alright?” she says, “You think this is a fucking terrible idea. And you know what? You’re probably right. But as you love to remind me, I’m not getting any younger and the timing, it actually works out. I’ll have the kid long before we even sniff the primaries or get to any real campaign action, so I’m not really losing any time.”“And if Selina does get the nomination,” Dan presses, “What then? You’re just gonna be traipsing around Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and all the other battleground states with a fucking baby on your hip?” “I had Mike weighing me down the last time. A baby will actually be an upgrade.”He exhales heavily, and for a moment, Amy thinks he might laugh. But there’s something about the distant look in his eyes and his grim frown that almost makes it seem like he is seeing her for the first time. She tries to imagine their roles being reversed, Dan coming to her with the sudden idea to have a kid, and she is pretty sure that she would look at him like he’d lost his fucking mind too, so she can’t really hold it against him.“What does your family think about this?” he asks. Maybe the hormones are making her more sensitive too, but she can’t help wondering if that’s his subtle way of reminding her once again that he fucked her sister. She won’t take the bait, she tells herself. She won’t give him the satisfaction. “I haven’t told them yet. I’m not telling anyone until I’ve made it through the first trimester, and that’s like another five or six weeks.”“What about Selina?” Dan looks stupidly pleased with himself, like he’s finally found the right angle to rattle her. “Have you thought about how she’s going to react?”“I have, actually,” Amy says, “If she has any concerns, having you and Ben and Kent here to help with the campaign will alleviate most of them. At least this early on.” She shrugs. “Besides, when she thinks about it, she’ll realize that it could actually help in some demographics. A campaign manager who’s a single, working mother makes Selina seem like she’s not only aware of those struggles but truly sympathetic to them. Like it’s not just lip service.”He laughs, shaking his head. “Oh, so you’re just going to sell me out as a fucking deadbeat, is that it?”“Calm the fuck down, Dan. No one even has to know you’re the father.”When he steps close enough that she can feel his breath on her face, that the warmth of his body blocks all of the cold air in front of her, she somehow forces herself not to move back, show the least bit of a reaction to his nearness. “I hate to break it to you, Ames, but all of D.C. thinks we’ve been fucking for years,” he whispers, and shit, it must be the damn hormones again because something about his voice, all low and rough, is really doing it for her. “I’m going to be the first person everyone thinks of… especially now that we’re working together again.”“Oh, fuck you.”“Been there, done that,” he snarks, “That’s how we got in this mess.”She crosses her arms over her chest, which helps her gets a little distance from him. “And don’t think for a second I don’t wake up regretting that decision every Goddamn morning.”No one should be as pretty as he is, wearing such an ugly smirk, but Dan lives to flout convention. “You might be able to sell that line a little better if you weren’t so fucking hellbent on having my kid.”“I’m not hellbent on anything, you fucking prick. I’m just--”Behind them, the door opens suddenly, and the sound of pretty vigorous applause washes over them, which must mean that Selina’s kicked a little ass. As Ben, Kent, and Leon head outside, Amy catches a glimpse of her, smiling her most convincing, fake smile and shaking hands like it’s going out of style. Amy takes a step away from Dan as Ben spots them and smiles, immediately seeming to pick up on the mood. “Well, look at this. Now we know it’s an official campaign,” he declares, “Because Dan and Amy are back to arguing like fucking school children again.”“Not arguing,” Amy insists, “Just having a conversation. Which is now over.”Dan shakes his head. “I don’t think so. We aren’t--”“How’d the speech go?” she asks Ben, ignoring Dan completely. “Sounds like a big hit.”She can feel Dan’s glare practically boring a hole into the back of her head as she listens to Ben’s analysis, but she knows that he won’t push the issue in front of mixed company, which means she is safe for the foreseeable future. Once Selina has finished pressing the flesh, kissing cheeks, and accepting enough praise to fuel her for a couple of days at least, they head to an Italian restaurant for dinner, one of the few in town open past nine o’clock. It’s a good thing that Amy doesn’t get her hopes up, though, because they don’t have pizza, so she has to make do with lasagna. It doesn’t really hit the spot, but she isn’t sure whether that’s due to the nausea rearing its ugly head again or the fact that Dan doesn’t take his eyes off her the entire meal, tracking her every move. Somehow, it's easier to blame Dan.-------It’s nearly three a.m. before Dan manages to fall asleep. The hotel mattress is a piece of shit, which definitely doesn’t help matters, but there's no way to sugarcoat it -- he can’t fucking sleep because he’s too busy trying to figure exactly how much of her mind Amy has actually lost. She wants to have a fucking baby. His fucking baby, to be precise.It is, without question, the most insane idea that anyone has ever had in all of human history.He tries to imagine two people less suited to being parents than they are, two people less interested in being parents than they are, and he comes up with nothing but a big, ol’ fucking blank. (He’s choosing to ignore the fact that this is pretty much all his fault, because his fucking slow sperm isn’t supposed to be able to get the job done, and sure, they were both too caught up in the moment the first time to even think about condoms, but Amy had a moment of clarity afterward, and he’d been so quick to assure her there was nothing to worry about -- and apparently, he did such a great fucking job that she actually agreed to let him go bareback a second time, all because that first taste of being inside without any latex in the way was too fucking good to be believed, and he wanted more. Thank fucking God he hasn’t been crazy enough to make that mistake with anyone else.)Amy can say all she wants that he doesn’t have to be involved, she can even believe that, but she has to know that it won’t really be that easy, that babies are fucking demons and raising one on her own will get hard, and she’ll want help, need help, and then she’ll be pissed that he’s not doing anything, and she’ll change her mind about everything and start berating him for being the world’s worst deadbeat. He won’t even be able to ignore any of it either because it’ll all be going on right there in his face.It will be a fucking nightmare. And that’s not even taking into account how the whole thing will make him look -- he doesn’t give a shit if people know he has no real interest in being a father in general, but he does care if that bit of information getting out affects his career, his future, because there’s an actual kid out there that’s he’s actively neglecting. Those are the kind of bad optics that are nearly impossible to overcome. But this kid isn’t just a complication for him; it complicates everything for Amy too, even if she can’t -- or won’t -- see it. Sure, probably 95 percent of his concern is tied up in his own self-interest (and not just being stuck with a kid himself, but the worry that Amy might be distracted by all the pregnancy crap, take her eye off the ball, and put the campaign, and BKD by extension, in jeopardy), but he’s also legitimately worried that she would derail her entire career just to have a fucking kid. She’s too smart for that -- at least, that’s what he’s always thought. This, coupled with the whole Buddy Calhoun insanity, makes him wonder if he misjudged her at some point along the way.Maybe it’s just a hormonal thing. Maybe the fucking kid is already flooding her system with so much estrogen that it’s somehow convinced her that she wants to be a mother, despite that being totally fucking crazy. Because if any fetus could manipulate and coerce a grown woman into doing its bidding when it’s still the size of a grape, it would be one that shares half his DNA.His kid would absolutely be able to pull that off. When his alarm goes off at six, he’s barely gotten three hours of sleep, but he’s come to realize that it doesn’t really matter why Amy is so insistent on having this baby. What matters is making sure that she’s really considered what all of it means, how everything is going to change -- for both of them. He has no illusions about having any control over the situation -- it’s obviously Amy’s decision, and if she’s really decided, if she’s truly committed to seeing this through, then that’s that, and he’ll have to find some way to deal with it -- but he needs to be sure that she really understands what they’re in for.He can’t go pounding on her door, though, because Ben and Kent both have rooms nearby, and Dan doesn’t really feel like airing this particular bit of dirty laundry in front of an audience. He decides he’ll wait for Amy downstairs, where she won’t be expecting him so early and he can catch her off-guard. But she has to show him up, of course, so when he gets down to the lobby, she’s already sitting on one of the couches, looking perfectly polished and professional as she sends a text on her phone, despite being eight (he estimates) weeks pregnant and probably puking at every turn. Her eyes don’t leave her screen as he sits down beside her, but she pauses in her typing for a moment.“Good morning,” she says politely, like she just intends to pretend last night didn’t happen, that she isn’t in a serious family way. “Are fucking kidding me?”Amy finally looks up from her phone, glaring at him. “It’s too Goddamn early for this, Dan. I’m tired and I don’t want to--”“Well, too fucking bad. We’re doing this now because we obviously didn’t settle anything last night.”“There is nothing to settle. I’ve already told you--”“You’ve spent nearly your entire career trying to get Selina elected president, right?” Dan says, “And we’ve got another chance to get that done finally but you’re gonna throw it all away because suddenly motherhood seems like it might be a little bit appealing?”“Stop being a motherfucking drama queen,” she snaps, “I’m not throwing anything away. I’m pregnant, not battling a terminal illness or chasing the Goddamn dragon. I’m not going through anything that millions of other women haven’t since the dawn of fucking time.”“Why?” he demands, “Why are you doing this? I know you… this isn’t what you want.”She sighs, sounding incredibly tired all of a sudden. “What the fuck do you know about what I want?” she asks, “Maybe what I want is something different for my life, something more than all of this bullshit. I thought that getting away from Selina was the answer, but that’s obviously not happening now, and then I find out I’m pregnant so it seems like--”“You want something different for your life?” he laughs, “Get a fucking dog. Or even better, a goldfish. You can flush that down the toilet when you get bored with it.”For a moment, Amy actually smiles, and she once again reminds him of those good, old days, when they would plot and scheme and rip everyone around them to shreds together -- but then she reaches out to pat his knee in a way that’s more than a little condescending. “If you’re working so hard to talk me out this because you don’t want to be a father, don’t worry about it. I already told you… I don’t need--”“Oh, no,” he insists, “No, I’d be here having this conversation with you even if you’d told me you were having Gary’s feebleminded spawn. Because it’s fucking crazy.”She stands abruptly, grabbing her coat from the back of the sofa. “Fuck off, Dan.”She reaches for the handle of her suitcase, prepared to roll off with it to parts unknown, but he jumps up, wrapping a hand around her elbow to turn her around. “See, but here’s where I use my status as baby daddy to say I’m not ready to fuck off just yet.”“You have no fucking say in any of this, okay? It’s kind of one of the party’s fundamental platforms, asshole. My body, my choice.”Dan sighs, because this isn’t going the way he wanted at all, because she clearly isn’t interested in being even the least bit reasonable.“Stop acting like I’m trying to hustle you into some fucking back alley, okay? I’m not trying to force … I just want you to think this through, Amy. That’s all.”“Well, if that’s all,” she says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Of course, I’ve thought it through, you condescending dick. I wouldn’t be having a fucking kid if I hadn’t thought it through.” He smirks. “And here I thought this was all just part of some elaborate plot to get me to make an honest woman of you.”She throws up an elegant middle finger and grabs her suitcase again. “We’re done here, okay?”It’s not fucking okay, but Dan spots Ben and Kent getting off the elevator as Amy stalks off and he’s not about to get caught in a second heated disagreement with her in less than 24 hours. So he sits down again and pulls his phone out of his pocket, pretending to check his email.Kent’s got updated numbers on Montez’s approval rating that he’s dying to share, and Ben already has an idea for Selina’s next appearance, and Dan listens to every word like they’re of the gravest importance. He tells himself that there’s nothing else on his mind, that he’s going to do his job exactly the same way he did it yesterday. Like his life hasn’t changed at all.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
-------According to her calculations, Amy’s been nauseous for nearly three weeks straight.The silver lining is that she’s only actually thrown up about once every couple of days, so she tells herself that it could be worse. She’s read horror stories on a few baby blogs about women who throw up three or four times a day and get so dehydrated that they need IV fluids, and if that were her fate, she wouldn’t get out of bed until she was well into her second trimester.Of course, she knows that no matter what she’s suffering through, she really shouldn’t complain, since she’s the one who chose this, who had another choice and decided not to take it -- but when she falls asleep at her desk in full view of the entire office and only wakes up when her head slides off the hand that’s supporting it, when she rolls her chair closer to her laptop and winces because her breasts, tender as all fuck, bang against the edge of the desk, when her nausea goes away long enough for her to eat a simple grilled cheese sandwich and the heartburn that explodes in her chest makes her feel like she’s swallowed a match and chased it with lighter fluid, she looks across the room at Dan and daydreams about wrapping her hands around his throat and squeezing the fucking life out of him, nice and slow so she knows the precise moment the last breath flows out of him.She thinks that she finally understands all those movie and TV cliches where some screaming woman, in the midst of the most painful, gut-wrenching labor, curses the kid’s father and threatens creative bodily violence in the delivery room, because Amy hasn’t even made it past the first trimester, and every day, she dreams up at least two dozen new ways to kill Dan and get rid of the body so no one is the wiser. Dan Egan and his motherfucking dick, she thinks. The root of all evil.She's made it as clear as she possibly can that she doesn't want anything from him, but she still feels him watching her from across the room like she is a bomb that he expects to detonate at any second, and the murderous impulses that inspires require every ounce of her raggedy self-control to keep in check.(Why can’t he ever forget about her when that's actually what she wants? Why can't he just walk away without looking back when it would make everything easier for both of them?)Amy is technically on her lunch break, though her chicken rice soup sits largely untouched beside her because somehow in the last 15 minutes or so, the idea of chicken makes her want to gag. She sips a can of caffeine-free Coke instead and opens the draft of the email that she is working on to her mother. Telling her parents that she’s having a baby like this is probably the coward’s way out, but it seems best for everyone -- okay, mostly for her, but she is the one who’s growing another human being at the moment, so her needs seem a little more important than everyone else’s. There is still plenty of time to work on the message because she isn’t going to tell anyone until the first trimester is firmly under her belt and she still has a few weeks before she hits that milestone. Putting it off isn’t just about the absolute dread of actually telling her family, though -- it’s because there’s still some part of Amy that isn’t entirely convinced this is really happening, some part of her that thinks all the pregnancy tests were wrong or that the universe will take it upon itself to correct the cosmic joke that is Dan Egan, poster boy for birth control, and Amy Brookheimer, the least nurturing woman on the planet, drunkenly fucking their way into a motherfucking oops baby that puts every ill-advised teen pregnancy to shame, especially when there are men and women out there so desperate for children of their own that they spend years of their lives and entire savings accounts trying to make it happen. In their case, they just drink a little too much scotch, Dan whispers a few sweet nothings in her ear, and it happens like damn clockwork, even with his lazy fucking sperm. It would be funny if it weren’t so fucking ridiculous.She reads over the last line in the email draft and sighs. There is a fine line to walk tone-wise -- she wants her parents to believe that she’s happy about the baby (and Jesus, these motherfucking hormones are doing a number on her because there are seconds, minutes, even whole hours, that she spends imagining who this kid might turn out to be, how he might fill up her world, and it gives her the strangest feeling of contentment, like nothing she’s felt in her adult life), but she doesn’t want her mother to think she is so over the moon that her inbox is suddenly full of links to Pinterest boards with nursery decorating schemes and baby shower themes, because Amy can’t even be sure where she’ll be living when the baby arrives -- New York? D.C.? A motel room somewhere in the middle of the country? -- so it’s just all too much to think about. Selina steps out of her office, distracting Amy from the email (at this point, all it’s going to say is, Hi Mom, Guess what? I’m pregnant. See you for your birthday!), and looks around the office. “Amy, Dan, get in here… we need your opinions on this.”Amy lurches to her feet, but she moves too quickly because she is hit with a wave of nausea so strong that she is certain she is going to throw up all over her desk. She turns and hurries for the bathroom without even looking back because she can’t risk taking the time to explain.“What the fuck is wrong with you now?” Amy hears Selina call, and Jesus Christ, she is an idiot for thinking this pregnancy could possibly stay a secret for another month.“I told her that California roll looked funny,” Dan is telling Selina, because sometimes he’s not as selfish as he seems. “But you know her. She never wants to listen to me.”Amy closes herself in the private bathroom that Selina’s banned the interns from using and hunches over the sink, holding her hair back in a fist to make sure it doesn’t get in the way. She dry-heaves a couple of times, her head pounding, but nothing actually comes up -- she isn’t sure whether that’s a good thing or not, though, because she thinks that she might actually feel better if she just threw up.The door to the bathroom starts to open then, and she curses herself for forgetting to lock it, because before she can slam her palm against it, Dan wedges his foot in the opening and easily pushes his way inside.“Get the fuck out, Dan,” she says automatically, but her voice lacks all of its usual bite because she is just too tired for this shit. He ignores her, closing the door and turning the lock behind him as he holds her can of Coke out to her. “Thought you could probably use this right about now. Did you actually puke?”She takes a deep breath, smoothing her hair and attempting to assume as dignified a pose as she can at the moment. “I’m fine,” she says, “Or I would be, if I could have a little fucking privacy.”It takes a moment, but she manages to feel steady enough to take a few steps backward toward the toilet. She closes the lid and sits down slowly, trying to resist the urge to bury her head in hands until Dan vacates the premises. But he just leans back against the door, making it clear that he doesn’t plan on leaving any time soon. “You’re a fucking pitiful sight right now, you know that?” “Get. Out.,” she repeats, gritting her teeth. He holds out the soda can again, though, and as much as she wants to throw it in his face, she reaches for it, because she may not have thrown up, but there is still a sour taste in her mouth and Coke has helped settle her stomach in the past. She takes a small sip, willing it to stay down. If she throws up in front of Dan, she will never forgive herself.“Better?”She gives a quick nod. “Okay, you did your good deed for the next five years. You can go now.” He grins. “Oh, Ames, look at that. Motherhood’s softening you up already. You really think I do a good deed every five years?”She thinks again about flinging her soda in his smug face, but she is so drained that she’s not sure she could splash more than his shoes. “As much as I hate to admit this to you,” she says, “I feel fucking awful. So try to be a decent human being for once in your miserable life and leave me alone.”Dan crosses his arms over his chest, making himself even more comfortable. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to give you some sort of pep talk?” he asks. “Tell you to keep your chin up, that you can do this?” He takes a step closer. “Because I’m not gonna fucking do that. You’re going to be awful at this. I’m going to be awful at this.”Amy huffs out a weak laugh. “That’s beautiful. I should get one of those keepsake pregnancy journals, and we can put that in a letter to the baby. I’m sure he’ll love reading it when he’s older.”“You know, if you want an in-depth account of the night he was conceived, I’m happy to help with that,” he says, smirking. “But I bet you’ve got all those details committed to memory, huh?”She rolls her eyes. “I still feel like I might throw up. You really want me associating that with sex with you?”Dan grabs a hand towel from the rack beside the sink and wets it under the faucet. She doesn’t know what he’s doing but watches as he squeezes the excess water from the cloth and hands it to her.“For your face,” he tells her. “You don’t want to go back out there looking all flushed and sweaty, like a fucking junkie.”Her cheeks do feel hot, because her internal thermostat is just another one of the things that’s off with her body these days, so she presses the towel to her forehead and dabs at her hairline before looking up at him. He is leaning back against the sink now, right across from her, and his expression is strangely serious -- which is so unlike him that it makes her nervous enough to twist her damp fingers in the hem of her skirt just for something to do. “Amy,” he says, and his voice is as gentle as it ever gets. For a moment, she is convinced that she might cry and she has no idea how to hide it. She hates that he can make her feel so much without even trying, without caring in the slightest. “This is fucking crazy. You get that, right?”She squints hard, just in case any renegade tears try to escape. “Maybe I’m not going to be the world’s greatest mother,” she says, “But I am more than capable of doing this. Fuck, if Selina can do it, then I sure as hell can.”He chuckles. “You’re setting the bar pretty fucking low.”“I told you I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It’s done.”Dan crouches down in front of her, curling a hand over her knee -- and his fingers feel so temptingly warm that she wants to ask him to rub her back, hold her hand, stroke her hair just until the room stops spinning. “It’s not, though,” he says, “We have to figure out what we’re going to--”She shakes her head. “There is no we, Dan. There’s me, over here, having a kid… and there’s you, over there, ignoring it, okay? That’s it.”He rubs his thumb against the inside of her knee through her stocking, letting it drift below the hem of her skirt just a bit. “It’s pretty hard to ignore when you’re puking in my face.”Amy stands abruptly, and Dan stumbles back against the sink. “Try harder then,” she says, reaching for the door before he can stop her. She apologizes to Selina and the others when she finally makes it into the meeting, using Dan’s lie about bad sushi to cover. Dan follows her into Selina’s office and takes the spot right beside her on the sofa, sitting so close that Amy can feel it every time he breathes. She knows that he is trying to make a point, prove that ignoring one another is not something that will ever be easy for them, but she just sips her soda, which is lukewarm and thoroughly unappealing by now, and forces herself to focus on whatever it is that Selina, Ben, and Kent are saying.This is never going to work, she thinks. And she is a fucking fool for ever thinking it could. Beside her, Dan nods absently, almost like he agrees. -------Selina has to attend a fundraiser that the Governor of New York is holding in the city -- he’s a rising star in the party, and an endorsement from him down the road could mean big things, so she’s got to start playing nice -- and Gary nearly has a fucking breakdown because there’s some incident involving the dress she plans to wear and an ill-advised container of yogurt. Only Gary and Ben are supposed to attend the event with Selina, so Dan’s sitting with his feet propped up on an empty desk, reading some stats that Kent just sent over, when Gary bursts into the room in full-fledged panic mode.“This is all my fault,” he cries to Amy, who’s typing away on her laptop and not paying him any real attention. “She hates that flavor! Remember the last time?”Amy looks up for a moment, her eyes flicking over Gary like he’s an annoying insect buzzing around her head. She glances at Dan for a moment, catching his eye with an almost smile that seems to say, Can you believe this shit? -- and he nearly falls out of the fucking rolling chair he’s stretched out in. He’s been getting nothing but ice from her for more than a week now, so a barely-there smile is pretty much like getting a lap dance from any other woman. (Because there’s no other way than personal to take the fact that she’s been avoiding spending a moment alone with him like he’s the fucking plague, which has meant subjecting herself to three lunches listening to Gary whine about the Selina problem du jour, a nearly 20 minute long conversation with Richard about why he prefers Twizzlers to Red Vines, and over an hour’s worth of phone calls with Furlong, who wanted to bitch Selina out about something and settled for Amy in her place. It’s beyond insulting to think Amy would rather torture herself in such stupidly cruel ways than just talk to him like a Goddamn adult, but that’s apparently where they’re at.)She told him to ignore her, and he’s tried, he really has, but it’s fucking impossible. He sees her nearly everyday, listens to her rip incompetent interns to shreds, watches her get queasy whenever Leon eats a tuna sandwich or Gary busts out the spring bloom-scented hand sanitizer, feels the long-suffering sighs she actively represses whenever Selina flies off the handle, catches her discreetly trying to check out Little Richard whenever Catherine stops by the office, and it’s like every fiber of his being is calling out for him to respond in some way. There really isn’t any point in talking to her about the kid or about how they’re going to handle all of it, though. Amy is a fucking stubborn bitch when she sets her mind to something, and there’s some part of him that thinks that she’s dug her heels in so hard over the baby situation just to stick it to him. If that’s the case, well, two can play that fucking game -- he can get on board with the kid just to stick it right back to her.Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he’s had some time to think about the situation, really consider what it means -- so when he watches her across the office, there’s something almost thrilling about knowing that her life’s about to turn upside down because she’s walking around with his kid inside her. Dan doesn’t know exactly what she’d say if she knew he nearly got hard when it dawned on him that now, she’ll never be able to forget him, never really be able to ignore him no matter how hard she tries, but the tirade would almost certainly be full of expletives and creative comparisons to various barnyard animals and single-celled organisms. But the fact is, this isn’t just while she’s pregnant -- this is for-fucking-ever. Amy is going to have his kid, which means his fingerprints are going to be all over her life no matter what he does or doesn’t do -- and it doesn’t matter what she does either. She can fuck someone else, marry someone else, run across the country to someone else, even pretend she’s in love with someone else, but Dan’s always going to be the father of her child. She’s going to go through her life with a kid who looks like him, maybe sounds like him and acts like him too, so he won’t ever be too far from her thoughts. Which means she’s always going to be his in a way that no one else can touch.So yeah, somehow, that idea gets him so fucking horny that there’s been a couple of times he's come pretty close to jerking off when he thinks about it. (But then, it sort of works in reverse too. Even if he could do what she asks and ignore the entire situation, Amy is always going to be out there in the world with his fucking kid -- and this isn’t some random congressional aide or production assistant, who could give him the all-clear to walk away and he’d run so fucking far before she even got the words out of her mouth. It’s different with Amy, and she has to know that, no matter what’s happened between them. She’s already the only woman who’s had any kind of staying power in his life, and that’s due to the parallel tracks their careers have always seemed to run along, but there’s probably more to it than that, like the fact that they understand one another in a way that no one else is smart enough to or the way that things always seem to make a little more sense when they’re in the same orbit. But he’s not interested in examining any of that too closely.) “Here’s what you do,” he listens to her tell Gary, all fierce and bitchy in that way that never fails to get Dan’s blood pumping. “You grab another fucking dress from the dozen or so you were considering and throw the rest of that shitty yogurt away. Once and for fucking all. I’m Goddamn sick of hearing about it.”Gary nods like some deranged bobblehead and scurries off, mumbling under his breath the entire time. Dan looks over at Amy, who’s gone right back to typing like she doesn’t have a care in the world, and that’s it -- he can’t keep himself in check a second longer.“You’re seriously going to put up with shit like that for the next nine months without a drop of booze in you?” Her fingers stop mid-key strike, and she tilts her head thoughtfully, though he isn’t sure whether she’s considering the question or trying to decide whether to acknowledge him at all. “It’s down to just about 30 weeks now,” she says, then reconsiders. “Maybe a little longer than that... you’re not supposed to drink when you’re breastfeeding either. At least not as much as I’d need to reasonably deal with that fuckhead.”“You’re going to breastfeed?” he nearly laughs. Her eyes narrow, and if looks could fucking kill, he’s pretty sure he’d be six feet under. “Yes, asshole… because it’s better for the kid. Builds up the immune system and shit like that. Some studies even link it to a higher IQ.” She clears her throat as she shifts in her chair. “It helps you lose the weight faster too.”Dan could make at least a half dozen jokes about that, but he’s honestly too distracted by the fact that Amy’s apparently reading baby books and mommy blogs and becoming a fucking expert on all things parenting -- which is so fucking strange that his brain can’t seem to process the information.She goes back to typing again, like none of this is particularly weird for her, and he wants to shake her until she explains how she can ease into all of this shit like it’s second fucking nature. Did she secretly want a baby the whole damn time he’s known her, he wonders. Did he misread some fundamental facet of her make-up?He watches as she concentrates on the email she’s writing, and for a moment, he actually thinks she might be humming under her breath, which is the last fucking straw. He wheels his chair over to her desk, so he’s right beside her -- and somehow, she has the nerve to look up at him like he’s the one who’s lost his mind.“You’re doing a pretty decent impression of someone who’s in a good mood,” he says, “What the fuck is your problem?”Amy flashes him that almost smile again before she has a chance to think better of it and lower her head to avoid his eyes. “This is the third day in a row I haven’t been nauseous. I think the morning sickness may finally be behind me, thank fucking God.”“So you’re in the second trimester?”“I’ve still got a couple of weeks to go. The second trimester doesn’t technically start until the middle of the thirteenth week.”She starts typing again, all business as usual, but it’s obvious that she doesn’t want him to press too hard on the topic, which is precisely why he does.“Technically,” he enunciates carefully. “That’s another way of saying you’re still putting off telling your parents. And Selina.”“I’m not putting off anything,” she insists testily, so he’s obviously hit a nerve. “I’m waiting for the right time to tell them. That’s all.”“Oh, sure, I get it. Hey, maybe you’ll get around to doing it by the time the kid’s graduating from high school.”She tries to stomp on his foot with the sharp heel of her shoe beneath the desk to push him away, but her aim is wildly off so she only succeeds in making him laugh. “I’m just … it’s not like … they’re either going to be too excited … or not excited enough. And I just don’t want to deal with that right now. A few extra weeks won’t make any difference.”It’s a surprisingly honest response, and all he can think about at the moment is the fact that she told him right away, almost as soon as she knew for sure, even though she was so sure how he would react, because she knows exactly who he is, has seen every shitty, irredeemable facet of his personality from the pretty much start. She told him anyway, because what are they besides brutally honest with each other? Most of the time anyway. He nudges her thigh with his knee. “So how much of this is because it’s mine?” Her brow furrows so tightly that it almost looks painful. “Excuse me?”“Oh come on, Ames. Don’t play dumb,” he says, “We both know you wouldn’t be having this kid if it was that fuckwad from Nevada who knocked you up. Or that fucking drip you dated a few years back… what’s his name…” Dan remembers Ed’s name perfectly well, but he isn’t about to give her the satisfaction of admitting that. “You would’ve gotten scooped out the second that little plus sign showed up on the damn stick and you know it.” “I don’t know what you’re implying,” Amy declares, trying for a haughty tone but refusing to look him in the eye. “But the timing wouldn’t have been right in either of those situations. Or maybe I just wasn’t ready back then. Whatever. This has nothing to do with you.”He grins. “Nothing to do with me? Come on, Amy. No one’s gonna believe that.”She tries to push her chair away from his, but he wraps his hand around her armrest, so she only rolls in place. “I hope you choke on that fucking colossal ego of yours, asshole. If you think for even a second that--”“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” he tells her. “Who could blame you? Catherine and Marjorie wanted my kid too. Because, let’s face it…” He gestures at himself. “This is a rich gene pool. Good looks, intelligence, charisma… and you know, besides a few minor cases of high blood pressure, no major hereditary illnesses to speak of.”“Don’t forget the mental illness,” she says, all faux sweetness.“I’m just saying, you’re lucky. This kid is going to be top-fucking-notch.”Amy huffs out an irritated laugh. “Yes, thank God, I was drunk and stupid enough to let you fuck me without a condom.”“Let me?” Dan scoffs. “Amy, you said please at least a half dozen times that night.”She shoves at his arm so hard and suddenly that he loses his balance and rolls backward into a pillar. “Get the fuck out of here,” she snaps. He grins, rolling himself right back over to her again. “Oh, come on. That’s a sweet story to tell the kid about that night.” “You’re so fucking sick in the head. Who tells their kid about the night they were conceived? That’s creepy shit.”“So we’re not going to include it in the birds-and-the-bees talk when the time comes then?”“Dan, you are unspeakably-”Selina breezes into the room then, having switched from her original plum-colored dress into a royal blue number that’s really an improvement all the way around, but probably most of all because it seems more patriotic. “What do we think?” she asks, though it’s pretty obvious she’s feeling herself. “Beautiful, ma’am,” Amy says automatically.“Good choice,” Dan agrees.Behind her, Gary beams, like he fucking designed and hand-sewed the damn thing himself, and Dan tries to imagine a worse fate than having every ounce of your self-worth tangled up in Selina Meyer -- hell, even being someone’s father can’t be as bad as that. Ben stumbles out of Selina’s office, looking both irritated and bored in his tux, and sighs. “Let’s get this fucking show on the road.” Selina nods but glances back at Dan and Amy almost suspiciously. “What are you two whispering about over there like a couple of fucking school girls?”Dan looks at Amy expectantly, so she knows that it’s up to her to field this one. She exhales slowly and conjures up a winning smile. “Dan was just confiding about his hemorrhoids.” She pats his arm almost like she has genuine sympathy for him. “I think you’re right, though. The suppository does sound like your best option.”Selina and Ben both roll their eyes, but Amy smiles, looking pretty fucking pleased with herself, and Dan actually laughs because she’s being too childish not to. It’s ridiculous to think that, in just a matter of months, they’re going to be someone’s parents, that they can just walk out of a hospital with an infant and no one will even check to see if they’re remotely equipped to handle the responsibility. He bumps his knee against hers again, so she directs her lovely, delighted smile right at him, and Dan is a guy who can do nearly anything without flinching, but try as he might, he can’t find a single way to ignore her, ignore the strange ache in his chest when she presses her foot against his and rolls her chair away. -------She schedules her 12-week prenatal appointment for a Tuesday morning when Selina is scheduled to get a haircut and eyebrow wax, so Amy is unlikely to be in demand. Ben, Kent, and Dan have been back in D.C. for a few days too, meeting with other potential clients for BKD, which means there are even fewer prying eyes to keep track of her movements, so the hour and a half that she’s out of the office goes completely unnoticed.The doctor says she is doing well: she’s only gained two pounds so far, but that’s apparently right on target for the first trimester, and when he does the ultrasound, the fetus actually looks like a real baby, so she doesn’t need the nurse to point it out to her this time. But with the giant, misshapen head, it resembles an alien more than anything else, which means she doesn’t really feel the urge to ooh and ahh. But then the sound of the heartbeat fills the exam room, and it’s so quick and so steady and so damn persistent that her breath stutters out of her in an almost painful rush.“Is that normal?” she asks, “For it to be so fast?”Dr. Klein checks the ultrasound screen and smiles. “156,” he says, “Perfectly normal.”But while everything looks good, even perfectly normal, he suggests that they do some tests for genetic abnormalities (“It’s all non-invasive,” he hurries to reassure her) because, despite the fact that she still thinks of herself as relatively young, she is apparently on the older end of the spectrum for a first-time mother (she imagines Dan making a joke about that, can practically hear his voice in her head as she wipes the ultrasound gel from her belly). Not old enough to be overly concerned, Dr. Klein tells her, but just enough that it’s better to be safe than sorry. It will take a week or two to get the results back, which means she’ll inevitably spend the whole time worrying about something that she has no control over. That kind of thing always pisses her off because it’s just so pointless -- and she doesn’t even have anyone to complain to about it. She still hasn’t told her parents about the baby, still hasn’t told Selina or anyone at work, so she is completely on her own.There is Dan, of course, but she isn’t about to bring the baby up with him, and since he’s not around to interrogate her about her whereabouts during the appointment, he’ll never know there is anything to ask about. It’s not like talking to him would make her feel better either. Dan doesn’t care about this kid beyond how it might negatively impact his life, and it’s not like he knows how to be reassuring or comforting in any kind of sincere way anyway.He would be useless, as always.But when he breezes into Selina’s office on Thursday morning, looking so polished and put together that he could walk straight into a GQ cover shoot, and stops beside her desk to drop off another one of the giant toffee crunch cookies that she’s been eating like they’re going out of style, she feels relieved in a way that she doesn’t understand.“Miss me?” he asks, grinning in an irritatingly self-assured way that immediately makes her want to knee him in the balls.It’s not that she really missed him -- he is way too fucking annoying for that -- but since they’ve been working together again, seeing each other so much, she remembers how everything seems a little more muted and dull when he’s not around. And back in the day, it often felt like they faced every catastrophe, fuck-up, even minor annoyance, together, like comrades in arms, and maybe recently, she’s noticed herself drifting back into that old feeling, that old headspace, even as she tries to fight it tooth and nail because Dan Egan is not someone she can count on for anything, especially help with something as mundane and world-changing as a kid. Amy knows that.So she ignores him, peeling back the cookie’s cellophane wrapper to break off a piece. He watches her carefully, his smile only widening. “Oh, God, you really did, huh, Ames?” He perches himself on the edge of her desk. “How much? How much exactly did you miss me?”She rolls her eyes. “About as much as I miss Mike and his special brand of ineptitude.”“You know neither of us believes that,” he says, smirking. “But if telling yourself that makes you feel better, then…” Tuning him out is clearly the wisest course of action -- giving Dan any kind of attention only encourages him -- so she breaks off another piece of the cookie, concentrates on chewing and swallowing like it’s her life’s work. She can feel his eyes on her the entire time, and she knows, without looking up, that he’s still wearing that same smug smile. “You’re welcome by the way,” he tells her. “For the cookie. From the way you’re inhaling it, I guess they’re still on the cravings list.”She nods. “This kid is fucking relentless. He’s going to wind up giving me gestational diabetes.”“You’ve been saying ‘he’ a lot. It’s a boy?”“I don’t know,” she tells him. “You usually have to wait until at least the sixteenth week to tell on an ultrasound.” She hesitates, because she told him to stay out of all of this, made it clear that she doesn’t expect him to be involved in this pregnancy in any real way, and all she would be doing by sharing details is opening the door for him to disappoint her again -- but when she looks up, he is focused on her, and only her, with an intensity that could almost make her shiver, which is probably why she can’t hold back. “The doctor did some genetic testing the other day, though, just to be safe, and it can tell you the gender too… so I’ll know in another couple of weeks..”“But you think it’s a boy?” Dan asks. “That’s the feeling you’re getting?”Amy laughs, because he is so much easier to handle when he’s being a fool. “I don’t really have a feeling one way or another. It’s probably just internalized misogyny that has me saying ‘he’ all the time,” she says, “But it’s just as likely that it’s a girl… and part of me is really hoping that it is. It’s what you deserve.”He stares back her blankly, looking genuinely confused. “Why?”“So you can be one of those annoying douchebags who only realize after they have a daughter of their own that using women and discarding them like the tissue you just jacked off in is a shitty fucking thing to do.”Dan cocks his head thoughtfully, considering the idea carefully. “You know, I actually think I could warm up to that role,” he says, “The crazy, intimidating father who greets all of his daughter’s dates from an armchair strategically placed in front of a cabinet full of rifles. Could be fun.”She snickers. “You are many things, Dan, but intimidating isn’t one of them.”(Amy doesn’t bother to point out that he won’t be around to put the fear of God into any of this kid’s dates or wouldn’t care enough to do it even if he were. It’s pointless.)“I intimidate plenty of people,” he insists.“Name one.”“Gary,” he says, almost proudly. “Please,” she laughs, “Gary’s scared of his own fucking shadow.”Dan is saved from having to scramble for any additional names by Selina calling them into her office for a chat. There’s really nothing of note to discuss, so they spend most of the meeting trying to convince her to reign in Leon just a bit, since he is absolutely unreceptive to feedback from anyone else -- and Amy has to admit that it only feels right to present that kind of united front with Dan, like it’s the natural order of things. Of course, Selina isn’t one to listen to reason, and she tells them that they need to be a little more open-minded where Leon is concerned.“Just be grateful you didn’t have to sleep with him,” are Selina’s parting words on the matter, and Amy isn’t exactly sure what she means, but she is certain that she doesn’t want to.Dan suggests they go to lunch to cheer themselves up, and she knows that spending time with him when she doesn’t have to isn’t a good idea, is just repeating the same mistakes she always makes with him, but she’s reached the stage of her pregnancy where she is hungry constantly, so the promise of food lures her in -- and she does actually feel better after eating her drunken noodles and listening to Dan whine to Ben over the phone about Leon’s latest awkward-as-fuck phrasing choices and Selina’s refusal to see the problem he presents. Sure, she wants Leon neutralized just as badly as he does, but there’s always something amusing about Dan Egan not getting what he wants. As she digs through her bag for a tube of lip balm -- her lips are dry as fuck these days, apparently another symptom of the pregnancy -- she comes across the ultrasound printout that the nurse gave her when she left the doctor’s office on Tuesday. The baby still looks like something from a low-budget Sci-Fi movie, but she glances over at Dan and wonders what he’d see if he looked. “I’m telling you, Ben… if we have to put up with much more of this crap I’m going to rip those fucking wire-rim glasses off his face and use them as a shiv to gut that fucking doughy stomach of his like a fish.” Dan grins at her across the table. “And if you think I’m a fucking loose cannon, you should hear what Amy wants to do to the little fucker.”Amy smiles back, because he’s not wrong -- but something about the gleam in his eyes leaves her feeling cold. She shoves the printout back down to the bottom of her bag and tells herself that it doesn’t matter what Dan might think of it. That’s not who they are.-------Dan’s not even down in D.C. for a week, but he comes back to New York a changed man.Well, not really. People don’t change -- anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that -- so it’s more accurate to say that he comes back with a new perspective. The kid doesn’t necessarily have to derail anything -- in fact, he and Amy might actually be able to get something out of the whole situation.And not any warm, fuzzy bullshit feelings or pride in doing their part to help the human race endure. Something so much more valuable and satisfying than that -- a baby might actually help them both out politically-speaking. In fact, knocking up Amy could turn out to be the smartest thing he’s ever done. The epiphany hit him when he and Ben were having lunch just before they flew back to New York. The meal was mostly uneventful, with a good chunk of it devoted to Ben complaining about his own fucking kids, which only confirmed what Dan already knew -- fatherhood fucking sucked -- until Congressman Chris Hamilton breezed past the restaurant’s front window, pushing a stroller down the sidewalk with a shit-eating grin that was impossible to ignore.This asshole, from some hick district in Alabama, served one utterly undistinguished term in the House, barely managed to get re-elected by the skin of his capped teeth, and then low and behold, goes and has himself a sickeningly adorable, tow-headed little brat, and suddenly, there are whispers everywhere that he’s a front-runner for the Senate when a seat opens up in a couple of years, that he might possibly be presidential material somewhere down the road.Sure, he’s got a pretty, plastic blonde wife on his arm to go with the kid, but that wasn’t what made the difference. Trophy wives were a dime a fucking dozen. But a kid -- a cute kid especially -- could be a difference maker.Dan’s always known that politics requires a veneer of respectability, and while he’s never been foolish enough to do anything that registered more scandalous than unseemly (like, say, getting busted for a DUI and sexually harassing the arresting officer), he knows the kinds of things that people say about him. In the past, he took comfort in the fact that his antics could be written off as youthful indiscretions, but the clock is probably ticking on that excuse.For some stupid fucking reason, though, parenthood seems to make you more trustworthy to the masses, like you have more invested in the future, like you actually care about the state of things in this country, like you have it all together in some significant way.In other words, having a kid might actually be a good look for Dan.Sure, dirty diapers and spit-up food all over his two thousand dollar suits might cramp his style, but he can see the benefits too. Congressman Hamilton has his adorable, little mini-me, and that has to be some kind of an ego rush, having this cute, little dope who looks just like you and only has to blow a few fucking spit bubbles to have every simpleton in a five-mile radius cooing -- and all of it reflects back on you, like you’re a fucking saint because you were dumb enough to skip the condom but smart enough to fuck a hot, fertile woman.And Dan knows that his kid, in particular, is bound to turn heads. Considering the gene pool -- and he’s not even minimizing Amy’s contribution; she brings plenty to the table -- he’ll be good-looking, smart as fucking hell, and probably come out of the womb with the kind of killer instinct that it took even Dan and Amy time to develop. Playing daddy definitely requires an investment of time and money that still makes him want to run for the fucking hills just a bit, but he thinks it’ll be worth it in the end. Besides, he’s got to believe that this kid is better off if he and Amy find some way to tackle the whole mess together. (Keeping Amy around is obviously a priority too, keeping her away from undistinguished fuckwads who are too damn stupid to be any kind of match for her but just smart enough to realize she’s a woman worth having, and somehow, he doesn’t see her making any sort of place for him in her life if he ditches the kid, which means he’s got even more incentive to try his hand at fatherhood.And, really, Amy is several giant steps above some random trophy wife too, because she can actually carry her own weight, bring some substance to back up the style, do more than stand over his shoulder and smile blandly. She’d look good and feel right at his side, like it’s where she belongs.)So he heads to her building on Saturday, just before noon, with an envelope and a bag of the chocolate-covered mini pretzels he’s seen her go to town on even before she got pregnant. He’s about to press the buzzer for her apartment, resigning himself to a whole song and dance routine just to convince her to let him in, when luck shines down on him, and a bored teenager comes stomping out of the building so Dan’s able to sneak in before the door closes behind him. Amy’s place is on the third floor in a walk-up, and as Dan jogs up the stairs, he can’t help thinking that she really has to consider relocating, because he just can’t imagine that it’s going to be much fun to go up and down three flights when she’s really packed on the baby weight. He should’ve let her sublet his old place, because it might be mean a longer commute to Selina’s, but it has a doorman and an elevator, which seem like pretty nice amenities for a pregnant woman. Selina still hasn’t decided where she wants to eventually set up campaign headquarters yet, though she’s leaning toward the D.C.-Maryland area, so maybe the point will be moot and Amy can just stay with him until the baby -- and campaign -- situation resolves itself. At the last minute, he decided to go with a three-bedroom apartment near Capitol Hill for no reason other than bigger is always better, but now there’s conveniently plenty of extra space he can offer up to look, if not actually be, supportive. Generous even. As he knocks on her door, he goes over the sales pitch that he planned to use to get her to buzz him into the building because she’ll probably still be reluctant to open up -- but he barely raps his fist against the door twice before she flings it open, almost as if she’s expecting him. She’s wearing yoga pants and a faded campaign T-shirt from one of Selina’s earlier runs at the presidency (which, he notes with interest, stretches wonderfully tight across her tits thanks to the pregnancy). The clothes, paired with her ponytail and bare feet, make it pretty clear that she has no real plans for the day, which is good because it means he’ll have her undivided attention.“You?” she practically barks when he grins down at her. “What the fuck are you doing here?” “Well, hello to you too, sweetie. I think the better question is why are you opening the door without asking who it is first.” “I thought you were my Postmate,” she says snidely. “With my macaroni and cheese and Double Cookies and Cream Magnum Bars.”“Wow. You really are pregnant, aren’t you?” Surprisingly, she steps back into the apartment, making room for him to follow. “No mac and cheese or ice cream,” he says, “But I do come bearing chocolate.”He holds out the bag of pretzels, and she eyes them intensely for a moment. It’s pretty obvious that she wants them, but isn’t quite sure whether she wants to give him the satisfaction of actually accepting them -- which is a pretty good metaphor for most of their relationship. The lure of chocolate eventually wins out, though, so she takes the bag, carefully opens it, and pops a whole pretzel into her mouth.“Seriously, Dan,” she says when she’s finished chewing. “Why are you here?”He extends his hand again, presenting her with the obnoxiously pink envelope from his jacket pocket. “To give you this.”Amy looks at the envelop dubiously, like it might contain anthrax or maybe an incredibly thin rattlesnake, so he waves it at her, as if that might actually entice her. Of course, it only annoys her, and she snatches it from his fingers just to make him stop. Her eyes stay fixed on his as she slips a finger beneath the flap, tears open the envelope, and pulls out the greeting card inside. She studies the front critically for a long moment before holding it up so he can read the big looping, glittery pink font that says, You Go Girl!, once more.“What the fuck is this?”Dan shrugs. “Hallmark doesn’t exactly make a card for when the only woman you’ve ever really liked gets knocked up with your kid, even though you’re both woefully unqualified to be parents, and you want to say, Hey, I hope we don’t fuck this up too much.”Amy looks down at the card, shaking her head slowly before she flips it open and reads the few words he’s scribbled inside -- Baby Brookheimer-Egan 2019.“As lovely as that sentiment is,” she says, with the kind of sarcasm even Gary wouldn’t miss. “We’ve been through this, Dan. I made a decision about the baby. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. So you can just--”“It has a little something to do with me. And I’ve been thinking… this doesn’t have to be--”Her doorbell buzzes then, and some hipster in a plaid pork pie hat comes up to bring Amy the food she’s been waiting for, and she is too busy putting away the ice cream bars and filling a bowl with a generous serving of the mac and cheese to pay Dan much attention. When she sits down at her tiny kitchen table with the dish, he takes the seat opposite her, even though their knees are practically knocking in the cramped space.“You’re still here?” she says, after taking a bite.“We haven’t finished our conversation.”“I’m pretty sure we have.”“Just listen to me for a minute. I’ve been thinking… you’re obviously going to need help. With the kid, and I--”She drops her fork, and it clatters against the side of the bowl. “Excuse me?”“You’re terrible with kids, Amy,” he says, not even trying for a kindly tone. “We both know that. Me, on the other hand? Kids fucking love me.”“Yeah, because you have so much experience with children,” she scoffs, “Infants in particular.”Dan can’t exactly argue her point because he probably hasn’t spent more than a handful of hours around children since he’s become an adult -- but each and every encounter went as smooth as fucking silk. “I can help out before the kid gets here too,” he says, “Fuck, I’m even willing to be there in the delivery room if you want. But I’m staying up near your head because you’re going to want to have sex with me again and I think that’ll be off the table if I actually see you push this kid out of your vag. That’s a real boner killer.”She swallows another forkful of macaroni into her mouth, looking positively murderous. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she asks, though he’s pretty sure that a rhetorical question. “Why would you want to be involved in any of this? From the first second I told you I was pregnant, you’ve done nothing but tell me that this the dumbest fucking thing I could do. Now you’re supposedly on board with having a kid?”“I was never really not on board,” he insists. “I had concerns. That’s all.” Amy shakes her head. “Bullshit. What the hell is your angle?”There's no point in even trying to pretend with her because she sees through him better than anyone.“Maybe it turns out you were right,” he says, “Maybe it will help Selina, employing a working mother to oversee her campaign. Puts the focus on a lot of important women’s issues, makes her look like she really cares. But the baby helps you too. It humanizes you, so you don’t seem so--”“Well, gee, thanks, fuckhead.”“All I mean is that now you’ll be like any other working mom, struggling to have it all,” he tells her. “It’ll make you look like you genuinely sympathize those struggles, like you have keen insight into issues that affect an important voting demographic. Blah blah blah....”She sets her fork down again and crosses her arms over her chest. “Yeah, it probably will. But what does it do for you?”Dan grins, casually lifting a shoulder. “My reputation has gotten pretty rough around the edges over the past few years. This could soften them up, make me seem like a reliable, stand-up guy. It makes us both seem more stable, actually. Grounded. Which, in turn, can only make us more appealing to other candidates who are looking for a little expertise.”Amy tilts her head, scowling at him like he’s just suggested that she get gang-banged by Jonah, Furlong, and Selina’s worthless ex-husband. “So what? I’m just supposed to lend you the kid for photo ops and press events?” she asks, “I don’t think so. The situation is what it is, and I’m certainly not above milking it for every advantage I can get, but I don’t plan on being a lousy enough mother that I think it’s okay to whore out my son or daughter for a father who has no real interest in them.”“That’s not what I’m …” He reaches for her discarded fork and takes a bite of her mac and cheese because it looks too good to let it just sit there. “I think it could actually be kind of fun, getting to raise a kid the right way.”She’s still for a long moment, like she’s considering the idea carefully, and he thinks that maybe she’s coming around, like he’s honestly managing to persuade her -- but then she throws her head back and laughs, deep and raucous, like it’s coming from the deepest part of her.“Just how stupid do you think I am, Dan? You think I’d actually believe that being a father sounds like a good time to you?”He shrugs, not the least bit chagrined. “Come on, Ames. We both know most of the people in this world have no fucking business reproducing and they raise these annoying, mediocre little shits who are a waste of everyone’s time. You and I, on the other hand, we’ve got a shot at producing one fucking hell of a kid... so what I’m saying is we do it all together. Because, shit, you’ve hung in there with Selina Meyer for Goddamn years and I got fucking Jonah elected, so don’t tell me we couldn’t handle parenting together.”Amy laughs again, snatching the fork back from him. “Yeah, sure, sure. So you’re going to change diapers?”“Fuck no. I think we can agree that’s not the best use of our time. We’ll hire someone for that.”“O-kay,” she says, in a sing-songy way that suggests she’s as skeptical as ever. “So when the kid has a fever or an ear infection, and I have an event I can’t miss for the campaign, you’re going to stay home and nurse him back to health?”“I don’t think that--”“And for three a.m. feedings and projectile vomiting episodes and temper tantrums when we can’t find whatever stupid fucking stuffed toy he can’t live without?” She drags the fork through the mac and cheese slowly, refusing to meet his eye. “You don’t have to answer, Dan, because I know you won’t be. As soon as it gets hard, it won’t be worth any of those reputation points that seem so important now. It definitely won’t seem like any fucking fun.”“Can’t we just see how it goes?”“Do you have any idea how stupid you sound now?” she asks. “I’m just supposed to be okay with not knowing if you’re actually going to hold up your end or not? Why would I agree to that?”“No, no. Calm the fuck down. I’m saying that I’m in. That I’ll be a part of it.”Amy nods briskly. “Oh, okay, so we’ll have some kind of custody arrangement drawn up then? Make it clear exactly what both of our obligations are?”“Is that really necessary? We’ve known each other for years, Ames. Do we need to be so formal about it?”“Get the fuck out of here, Dan,” she sighs, “This is exactly what I’m talking about. You have no intention of seeing any of this through. And that’s a shit thing to put a kid through. It’s a shit situation to put me in.”She isn’t wrong, of course -- no woman in her right mind would agree to her baby daddy having some undefined role where he doesn’t actually have to commit to anything -- but maybe he thinks their history should make all the formality unnecessary. He’s not some fucking one-night stand, for fuck’s sake.But then, it’s precisely because of their history, the fact that she knows him, really knows him, that she can’t just hope for the best.“Is this all because I’m not getting down on one knee and proposing?” he says, leaning back to appear as relaxed as ever. “Sorry to shatter that fantasy, but I just don’t think marriage is necessary. This makes us seem more progressive, raising a kid together but not needing to be legally tied to one another.”(Honestly, he could probably warm to the idea of making the whole thing official easily enough, tying it all up in a neat, little bow so everyone can see just how serious they are. It’s Amy who would freak the fuck out if he even so much as broached the idea of getting married, enough that she might run all the way to another continent this time -- which is pretty fucking ridiculous, considering she wore that asshole Calhoun’s ring on her finger for months.)“Progressive?” she snickers, “Please. You just know that there’s no way anyone in D.C. or New York or anywhere in the fucking world would believe that a whore like you, who’d fuck just about anything with a pulse, would ever settle down with a wife and kid.” Dan shrugs. “Don’t try to sell what no one will buy. Pretty much politics 101.”(They’d probably buy it if it was Amy, he thinks. That wouldn’t be that difficult to sell.)She pushes the half-full bowl of macaroni and cheese and fork his way, apparently done with it. “Exactly my point. You’d be a lousy fucking father so no one will buy this. Let’s just --”“Oh, fuck that,” he snaps, “If people can buy you as a loving, devoted mother, they can sure as hell buy me as an invested father. I’ll have you out-parented before this kid can even sit up, guaranteed. ”Amy stands abruptly, heading to the fridge for a bottle of water. “Jesus Christ, Dan. It’s not a fucking competition. It’s--”“Please, Ames. Everything is a Goddamn competition,” he says. “And by the way, the night this little miracle happened…” He gestures toward her stomach. “I made you come three times and I only came twice. So score one for Daddy.”She grimaces in an almost comical way. “You are so fucking gross. Besides…” She straightens her spine to try to look a little more imposing, which is obviously impossible. “I was faking,” she declares haughtily. “Oh, you fucking wish,” he laughs. “The scratches I had on my back that took a full week to heal beg to differ. Besides, when have you ever done a damn thing to pacify my ego?” She ignores him, making a big show of washing her hands because she can’t exactly refute anything he’s said. Standing there in her bare feet, she looks so damn small -- sometimes it’s difficult to remember her size because she always seems to fill a room with her attitude and cunning and anger, to bear the weight of the world (or Selina Meyer’s latest fuck-up) on her shoulders like it’s nothing at all. Dan pushes himself to his feet and stands right behind her at the sink, where he’s close enough to watch her shoulders rise and fall with each breath. He wants to touch her almost as much as he did the night they met Ben for drinks, but her back is so stiff and straight that he’s pretty sure it would be a mistake.“Forget all of this bullshit,” he says, “You’re going to need help. That’s the truth, Ames. You still haven’t told your parents, right?”“And I’m supposed to count on you for help? Seriously?”“Do you want to do this on your own?” She spins quickly, almost knocking him off balance, and her gaze is so steely that she’d have most people pissing their pants. “I can,” she says, almost defiantly.“Of course you fucking can. But that doesn’t mean you should.” He shakes his head, thinking a different approach might be in order. “Look, this is my kid too, and you need someone around to make sure all the postpartum hormones don’t turn you into some kind of pod person, babbling about nothing but baby shit all day, showing people hundreds of fucking photos of the brat they never asked to see, making the kid all whiny and --”Amy rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. There’s a greater chance of me suddenly declaring my undying love for Jonah than becoming one of those mothers.”“Well, obviously, the Jonah thing isn’t going to happen.” She nods emphatically, though she’s clearly surprised to have him agreeing with her so easily -- and Dan grins because that means she doesn’t see what’s coming. “Because you’re already madly in love with me,” he says. He is half-joking, because he doesn’t think that she’s ever really loved him in the way that other people seem to do it, with hope and expectation and joy, but she fits with him in a way that she never has with anyone else and he gets to her in a way that no one else can and he makes her feel things that no one else does. It’s obviously not an easy thing to own up to, though, if the way she glares at him is any indication.“Dream the fuck on, Dan.”“You know what Paul Anka says, Amy,” he needles, “Havin’ my baby, what a lovely way of saying how much you love me...”“I would sooner shoot myself in the stomach than--”“Watch what you say, Ames. People might start thinking that you’re an unfit mother.”She slides out from between the sink and his body carefully, like she doesn’t want to accidentally touch him in the process, and flings the freezer open, so the door is literally thrown up between them. As she grabs one of her precious ice cream bars, he notices the slip of paper tacked up on the refrigerator -- and he may not know much about pregnancy or babies, but he can spot an ultrasound when he sees one.“Shit,” he says, pulling it off the door for a closer look. “Is this the fucking kid?”Amy closes the freezer, ice cream bar poised at her lips, and studies him very carefully before nodding.“His head is fucking huge. Is that normal? Should it be--”“It’s normal. The head’s almost half the length of the body at this point. But the body lengthens as the baby gets bigger.”He grins. “Maybe he’s just got a really big brain.”She huffs out a weak laugh. “The only thing he might inherit from you that’s extra big is your massive, fucking ego,” she says, “And that won’t show up on an ultrasound.”Dan shrugs -- because really, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if he passes his confidence onto the kid -- though he feels a little winded for a moment, because he’s known about the baby as a concept for weeks now, but he’s not sure it ever actually seemed real before. He looks at the ultrasound again, the grainy picture that almost resembles an actual human being, and tries to comprehend the fact that all of this is going on inside Amy right now because his sperm wasn’t quite as slow as that quack doctor would’ve had him believe.It’s fucking nuts.Family doesn’t mean much to him -- which probably goes without saying, considering that he fucked his brother’s fiance without feeling even a little bit bad about it and has gone almost three years without seeing his parents -- because let’s face it, there are much more important things in the world that people he might happen to be connected to by something as insignificant as DNA. On the surface, that's all the baby would be, but the kid is part of Amy too, is only here because Dan couldn’t wait to get his greedy hands on her the first chance he got, and he doesn’t think he can ever forget that. He sets the ultrasound back on the fridge door, sliding the magnet back over the edge to hold it in place -- and for a moment, he and Amy just stand there, looking at the printout like neither of them can believe what they’ve done.“Let’s make this simple,” he says finally.She looks up at him, and for a brief second, her face is so beautifully open, like she actually wants him to know everything that she’s feeling. “What?”“Just think about it, doing this together,” he tells her. “I won’t be Father of the Year, but I can figure most of it out. With you around to tell me what to do.”Amy nearly smiles, the corner of her mouth lifting just a bit even as she fights it. “Like you’ve ever been good at taking orders from me,” she tries to joke, but he keeps his gaze steady and serious enough that she loses all her levity. "Maybe I would consider it,” she says, looking away. “If you could actually manage to not be a dick for more than two minutes at a time.” “Deal,” he tells her, without even thinking -- because not being a dick in Amy’s book is far easier than it is with most people. She doesn’t need him to be a saint, to commit to making the world a better place or pretend to genuinely care about helping others or any other good guy bullshit. She doesn't even really want that. She just expects him to treat her (and the kid too) like she matters as much as he does -- and he can do that, if he actually tries.So he holds out his hand to shake on it, and Amy laughs almost warmly, like she thinks he’s an idiot but is charmed by it all the same. And then she slips her hand in his, curls her fingers around his, and makes a promise that he has every intention of holding her to.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
-------Selina is invited to a Women’s Leadership Forum luncheon down in D.C. and demands that Amy tag along because she hates at least half of the attendees on general principle and wants Amy to run interference. It’s not that big a hardship, really -- she misses D.C., and since her morning sickness seems gone for good and her energy is back up, she feels a lot like her usual self. Of course, her appetite is off the charts lately, which is a far cry from the days when she could go 12 plus hours without remembering to eat, and she is hot all the time, even though there’s still a chill in the air, so she has to wear layers that she can take off as need be to keep herself comfortable. But those are minor inconveniences that she is more than capable of dealing with. Still, she’s anxious to get back to New York, to hole up in her apartment where she can wear a tank top and shorts and stuff her face with whatever takeout she feels like with no one around to judge.But it happens to be Kent’s birthday, and Dan and Ben are taking him out for dinner, and they insist that she come along. Amy is ready to say no until she hears that they’re going to the restaurant with the herb-crusted filet mignon and truffle macaroni and cheese that she loves and then she decides that catching a later train really isn’t that much of an inconvenience. (There may be some small part of her that’s avoiding going home, though, because every night that she spends sitting alone in her apartment, she inevitably winds up sinking into a guilt spiral because she’s well past the point at which she should have told her parents about the baby, and yet she still can’t bring herself to do it. Dan joked about her waiting until the kid is in high school to tell them, but some days, she seriously wonders if waiting until she’s just about to give birth -- or until just after -- is a viable option. It would spare everyone -- well, again, mostly her -- a serious headache if her parents are just presented with their grandchild as a done deal rather than a situation that they feel compelled to worry about for the next several months. Of course, Amy knows that’s crazy -- and only partly because it would mean that she’d have to give birth on her own, with no one around to murmur useless words of encouragement in her ear when the kid is pushing its way out in earnest and it feels like she’s being disemboweled.Because, really, it’s not like she can’t do it alone -- she’s brought United States senators to their knees, for fuck’s sake; she is harder than fucking steel -- but maybe she doesn’t exactly love the idea. Maybe she is terrified of how much it’s going to hurt, of everything that could go possibly wrong, of having no one around to distract her from the hell of it all with shitty jokes about the Iowa Caucuses or Citizens United.When Dan made his pitch for trying his hand at fatherhood, he claimed he was willing to be in the delivery room, but it’s not like he’d be there because he honestly cares. For almost a week now, Amy’s been trying to decide whether it really matters if he’s only there because he expects to get something out of and not because he genuinely wants to be -- will she give a fuck if she has his hand to hold, his fingers to crush, when the pain gets to be too much? Will she really care as long as he’s there to steal her attention with his infuriating, not-as-clever-as-he-thinks wisecracks and perfectly selfish insensitivity?It’s a lot to fucking think about all alone in her apartment.)Fortunately, staying for dinner turns out to be the right decision because the food is so good that she is seriously tempted to reach her fork across the table and finish what’s left on the guys’ plates once she’s done with her own meal. Of course, that would only invite unnecessary scrutiny from Ben and Kent, and she is lucky enough that they haven’t noticed she isn’t drinking. The conversation is also good, pre-campaign campaign strategizing and jokes at Jonah’s expense and gossip about the most recent mess that Furlong’s made for himself. In the booth beside her, Dan is remarkably pleasant too -- not charming, she won’t go so far as to call it that, because she doubts that Ben or Kent or anyone else who spends even two minutes with him would notice any difference from his usual dickhead behavior, but she knows Dan best and can sense a slight but undeniable shift, at least toward her -- which is something he seems to be making an effort at lately. His hair is also freshly cut, and his five o’clock shadow is coming in just right, and he smells so clean and fresh that Amy wants to bury her face in the curve of his neck and really breathe him in.Because Jesus fucking Christ, she is horny as Goddamn hell, amped up in a way that she doesn’t think she’s ever felt before. More than one pregnancy book mentioned it as a possible symptom once she started to move away from all the morning sickness and exhaustion, but she was hoping she’d be immune because the last thing she needs right now is sex complicating her already fucked up life further.It’s almost like Dan knows too, like he has a sixth sense about her sex drive, because he keeps touching her, in mostly innocent, harmless ways -- his knee rubbing against hers beneath the table, his arm resting along the back of the booth so his fingertips constantly graze over her shoulder, leaning in close enough that his breath ghosts over her cheek when he reaches for a forkful of the pie they’re sharing for dessert -- that are still impossible to ignore. It doesn’t get any better when Ben and Kent head out either because even when they’re alone and there’s plenty of room to spread out in the booth, Dan doesn’t slide away from her. He stays crowded up against her, his arm draped possessively around her and his thigh pressed firmly to hers, and the intimacy of it all makes Amy feel alternately confused and aroused. She could move away from him, of course, but there’s something about the warmth of him that she just can’t turn away from. So she isn’t surprised that she feels almost feverish when she and Dan finally leave the restaurant and step out into the brisk evening air. The last train to New York for the night leaves in ten minutes, and there’s no way she’ll make it to Union Station in time, which means she’s stuck in D.C. until five the next morning at the earliest. Getting a hotel room seems like too much trouble, so she’ll probably just sit in the Amtrak waiting room, catching up on emails and scanning the headlines until sunrise.“That’s fucking crazy,” Dan tells her when she shares her plan. “You need to get some sleep.” He tugs at the belt of her coat, pulling her in close. “Come back to my place,” he urges, his voice pitched persuasively low. He is looking at her in a fierce, hungry way that makes it clear it’s not concern that she get a good night’s sleep that’s really on his mind. It doesn’t escape her notice that he’s using the same line that he did that night in the bar a few months back either, and she wonders if he’s been planning this all evening, if that’s why he was opening doors and helping her into her coat and playing at being a gentleman in a way that reminds her of the couple of weeks that they dated a million years ago, when he was still trying to impress her to get whatever it was he wanted out of her. If they hadn’t slept together a few months back, she might understand why he seems so determined to fuck her -- but he already got her to give in again; there’s no edge to be gained here. “You don’t have the benefit of all those drinks this time,” she says, more flirty that she intends. “I’m sober as a fucking judge.”Dan grins. “I don’t know what judges you’ve been hanging out with… but I guess that means I’ll have to rely on my innate charm and charisma.”“You’re shit out of luck then,” Amy insists, but it’s a poor bluff because she lets him guide her into the backseat of the Uber he’s called and practically molds herself to his side when he wraps his arm around her to pull her close again.It’s not like it was in the cab in New York, though -- he touches her carefully, his fingers sliding along her arm almost gently, even if she can swear she feels the heat of his skin through her wool coat -- and somehow, she’s more turned on than if he reached up her shirt or under her skirt. She rests her hand on his thigh, afraid to touch him any more than that because she doesn’t trust herself not to start tearing at his clothes, climbing into his lap and riding him like nothing else matters.Dan’s new apartment is in one of those luxury buildings near Capitol Hill, decked out with all the bells and whistles he finds so important. His particular unit is pretty bare bones at the moment, though, because he is still going back and forth to New York all the time. There’s only a leather sofa and a bunch of boxes in the living room and a bed, TV, and dresser in one of the bedrooms (like a tribute to excess, there are three fucking bedrooms; Amy thinks that two and a half of her apartments could probably fit in all the space he has there) -- at least that’s all she sees from the doorway because she refuses to actually cross the threshold on her own. As usual, Dan is ready to force the issue, and he comes up behind her, slides her bag off her arm, and drops it to the floor without giving a thought to her laptop inside. She thinks that he did the same thing that night in New York, but the world was already spinning pretty fast by the time they made it to his apartment then, so some of the details are still a little sketchy. He turns her around to face him, his hands still surprisingly gentle on her shoulders, and she knows that she’s probably already flushed and her pupils are likely blown wide and she’s breathing hard enough that he can definitely tell everything she is so desperate for just by looking at her.And his grin would be absolutely infuriating if she weren’t already imagining what it might feel like pressed between her thighs. His eyes don’t leave hers as he pulls the belt loose on her coat, slowly undoes all the buttons, and pushes it from her shoulders. Amy tries not to look away, but his gaze is so heavy and intense, like he’s demanding something of her that she isn’t sure she wants to offer up, that she feels herself start to panic. She knows what’s about to happen, and fuck, she wants it to, even more than she wanted that juicy steak at dinner, but it still feels like too much somehow. Giving in to Dan Egan again goes against every instinct she has (Should she even be listening to her instincts at this point, though? They’ve been stunningly poor over the past couple of years), and he might think the pregnancy means this is hardly a noteworthy development, and maybe he even believes that his half-assed offer to co-parent in the name of almighty career advancement means they’re on the same page, but she isn’t so sure. (Because she is sure that he’s still conning her, since that’s the only way Dan knows how to relate to other people, and she refuses to let herself fall for his bullshit again, especially now when there’s so much more at stake. But the one thing that gives her pause, that haunts her sometimes when she tries to fall asleep at night, is the look on his face when he saw the sonogram on her fridge, because there was the briefest, heartbeat of a moment just before he collected himself and his know-it-all smirk was firmly back in place, when he looked dazed, maybe even overwhelmed, in a real and honest way. She has never seen that look on his face before, but she wonders if there’s any way he could have faked it, if he’s so fucking good at pretending that even she could still be fooled after all this time.)Of course, Dan is adept enough at reading her mood to sense her hesitance, so he steps even closer, sweeps the hair away from her neck and presses a kiss to the sensitive spot just behind her ear -- and just like that, her skin is again burning with the kind of heat that makes her think spontaneous human combustion might be a legitimate phenomenon.“Come on, Ames,” he murmurs, in a low, cajoling tone that has her clutching at his biceps to steady herself -- and keep him close. “You already made this mistake once. It’s so much easier the second time around.”He is teasing, being more flippant than she’d usually appreciate, but fuck it all to hell, because he’s stripped off his jacket and tie and undone the top couple of buttons on his shirt, which means it’s not Amy’s fault that she wants to climb him like a fucking tree, slather him from head to toe with some of the caramel sauce from the apple pie at dinner and take her time licking it off every inch of his body -- it’s the hormones, the motherfucking hormones. So she can’t possibly be held responsible for the desperate way she presses herself against him and pushes up on her toes to brush her mouth over his. “It’s been more than once, though, hasn’t it?”He nods, grinning. “So it should be second nature by now.”And that’s exactly what it feels like when Dan kisses her, wraps his arms around her waist and lifts her just enough that her heels slip off and clatter against the hardwood floor, drops her down on his bed and undresses her with the kind of single-minded determination that makes it impossible to remember why she ever thought about resisting. “Why are there so many fucking layers?” he whines when he has to wrestle her cardigan, blouse, camisole, and bra out of the way. She still has to keep up the facade, though.“This is a terrible idea,” she pants against his neck just after he slides inside -- though the way she claws at his back and squeezes his hips with her knees probably betrays that notion. “Why haven’t I learned my fucking lesson?”Dan laughs but a little distractedly because his hands are on her breasts. He’s obviously trying to gauge how much bigger they’ve gotten since the last time they did this, which would normally piss her off, but he traces his thumbs over her with the perfect of amount of pressure to make her gasp and arch her hips against his even more insistently so Amy is in a forgiving mood. (That’s got to be the hormones too, she thinks. Every part of her is so sensitive that she can barely stand how good he feels against her, inside her, so she somehow never wants it to end and doesn’t know how much more she can stand all at the same time.) “Relax,” he says, even as he picks up the pace. “It’s not like I can get you any more pregnant.”“If I was having twins,” she practically moans, “I’d fucking castrate you.” They laugh together, all low and breathless, but somehow, Dan’s still able to maintain the perfect rhythm, and she matches it exactly, and she is pretty sure she’s never had this much fun in bed before. Still, she is waiting for the other shoe to drop the next morning, for Dan to say or do something that lives up (or down) to the asshole he usually is -- but somehow, it doesn’t happen. He convinces her to sleep in later than she intends by fucking her so slow and easy in the watery blue light of dawn that it feels strangely tender, and she wonders how he knows that’s exactly what she’s in the mood for. He lets her take the first shower afterward, offers her some of his stupidly fancy face wash that costs $70 a bottle, has food delivered so there’s a breakfast burrito waiting for her when she’s finished getting ready, and announces that he’s going back to New York with her because he has to take a meeting with a State Assemblywoman from Brooklyn for BKD that afternoon. They have a brief, heated disagreement about taking the train versus grabbing a flight that’s very much like their usual arguments, but she wins in the end because he can get to his meeting faster from Penn Station. There hasn’t been much coverage of Jonah’s fucking ridiculous attempt at a presidential run in the mainstream press, but some niche blog, where one of the staff writers has apparently had the misfortune of meeting him in person, has taken the time to compile a post with all of the boneheaded, embarrassing messes that giant dickhole has gotten himself in over the years, and Dan gleefully reads it all to her on the train since the pregnancy’s left her with serious motion sickness. They’re particularly amused by all of the trouble that they personally played a role in bringing Jonah’s way, and Dan curves his hand over her thigh, tapping his fingers against her whenever he’s laughing too hard to get the words out. Amy shifts in her seat, curling herself into him so she can watch his eyes as he reads, the way the corner of his mouth lifts up when he’s particularly amused, how he glances over every so often to get her reaction, and somehow, it’s all nearly as much fun as the sex. She wishes she could bottle the feeling, always remember that it’s possible for Dan to be wholly himself and still be the only person she actually enjoys spending time with. “Well, would you look at this. Dan Egan and Amy Brookheimer, together again.”They look up from Dan’s iPad to find Edie Schultz, one of Senator Fitzpatrick’s former aides from Selina’s days as Veep, appraising them with a cheap, phony grin that isn’t even convincing by D.C. standards. Of course, she never particularly liked either of them, because they’re not known for suffering fools gladly, but she’s clearly intrigued enough to find the two of them huddled together on a New York-bound train that she’s willing to make time for small talk. Amy is painfully aware of her rumpled, day-before clothing and messy, unstraightened hair, so she pulls her coat closed a little more tightly around her. “Hi, Edie. How are you?” she forces out, clenching her jaw so hard that it almost hurts. “Oh, just fine, thanks. My sister had her second baby last week, so I’m headed up to Philly for a visit.”“How nice,” Dan says, as insincere as ever. “Please don’t let us keep you.”“You know, Dan, I was so very sorry when the CBS thing didn’t work out for you,” Edie says, sounding anything but. “Oh, and your engagement too, Amy. So what’s keeping you busy these days? What are both of you up to actually?”Amy glances at Dan because Selina still hasn’t formally announced yet, convinced that it’s too early and people will get tired of hearing about her if she jumps the gun, so they need to come up with another plausible explanation for what they’re doing together -- and mentioning the pregnancy is obviously off the table too.“I’ve started a consulting firm,” Dan tells Edie. “With Ben Cafferty and Kent Davison. Amy’s been working with us on a part-time basis.”It’s the best kind of lie, one rooted mostly in the truth, so Amy nods emphatically. Edie studies them for a moment, trying to suss out whether she should believe them or not. “Oh, of course,” she says, so patronizingly that Amy really wants to smack her in the mouth, knock her smart, little tortoiseshell glasses right off her face. “It’s no surprise really. You guys are like those cowboys from that Heath Ledger movie … you just can’t quit each other.”Dan snickers and Amy rolls her eyes -- because Edie is a Goddamn idiot -- but it occurs to her that Dan was right. Even if they try to hide it, even if she works to present herself to the world as some fierce single mother raising a kid all on her own, there are going to be plenty of whispers about how he definitely must be the father once her pregnancy is common knowledge. It’s too easy a leap to make. Mercifully, Edie heads off to the snack car for coffee before Amy winds up saying something she’ll regret. Once the door closes behind Edie, Dan leans in and wraps his hand around Amy’s wrist, rubbing his thumb over her pulse point with a tenderness that’s startling enough that she almost feels like she’s having an out-of-body experience.“She’s a fucking asshole,” he says, “But she isn’t wrong. Especially now.” He juts his chin toward her stomach. “This kid means we’re shackled to each other for life. No more fucking off to the fucking desert or wherever else you get in mind. You’re stuck with me, Ames.”She is pretty sure that his smile is meant to be playful, but Amy feels a tightness in her chest that makes it difficult to take a deep breath, let alone smile back. She slides her hand back in his grip a bit, so she can curl her fingers around his thumb and nudge his attention back to the iPad. “Keep reading,” she tells him.-------“Something’s going on with Amy.”Ben wanders over just as Dan’s made himself comfortable at one of the empty desks in Selina's office for a long overdue catch-up session with his phone, but Ben has his attention as soon as the magic word is uttered.“What are you talking about?” he asks.Ben nods toward the glass walls that make up Selina’s office. “Look at her.”Dan glances over to see Amy and Selina huddled together around a laptop. Selina is laughing at whatever they’re looking at it, and Amy is smiling her big, genuine smile that always leaves her looking a little deranged. It’s become something of a daily habit for him to study her and try to determine if he’d be able to tell she’s knocked up if he didn’t already know -- and the verdict so far has been no. Of course, he saw her naked the other day, and her belly is definitely rounding out, and fuck, her tits are well more than a handful these days, a fact that he’s been mostly trying to ignore ever since for the sake of his sanity.But Ben draws his attention to her, and he can’t help noticing that, while the buttons on her shirt are making a valiant effort to stay closed, the third one down is straining just a bit and it would probably be so easy to flick it open and…“You fucking see it, right?” Ben asks, “She’s all rosy-cheeked and smiling like a demented moron. What the fuck is that about?”Dan squints, trying to get a better look. He doesn’t know if Ben’s picking up on some fabled pregnancy glow or the fact that she’s still riding the high of the other night’s orgasms, but he grins because either way, it’s all his doing. (He could kick himself for not realizing his mistake sooner, but because Amy’s prickly as fucking hell on her best day and there’s the kid now to make everything even more of a minefield, Dan had been operating under the assumption that getting too close would send her packing, that any big, sudden movements would scare her off completely, so letting her come to him, at the glacial pace she’d undoubtedly favor, seemed like the best play. But the joke was on him because as soon as he did what he’d wanted to from the start and made an actual move, she responded in the same way she had that night in the bar all those months ago, like she’s finally ready to stop overthinking every fucking little thing, like she wants him as close as she can possibly get him, like she’ll never really get enough of him. It works out well for him all the way around because not only is it the best way to convince that he’s right about everything when it comes to the two of them and the baby, but actually getting to lay his hands on her, feel her respond like she just can’t help herself, have her reach back for him with such hungry, little hands, is so much fucking better than teasing her, getting all up in personal space without actually touching her when that’s exactly what she wants, even if she won’t admit it -- and that’s always been its own kind of fun, he’ll readily admit.“Must be the thrill of the pre-campaign campaign,” he says flippantly, but Ben gives him a hard look that makes him reconsider. “She’s like the rest of us, happy to be working on something that actually matters again. Just a few months back, Selina had her measuring drapes for a Goddamn library for fuck’s sake.”“I don’t think it’s just that,” Ben muses, “Shit, I hope she’s not in love … or you know, what passes for it with her. You don’t think she’s about to ditch us again, run off to the Wild Wild West and get engaged to some fucktard cowboy like that last time, do you?”Dan laughs, because if he only knew. “Not a fucking chance.”Ben cocks his head, studying Dan with narrowed eyes like he’s caught wind of something he doesn’t quite like. Of everyone currently working on the campaign, of everyone that he’s worked with in recent years actually, Dan is pretty sure that Amy is one of the few that Ben genuinely likes, whose well-being he might actually care about, so it isn’t a surprise that he’d be interested in Amy’s current state of mind. But it annoys Dan all the same because the last thing he and Amy need right now is Ben or any of the rest of them throwing in their fucking two cents regarding the delicate situation they’ve found themselves in, not when Dan’s still trying to get it all worked out the way that he wants. Hell, it’s not like Ben is anyone to be dispensing advice about raising a family anyway -- Dan’s pretty sure he doesn’t even know all his kids’ names. “You seem pretty confident about that.”“Because I know her. Amy’s too fucking smart to make that mistake twice.”“See, and I always thought she was too smart to make it in the first place.” Ben starts to walk away but glances back with a smirk. “I wonder what could’ve possibly driven her to do it the last time.”The implication is pretty clear -- that Dan somehow played a role in it -- and there’s always been some part of Dan that liked believing that, thinking that anything he might have done had the power to unravel her so much she’d lose her mind enough to take up with tall, blonde, and stupid. Lately, though, it’s become a less and less appealing prospect. He doesn’t really want to claim responsibility for sending Amy off into the arms of Buddy Calhoun because if that dim-witted motherfucker hadn’t blown things so colossally -- and how fucking hard would it have been for him to color within the lines just enough to keep her from bolting? Dan’s pulled enough shit to know that Amy isn’t exactly high-maintenance -- then she probably would’ve married him, would’ve wasted herself in the lowest stakes political game around, and then somewhere down the road, it would’ve been his fucking kid she got knocked up with, and she never would have made her way back to where she belongs. It’s a fucking sickening prospect -- and one he certainly wouldn’t want to claim any responsibility for.But Ben is wearing his shrewdest expression, like he knows exactly what Dan’s thinking, and Dan doesn’t like it one fucking bit, so he does what he usually does with anything vaguely uncomfortable -- ignores it. He watches Ben hold open the door to Selina’s office so Amy can step out, watches as she makes her way across the office to her desk, and then wheels his chair over once she’s sitting. He manages to catch her by surprise somehow, so she smiles when she sees him before she thinks to stop herself. “Oh… you’re still here. I was just about to text you.” He grins. “Yeah?”“It’s a girl,” she says, keeping her voice low.“What?”“The baby, it’s a girl. The doctor’s office finally called with the test results.”“Oh, yeah… right,” he says stupidly. Before, when Amy decided that karma should kick him in the ass by having the kid turn out to be a girl, it’d almost been funny because he’d been so sure that she was having a boy. But Jesus, he’s not only going to be a father but the father to a fucking little girl -- sugar and spice and all that bullshit. He could maybe handle raising a boy, but how the hell is he supposed to be any kind of father to a little girl?Fuck, fuck, fuck.“Took them long enough,” he mutters, just for something say. “Weren’t you supposed to have the results weeks ago?”Amy practically beams, so it’s obvious she’s delighted by whatever it is she sees in his face. “You look like you’re going to be sick. Do I need to get a damp cloth for your forehead?”“No, it’s not … I’m fine. It’s fine.” He shakes his head, trying to ignore how amused she is by all of this. “Are you okay?” he asks, wanting to shift the conversation in the worst way. “The rest of the test results were okay?”She nods, opening up her laptop. “Fit as a fucking fiddle.”“Okay, good. So when’s your next appointment?”“Not for a couple of weeks. At sixteen weeks.”“I should probably come,” he says, and she glances up from her computer like he’s surprised her. “I should know what’s going on, meet your doctor, all that shit.”She looks away, like she isn't quite sure how to respond. “That’s not necessary.”He bumps his knee against hers, smiling. “What did I tell you? I’m all in… you don’t believe that, which is fine, but you have to at least let me try to prove it.”Amy looks at him for a long moment, her eyes strangely bright. When she sighs, there isn’t any of the usual frustration or annoyance -- instead, it sounds almost wistful. “Fine,” she says, “I’ll text you the information.”He is expecting a fight, so it’s almost a letdown to have her agree so easily. Fortunately, he’s got another way to needle her. “Oh,” he says, “I almost forgot. You’ve really got to start telling people, Ames. ”She frowns. “What? Why?”“Ben noticed your glow.”“My what?”“You know how pregnant women supposedly glow?” he says, grinning. “Ben mentioned something about how you look radiant or bright or luminous or some bullshit like that.”“Shit,” she mutters, “Fuck. I know I’ve got to… I’m not going to be able to... I just … God, why can’t everyone just mind their own fucking business?”Dan rolls his chair even closer, so one of his knees slots between hers. “You know, I haven’t noticed a glow per se, but I will say your tits look absolutely amazing in--”Amy sputters, slapping a hand over his mouth. “Can you ever just shut the fuck up?”He can’t help himself and gives in to the impulse to lick her palm, even though there’s a 50-50 chance that she’ll slap him, but she actually laughs, nearly giggles actually -- even if she does immediately snatch her hand back like it’s been burned and stare at him like he’s lost his mind.“So I was thinking,” he says, and she rolls her eyes automatically, like the mere prospect is enough to exasperate her. “I was nice enough to let you stay at my place the other night, so maybe you could return the favor tonight. Actually, we should probably think about making it a regular thing. I’m always coming up here and you’re gonna be coming down to D.C., so it just makes sense to show each other a little hospitality.” She tries to glare at him, but there’s something almost soft about the way she looks at him. “Get the fuck out of here, Dan.” “You don’t have to fuck me every time,” he says, “I think every other time would probably be fair.” Amy huffs out another exasperated laugh and pushes against the floor with her heels to try to put some distance between them, but he wraps a hand around her wrist to tug her right back. “Come on, Ames,” he whispers. “I’ll bring the cookies or ice cream or whatever the fuck it is you’re craving these days... and then later, I can help with any other cravings you might have.” It’s a dicey gambit, Dan knows, but pushing the issue seems worth the risk. He could certainly find someone else to warm his bed, and really, that might be easier for him in the long run, but there was something about the other night in D.C. that he just can’t get out of his head. Maybe the pregnancy has done a number on her because she was into it in a way she hadn’t even been a few months back when he knocked her up -- and that night was pretty fucking spectacular in its own right. (Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that they weren’t drunk, that she fucked him when her head was perfectly clear, so it was intentional, nothing she could blame on single malt scotch and lowered inhibitions.)It’s obvious that Amy knows exactly what he’s offering, is picturing the other night in all its hot, fucking glory, and she swallows hard. She clearly thinks she should say no -- he can see that plain as day -- but she is much more agreeable these days when all of her physical needs are being met, and she’s a slave to the Goddamn hunger and hormones at the moment, so his offer is nearly impossible to resist.“Pulled pork nachos,” she says.“Excuse me?” “I’ve been craving the pulled pork nachos from the barbecue place in my neighborhood. And Italian ice. Rainbow.”He grins. “You got it.”She nods briskly, like she’s ready to be done with the topic until later. “I have to get her to decide which of these fundraisers she wants to do,” she says, grabbing her iPad from the desk and striding back toward Selina’s office.Amy and Ben cross paths again on their way in and out respectively, and of course, he heads directly for Dan. “There it is again,” Ben declares, “The fucking smile...”Dan shrugs because it’s not like he can really explain it. He watches Amy make herself comfortable on the sofa in Selina’s office, and she does seem a little less frantic than usual, even if she keeps moving the iPad around in her lap to block any and all angles that Selina might have on her stomach. He still isn’t sure about a glow, but she is definitely stunning, with her big, bright eyes and calm smile, so it’s difficult to look away. Amy glances his way for a moment, catches him watching, and her smile shifts, becomes even gentler, sweeter.And somehow he doesn’t even think about it, he just smiles back, even with Ben watching, even though he can’t stop thinking about how he’s an expert at handling women but has no fucking clue how to raise a little girl, even though there’s a split-second when he feels like he can’t breathe in a way that reminds him disturbingly of London. -------Amy finds it somewhat disturbing just how cozy she finds Selina’s office when it’s empty. When the place is buzzing with people, there is something about it that feels too fussy, too much like a photo spread in a magazine, all staged and artificial. But when Amy is alone like she is now, when everything is quiet and still, and the lights are dimmed, all she notices is how soft the sofa’s upholstery is, how plush the cushions are, how it almost feels like home.Kent’s sent over some new poll numbers he’s collected, which are essentially worthless because Selina still hasn’t made the official announcement yet. Even if there was any value to be found in the numbers, Amy could definitely wait until the morning to look them over, but she’s slipped off her shoes and stretched her legs out on the sofa, so leaving for her apartment right now just seems like a bother. It probably has something to do with the fact that her feet and calves are aching, like they always seem to be at the end of the day lately -- which means that she’s probably going to have to give up her heels soon. She isn’t looking forward to that because then every asshole in her path will tower over her even more than usual, assume that gives them some sort of advantage over her, which is patently untrue but frustrating nonetheless.There is no point in worrying about that at the moment, though, so she makes herself even more comfortable, wedging one of the throw pillows behind her lower back for extra support, and forces herself to focus on Kent’s figures. As unimportant as she thinks they are, studying them is definitely a better use of her time than thinking about Dan, which is how she’s spent the better part of the afternoon.It’s pathetic. So she is absolutely not thinking about how he keeps showing up at her desk or apartment with a smile that, against all of her better judgment, she loves, about how he calls and texts all the time even when he doesn’t have anything of consequence to share, about how when she’s tired and cranky and doesn’t know how to ask for what she wants, he runs a hand down her back or brushes his knuckles over her cheek and it’s everything that she needs.(And she is most definitely not going to think about the sex, which has been frequent and amazing and so utterly reckless that she refuses to analyze it any further, particularly since she doesn’t trust herself to put an end to it any time soon.)Somehow, Dan must sense that she’s trying her damnedest not to think about him, and he obviously can’t have that, because she hears footsteps outside Selina’s office door just as she’s made it through the first page of Kent’s insanely detailed charts -- and when she looks up, he is standing there, looking stupidly dashing in his coat and scarf, offering up that Goddamn smile that leaves her feeling hopelessly off-kilter. He’s been in Connecticut with Selina and Ben since late this morning, schmoozing with potential donors in Greenwich in the hopes of building up the war chest. Normally, Amy would resent being left behind with Kent and Richard, but she hates having to ask for money like a fucking salesman, and her feet are sore, and it seemed like some time away from Dan might actually help clear her head. Of course, he has to show up before she’s made any progress. “Now, how did I know I’d find you here?” “Because you’re apparently stalking me these days.”“Some women would call it attentive,” Dan says, grinning. Amy fights the urge to smile back at him and glances down at her iPad to look busy, disinterested even. “Yeah, but those women don’t know you… or are just fucking idiots.”He nods. “Most of them, yeah.”“Seriously. What are you doing here?”Dan reaches into his the pocket of his coat and pulls out a can of the sparkling cranberry juice that she’s been drinking by the gallon lately. It’s still cold when he hands it to her, so he probably just bought it from the bodega on the corner. She’s become such a good customer down there that the guy who owns the place has started giving the juice to her three-for-two (Amy is pretty sure that he suspects she’s pregnant too, though he’s had the decency not to ask) so she only has to make one trip. She wonders if he knew Dan was buying the can for her. “Are things already so bad with the consulting you’re resorting to moonlighting for UberEats?” She leans forward to try to see into the dark office behind him. “You’re alone?”“Why?” he asks, smirking. “You wanna fool around in here? Because I’m game if you are.”“You wish, asshole.”He shrugs, like he isn’t about to bother denying it. “They went for dinner. To celebrate how well things went today.”“And you didn’t feel like expensing an $85 steak? You love that shit.”“I told them I had a date,” he says, and his grin is such that she thinks he’s teasing, but it’s fucking Dan so she can’t really be sure he didn’t just stop by on his way to something better.“Well, then, don’t let me keep you.”Amy shifts against the pillow behind her, trying to look as comfortable and unconcerned as she can -- which she knows is a losing battle because Dan senses weakness like a shark picking up the scent of blood.“Oh, honey,” he murmurs, so amused and delighted that she wants to chuck her iPad at him. “I’m all about you tonight.”She rolls her eyes, but that doesn’t deter Dan from lifting her feet from the sofa cushion so he can sit down beside her. She wishes she wasn’t stretched out the way she is because there’s something about sitting with her feet in his lap, his hands curled loosely around her ankles, that feels even more intimate than the sex. She opens the can of cranberry juice and takes a sip, just to avoid his eyes. “Your feet still bothering you?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for a response before massaging her arch with his thumb -- and it feels so damn good that her eyes drift shut and she groans before she can stop herself.“Oh, fuck, yeah, just like that.”“I’ve heard that a lot from you lately.”She kicks at his stomach with her other foot. “Shut up.”He doesn’t stop massaging her foot, though, and when she looks at him, he is grinning right at her, almost like he finds her charming, like she delights him.“I hate to bring up another sore subject,” Dan says, but he really couldn’t sound less sincere if he tried. “But how much longer are you planning on keeping Selina in the dark about the kid? She’s oblivious to a whole fucking lot, but this is probably pushing it. She made a crack today about how we should stage an intervention about all those toffee cookies you’ve been eating.”“I haven’t had one in almost a week,” Amy grumbles, even though that’s beside the point -- because he definitely isn’t wrong. “Last week, she told me I need to lose my winter weight before the campaign officially begins. She even offered to buy me some training sessions at her gym.”He laughs, enjoying himself way too much. “Well, come on, Ames. Did you really think you could fool everyone indefinitely just by wearing shirts that would probably fit Ben?”“Oh, like you would’ve figured it out if I hadn’t told you? You’d just be wondering why I’d let myself go and asking when I was going to start hoarding cats and--”“Please. I’d have worked it out by now.” He slides a hand up her ankle, over her calf toward the hem of her skirt. “But then, I’m a little more attuned to your body than most. Like, I bet if I …”Dan slides his arm under her legs, hooking it beneath her knees so he can tug her toward him until she’s practically sitting on his thighs. She makes a sound that’s nearly a gasp and would normally leave her feeling very foolish, but he swallows it almost immediately, pressing his mouth to hers like he is determined to steal her breath -- and whatever scraps of reason and common sense she has left. So she sinks right into him, fisting a hand in the soft fabric of his scarf to keep him where she wants him, and when he tangles his fingers in her hair and pulls at it just hard enough that it almost hurts in the best way, she is strangely aware of the way her heart is pounding, of the blood surging through her body. Making out with Dan in Selina’s office is an unquestionably stupid thing to do, and yet, Amy just presses herself closer, curves her fingers over his jaw and adjusts the angle of his mouth on hers until it’s just right. She could kiss him like this for hours, she thinks. Forever maybe.“See?” he whispers against her mouth. “I knew that’s exactly what you’d do.”“You…” She swats at his chest, but he catches her hand and keeps it pressed there. “You’re such a fucking asshole,” she mutters. Of course, he just keeps grinning, and she is a glutton for punishment because she smiles back, and when he slips his hand under the back of her shirt and traces his fingers over the small of her back, she drops her head to his shoulder, tucks herself against his side like she belongs there.(It’s crazy. She is crazy.)“You should tell her before she officially announces,” Dan says, and it honestly takes Amy a second to remember what they were talking about. “Sure, she’s going to freak the fuck out whenever you do it, but it’ll definitely be worse if she thinks you’ve fucked up her momentum.”“Well, she still hasn’t fucking decided when she’s going to announce,” Amy complains, “So at this rate, I can just tell her when I go into labor.”“It is weird that she’s dragging her feet about it. I thought she’d want to shout it from the fucking rooftops the first second it made political sense.” “Kent seriously needs to come up with some numbers that show her it’s better to do it before the field gets too crowded. When it’s just fucking Jonah, a couple of senators who bore everyone to tears, and a Goddamn retired wrestler who’ve announced, there’s no rush, but once some actual viable candidates make it official, she’s already behind the eight ball.”“Tom James,” Dan suggests, because it’s what they’ve all been thinking but not mentioning to Selina.“Yep, and you can imagine how well she’ll take that news. That’ll be the day I’m really regretting the fact that I can’t fucking drink.”When he laughs, his breath ruffles her hair, and his chest rumbles beneath her cheek like a lullaby, and she feels warm and drowsy like she does after a good bath -- and it is absolutely insane because she knows Dan, knows this isn’t really him, knows he is always working some angle, knows that none of this can possibly be real. Even if it feels like…Dan squeezes her hip. “I could get used to this,” he says, almost absently. Amy lifts her head to look at him. “What?”He shrugs, his expression as unreadable as ever. “Have you eaten?” She shakes her head. “Let’s get dinner.” She stretches, trying to fight a yawn. “I don’t feel like going to some noisy, crowded restaurant.”“So I’ll take you home and we can order something.” She smirks as he holds a hand out to help her off the sofa. “Wow, you’re really trying to save on hotels these days, aren’t you?”“What can I say? Your place is just a whole lot friendlier.” So he helps her into her coat, hails them a taxi, and calls in an order to the Thai restaurant in her neighborhood that they both like. He kisses her again after he helps out of the cab too, so soft and serious that it’s almost impossible not to believe it. Later, she wakes in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and Dan is so comfortably sprawled out across the mattress that she isn’t entirely sure how she’s going to fit when she comes back to bed. Amy is half-tempted to shove him right off -- it’s her Goddamn bed -- but she knows what a dead weight he is when he’s sleeping, and she doubts that he’d even budge. So he startles her when he grabs for her wrist, tugs her back beneath the blankets, tucks her against him so her back fits against his front and his arm curls around her just above her belly, all without really waking up. It is the best and worst feeling she’s ever had. Dan mumbles something into her hair, so soft and low that she can’t make out the actual words. Her head feels fuzzy, like when she’s had too much champagne, so nothing makes any sense. But she needs to think, she needs to be rational, she needs to figure out what the hell to do.Instead, Amy only drifts back to sleep, with Dan’s bare skin warming her and the weight of him steadying her. She doesn’t wake again until her alarm goes off.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
------Dan’s never shy about throwing credit his own way, but this time, he really has to hand it to himself. Sure, he knew he’d get everything to work out the way he wanted, but he really didn’t think it would happen this quickly.It’s almost funny because when Amy told him she was pregnant, he was so sure the baby was going to be a fucking wrench in the works, but the kid (their daughter; fuck, he still hasn’t fully processed that) is actually helping everything along. The professional advantages are apparent enough -- once he’s got the whole stable, dependable family man persona established, it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to persuade even the most squeamish of politicians that his brand of questionable tactics can get nearly anyone elected (see exhibit A: Jonah Ryan) -- and personally speaking, he’s already got exactly what he wanted when he tried to convince Amy to come work with him, Ben, and Kent. Free access to her pretty much whenever he wants. Which means they brainstorm about changes Selina should make to her official policy positions and eat plenty of takeout together and commiserate about how they’re smarter than pretty much everyone who crosses their path and torment Gary about his latest meltdown, and it’s everything that’s always been fun about spending time with Amy.And that’s not even taking all the fucking into account, which he hadn’t been counting on so soon but he is enjoying the hell out of nonetheless. Amy certainly doesn’t have any complaints either. She still feels the silly need to play-act at being a cranky bitch most days, but she’s been in a good enough mood that Ben’s noticed, and even Gary mentioned how pleasant she’s been lately, for fuck’s sake -- which naturally prompted her to bite his fucking head off and send him scurrying back to Selina’s side even faster than usual, much to Dan’s amusement.The only real snag is that she hasn’t actually agreed to do the whole kid thing together. It’s almost as if she doesn’t want to acknowledge what’s happening between them or what it means about how she feels, like she wants to pretend it's all business as usual. But Amy is fucking him, and Dan knows her, knows that she wouldn’t go down that road if there weren’t at least some part of her that was sure, so she’s going to give in eventually. He has no patience to speak of, but he knows that pushing the issue will only blow up in his face. So biding his time is the smart play here, even if it would be so much easier to sell the whole happy family thing if they’re already acting like a happy couple when everyone finds out about the kid.They could really milk the pregnancy for all it’s worth if Amy would just hurry up and get on board...What he really needs is Selina to fucking announce her campaign and set up her headquarters near D.C. already, so he doesn’t have to keep leaving Amy alone in New York whenever BKD business calls. It’s always when Dan spends a few days away that she gets too much in her own head, tries to talk herself out of wanting what she wants, retreats just enough that it starts to feel like one step forward and two steps back.If they were in the same city, he could get her to stay at his apartment, where he’d always be around to keep her from overthinking everything. His mother’s been making noises about buying the baby a crib, and maybe he should let her, set it up in one of his spare bedrooms so Amy can see just how easy it can all be. Getting BKD on solid ground would help too, since he’s pretty sure Amy doesn’t view his uncanny knack for losing his job every other week as a positive quality for the father of her child. They’ve got Selina on the roster, which could obviously mean big things if she actually gets the nomination, even more so if she somehow manages to take the general election, along with a gubernatorial candidate from Maryland and a senator running for reelection in Delaware. That’s a good start but clearly not enough. “We need to get our profile up,” Ben says during one of their brainstorming session, which obviously goes without saying. “And you know the fastest way to do that...”“TV, obviously,” Kent offers helpfully.Ben nods. “As our resident pretty boy and former extremely minor television celebrity, that all falls on you, Danny Boy. You’ve got to have some connections to exploit, some poor, unsuspecting shitheads who’ll still put your mug on TV. So make yourself useful for once and get our fucking name out there.”“Glad to know I’m good for something,” Dan grumbles, but it’s for effect really because he never minds being valued for his good looks and charisma. “Just barely,” says Ben.Unfortunately, it turns out the producer Dan knew at the CNN Washington bureau has moved on to some flashy sports network, so things aren’t as easy as he’s hoping. But then he remembers there’s a booker he’d been friendly with on occasion, who’s gets lonely pretty often because her boyfriend is a foreign correspondent boyfriend who's always off in Afghanistan or Syria or some other war-torn country.So he asks her for a drink to see what it’ll take to convince her to throw a little airtime his way, and as luck would have it, CNN is hosting a cocktail party that night to celebrate their latest ratings numbers and Tessa tells him he should stop by. He wears one of his newer suits and lays on all the charm, hoping a little attention can get the job done, nice and simple. It’s not going to be that easy, though, because Tessa keeps leaning forward to give him a view down her dress and sliding her hand over his thigh, so he knows she’s expecting to fuck. (Though he thinks he remembers that she’s got some ridiculous rule about not actually fucking anyone other than her boyfriend. It’s beyond stupid because Dan’s willing to bet that if he’s the kind of guy who actually cares about fidelity, Jacob or Ethan or whatever the fuck Mr. War Zone’s name is won’t find it especially comforting that she’s only getting fingered and giving out amateurish hand jobs while he’s off dodging bullets and IEDs).Dan’s firmly of the mind that what Amy doesn’t know can’t hurt her (or piss her off), and it’s not like she’s actually told him she expects him to stop sleeping with other women. When her pregnancy is common knowledge and everything is settled, that’s obviously a different story, because it doesn’t exactly fit the family man image if he’s fucking around on the mother of his child before the kid’s even born. He may be an unapologetic asshole, but he understands that much -- and what’s the point of doing all this otherwise?But Tessa moves closer, practically slides off her stool and into his lap, and he feels antsy in a way he never does before sex. He just needs another drink to take the edge off, he decides, because it’s been a long fucking day, and Ben and Kent are expecting him to get this done, and it should be so fucking simple.He doesn’t even get half his drink down, though, before Tessa’s phone starts blowing up. Apparently, Montez’s Secretary of Defense has suddenly resigned, so Tessa has to go back into work and line up a panel that can speculate wildly about the suspicious circumstances of it all (for a moment, he thinks about trying to talk his way into that gig, but decides that might seem a little too desperate), which means Dan just wasted nearly 40 minutes showering her in insincere compliments and listening to her whine about how no one understands how hard her job really is for fucking nothing. Fuck Tessa and fuck CNN and fuck Montez and her Secretary of Defense’s shitty timing.He could stay at the party, try to find a producer or news director to chat up, but Dan’s irritated enough that he decides it’s best to cut his losses, head home early, and take another shot at it in the morning. In the backseat of his Uber, he takes out his phone, thinking he’ll call Amy, see what she’s up to and gauge her mood, but he’s surprised by a text from Tessa before he can dial. It turns out that he's even more charming than he usually gives himself credit for because she’s booked him for a prime spot on tomorrow night’s panel regarding the climate change bill that’s been stalled in the Senate for a week now. He really shouldn’t be surprised, though -- Dan Egan always has the magic touch, even when he doesn’t lay a finger on a woman. So when Amy reads his mind and calls just as he’s letting himself into his apartment, he’s grinning before he even accepts the call.“Get used to the idea of this kid being born in prison,” she declares, forgoing a greeting. “Because I’m five seconds away from slitting Leon West’s throat with a fucking letter opener. Maybe Selina’s too, if she doesn’t fucking announce soon.”“If you’re gonna do it, make it a real spree,” Dan says, “Shiv Gary and Richard while you’re at it.”She makes a sound that’s almost a laugh before launching into a blow-by-blow of her latest run-in with Leon over the speech for Selina’s next fundraising appearance, which is apparently lame enough that she’s found herself almost missing Mike. Catherine’s been bringing Little Richard around the office a lot lately too, she complains, and that’s only left Selina in the kind of terrible mood that makes her almost impossible to deal with. Amy sounds painfully frustrated, but he can’t help laughing because it’s always so fucking amusing when she’s spinning out like she’s about to go off the rails. “It’s not funny, you dickhead. How am I supposed to get any work done like this? She claims she wants to be fucking President but she won’t just … It’s fucking insanity and that shitbag Leon doesn’t even--”“Jesus, take a fucking deep breath,” Dan tells her. “I’ll talk to Ben, and he’ll knock some sense into Selina, and maybe Kent can come up some numbers that show Leon’s speeches are tanking. We’ll take care of it.”“Perez’s staff are being a bunch of cunts too,” she says, “I can’t get them to commit on that fundraiser in D.C., which is just … say no if you want but at least have the balls to fucking tell me that instead of giving me the runaround.”“You know how delicate those things can be. No one wants to--”“Don’t you know Perez’s deputy chief staff, Jon? But not well enough that he hates your guts like he should?”“Yeah, we used to work in the same--”“So maybe do your fucking job then and get him to set it up? You’re always bragging about how goddamn charming you are. Why don’t you prove it for once?”He lets her grumble a little more, about some ridiculous thing that Gary did and some inexcusable mistake an incompetent intern made, before he shares the good news about CNN. She isn’t impressed, of course, but he still makes sure to mention the bill he’ll be discussing since he knows Amy hates it -- because despite the fact that it’s sponsored by two Senators who always supported Selina, she just doesn’t think it goes far enough. As expected, she goes off, ranting like someone who would make the perfect Fox News guest if only she weren’t so coherent and rational. She makes a compelling enough case, though, that Dan decides he’ll spout her stance on CNN. It’ll almost certainly get him more screen time than the standard for or against argument, that's for sure. He’ll have to clean up the language a bit, but he’s definitely going to borrow some of her better one-liners too.“Are you home?” he asks once she’s finally finished her tirade. “Yeah, just getting ready to watch Colbert and go to bed.”He loves to tease Amy about her thing for Colbert, because then Dan can remind her that he technically used to work with him when they were both employed by CBS, that they even shared a drink at a charity event last year -- sure, it was barely a two minute conversation, but Amy doesn’t need to know that -- which never fails to annoy her. (Dan hasn’t mentioned this to her, but he sometimes thinks about what could happen if they actually get Selina back to the White House, how appearances on shows that aren’t strictly political like Colbert’s might be a possibility, especially if he -- or, even better, they -- write a book. The story behind the first elected female president is gold in and of itself, but there’s the whole sappy romance angle to play up too, cloyingly sweet shit about starting a family while they were working toward making the world a better place for their daughter. They wouldn’t even have to write a word -- publishers would fucking line up to buy the rights and find them the best ghostwriter to do all the heavy lifting.)“In bed, huh?” he says, grinning. “What are you wearing?”She sighs. “And here’s where I say fuck off and hang up on you.”It’s not an empty threat, and Dan doesn’t hear from her again until after his CNN appearance, when he is so brilliant, so insightful and commanding that the producer immediately asks him to come back next week and promises there will be plenty of other opportunities in his future. Ben’s thrilled because nearly every time Dan graced the screen, a caption that read “Founding Partner, BKD Consulting” appeared beneath his name, and Kent’s already hard at work compiling name recognition data based on Dan’s appearance to go over at their next meeting. Amy obviously watches too because there’s a text waiting when he gets off the air -- Wow, I didn’t realize exactly how much your hairline is receding until I saw it on the 60 in TV in Selina’s office. Time for a new box of Just for Men too… those studio lights pick up all the grays -- and she can be as bitchy as she likes because it doesn’t really matter when Dan gets to picture her stretched out on the sofa, hanging on his every word. Miss you too, pumpkin, he texts back, and when she answers with the eye-rolling emoji, it only makes his message even truer.Amy doesn’t mention her doctor’s appointment the next afternoon, which doesn’t really surprise him, but he’s still on the shuttle back to New York in the morning because he told her he’d be there, and he doesn’t want to give her any reason to say he’s not holding up his end of the bargain. He even makes his way to the office a good 25 minutes before the appointment so he’s sure to get there before her -- which means he’s stuck sitting in the waiting room with several visibly pregnant women who all seem to be reading copies of Parenting. It’s pretty fucking uncomfortable until Amy storms in ten minutes later, her coat billowing behind her like a cape. The double take she does when she spots him is comical, almost like he’s the very last person she’d ever expect to find in her doctor’s waiting room, so Dan grins as he stands to greet her. She walks over a little stiffly, but she doesn’t resist when he bends to press a pretty emphatic kiss to the corner of her mouth. The other women in the waiting room watch intently, which he definitely understands because they’re obviously envious they don’t have a hot, well-dressed baby daddy who’s willing to take time out of his busy schedule for prenatal appointments. “I wasn’t sure you remembered,” Amy says.“So why didn’t you remind me?”She shrugs, taking the seat beside him. “Because I told you, this really isn’t necessary.”“And yet, here I am.”She stares at him with wide eyes that make it very clear she doesn’t know quite what to make of that fact -- so she just starts babbling. She tells him that this is the same practice where Catherine’s a patient, which is surprising as hell because he’d expect that Catherine’s birthing plan would’ve veered more toward fruit-loopy, holistic bullshit territory than Amy would ever tolerate. “Her real doctor,” Amy hurries to clarify. “Not her fucking doula or whatever. Let’s be really clear about that… the only people allowed in my fucking delivery room will have degrees from Harvard or Johns Hopkins, know how to operate actual medical equipment, and have access to the kind of drugs that won’t have me feeling anything below the waist for at least a fucking week.”He’s certainly not going to argue -- if he were faced with the prospect of something as fucking brutal as childbirth, he’d want someone with actual medical expertise overseeing the whole thing -- but he can’t resist pointing out that it was another of Catherine’s doctors who told him he wasn’t up to the task of getting anyone pregnant so maybe she’s not the best judge of medical acumen. Amy rolls her eyes. “I’m certain that doctor would’ve told you that whatever your diagnosis, fucking around without a condom still meant this was a possibility.”She has a point, but what really reassures Dan is the fact that the office is on the Upper East Side, so it’s pretty posh and obviously caters to plenty of movers and shakers. It turns out that Amy’s doctor is actually a graduate of Georgetown Med, but that’s apparently good enough for her because she’s as comfortable with him as she ever is with other people. Of course, all that really means is that she doesn’t display any overt hostility as Dr. Kline asks all his questions, requests a urine sample, checks her blood pressure, and examines her belly. Amy does seem vaguely uncomfortable that Dan’s there for all of it, though she doesn’t actually protest or ask him to leave. That’s because it’s not really that she doesn’t want him there -- it’s that she does want him there and hates that she does. So she refuses to meet his eyes like she’s determined to ignore that he’s in the room entirely if she can help it. She only introduces him when it just becomes too awkward not to acknowledge presence -- and even then, all she does is jerk her thumb in his direction and say, “This is Dan,” like that explains everything.“I’m the dad,” Dan adds, mainly just to annoy Amy, who sighs in that aggressive way that always amuses him. Dr. Klein eyes him knowingly, so Dan wonders if the guy might be a CBS This Morning fan. Of course, this is a pretty swanky practice, which means Dr. Klein is used to being discreet with celebrities and doesn’t give anything away. The nurse must be new, though, because she smiles at Dan and says in a low, confidential tone, “The show just isn’t the same without you.”Amy’s eyes narrow sharply, but Dan isn’t sure whether she’s pissed at him or the nurse. “You really didn’t have to come,” she mutters, so he offers up his most winning smile just to rile her up more.Dr. Klein, on the other hand, has an almost soothing effect on her, and Dan really has to hand it to the guy because he manages to convince Amy to opt for the 3D ultrasound, which isn’t medically necessary and her insurance likely won’t cover, but apparently provides a more detailed image of the baby. Too Goddamn detailed, it turns out.Because hearing the kid’s heartbeat is weird enough, but seeing all the details of her face at this stage is just un-fucking-settling. Even if Amy had already announced her pregnancy and his status as baby daddy status was public knowledge, he wouldn’t be posting this shit on Instagram because it’s not even the least fucking bit cute. It looks more like some shitty CGI horror movie monster, actually. But Dr. Klein and the nurse leave the room, presumably so he and Amy can share a tender moment where they coo over every detail, which is obviously not a thing they’d ever do, especially over nightmare-looking shit like this. Dan’s about to crack a joke to that effect until Amy raises a hand to her mouth like she’s trying desperately to hold something back. For one terrifying second, he thinks she might cry, that she’s so overcome with emotion in the way that a normal person would be over the sight of their soon-to-be firstborn that she just can’t contain herself. He has no fucking clue what to say because all he feels is embarrassed for her, and it’s not like he could fake anything in a way that she’d really believe so he just sits there, wishing like hell he could duck out of the room too. Amy doesn’t cry, though. She tilts her head back instead, moves a hand up to cover her eyes, and lets out a slightly hysterical, cackling laugh that startles the ever living fuck out of him. “What the shit is--”“That is the most fucking terrifying thing I’ve ever seen,” she sputters between laughs. “I know Dr. Klein said it might be too early for a good picture, but she looks like a motherfucking skeleton … or one of those starving kids from the commercials. It’s … Jesus, I really don’t need to know that’s what’s going on inside of me right now.” “Oh, thank fucking God,” Dan says, laughing with her. “I thought I was going to have to try to pretend this isn’t some of the creepiest shit ever.”“And they’re going to try to give us a bunch of pictures to take home…” She shakes her head. “I never want to see this fucking thing again.”He glances back at the screen, grinning. “You know, I think she’s got your nose.” “Fuck you.”He grabs some paper towels from the dispenser on the wall so she can wipe the ultrasound gel from her stomach, and she slides off the exam table, working quickly to straighten her skirt and blouse. Something about the way her hair falls over her face and hides her barely-there smile as she glances down to redo the last few buttons on her shirt is so stunningly familiar that it almost stops Dan in his tracks. They’re together, doing this absolutely fucking insane thing that doesn’t make any damn sense for them, for who they are, but Amy is wearing an expression he’s seen hundreds of times before, that he remembers from long days of doing damage control for Selina and late nights sharing a drink in mostly empty bars, that’s always felt calming and like a good, hard kick in the ass at the same time, that he went more than a year without seeing, so it’s almost like this is just more of the same old shit they’ve always found a way to wade through. And maybe the lighting in the exam room is really good, or maybe Ben is right and she’s glowing, but he can’t stop looking at her. He doesn’t even really want to. Until Amy catches him and self-consciously smooths her shirt over her stomach.“What are you staring at?” “I was just thinking,” he says, trying to regroup. “When everyone finds out about the kid, they’re gonna wonder how you’re going to convince me to make you an honest woman.” She snorts. “It’s not the fucking 1950’s, Dan. Women have children all the time without being married.”“Not in politics.”“I’m not the one running for office… so no one’s going to care,” she says, looking him in the eye carefully as she reaches for her coat. “And if they do, they can go fuck themselves.” She’s obviously right, at least to some degree -- this situation obviously isn’t anything like when Selina got knocked up back in the day -- so he isn’t inclined to argue. But Dan also knows that there are people who will definitely care -- like her fucking father, for one. He’s going to care so fucking much that Dan’s expecting him to turn up with a fucking shotgun any day now -- and she’s not going to handle the whispers and speculation and the starring fucking role in all that juicy gossip well at all.“Oh, Ames,” he says, smirking. “You're going to be such a great mom.”“Shut up, you dick. Oh, and I’m telling you right now, if that fucking nurse starts blabbing everywhere that Danny Egan is going to be a father before I decide to tell people, I’ll shoot you in your fucking smug, recognizable face.”“Wow, motherhood is really bringing out all your murderous impulses, isn’t it?”“Newsflash, Dan,” Amy says, pushing past him for the door. “I’m always about two seconds away from killing you.”And yet, when they stand at the reception desk so she can make her next appointment and he puts an arm around her, she doesn’t move away, just busies herself marking the date and time down in her phone’s calendar. She’s also the one who decides they should pick up takeout on their way back to the office before the staff meeting that Selina’s called -- where he fully expects to have to physically restrain Amy from scratching out Leon’s eyes -- and she even smiles once or twice while they eat at her desk and debate how best to get Selina to finally fucking commit to an official campaign announcement.Dan can’t kiss her, surrounded by all the fucking interns who are hyper aware of everything Amy does because they are both terrified and in awe of her, but he reaches out to wipe a pale smudge of salad dressing from the corner of her mouth with his thumb, and when she looks up at him through her lashes, all soft and flushed, he smiles too. -------Selina is invited to give the keynote address at a Senate fundraiser in Chicago, and of course, Amy has to tag along. It’s supposed to be a low-key event, but Ben decides that it’s a good idea if Dan goes too and takes the temperature in the room to see how well the Meyer brand is playing within the party at the moment. They’re flying commercial, which is a pain, but the flight is barely three hours so Amy tries to be as good a sport as she can with her swollen feet and the persistent ache in her lower back. It helps that Dan’s charmed the flight attendants, so she’s never without a cold can of ginger ale or a bag of animal crackers for long. She gets a little bored after she’s read over Selina’s speech for what has to be the tenth time, though, which is probably why she opens her laptop and finds herself looking at baby clothes online when Dan goes to the bathroom. It’s nauseating how everything for little girls is so appallingly pink, all decked out in bows and ribbons and fucking glittery unicorns, so she finds herself looking in the gender-neutral section, where most of the stuff is white or gray, understated while still being sweet enough for a baby. She thinks she can stomach that. Unfortunately, she’s so caught up in trying to find the least objectionable options that she doesn’t notice Dan’s on his way back from the bathroom until he is already settling back in his seat, so Amy tries to slam the laptop shut, hoping he hasn’t actually seen anything on the screen.But damn him, he’s as eagle-eyed as ever.“What? Are you looking at porn?” he asks, laughing. “I know it’s been a couple of days, Ames, but you could’ve just followed me to the bathroom. That’s a lot less unseemly than flicking your bean in the middle of business class.”“I wasn’t looking at porn, dickhead.”The elderly woman in the seat across the aisle from Dan looks at them in horror, but Amy can’t be too concerned because he’s reaching for her computer, trying to pry it from her fingers so he can take a look at the screen.“What’s more embarrassing than porn?” he wonders, just before he wrestles the laptop from her -- and of course, he laughs again when he gets the computer open and finds Target’s selection of baby clothing staring back at him. “Oh, this is fucking priceless. And very, very sweet, Ames.”“Do you know how hard it is to find baby clothes that aren’t so fucking cutesy you want to puke?” she says defensively. “I need to start looking now or she’s going to wind up like some trailer park baby, always wearing nothing but a diaper.”Dan is still grinning, but he takes a moment to scan the screen. “Oh, yeah, shit like this,” he says, pointing at a fluffy, white one-piece, with lamb ears on the hood and little lamb heads on the attached feet. “I think putting your kid in something like this has to warrant a visit from CPS.”“The stuff for little girls is even worse. It’s all tutus and butterflies and fucking sequins. If I wanted my kid to wear shit like that, I’d just take hand-me-downs from…” She hesitates for a moment because still, after all this time, she can’t seem to acknowledge Sophie’s existence in front of Dan. “My nieces,” she finishes lamely.For once, he’s oblivious, still scrolling through the website and snickering at the particularly terrible outfits. “Hey,” he says, glancing over at her. “I’ve been meaning to ask… you have any ideas for a name?”“Not really. Why?”“Well, if you want some help, my mom’s partial to Clare or Alana,” he tells her. “Oh, and she wants to buy the kid a crib. I said I’d have to talk to you about it, though.”Amy blinks in surprise. “You told your mother?”“Yeah,” he says absently. “A couple of weeks ago maybe, when all the tests came back and we knew it was a girl. Seemed safe enough then.” He shrugs. “I figured my mom would be thrilled to know she’s finally going to have a grandkid who’s not a snivelly, little mouth breather. And she was… she even loved that fucking horror movie-looking ultrasound from last week.”
Amy nods, but she is startled enough that it’s almost an involuntary gesture. She knows Dan isn’t close with his family, that he doesn’t ever go home or welcome them for visits, but the fact that he told his mother that he’s going to be a father means he’ll have to commit in some real way -- because she is probably going to want to meet the kid, see photos, celebrate birthdays and holidays with her. He’ll have to be around in some capacity if he’s going to give his mother what she’s expecting.And he didn’t even mention to Amy that he was planning on telling his family as some way to lower her defenses or prove something to her -- he just did it.She’s known about the baby for months now, and she still hasn’t worked up the nerve to tell her parents -- and Sophie. God, she can only imagine how fucking tickled her sister is going to be by the fact that she’s gotten herself knocked up with a little bastard herself. (Of course, Sophie will be considerably less tickled over the fact that Dan is the father, but she’ll still find a way to gloat somehow.)“Are your brother’s kids really that bad?” Amy asks, needing to think about something other than her own fucked up family, about how she is supposed to feel about Dan.“Yeah. I think anyway… I’ve only met them once or twice, but they seemed pretty fucking stupid even for a three- and five-year-old. Homely as shit too.”“What are you going to do if this kid isn’t the smartest or cutest brat on the playground?”He sighs, having the nerve to sound irritated. “Amy, come on, I love problem-solving with you... it always feels a little bit like foreplay actually, but let’s save our energy for real fucking problems. Because there’s no way the two of us are having some fucking half-witted uggo.” She laughs, almost despite herself, and Dan grins. “This kid could probably fetch a fuck ton of money on the black market, actually. I mean, with this gene pool, she’s going to be adorable and brilliant … and have a really fucking amazing head of hair. Who wouldn’t want to buy her?”“I’m not sure we could convince the American people to vote for a candidate whose top campaign officials sold their precious bundle of joy for a six-figure payout.”His grin only widens. “If anyone could, it’s us.” She wants to fight it, she really does, but she feels herself smiling back, because he may be a fucking idiot most of the time, but he’s never really been wrong about how well they work together. That night back at the bar, when Dan was convincing her to come home with him, he talked up the good old days, and she tried to pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about, but it’s this, Amy thinks. These moments when it’s just the two of them, and it feels simple and easy, without any real effort or thinking or second-guessing. It doesn’t matter what they’re talking about, whether it’s an honest-to-fucking-God political crisis or petty bullshit about the idiots they work with, because it all energizes her somehow, makes Dan grin in that way she can’t ignore. She felt it that day a few weeks ago when they took the train to New York together, and every night since that he’s managed to talk his way into her bed or keep her on the phone to discuss his vision for BKD when she really should be sleeping, so it’s happening more and more often, like she is falling down the rabbit hole of feeling things for Dan that she knows she’s only going to wind up regretting in the end. He bumps his shoulder against hers and angles the laptop so she can see the screen. “I’m buying this one,” he says, pointing to a gray onesie that reads “Mommy’s Little Peanut” in aqua and yellow script. “The thought of you carting around a baby wearing this thing is too fucking much.”“I’m not--”“You know, I hadn’t really considered that benefit before. Being able to use the kid to embarrass you by proxy… that could be a lot of fun.”Amy taps her finger against the photo of a onesie that reads “Daddy’s Little Cupcake,” complete with glittery applique of said baked good. “That works both ways, asshole.”“See, you’d think so, but I take a photo of me with our adorable baby wearing this shit, and the saps on Instagram will eat it up with a fucking spoon. I add a puppy or a kitten and I could break the whole fucking internet.”She cocks her head and smiles, all faux sweetness. “You know, you’re probably right,” she says, “Me, on the other hand? No matter what this kid is wearing, I’ll have to live with the eternal shame of the world at large knowing I had sex with you.”Dan looks over at her, and his grin is almost terrifyingly cocky -- and so Goddamn sexy that she shifts a little restlessly in her seat. “Yeah,” he agrees, but when he leans in to stroke a finger over her wrist, she knows she’s playing right into his hands because her cheeks go hot in an instant. “And they’re gonna know it wasn’t just once. They’re gonna take one look at you and be able to tell right away just how well you're getting fucked.”She rolls her eyes on cue, and predictably, they spend the rest of the flight arguing because Amy is emphatic that their recent encounters don’t mean anything since she’s already pregnant and too much at the mercy of her hormones to know any better. Dan doesn’t see it that way because, according to him, she’s not that big yet so there are probably enough guys who would scratch her itch (He even rattles off a list of potential candidates, taking great delight in suggesting Jonah every other name, and when she wrinkles her nose, he smirks. “What? The idea of fucking a giant who also happens to be the least qualified presidential candidate in history doesn’t get you all hot and bothered?”), but it’s him she keeps coming to. He is smug and insufferable, but for once, Amy doesn’t mind. It’s a distraction from the fact that he’s told his family about the baby, that he’s paving the way to play some kind of real role in the baby’s life, and she has no idea what to do with that knowledge. It also keeps her from thinking about how she’s the one who keeps putting off sharing the news with the people in her life, how she’s going to need to start wearing maternity clothes any day now and still hasn’t found a way to tell Selina, how she dreads telling her family because she already feels like she has to protect her daughter from everything they might say, think, do.But she can be just as demonstrative as Dan, Amy tells herself. She can do it. So when they land in Chicago and there are a few hours to kill before they’re due at the fundraiser, she decides to be proactive. She makes herself comfortable on her hotel room bed and takes out her phone, scrolling through her contacts to dial her parents’ number.“Amy,” her mother sighs happily when she answers. “What a nice surprise! I was just talking about you to Mona Brimley from down the street, bragging about how you’re back to really changing the world. But I didn’t give her any details… I know you said it’s all still hush-hush.”Amy smiles stiffly. “That’s really nice, Mom, but could you get Dad? I’ve got some news, and I want to tell you both together.”“Oh, sure thing, honey. Just a sec...”She listens to her mother call for father, hears her father calling back, and takes several slow, deep breaths until they’re both on the line.She starts talking before she can change her mind.-------Selina’s performance at the fundraiser goes as well as any of them could hope and generates plenty of interest if the number of retweets and Instagram likes on the video clips are any indication. Dan works the room afterward, chatting up some of the more influential party members, and comes away feeling like the news of her officially going after the nomination again might just be pretty well-received. Of course, he’s taking a good chunk of the credit. Since they mercifully left that shitbag Leon back in New York, he and Amy were able to rewrite a few critical lines in Selina’s speech, and it wasn’t a fucking coincidence that those are the parts that scored the biggest reactions. It’s the perfect time for Selina to announce her candidacy, Dan and Amy argue afterward, and for once, it seems like Selina just might listen to reason. Everything's coming up fucking aces.It definitely doesn’t hurt that Amy is in such a good mood after the fundraiser that she comes to his room and fucks him in a giddy, almost euphoric way that captures the triumphant feel of the evening perfectly. She refuses to stay the night because she doesn’t want anyone to see her leaving his room in the morning, which he thinks is pretty fucking silly -- because if Ben’s shrewd looks and pointed comments lately are any indication, that cat is out of the Goddamn bag -- but it isn’t really worth starting a fight over. Any way you slice it, the trip is a success.Until the next morning, at least, when they’re supposed to fly back and a storm in the Midwest delays their flight for six hours. It’s a pain in the ass but not the end of the world, all things considered. Gary’s able to get the hotel to give them a later check-out (which seems a minor miracle since his powers of persuasion are about as good as Jonah’s), so they’re really not all that put-out. Dan knows Amy will make the most of the downtime, holing up in her room with her laptop to go over whatever numbers Kent’s sent over regarding last night’s performance, but he decides he’s more than earned a break and heads to the hotel’s fitness center to get in a quick run before they’re due at the airport.On the way down, he gets an email from his mother with a link to some article about kids’ developmental milestones from birth to age three. He knows she probably means well, but it’s not like he couldn’t google this shit himself if he were interested. That’s what makes this whole thing such a fucking headache, he thinks. For his mother, everything in his life is now reduced to the fact that he’s going to be a fucking father, not that he’s a partner in a promising new business or has the opportunity to pull the strings for a presidential campaign right there at his fingertips. Of course, there’s also the fact that he’s actually going to be someone’s father. That he’s going to have this kid depending on him for fucking everything -- that alternately irritates, horrifies, and maybe even, sometimes, amuses him. Dan Egan with a fucking kid; it makes for a pretty good joke.(Of course, the kid’s already proving to have some benefits -- like the other day, when he needed to get through to the party chairman who was tied up in meetings all day. Usually, Dan would chat up the assistant, flirt like nobody’s fucking business to make sure that his name got to the top of the call back list, but something about Cynthia’s voice made him think that she was a little older and insincere flattery might not be the best way to win her over -- and then inspiration struck.“I really should apologize,” he said, trying to sound frazzled. “I was supposed to call Chairman Taylor yesterday, but I got distracted. My girlfriend’s pregnant, and we just found out that we’re having a little girl. I’ve kind of had my head in the clouds ever since.”“Oh, congratulations,” Cynthia trilled back. “That’s so nice! You know, most men want a boy so badly… it’s lovely that you’re so excited about having a girl.”“Yeah,” he agreed, “I’m really hoping she turns out just like her mom.” It was a sickeningly sweet line (and not really true, because he doesn’t really think he could handle two Amys -- that seems like too much fucking work for his liking), but it worked like a charm because he heard back from Taylor less than two hours later. He could’ve lied about having a kid at any time, obviously, but it never occurred to him before. Now, though, despite his best efforts, the kid’s starting to demand his attention in ways that he doesn’t really understand. Shit, he even found himself contemplating baby names last night when he got bored during the fundraiser, and he thinks he might like Emma... but Emma Egan sounds fucking awful, and, icing Amy out probably isn’t fair since she’s the one doing all the work of actually incubating the kid. Emma Brookheimer-Egan has a pretty good ring to it too, because hyphenated names always stand out a little more and that’s obviously what he wants for the kid. He should run it by Amy one of these days …)Still, he fires off a quick reply to his mom as he gets off the elevator, thanking her for the article to get her off his back, but purposefully ignoring her not-so-subtle hints about coming for a visit (His mother clearly thinks Amy is some kind of Mother Theresa-level saint because she’s saved Dan from dying alone, so there’s some small part of him that almost wants them to meet, just to see the look on his mother’s face when she discovers that Amy isn’t the sweet, twin set-wearing, cookie-baking Disney Princess of a woman she’s probably picturing), so he’s distracted enough by his phone when he makes his way into the fitness center that he doesn’t see her right away.Well, that’s not entirely accurate -- he realizes there’s a woman on the treadmill farthest from the door, but it never occurs to him for even a second that it might be Amy, so it takes a moment before it registers.There she is, though, barely going three miles an hour if he had to guess, in what has to be the most miserable-looking stroll he’s ever seen. She’s wearing black leggings, a T-shirt with the hotel’s logo in the corner that’s at least three sizes too big for her, and a pair of bright blue Converse low-tops that, paired with her bouncy ponytail, make her look like she’s barely 20 years old, not nearly 20 weeks pregnant and cracking the whip on what just might be a historic presidential campaign. The TV in the corner of the room is muted but tuned to the Food Network, and since Amy’s culinary skills are limited to burning toast and ordering takeout, it was probably already on when she jumped on the treadmill. Her phone is on the console in front of her, but it’s turned screen side down so she can’t see any alerts that come through. The whole thing is fucking weird.When he steps onto the treadmill beside her, she finally realizes there’s someone else in the room, but she doesn’t seem particularly relieved to discover it’s him. “You’re never gonna break a sweat at that speed,” he tells her.Amy shrugs. “The doctor said I should exercise, but running seems too aggressive. All that bouncing up and down can’t be good.”Dan certainly doesn’t know what an appropriate workout for a pregnant woman would look like, but the idea of Amy exercising at all is pretty fucking out there -- she’s always had to run a million miles a minute in Selina’s wake so she’s never really had the time or need before. But Dr. Klein did mention that a little activity would be good for her at that last appointment, and she apparently took the advice to heart. Dan finds it almost amusing how well Amy’s been following the doctor’s orders -- sure, she probably indulges her cravings a little more than she should, but she’s faithfully choking down those horse pill prenatal vitamins every morning, given up caffeine, sushi, alcohol, and all those soft cheeses she loves like a champ, checks every over-the-counter medication she takes to make sure it’s safe. It’s almost like it’s becoming second nature for her to look out for the kid. (Sometimes, he thinks about everything that she’s putting up with for this baby -- nausea and exhaustion at the beginning, the swollen feet, heartburn, and backaches now, and the fucking nightmare of things still to come -- and he can only come up with one reason why she’d do it. She really fucking wants this kid.)He increases the speed on his treadmill, jacking it up as fast as he usually goes even though she’s probably going to think he’s trying to show her up. “What’s your problem?” he asks when she stays uncharacteristically quiet. “Nothing,” she says, though way too quickly to be believable. She doesn’t look at him either, and she still hasn’t touched her phone since he got here, so he’s not dumb enough to take her at her word. But if she doesn’t want to talk about why she’s moping like a fucking moody teenager, he isn’t going to push the issue. “I talked to Ben,” he tells her instead, because shop talk is always a safe bet with Amy. “He’s already gotten calls about having Selina speak at fundraisers in Denver and San Francisco, so I’d say we were a hit.”“That’s good.”“Oh, and Ben and I were thinking that maybe you should start taking some meetings with us and our other candidates when you have the time. You know, to help make the transition to BKD a little smoother.”Amy looks at him, frowning. “What do you mean?”“No matter what happens with Selina and the election, we’ve gotta get you back down to D.C. eventually,” he says, “And slotting you in at BKD just makes the most sense for everyone. Obviously, if we actually pull this thing off and Selina takes the White House, maybe there’s a role for you there, but otherwise, we’ll need to keep you busy.”“Why?” “Why?” he laughs, “Sweetheart, if you’re fishing for compliments, you already know we’d fucking love to have you--”“No. Why do I need to get back to D.C.? Why is that a priority?”“Because that’s where you want to be,” he says -- because he knows her, knows that, like him, she wants to be where the real action is. “And we’re having a kid together. That’ll be easier if we’re living in the same city.”He definitely isn’t about to admit that he just prefers having her close, because she might read into that, make something more of it than it really is -- or blast him for being so fucking selfish that he thinks she should always be just around the corner in case he decides that he needs her, wants her, which is fair, but he doesn’t feel like hearing her bitch about it right now.“That’s assuming a lot,” Amy says, slowing the speed on her treadmill even further. “Like what?”She shrugs, not looking at him. “It just seems pretty unlikely that you’ll still be into this whole half-hearted parenting thing by the time we know what’s going on with Selina and the election, so it probably won’t matter much where I wind up.”He grins. “Hey, come on. Kids are at peak cuteness at around six months to two years. I’m definitely gonna want to be around to take advantage of that.”Amy snorts, stopping her treadmill so suddenly that she almost stumbles to a halt. “This is exactly what I meant,” she says, “I am not letting you anywhere near this kid when you’re only going to ditch her as soon as she’s not cute or valuable enough for you. I know you’ve never met a person you wouldn’t screw over if you could, but maybe pretend to be a decent human being for once and don’t do it to your own kid?”She grabs her phone and practically bulldozes her way off the treadmill, clearly determined to get away from him as quickly as possible -- and Dan’s so confused that it takes a few seconds before he thinks to stop her. He knows they haven’t really settled anything regarding the kid since he showed up at her apartment and told her that he wanted to be involved, but she’s obviously been warming to the idea of doing it together if her recent behavior is any indication. It only makes sense too, because being a single mother seems like a serious fucking headache, and he’ll probably be pretty useless as a father, but parenting definitely seems like a numbers game, and they’ve always made a good team. He’s trying to convince himself that raising a kid can’t be anywhere near as difficult or frustrating as a career in politics -- though it doesn’t come with any of the glory, which means it can't be anywhere near as satisfying either -- so he thinks it’s something they can probably work out together.Amy wasn’t wrong -- if Andrew and Selina could do it, he’s certain the two of them can get by. “Wait a fucking second,” he calls after her, but she obviously isn’t listening, and he has to hop off the treadmill and grab her elbow before she reaches the door. “You think that's the end of the conversation?”She stops but stubbornly keeps her back to him. “I don’t think you’ve grasped this yet, but in a few months, there’s going to be an actual baby here, who needs fucking everything. She won’t be some convenient, little prop to help you seem like a decent guy. There aren’t enough fucking kids in the world for that.”“Believe me, I understand this kid isn’t going to be anything but inconvenient. That’s how babies work. But I’m still willing to--”“You fake it better than just about anyone, I’ll give you that. I almost fell for it, for fuck’s sake, and I know exactly what a disingenuous shit you are,” Amy says, “But I’m not interested in playing house just because we're in the same zip code and you happen to feel like it that day. You may have half-assed every relationship you’ve ever had, did just enough to get whatever you wanted out them, but you’re not doing it to my kid. I may not know her yet, but I know she deserves better than that. Better than you.”“Yeah, like maybe a mother who isn’t a psycho bitch,” he snaps, because seriously what the hell is going on -- she’d been fine just a couple of hours ago when they met with Gary to figure out what flight they should take back. She’d even teased him about how he’d have time now to stop by the spa for a facial. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”“Sorry, am I not being considerate enough for you? I’m only growing another fucking human being as we speak, but let me make sure you aren’t--”“Which was all your fucking idea, so if you’re not--”“I’m well aware, Dan. But that doesn’t mean I have to put up with your shit or be grateful that you’ve decided you might be interested in holding your own kid once in a while because it’ll look good on Instagram.”“Put up with my shit?” he laughs. “Ames, I’m trying here, okay? And I think, all things considered, you’re pretty fucking lucky.”She laughs too, but it has a thin, flat sound that he really doesn’t like. “Oh, really?”“Yeah, really. You’ve been telling me I can get lost from the very beginning, but I haven’t done that. I’ve been trying to … because let me tell you, most guys would’ve fucking bailed by now. For good.”“Forgive me. I didn’t realize you’d locked up the fucking sainthood because you think it might be politically expedient to play at being a father.”“Jesus Christ,” he grits out, spinning her around to face him finally. “What the fuck is…” Amy keeps her head lowered, but Dan sees it as soon as she turns -- how wet and bright her eyes are, how red and damp her cheeks are -- and it stops him dead in his tracks.“Are you crying?” he half-laughs, half-asks. It’s not that he’s really amused by the idea, but it’s just so fucking unnerving that he doesn’t know how else to react. Amy’s always been tough as nails, strong as fucking steel -- when you push her too far, you don’t break her heart or crush her spirit. You just piss her off, enrage her until she comes right back at you swinging. He’s never even seen her misty-eyed in all the years he’s known her.(Of course, sometimes she’s pushed too far, and she runs all the way across the fucking country to shack up with a braindead hayseed in cowboy boots without so much as a goodbye, but now’s not the time to think about that.)She wipes at her face roughly, like she doesn’t care if she scratches the skin. “Calm down, you unrelenting dick. It’s just the Goddamn hormones.” She exhales and lifts her chin to meet his eyes almost defiantly. “Which you should be grateful for because I never would’ve slept with you again if it wasn’t for--”“Fucking enough with that already,” he says, “If you’re still trying to convince me you don’t want me, Ames, that ship sailed a long time ago. Right around when you started grinding your ass against my dick in the backseat of that cab.”Her eyes narrow, giving her a fierce, furious look that almost has him convinced she’s going to hit him, pummel him with her tiny fists until she exhausts herself. “You are such an asshole,” she says, “And I’m a fucking moron… so this kid is probably going to turn out to be an asshole moron. Looks like you were right, Dan. I should’ve just gotten rid of it when I had the chance.” It’s a strange, sobering thing to realize -- because he’s always known exactly how to handle Amy in every situation they’ve ever found themselves in -- but he has no idea how to deal with her like this, when there’s a rawness to her anger that makes her vulnerable in a way she’s not even aware of. With anyone else, he’d be coming up with a dozen different ways to exploit it, but seeing it in Amy now only makes him uncomfortable.“I never said… stop acting like a fucking crazy person, okay?” he says, trying for an even tone. “It isn’t… Getting worked up like this can’t be good for the baby.”Amy glares at him, but her eyes are still bright with unshed tears. Somehow, though, she still looks as formidable as she ever did busting balls for Selina. “I am so very sorry for not being better at this,” she declares, without any sincerity. “But then, really, that’s your mistake. You just knocked up the wrong Brookheimer... I bet Sophie’s a lot more agreeable when she’s getting ready to pop out a brat.”This time, she bolts for the door so quickly that he can’t stop her, and honestly, he’s blindsided enough by her outburst, the sudden sucker punch of it, that it’s hard to get himself in gear. At least, at first, because it takes less than 30 seconds for him to process it all, and then the urge to call after her is too tempting to ignore.
(Because seriously, what the ever-living fuck? He’s been on his best fucking behavior lately, hasn’t given her any reason at all to go this far off the deep end.)"Maybe I did," he says, stepping into the hallway behind her. She's already made it to the elevator, but she looks at him over her shoulder as she stabs at the button. "Maybe this is all a fucking mistake."He waits for Amy to fire back at him, is almost looking forward to it, but Kent chooses that precise moment to send him a 911 text, demanding a return call, so Dan’s just distracted enough to miss her before she steps onto the elevator.She goes on to ignore eight texts, five phone calls, and two pretty Goddamn testy voicemails, which is just fucking juvenile considering that she’s going to be stuck on a plane with him for almost three hours and have no choice but to talk to him.He should know better than to underestimate Amy, though, because she bullies Gary into switching seats with her on the flight back under the guise of wanting to brainstorm with Selina about getting the ball rolling on the official campaign announcement. It’s difficult to tell who’s more irritated by this development, Dan or Gary, but they’re both furious enough that the flight is fucking interminable. The thing that really pisses Dan off is that he has no clue what Amy’s problem is. Usually, when someone (Amy in particular) is this kind of angry with him, he knows the precise thing (or series of things) he’s done and isn’t the least bit sorry for. Right now, he hasn’t got a clue -- he’s been positively fucking doting lately if you ask him -- and somehow, if he doesn’t know what the fuck Amy’s being such a bitch about, it’s not as easy to maintain his usual fuck-you-for-having-the-nerve-to-be-upset attitude.That’s a lousy fucking feeling.So Dan tries to steady himself with a few rounds of scotch and then proceeds to flirt with a redheaded flight attendant loud enough for all of business class to hear. From where he’s sitting, he can just see the side of Amy’s head and shoulder, all the way at the front of the section, but she doesn’t even flinch. She doesn’t react at all, actually, which is even more infuriating and makes him seriously consider coaxing Red into the bathroom, putting all the anger he feels into fucking her less than ten feet from where Amy is sitting. Let’s see her fucking ignore that. But then, there’s a pretty good chance this could all turn out to be some temporary hormonal freak out because Amy’s feeling fat or her back is aching or they didn’t have the M&M’s she likes in the vending machine, and he’s the most obvious target for her shitty mood since he’s the one who knocked her up. When she eventually comes to her senses, she’ll reluctantly apologize, and they can go back to normal-- it’s not like he’ll hold a grudge or expect her to make it up to him too much.If he fucks the flight attendant, that’s probably off the table. But if he doesn’t fuck her, then he won’t get the satisfaction of pissing Amy off in return right now, and Dan’s wired for instant gratification all the fucking way, so it’s hard to imagine that fucking Red isn’t the best course of action. It’s a testament to how much Amy’s screwed with his head that he spends too damn long thinking about what he should do and the fasten seatbelts sign turns on for the plane to begin its descent, which means it’s too late to do anything other than sit around like a fucking asshole because Amy won’t even look his way. He must be pretty twitchy because Gary watches him like maybe there’s another breakdown in the offing, which is fucking maddening because earning Gary’s concern is about as fucking low as it gets.Amy laughs suddenly, loud enough to echo through the cabin like a taunt, and Gary shakes his head. “Amy,” he sighs petulantly. “Sometimes, she’s just way too needy.”Even in his foul mood, Dan has to laugh at the absurdity of it, and after a moment, Gary giggles along with him, not caring in the least that he doesn’t know why they’re laughing. It’s enough to change Dan’s mind -- Amy is definitely going to have to make this up to him. Big fucking time.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
-------Even though she still hasn’t committed to an announcement date -- April, Selina is thinking now; she likes April for some unknown fucking reason. Amy really should tell her that, according to the grapevine, Tom James is going to announce any day now. That might be the only way to get her to finally settle on a date, but Amy knows exactly how brutal that conversation will be, and she’s just not in the right frame of mind to do it right now -- Selina still insists on face-to-face staff meetings once a week. They’re always brief and mostly useless, because besides lining up appearances, there’s not much to be done at this point -- the first scheduled primary debate isn’t for another five months, for fuck’s sake (right around Amy’s due date, actually, because the universe obviously has it in for her) -- but Amy doesn’t mind much since she’s in New York anyway. Ben, Kent, and Dan might be annoyed about always having to trek back and forth from D.C. for no good reason, but that’s their problem. She is dreading this morning’s meeting, though, and for once, it’s not because of anything that Selina might say or do. Amy hasn’t seen Dan in nearly a week, since she walked away from him in JFK without a word or glance back. They’ve “talked” over email as part of a discussion with Senator Perez’s office about the fundraising appearance in D.C., but she has ignored every phone call and text message from him that alludes to anything even remotely personal.So that means that their last real interaction involved her crying in front of him, hot, desperate tears that she couldn’t seem to stop. The shame over that slip-up is impossible to ignore, so staying far, far away from him is the only way she can think of to deal with those feelings. It’s foolish because he is going to corner her at some point, force her to talk to him, poke and prod at her until he gets at the truth of why she unloaded on him in Chicago, and the longer she puts it off, the longer she ignores him, the pissier and pissier he’s going to get until they inevitably have the kind of blowout that could put any of Selina’s closed-door meltdowns to shame. Amy knows that rationally, but emotionally-speaking, she would rather rip her fingernails off one by one than talk to him in any kind of one-on-one situation. So she plans to grab one of the armchairs in Selina’s office for the meeting and spoil any chance that Dan has of sitting next to her in some fucked-up effort to torture her. Ben and Selina have already staked their claim, though, which means the best Amy can do is take a spot on the end of the sofa beside an armrest. To her immense relief, Kent sits beside her to show her a video of Jonah’s most recent campaign appearance when he fell off the stage in a middle school auditorium and nearly broke his leg. The clip improves her mood immensely so that when her phone vibrates with a new text message that she instinctively knows is from her mother, she doesn’t even sigh. Over the past two hours, Amy has received no less than nine text messages from her mother, a woman who barely knows how to turn on her iPhone. Apparently, the idea of a new granddaughter is enough to inspire her to learn, though, because Mom has ideas about everything from the nursery decor (she’s found the most adorable rosebud wallpaper online!) to maternity clothing (Target has some really lovely, affordable options!) to names (Charlotte is lovely, but so is Olivia or Hannah!). It is the stuff of Amy’s worst fears, though she knows that she should be more grateful. To say her parents were stunned to hear about the baby is an understatement, but they both seemed genuinely excited, like maybe they think she is finally becoming a normal woman, with all the trappings of a normal life, and things will turn out all right for her after all. They pinned a lot of their hopes on Buddy, so over the past several months, they’d all but given up on that for her. This kid must be the answer to their prayers.Of course, they don’t know who the father is, so maybe they’ll change their minds. (“We didn’t even know you had a boyfriend, sweetie,” her mother said, sounding relieved, not hurt that she’d been left out of such an important part of her daughter's life. “Tell us all about him!”“I don’t really,” Amy corrected, though she really didn’t want her parents to worry. “I’m not … it’s just complicated, so I don’t--”“How complicated can it be?” her father demanded, because he was the kind of father who would always look out for his little girl, who would always take it personally when she was hurt or left high and dry. “You said you didn’t plan this, so you obviously didn’t get pregnant alone. Where is this guy? Did he run out on you? Because I’m not--”“Dad, please. Can we just … for now, let’s just focus on the baby, okay? On the good news that you’re going to have another grandchild.”Her father exhaled heavily, sounding weary and worn -- and not just because of his health issues. He’s used to this kind of crap with Sophie and her kids, but Amy knows that he’s always expected more from her, expected better. “Fine,” he grumbled. “For now, we can just ... but we’re gonna talk about it at some point. Sooner or later.”)Still, telling them went as well as she could have hoped, although they made her promise to come home for a visit so they could fuss over her belly in person and help her do some shopping. She can probably put it off for a while, though, because people -- well, most people. Not Dan fucking Egan -- are reluctant to fight with a pregnant woman.Not Sophie either, of course.It was silly, obviously, but when she didn’t hear from Sophie right after she finished the call with her parents, Amy thought that maybe they were going to let her be the one to deliver the news. She wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, but the idea that she could control how and when her sister found out was reassuring.Which is of course why when she was on her way back to her hotel room after their flight was delayed the next morning and her phone suddenly blew up with at least ten texts in rapid succession, she knew instinctively that they were from Sophie.Because once again, the universe exists solely to fuck with her. When Amy skimmed the messages, they were exactly what she would expect -- all gloating about how, for all her fancy education and professional success, her time spent as the right hand to the most powerful woman in the world, she still wound up exactly like Sophie, unmarried and knocked up. Sophie wondered about the father too, tried to guess at who it might be, but Amy ignored that text just like she ignored all the rest and hoped that would be the end of it, at least until she had to see Sophie in person. Unfortunately, as fucking stupid as she might be, Sophie still knows her sister pretty damn well. And if she did even the most basic of googling, she could find at least a few photos of Selina’s recent appearances, and there were probably one or two of Amy and Dan huddled together, whispering in one another’s ear about some campaign calamity or another, and Sophie obviously made what felt like the logical assumption.(Because once again, Dan is infuriatingly right -- who the hell else will anyone think Amy is screwing around with?)Oh I get it now, Sophie texted. this is how you think your gonna trap Dan… dream on, sis. LmaoAmy could have shaken that off -- because the idea was so ludicrous that it wasn’t even worthy of a response -- but her sister didn’t stop there. Sophie knew exactly what she was doing, knew exactly what kind of damage she was aiming to do when she sent the screenshot from Instagram because there was nothing innocent about the photo of Dan with an attractive woman in the littlest black dress in existence practically sitting in his lap at some bar or party. It wasn’t that difficult to figure the story behind it, not with the impossible-to-miss CNN logo in the background and the timestamp of just a couple of days before he made his triumphant return to TV to discuss the climate change bill.Guess he’s not in the mood to play baby daddy yet, Sophie wrote beneath the photo. But at least you know he’s definitely got a thing for blonds, you know if you ever manage to get the baby weight off. ;)It took less than three seconds for Amy to delete the thread, but she spent at least ten minutes thinking about removing all of Sophie’s contact info from her phone, as if that might erase her from Amy’s life -- but then, it didn’t really matter. Sophie didn’t really matter. Dan obviously matters, considering the fact that she’s about to give birth to his child in a matter of months, and he’s out there acting like nothing has changed, like nothing could possibly slow him down.That’s the worst part of it, that it’s almost ridiculous to be angry with him when all he’s done is be who he is, who he’s always made perfectly clear that he is.If lately Amy started to think that maybe, perhaps, there was a chance that things could be different, that all the time they spent apart had made things different, that’s on her for being as fucking naive and gullible as a first-year intern. That Sophie was the one who got to remind her that Dan is exactly who she’s always known him to be is just the icing on the shit cake that is her life. (And maybe that’s the real damage that Dan’s done, even if he doesn’t understand it. He gave Sophie the perfect ammunition to torture Amy with for the rest of their lives, handed it to her on a fucking silver platter. Amy doesn’t think she can ever get over that, not when she imagines her daughter growing up with her aunt making taunting comments about how she banged the kid’s father at every turn. It makes Amy want to throttle her sister in anticipation, squeeze every last bit of breath from her, so she never opens her fucking mouth again.)All of it left Amy feeling so foolish and angry that she cried, actually cried real fucking tears, in front of Dan -- and then, he made it all worse because that’s what he always does. He can’t fucking help himself. Of course, he’s still fucking around -- if he thought it would get him something he wanted, something he needed, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do. A baby isn’t going to change that. But fuck him if he thinks she’s ever going to let him near her daughter. She’s never imagined herself as one of those terrifyingly overprotective mothers, but she’s heard this kid’s heartbeat, thumping in its frantic, hurried way, and sometimes, she swears that she can still feel it now, pounding through her body all the way to the bone. She knows that motherhood isn’t going to change who she is fundamentally, that she’ll still work 16-hour days and make chasing the White House a higher priority than teaching the ABCs and the fine art of shoe-tying much of the time, but when she thinks about her daughter, she is reminded of how fiercely she’s fought for and protected Selina all these years, and that’s nothing compared to the impulse she feels to shield her daughter from every awful, ugly thing in this world. Nothing could have prepared her for it, this astounding love for a child who doesn’t even exist yet. It is terrifying and empowering all at once, so she might not be the greatest mother in the world, but she’ll be fucking damned if she lets anyone hurt her daughter.Even Dan. Especially Dan.Because it’s not the same for him. He wants to treat all of it like a game, like some power play, which is the exact same way he’s approached his relationship with Amy since the day they met. She may have been crazy enough to fall for his act lately, to sleep with him and laugh with him and buy into some make-believe scenario where they can actually be some sort of family, but she’s always known, deep down, that he isn’t someone she can count on for anything. Certainly not to keep his fucking dick in his pants. If he’s willing to go along with the whole fatherhood thing, it’s only because he thinks it’s going to score him points, because he’s already drafted a new bio for the BKD website with some nauseatingly insincere bullshit about being a family man, has the accompanying photos of he and the baby staged in his head like the calculating, cold-hearted prick that he is. There’s no way Amy is going to let her kid be used that way. When Dan finally strolls into Selina’s office a couple of minutes before the meeting is scheduled to begin, it’s almost as if he’s read her mind because he takes the seat on the other side of Kent, wishing everyone a good morning but refusing to look Amy’s way once, like he’s somehow punishing her by not paying her any attention.If he thinks that will actually rattle her after all the other shit he’s pulled, he is even dumber than she thought.As expected, there’s barely anything to discuss, just some ideas about how to whip the ground teams in Iowa and New Hampshire into shape, but Selina still manages to fill almost an entire hour with the sound of her own voice. Just like Dan, Amy spends the whole meeting ignoring him, ignoring him so hard that she knows he must feel it even though she’s barely moved. Two can play this game, asshole, she thinks. “Okay,” Selina says, clapping her hands. “I guess that’s it, so we can--”“Actually,” Dan says, shifting forward on the sofa. “Before we go, I think there’s something Amy’s been meaning to tell you.”In an instant, Amy feels the entire room shift its focus to her, and Dan smirks with as self-satisfied a gleam in his eye as she’s ever seen. She freezes, because she should know better but there’s some part of her that can’t believe he would do this, out her pregnancy to Selina in front of everyone like this just because he’s pissed off about being ignored. (Never mind that it’s beyond ridiculous that she hasn’t told Selina yet; that’s beside the fucking point.)It’s such a shitty thing to do, such a fucked-up way to get even with her for whatever perceived wrong he has the fucking nerve to think she’s committed, but then Dan is one fucked-up son of a bitch. “Oh yeah?” Selina says, leaning back in her chair once more. “What’s up, Amy?”Almost against her will, Amy finds herself leaning forward to get a better look at Dan, who stares right back at her, cat-that-ate-the-fucking-canary pleased with himself, and it feels like some game of chicken, like they’re both waiting for the other to blink, to give in first. She frantically tries to come up with some other piece of information to share that makes sense in the context of the conversation, but her mind has gone terrifyingly blank. Dan gives in to the urge to full-out grin then, and turns back to Selina. “Senator Perez,” he says, “Amy finally got her staff to officially invite you to speak at that fundraiser in D.C. next month.”“Oh, fucking fantastic! That walking erection Craig Taylor is supposed to be there … it’s the perfect chance to show him, up close and personal, that I still got it. Good work, Amy.”Amy forces a tight smile. “No problem, ma'am.” The meeting breaks up right after that, and somehow, Dan manages to slink off with Kent before Amy has the opportunity to punch him in the dick like the daydream that’s playing on a loop in her head has convinced her is the wisest course of action. (Just as well, she thinks. She’d only have to explain her behavior to Selina, and that would entail telling her about the baby all the same.) Ben wanders over to Amy’s desk after he finishes up a private meeting with Selina, looking almost amused. In her current mood, Amy doesn’t really have the patience for anyone so she keeps her eyes focused on her laptop, trying to channel her anger into something remotely productive. “What’d you have to do to get Perez to agree to that fundraiser?” he asks, “Blow every member of her staff?”“Dan actually took care of that. It doesn’t take much to get him to swallow.”Ben nearly laughs, but his expression seems to shift then, become a little too serious for Amy’s comfort. “What was that thing with you two back there? Dan being an asshole again?”She snorts. “Again? Being an asshole is his fucking baseline.”Ben nods, because he obviously understands who Dan is too. He must not be satisfied with her response, though, because he lingers at her desk, watching her carefully. “So…” he says, glancing around briefly before lowering his voice. “When are you due?”Amy knows that her eyes go comically wide -- she feels it, notices the way her vision goes blurry for a second -- as she stares back him. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Ben might have picked up on the fucking elephant in the room that she’s been trying to hide under all the loose clothing -- he’s had a few wives, fathered children of his own, and as disinterested as he may be in his family, he probably knows some of the signs. Dan even mentioned something about him saying she was glowing, so he’s clearly not oblivious -- but she is still stunned somehow.“Excuse me?” is all she can manage to say.“What I’m really wondering is whether it’s Dan’s or he’s just pissed off because it isn’t. I’ve been trying to figure that out for a couple of weeks, actually.”“What did you decide?”“That you’re probably the only woman on this fucking planet insane and arrogant enough to give birth to that fucker’s demon spawn.”“Arrogant?” she repeats, laughing. “Really?”“I’m working under the assumption you think your genes are going to overwhelm his and you’ll wind up with a halfway decent kid,” says Ben. “I wouldn’t hold my breath, though. I suspect this kid is going to be pulling the fucking wings off flies and burning ants alive with a magnifying glass for fun by the time he’s learned to walk.”“It’s a girl actually.”“Oh, well then... maybe you’ll catch a break.”“I haven’t told Selina yet,” Amy admits, because it’s something of a relief to have someone other than Dan to talk to about this. “I just don’t…”Ben nods, clearly not surprised. “Well, she’s not gonna hear it from me. But you know, you really should tell her sooner rather than later. She may be pathologically self-absorbed, but she’ll pick up on it eventually. And she’ll spit fucking nails if she doesn’t hear it directly from you.”He is right, of course -- just like Dan was when he told her the same thing. Amy knows that, rationally, but her life feels so beyond her control at the moment that she doesn’t want to introduce another person to the mix who’ll have opinions and thoughts and feelings about the whole thing. She doesn’t want to have to reassure anyone else. “And that’s the last piece of advice you’re getting from me,” Ben says, reaching to grab his raincoat from the rack. “Because I’m as shitty a parent as you’ll find. And you know, it’s going to be so much worse for you so what could I possibly tell you that would help?”She frowns. “What do you mean?”“I don’t see my kids for a month at a time, and no one bats an eye because I’m just the father. But if a mother does that? People freak the fuck out. With pitchforks and flaming torches and all that shit.”“I’ve accepted that I’ll need to spend time with her more than once a month.” Amy isn’t about to explain that she’s actually starting to welcome the idea, that as much as she lives for the self-destructive rush that a career in politics brings, there is something appealing about having an escape from all of it at the end of the day, a smiling face to come home to that won’t care if she managed to bring up poll numbers or plan the perfect attack ad. She is looking forward to having more in her life than Selina and her constant need for reassurance, Dan and his habit of drawing her in and pushing her away to suit his whims, her parents and their ever-present worry about whether she’s happy enough or happy in the right way.Ben pats her shoulder, smiling. “Good. So you’ll be fine then.”It says something about the state of her life that his mostly joke-y assertion that she can handle motherhood well enough makes her feel better, but that’s where she is these days. She watches him head for the elevator, and for the first time in days, her smile feels almost natural.“Oh,” Ben says, turning back for a moment. “And don’t forget to call that inbred shit sack Stanton in Des Moines and put the fucking fear of God or Allah or Buddha or whoever else you need into him. He’s starting to make fucking Richard look almost competent.”Amy nods, and that’s an even bigger relief, because Ben doesn’t just think she can get by as a mother; he doesn’t expect her to suddenly become useless at her job because she’s having a baby either. And work is the key, because it keeps her focused, reminds her what’s important, so she’ll work to get Selina elected and she’ll work on bringing this kid into the world as healthy as can be, and the rest of the bullshit -- Dan and Sophie and her parents’ expectations -- can just become white noise in the background of her life.She just has to get through the next few months without getting distracted. So she gets the Des Moines office on the phone, waits for Stanton to get on the line, and then proceeds to rip him to shreds like it’s second nature, like it’s what she was made for. -------It’s not the fucking hormones -- or, if it is, it has to be the worst motherfucking case of pregnancy-induced psychosis in history. For nearly a week, Amy’s been fully committed to pretending that he doesn’t exist. It was bad enough when she practically ran away from him in the airport, disappearing into a crowd of tourists like she was fleeing for her life, but ignoring every single phone call, voice mail, and text that he’s sent since is just adding insult to fucking injury.The only contact they’ve had is the few words they exchanged in emails with Perez’s chief of staff, and even then, he could practically feel the frost coming from her through his fucking iPad screen with every politely distant word, like he isn’t even worth the effort of showing any hostility towards. Somehow, it’s worse than when she fucked off to Nevada, than just a couple of months back when she first told him about the baby and was arms-lengthing him to prove that she didn’t expect anything from him. She’s been nothing short of a Grade A fucking bitch, and Dan still has no clue what her problem is. He does plenty of shitty things that piss people off, so there’s a good chance she’s entirely justified, and that’s fine -- he can deal with her being angry, if she would actually fucking show it, get in his face and let him have it. He’s used to that, with Amy telling him precisely what kind of asshole he is and the exact way she’d like him to go fuck himself. Amy acting like a petulant child, refusing to talk to him, refusing to look his way when they’re both in the same room, is just fucking beneath both of them. But Dan’s not about to act like some pathetic asshole, chasing after a woman who doesn’t want a fucking thing to do with him -- so he pulls the stunt at the staff meeting to get Amy’s attention. Letting her think he’s actually going to tell Selina about the baby just to piss her off is unquestionably a dick move -- there’s no way that intentionally upsetting a pregnant woman, let alone the mother of your own fucking kid, is anything less -- but he figured it’s the best way to get her talking. Or screaming, actually.He fully expects her to hunt him down afterward, rip him to verbal fucking shreds for putting the fear of God in her -- which may not be the best way to start a conversation, but he’s tired of waiting. So when his phone stays stubbornly silent for nearly six hours, he is fucking livid. Completely and utterly over this bullshit. (Because where does Amy fucking get off thinking she gets to dictate the terms of their relationship? She’s the one who goes crazy enough to take up with fuckwads like Calhoun when left to her own devices, she’s the one who cuts and runs across the fucking country when she’s on her own, she’s the one who needs Dan around…)He’s in such a fucking mood that he decides he should treat himself to a haircut and shave. His favorite New York barbershop happens to be around the corner from the CBS studios, which gives him the idea to call Brie -- because fucking the anger out of his system is the only thing that really makes sense and it’s not like she’d ever expect to have a real conversation before they fuck. But they trade texts and it turns out that she’s in Minneapolis for the Final Four since CBS This Morning is doing a live remote for March Madness, so he’s shit out of luck. Amy still hasn’t called to scream in his ear or sent a text to ream him out, which means it’s been a full fucking week since she deigned to respond him. Dan tells himself he’s not going to call or text again (she’s the one who fucked everything up so she should be the one to fix it), but he winds up sending her message just as he’s sitting down in the barber’s chair. It’s not caving, though, because it concerns a completely practical subject -- the fact that she needs to change the time of her next doctor’s appointment because Ben scheduled a meeting with a potential client that morning and Dan won’t be able to make it back to New York until later in the afternoon.He holds his phone in his hand the entire time the barber’s working, but even after the nearly 60 minutes it takes the guy to finish up, Amy still hasn’t gotten back to him, which just goes to show how fucking unreasonable she’s being. It’s about the fucking kid -- she can’t just pretend he isn’t intimately involved in all of that. So when he bumps into Allison, a news editor from CBS who he always kind of wanted to sleep with if only because she was so irritatingly faithful to her boyfriend, just around the corner from the studio, and she mentions that she and the boyfriend just broke up, Dan suggests they get a drink even though it’s barely five o’clock. Allison’s got some boring sob story about how she stuck with her boyfriend for almost five years, and it was only reasonable that they start thinking about getting married, but the guy wasn’t really sold, and she tried to call his bluff with a predictable ultimatum, and it all ended with him moving out of their co-op in the East Village and them fighting over custody of some fucking Labradoodle. It’s so fucking stupid and tedious (why is it that Amy is the only woman who can talk for hours without boring him? She isn’t that fucking interesting), but Dan can’t help thinking that if he’s out with another woman when Amy finally calls, that’ll teach her a fucking lesson -- because is she seriously still pissed about the Sophie thing? It was years ago and meant abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Amy let him get close enough again to knock her up, for fuck’s sake, so haven’t they moved the fuck past it? -- and maybe she’ll finally get over herself.But Amy still doesn’t call or text, and Dan drinks enough that there’s nothing else to do but ask Allison back to his hotel room. It’s easier to convince her than he expects, but if her pissy tone is any indication, she’s in a vengeful mood, and she’s always been dumb enough to take his charm at face value, see it as easy and natural, not as sharp and calculated as a knife in the back. Fucking her feels off, though he doesn’t really know why because she’s hot and eager enough. It’s probably all her, because she’s not used to screwing anyone other than her boyfriend in years, but at least Dan manages to show her good time. Or maybe. Allison seems as subdued as he feels afterward, which is generally not the kind of mood he likes to inspire in women. But honestly, he’s glad that she doesn’t want to linger, that she’s more concerned with getting dressed and getting out than talking to him because all he really wants now is to be alone. Especially when she pats his arm in an annoyingly supportively when she’s leaving, like she’s the one trying to make him feel better. “I hope everything works out,” she tells him.“Everything’s great,” he says automatically. “The consulting is really taking--”“I meant with your girlfriend. I know how hard--”His laugh is sharp and humorless. “I don’t have a fucking girlfriend.”“Oh, sorry, right. With your ex. I didn’t mean to--”“I don’t have an ex either.”Allison frowns, looking confused. “You don’t? I thought you were doing the whole rebound thing too. You kept asking all those questions about why Ryan and I broke up, and if I thought we’d ever get back together, so I figured you were going through--”“I just wanted to fuck,” Dan says hotly. “And I thought the easiest way to make that happen was to pretend I cared about that shit. That’s all.”He expects her to flinch or at least look disgusted, but she just laughs. “Oh, okay. My mistake. You definitely seem like a guy who just got what he wanted.”For a moment, Dan seriously considers shoving her out the door and slamming it in her face, but he isn’t a fucking savage. So he just grabs her jacket and shoves it at her until she gets the hint and disappears. Once he’s alone, he takes a shower, helps himself to some of the stupidly expensive scotch from the minibar, and tries to get into a late night showing of Crank 2. He’s seen it before, so it hardly holds his interest, and for some fucked up reason, he winds up reading over the last dozen or so unanswered texts he sent to Amy. It only pisses him off more, so when he wakes the next morning and hurries to check his phone again -- even though it’s been on the bedside table all night and there’s little chance he wouldn’t have heard it -- and she still hasn’t made contact, that is the fucking last straw.Maybe Amy doesn’t want to have this fucking thing out, but he does so that’s what’s going to happen. Dan is supposed to meet Ben and Kent at Selina’s office because they’re meeting with a Congressman out on Long Island with access to deep pockets and is putting out feelers for a Senate run when a seat opens up in a couple of years -- he’ll just show up early so he has plenty of time to go a few rounds with Amy before the car’s due to pick them up. Her desk is annoyingly empty when he gets there, though, so he decides to sit and wait. She’s probably in the bathroom or out on a breakfast run, and it’ll infuriate her to come back and find him sitting at her desk like he owns it. She definitely won’t be able to ignore him.Five minutes turn into ten, though, and then fifteen, and by the time his watch ticks off 25 minutes, Dan is fucking antsy. “Where’s Amy?” he demands when Gary strolls by with coffee for Selina.“What? Oh, you know…I don’t think she’s in yet.” He checks his watch. “Which is strange because she’s usually here right at eight… or before even.”“Call her,” Dan orders, because he knows that while she’ll undoubtedly ignore another call from him, she won’t be so quick to dismiss Gary since it might mean a Selina-related crisis. “I have to bring Selina her coffee,” Gary says, but something about the look on Dan’s face gets him to reconsider. “Fine,” he grumbles, setting the coffee cup on the corner of Amy’s desk and digging his phone out of his pocket. “She’s not answering,” Gary announces after a minute. “I’ll leave a message.”Dan nods, but he’s barely paying attention because if Amy’s not taking Gary’s call, she must be in a real fuck-the-world mood and that’s an unnerving prospect. When she’s more than an hour late, he decides that enough is enough -- he’s just going to head to her apartment and drag her out if he has to. She can ignore him all she wants, but he’s not about to let her hide from him like a fucking coward. She tried to do that once before, and look how well that turned out for her. Just as he’s grabbing his coat from the back of her chair, the elevator dings, and he hears the distinctive rhythm of her heels clicking against the hardwood -- and he feels relieved for nearly an entire ten seconds before he flies right back into anger. “Where the fuck have you been?” he demands as soon as she rounds the corner.Amy regards him coolly. “Excuse me?” “You’re over an hour late.”She huffs out a laugh, and he really hates how amused she looks, like he’s too ridiculous to be taken seriously. “I don’t work for you, Dan,” she says, “And you’re not my father, so it’s none of your business.” He pushes himself to his feet and leans across the desk toward her, where she is making a show of ignoring him in favor of taking off her coat. She’s wearing a ridiculously loose cardigan in some pathetic attempt to camouflage her belly, but considering how out of place it looks with the dress she has on under it, she’s really only drawing attention to herself. “Oh really? The fact you’re having my fucking kid doesn’t make it--”“Shut your fucking mouth,” she snarls, her gaze practically burning him. “Despite the stunt you pulled yesterday, I still plan to tell Selina on my own Goddamn terms.” “The stunt I pulled?” he says, “How about the psycho show you put on in Chicago? Or blowing me off every day since? Or the crap this morning, ignoring Gary’s call like a fucking child?”Amy crosses her arms over her chest, looking about ready to breathe fire -- and he wishes it didn’t turn him on quite as easily as it does; he doesn’t need to be distracted. “I wasn’t ignoring anything, shithead. Again, not that this is any of your business, but I dropped my phone this morning and it died. I had to run to the Verizon store to get a replacement.” Dan blinks, feeling as foolish as he can remember in a long time. “Is that acceptable? Is that a valid enough excuse for showing up late for you?”He sighs, because all of this is just silly -- and exhausting -- at this point. “Amy, come on. You know this is crazy. We should just--”“Get away from my desk,” she says, “I have work to do.”Dan makes his way around to her, standing closer than is necessary, and Amy wants to take a step back, wants the breathing room back, but she clearly wants to stand her ground even more. So she stares up at him with those wide, unflinching eyes, practically daring him to push her -- but honestly, the only thing that he really wants to do in that moment is kiss her, get the taste of her on his tongue again until she’s breathless and trembling against him. That would earn him a (mostly) deserved slap, though, so he reaches out to cup her elbow instead and mutters, “We need to talk. You’re gonna have to have this out with me at some point so just--”“I don’t have to do anything. So just get--”“You’re being absolutely fucking ridiculous. I’m only trying to--”Amy grabs his arm and yanks him around the corner toward the elevator, where the entire office (all those fucking annoying interns who apparently have nothing better to do) can’t see them. “You might enjoy making a big, messy scene,” she says, “But I’d rather not have everyone knowing my fucking business.”“Yeah, including me clearly,” Dan says, “What the fuck is your problem exactly? A week ago, you’re crawling into my bed and riding my dick like it’s your fucking life’s work, and the next day, you can’t even sit next to me on a Goddamn two-hour plane ride. What the fuck am I missing?”“Me coming to my senses, finally. That’s all.” She crosses her arms over chest, staring down at her shoes to avoid actually looking at him. She’s trying very hard to seem calm, like she’s above all of this, but she is practically vibrating with tension so he knows better than to buy it. Since last week, he’s been racking his brain to try and figure out what could have sent her running and nothing makes sense, but she still won’t meet his eyes, is still as worked up as she was in Chicago, so it’s obviously a big fucking deal to her. “Is this about Tessa from CNN?” he asks, because it’s the only thing he can think of -- and the timing sort of makes sense too, even if he has no idea how she would’ve possibly found out. “Because that didn’t mean anything. I was only going to--”“You are un-fucking-believable. You’re out screwing every…” Amy shakes her head and smiles, almost like she’s about to laugh. “And you still have the fucking audacity to scold me because I don’t return a few phone calls? Fuck you, Dan… and leave me the hell alone.”She tries to step around him and head back to her desk, but he reaches her wrist before she can get too far. “I didn’t even fuck her, Ames, so you’re getting all worked up for nothing.”“But not for lack of trying, right?” she says, wrenching her arm out of his grip. “I was only going to do it so I could--”“Spare me the fucking details.”“So this is why you’ve been acting like such a fucking bitch? You don’t want me to fuck anyone else? Then just say that, don’t be--”“I told you from the beginning,” Amy says, peevishly. “I don’t want anything from you.”If he’s trying to get through to her, calm her down and convince her to talk to him, laughing probably isn’t the way to go, but Dan can’t help himself. She has to know that she’s as transparent as fucking glass.“You don’t want anything from me,” he sneers, “Right. That’s why you’ve spent the last couple of months fucking me like you’ll never get enough, why you’re still pissed I fucked your sister and Tessa and whoever else you--”“I don’t care, Dan,” she says, even though everything from the strained sound of her voice to the rigid line of her shoulders proves it isn’t the least bit true. “I don’t care. Just leave me the fuck out of it. I’m going to have a kid in a few months... I have more important things to worry about than where you happen to be sticking your dick this week.”He smirks. “Well, as long as it's in you, right, sweetheart?”Amy exhales, and her nostrils flare like she’s seriously contemplating the most painful way to castrate him on the spot. It shouldn’t feel as good to have the full force of her rage focused solely on him, but Dan’s never been picky about what exactly makes him the center of Amy’s universe. “You can’t understand this,” she says, “Because there’s never been a second in your life where you put someone else first, but all I’m thinking about is my daughter. She’s going to be saddled with enough fucking baggage from the start. I’m not about to add daddy issues to the list.”“Yeah, because I’m sure she’s going to grow up really fucking well-adjusted with your plan to never speak to me again.”Amy looks away, because she must know he is right but can’t bring herself to admit it. “I don’t want to do this, Dan. I just want you to leave me alone… which should be really easy since you’ve got Tessa and whoever the fuck else to keep you busy. So knock yourself out, just leave my kid and me out of it.”“It doesn’t work like that, Amy. We’re already fucking in this, together.”She shakes her head and presses her lips together, like there’s a surge of something sharp and bitter, rising up inside her, and she’s trying desperately to hold it back. For a second, he thinks she might cry again, and he glances over his shoulder to make sure no one is coming down the hall because she’ll never forgive him if anyone sees her on the verge of tears. “If you think I’m going to let my daughter grow up thinking that the way you treat people who you… the way you treat women... is normal,” she says, “You’re fucking crazy.”“She’s my kid too.”Amy furrows her brow like she doesn’t understand. “Excuse me?”“You’re saying ‘my’ a lot, but she’s ours. You can’t change that because you don’t like--”“Maybe not, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to let you anywhere near her. I’m not giving you the chance to fuck her up like you have every other person who’s ever had the misfortune of knowing you.”“You don’t get to decide that either,” Dan says, since it’s feeling more and more like he’s got the high ground here. “All it takes is one call to a lawyer, and you won’t be able to keep me away.”She laughs, but it’s such a bitter, rough sound that it almost feels like she’s slapped him.“That’s the emptiest fucking threat I’ve ever heard. Like you’d ever claim legal responsibility for this mistake.”“It’s not a threat,” he tells her, “I’m just reminding you that you can’t fucking get rid of me. You decided to have my kid, so now you’re always going to have to make room for me. Those are just the facts.”When Amy looks up at him, her eyes have a broken, distraught look he’s seen before -- when things were going off the rails with Selina’s recount, when she found about him and Sophie, when she thought Mike’s diary might land her in jail -- and he gets a weird, jittery feeling when he holds her gaze for too long.“Why are you doing this?” she asks, almost plaintively. “You think a kid is going to be some kind of golden ticket to professional respectability? Then go and knock up some brain dead intern. Maybe she’ll be distracted enough by shiny things that you can just buy her enough jewelry to make her overlook the fact that you’re the most--”“Oh, I get it now,” Dan laughs, “I didn’t buy you a ring like Buddy fucking Calhoun so you’re going to punish me by telling me I can’t see our kid? That’s a little passive aggressive for you, isn’t it?”“Fuck you, Dan.”He takes a step toward her, backing her up against the wall, and she glances up at through her lashes, breathing hard. She wants to kill, but she wants to fuck him just as bad, so they’re on the same page about that at least. “You want me to get down on one knee?” he asks, lowering his voice until it’s a rough whisper. He can’t stop taunting her because she looks so fucking beautiful, so much more like herself with her bright eyes and flushed cheeks. “Is that it? Is that what you want, Ames? Sorry, but the fact is, I don’t have to. I don’t have to do anything and you’re still not going anywhere.” “Maybe it’s the buildup from all your fucking hair products that prevents you from grasping it,” she practically growls, shifting forward just a bit so he can feel breasts graze his shirt even through all her layers. “But get this through your thick, Neanderthal skull ... you’re not entitled to any part of my life just because of this baby. I’ll do whatever the fuck I want… because I don’t need you, Dan. No one needs you. So stay the fuck away from me and just--”“That may be true. You probably don’t need me… but you still want me, don’t you, Ames? You can’t stop--”“You’re such an unbelievable fuck--”“As much as we hate to interrupt…” Dan and Amy look over to find Ben and Kent, watching them from in front of the elevator, because apparently, they arrived at some point when Dan and Amy were too distracted to notice. He has no idea how much the other men have heard, but their expressions are an irritating combination of amused and disgusted that indicates they probably got an earful. “The car’s waiting downstairs, Danny Boy,” says Ben. Amy uses the distraction to take a few steps back, like that might change what Ben and Kent saw when they stepped off the elevator. Dan definitely has more to say to her, but it’s not like they can talk freely with an audience, and he does have a fucking job to do. So he follows the other men toward the elevator, looking back at Amy over his shoulder. She’s taking a deep breath and steadfastly refusing to meet his gaze once again, so he has a pretty good idea how angry she is. Ben doesn’t even wait for the elevator doors to close before he laughs. “Real fucking smooth, Romeo.”Kent nods sagely. “Statistically speaking, a woman like Amy isn’t--“As much as I appreciate the unsolicited advice,” Dan says, “You guys don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”Ben shrugs. “You do have to feel bad for the kid, though.”“What the fuck did you--”“Your kid. It’s a real shame she’s going to be raised by two parents who couldn’t get out of their own fucking way if their miserable lives depended on it.” “What do… how did you …” Dan sputters.Kent makes a sound that might be a laugh. “Look at that. Fatherhood has rendered him speechless.” “I don’t think we’re that lucky,” says Ben.Dan glares at him. “How the fuck did you guys find out?” Ben shakes his head wearily, like he’s tired of dealing with fucking morons. “You honestly think you two have been that discreet? The only reason Selina hasn't cottoned to the whole thing is that she's still too fucking busy riding the high of another shot at the presidency.” He lifts a shoulder. “And maybe I confronted Amy about it yesterday and she confirmed it.”“I knew when she gave up caffeine … and alcohol,” Kent says, “It seemed highly unlikely that she would do so without good reason.”“Guess you weren’t just blowing hot air about talking that poor girl into things,” Ben muses, “Because why someone as smart as Amy would let the likes of you knock her up is a fucking mystery for the ages.”“Believe me, it’s not like we fucking planned it.”“No? I thought you figured it was the only way an asshole like you could hang onto her.”“That’s not even fucking--”“I guess you’re a step up from that knuckledragger Calhoun, though,” Ben says, “But that says more about Amy’s fucking piss-poor judgment than it does your suitability as anyone’s baby daddy.”Dan snorts. “Oh, fuck that. I’m several giant steps up from that asshole.”“There is considerably more at stake for you, though,” Kent suggests, though his eyes never leave his phone. “Amy is probably expecting something from the father of her child.”“You gonna put a ring on it?” asks Ben.“What is this, the fucking 50’s?” Dan mutters, “And she doesn’t even want to talk to me, so I’m pretty sure she’s hoping I fuck off, not pledge my eternal fucking devotion.”“Well, then, at least we know she didn’t totally lose her mind out in the fucking desert.”“How about we talk about something that’s your actual fucking business?” Dan says, “Like Darryl Collins?”Surprisingly, Ben and Kent give up the Amy talk pretty easily, so the focus shifts to Congressman Collins and their pitch to him. Dan follows along, even throws his two cents in a few times, but it’s a struggle to focus because he’s already thinking about the first thing he’s going to say when he sees Amy again, how he’s going to get her to calm the fuck down and actually listen to him. Halfway through the meeting, he sneaks his phone out beneath the conference room table and texts her, so she knows they’re not finished, that they haven’t settled anything.-------She hasn’t really made a habit of talking to the baby, but every so often, she does it without thinking. When Dan finally gets out of her hair and she’s returned every phone call and email that she missed earlier because of her busted phone and Dan’s drama queen antics, Amy sneaks a minute to herself in the bathroom. She takes a few deep breaths to try to reign in her still simmering anger, and her hand absently curves over the round bump of her belly, hidden beneath her loose dress and a cardigan that looks like something her grandfather used to wear. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, patting her stomach almost consolingly. “But your father is such a fucking asshole.”She felt the baby move for the first time the other day, and that strange fluttering somehow both unnerves and calms whenever it happens. It is a tangible reminder that the baby is on her way to becoming an actual person, ready to assert control over every aspect of Amy’s life, and, more comfortingly, that Amy isn’t alone, that she’s never really going to be alone again. It’s gotten to the point that she’s started to view every subtle movement, every flutter in her belly, as a way for the kid to communicate with her, so she waits for a moment to see if the baby is going to make her presence known, give a sign that she agrees with Amy’s assessment of Dan or not.But the baby doesn’t move, even as Amy taps her fingers against her stomach. Sometimes, she is absolutely terrified by the idea that their daughter will be taken in by Dan’s charm, that she’ll fall in love with him in a genuine, profound way that leaves her open to the kind of heartbreak that can devastate a life -- she’s just a baby for Chrissakes, too much of a blank slate to know any better, so she’ll be plenty vulnerable to the likes of Dan Egan.(Amy is smart enough to know so much better, and she’s been vulnerable to him more times than she wants to admit -- that can’t bode well for her daughter.) “I hope you have better taste in men,” she murmurs, rubbing her hand over her belly. “Or women, whatever. Everyone is so fucking awful that it really doesn’t matter in the end.” It’s a silly thing to even think about, Amy knows, because who her daughter might someday wind up with is the least of her concerns at the moment. But it seems to stick in her head because lately, she can’t help but think that all of this would be so much easier if any other man in the world were the father of her child. And yet, she can’t even bring herself to actually wish for that, because there are moments even now when she considers what the baby might look like, how she might somehow manage to be the perfect combination of the two of them, and it feels right in a way that Amy can’t shake -- until she remembers that she is mooning over one of the world’s greatest assholes, and any resemblance that she sees between Dan and their daughter is only going to break her heart, not fill it with any kind of joy.She can be honest with herself, if not with anyone else -- she isn’t like Dan, who can drift through his life without any real connections to anyone or anything. As much as she wishes it wasn’t true, Amy likes the idea of having someone that’s hers, though she learned the fucking hard way with Buddy that it can’t be just anyone. She’s suspected for a while that she isn’t cut out for any kind of traditional relationship -- she’s tried and failed enough times to know she isn’t any good at it, isn’t into it in the way that other people seem to be, doesn’t get excited by all the hearts and flowers bullshit that seems to signify romance to the rest of the world -- and God knows Dan isn’t either, so she has considered the fact that they might be the only people who could actually handle each other long-term. But even then, they’d both wind up miserable, because Dan would be trapped in some domestic nightmare he’d probably give his left nut to get out of, and she’d be stuck living with a man who was only with her until something better came along.So that can’t be love, Amy tells herself. She can’t really love him.It would be utterly insane for one thing, an exercise in masochism that psychologists could write endless papers about, and for another, she still hates him most days, whenever she remembers everything that he’s done.It’s not even that he slept with Sophie (or Tessa or Jennifer or Tracey or who-the-fuck-ever) that really does it. She thinks she might be able to get past that if it was truly a mistake, something he regretted and felt some sort of remorse for, a lapse in judgment that he sincerely wanted forgiveness for. What kills her, still makes her heart ache if she lets herself think about it, is that he just doesn’t care at all, that the only feeling he has about the whole thing is the fucking thrill of knowing it bothers her, that she cares enough to be hurt by it. She doesn’t understand how she could possibly love someone like that, what it would say about her if she actually did. That’s why she clings to the hatred sometimes, holds it as close to her heart as she possibly can, like it’s some kind of armor that can keep her safe. Even that doesn’t really work, though, because when she hates him, it’s with a passion that almost scares her. She isn’t stupid enough to buy into that fine-line-between-love-and-hate bullshit, but she knows it means something that Dan stirs up more in her than any other man ever has, that he pushes every single one of her buttons with a kind of dexterity that’s almost poetic, that he can always reel her in with ease, even though she knows exactly how awful he can be. Amy really fucking hates Dan for that.She pats her belly, as if she can reassure the baby that she isn’t about to be born into a hopelessly dysfunctional mess with the press of a few fingers. “I won’t be that stupid again,” Amy whispers, “I swear to fucking God.”She can’t hide in the bathroom all afternoon, so she checks her face in the mirror to see if she’s presentable. Just as she finishes wiping the smudged mascara from beneath her eyes, there’s a soft knock at the bathroom door, like someone’s finally noticed that she’s missing. “Amy?” Gary calls in a timid, not-wanting-to-disturb tone. “She’d like a word with you when you get a chance. I mean, no pressure, but sooner rather than later.”It’s something of a relief to realize that even when she is as big as a house, when she’s waddling around like she’s stuffed a beach ball under her shirt and everyone else thinks she looks ridiculous or harmless, Gary will still be scared of her. At least she’ll still have that, she thinks, as she tugs her cardigan closed and hastily buttons it. That doesn’t stop Selina from eyeing the sweater critically when Amy stands in front of her desk, though, like the layers aren’t fooling anyone. “My offer still stands,” Selina says, “Angelo from my gym will put you through the fucking paces, but he’ll have you back at your fighting weight in a month, easy. Well, as long as you lay off all those fucking cookies and ice cream sandwiches.”“I appreciate that, ma’am. I’ll think about it.”Fortunately, all that Selina really wants to talk about is the fundraiser with Senator Perez, which is fine because Amy has nailed down all the details and can present her with the kind of good news that always makes Selina Meyer easier to deal with. “Perfect,” she says, “Craig Taylor better be in the mood to kiss my fucking ass.” She leans back in her chair, smiling in a way that suddenly makes Amy uneasy. “Now, onto the really important stuff…”“Ma’am?”Selina crosses her arms over her chest and tries for her most imposing look. “I would just like to be sure,” she says slowly, “That whatever the fuck is going on between you and Dan, it’s not going to screw up my campaign. Right?”
Amy blinks, feeling like the fucking deer in headlights, though she still has the presence of mind to move her laptop in front of her, so it effectively blocks her stomach. (As if that will accomplish anything if Selina already knows about the baby.) “Excuse me?”“Don’t play dumb, Amy. You can’t sell it … you’re not fucking Mike.” “I’m sorry, ma’am. I really don’t know what you’re--”“Oh, please, girlie. It’s all those useless interns have been talking about all day. Apparently, you two made quite the fucking scene earlier.”Amy shrugs, trying to play it cool. “We had a fight, which is something you’ve seen at least a hundred times over the years, so it’s not anything to--”“One story is that you caught him in bed with his lawyer,” Selina says, “And the other is that he tried to give you a ring and you threw it in his face.”Amy snorts. “With all due respect to the fucking interns, that’s bullshit.”“Maybe so. But there’s probably some grain of truth there because you two are fucking, right?” Amy looks away, feeling every bit the fool. “And unfortunately, everyone gets so Goddamn sensitive once you’ve seen each other come. Even a walking dildo like Dan.”“It really isn’t like that. I haven’t--”“Oh, spare me ... I’ve seen plenty with my own eyes. One minute you’re flitting around like he asked you to the prom and you’re not sure what fucking color dress to wear,” says Selina. “And the next you’re stomping around like you want to rip his dick off with your bare hands and shove it down his throat. Now, we’ve all had the latter impulse where Dan’s concerned at one time or another, but you two have a fucking history that has me concerned we might have a--”“We don’t really have a history to speak of, ma’am. It was only a--”“Give me a fucking break. You two have wanted to bang each other’s brains out while simultaneously choking one another out from that first minute I hired him. Neither of you has exactly been subtle about it.”“That’s not --”“And don’t get me wrong,” Selina declares, holding her hands up in mock surrender. “I’m not about to begrudge you a single fucking orgasm because Amy, honey, you need all the loosening up you can get. But if you two can’t play nice and that starts to affect the campaign, well, then, we’re going to have to do something about it, aren’t we?”There are have most certainly been times in the past when Amy’s felt more humiliated -- it wasn’t even that long ago, considering the way the Buddy Calhoun disaster blew up in her face -- but she wants out of this conversation so badly that she finds herself wishing for Gary to interrupt with some yogurt crisis or wardrobe emergency.This is all Dan’s fucking fault, she thinks. She’s most definitely going to punch him in the throat the next time she sees him.(And Selina doesn’t even seem to know about the Goddamn baby yet -- thank God the interns are too fucking stupid to have picked up on that juicy detail while they were apparently live-tweeting her fight with Dan this morning -- so what the fuck is she going to say when she finds out that Amy was dumb enough to let Dan knock her up?)“Ma’am, look,” Amy says, trying to stay as calm as possible. “I may have some minor issues with Dan I need to work through, but I can promise you they will never, not even for a second, affect what we’re trying to do here. And I’d never presume to speak for him, but considering that he’s only pissing me off to amuse himself, I don’t think Dan’s about to blow any professional opportunities on my account. So it’s really not--”“For fuck’s sake, Amy,” Selina groans, “You’re Goddamn shit at playing coy too. You know as well as I do that whatever tiny, itty-bitty soft spot that fucking sociopath has, it’s got your name tattooed all over it. Probably with little fucking hearts and flowers around it.”Amy laughs, because the image is so absurd and feels so wrong-headed that she isn’t sure how else to react. It’s possible that Selina’s right, that if Dan holds any kind of affection in his shriveled, black heart, it’s for her, but that doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot. All it means is that when he screws her over, he might, possibly, think about it for a millisecond -- he’ll still do it, of course, but there’s maybe a fleeting moment when he considers how it might affect her. No one else gets that much, she knows, but in the end, it’s still just a big, old pile of shit. “Is that supposed to be enough?” Amy asks before she can stop herself -- and she regrets it instantly because it reveals so much more than she ever wants Selina to know. (She told Dan that she didn’t want anything from him, but the real problem, Amy realizes, is that she doesn’t really know what it is she wants from him. A simple promise that he won’t fuck other women, especially members of her family? A guarantee that he’ll care about their daughter in a way she’s pretty sure he’s never cared about anyone else in his life? Some kind of proof that he actually means it when he says they’ll do the parenting thing together and be the world’s most fucked up, non-traditional family? Somehow, she wants him to leave her alone and never go away all at the same time, which is no answer at all.)“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on,” Selina says, frowning. “You’re starting to scare me, Amy. Fuck him all you want, make him go down on you until his tongue is too fucking tired for any of those barely clever quips of his, but don’t get fucking hung up on him. He’s not the--”“I’m not hung up on him,” insists Amy. “He’s just always in my fucking face and I can’t just …”Selina nods almost sympathetically, which surprises Amy enough that she lets her laptop slip for a second. “Let’s think about this rationally for a minute. All things considered, you could really be doing a lot worse. Because honestly, Amy, your track record with men is shit. There was that pasty ginger bastard from Education when you first came to work for me, and then there was that gangly motherfucker who was.. What? A fundraiser or something? And the less said about that bolo tie-wearing asshole from Nevada the better, right?”“Ma’am, I really don’t want to talk about--”“All I’m saying is at least Dan’s presentable by comparison. Sure, he’s probably the biggest douchebag in D.C., but you know that. What fucking skeletons could he possibly have in his closet that he hasn’t already told you about himself?”Amy nods. “He’s never shy about sharing the gory details.”“And just as important, he knows you. So he’s not going to expect you to be…I don’t know. Pleasant or attentive or whatever.” And that right there is why Selina seems so strangely okay with the idea of she and Dan screwing -- if Amy gets it into her head to dare to have some kind of personal life, Selina prefers that it’s someone on the campaign, someone who won’t be jealous of all the long hours that Amy puts in because he’ll be doing the same, someone who Amy doesn’t have to make time in her schedule to see because they’ll always be in the same places, someone who won’t mind if Amy wants to discuss media buys or debate strategies while she’s fucking him because he’s thinking about the same things.In other words, Dan is the best possible option for Selina because he won’t distract Amy from the campaign. If she only fucking knew ...“I’m not trying to tell you what to do, though. Who the fuck am I to give relationship advice? I didn’t even …” Selina says, and her voice takes on a shaky quality so Amy suspects she’s thinking of Jaffar, who she hasn’t mentioned once since she took Ben’s advice and sacrificed him on the altar of her almighty political aspirations. “What I am telling you is keep the fucking lovers’ spats out of my campaign, okay? The rest of it, figure out on your own.”“Yes, ma’am.”Back at her desk, Amy checks her phone, and is surprised to see that Dan’s already sent her four texts. The first one pisses her off -- I still want to talk to you -- because it just proves that he didn’t listen to a word she said earlier. The other three, though, are just links to some stupidly expensive cribs from Restoration Hardware that his parents want to buy for the baby. She wants to hate the one Dan’s pointed out as his favorite out of spite, so it’s annoying to find that it’s perfect, all simple, clean lines and wood stained softly white. Still, it is nearly impossible to imagine her daughter sleeping in it because Amy has no idea where the crib will go or whether Dan will ever put the baby to sleep or how any of this can possibly work out. She’s avoiding Dan because she’s angry, because she doesn’t trust him and doesn’t trust herself around him -- and it would be one thing if it were only her heart at risk when he inevitably acts like the asshole she knows he is, but she has the baby to consider too. Setting her daughter up for the kind of emotional scars that Dan could inflict without even breaking a sweat seems like Mommy Dearest levels of terrible parenting. Amy won’t do that to her child. She opens her laptop to send some of Selina’s notes regarding the fundraiser to Senator Perez’s staff, but her eyes feel hot and itchy, like she might cry again at any moment.Fuck Dan, she thinks. And fuck Selina and the Goddamn interns and Sophie. Fuck her parents too. Fuck all of them.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
-------It takes longer than he expects to make it back to Selina’s office because there’s an accident on the Cross Island Parkway.Being stuck in bumper to bumper traffic with Ben and Kent is fucking torture because they’re both in pissy moods since they decided that Dan was less than attentive during their marathon meeting with Congressman Collins. “We’re supposed to be fucking partners,” Ben lectures, “That means everybody has to carry their fucking weight. You can’t check out on the business because you’re too busy worrying about the next time you’re gonna get your dick sucked.”Kent doesn’t say a word, but eyes Dan critically across the backseat of the car to make his judgment more than clear. It all seems pretty unnecessary, considering that Collins was so fucking gung-ho that he didn’t need a single world of convincing about BKD’s expertise. Still, Dan doesn’t bother arguing because he knows he wasn’t exactly at his best, though it’s not like it’s really his fault. It’s Amy who got him all wound up, who made it impossible for him to think about anything other than getting back to her and finishing their fucking conversation.Despite the hour, though, he knows that Amy’s likely still at her desk, that she probably hasn’t even stopped for a proper dinner because there’s no one around to force her to take a break. So it’s a fucking surprise when he gets to the office and finds that it’s almost completely dark, with only a dim light illuminating Selina where she sits behind her desk.Finding her all alone should probably sound some alarm bells, but Dan’s more concerned with the fact that Amy is nowhere to be found to analyze the whole thing too deeply, especially since she is still ignoring his texts, even though they were nothing but innocuous chit chat about fucking cribs. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that she’s just as wound up as he is after their chat this morning, so much so that she still refuses to acknowledge the simple fact that there’s no getting rid of him anymore. With no Amy in sight, he’s ready to duck out just as quickly as he came in, but Selina looks up and waves him over before he can make his escape. He definitely isn’t in any kind of mood for her usual bullshit, but she’s seen him so he doesn’t have any choice but to answer the summons.“Just the man I was waiting for,” she says, taking off her glasses and leaning back in her chair.“I was actually looking for Amy. Do you know where--”“Catherine wanted to drag me to some Goddamn touchy-feely documentary about how to raise more sensitive boys, which ... come the fuck on, what kind of hopeless, futile bullshit is that?” She shrugs. “So I made Amy go instead.”Dan chuckles. “Oh, she must’ve really loved that.”“Well, you know, our Amy’s a team player.” Selina smiles, looking almost sadistically amused. “Besides, when I pointed out it was a good way to avoid you, she fucking jumped at the chance.”He isn’t sure exactly how to respond -- for a moment, he wonders if Amy finally told Selina about the baby, if that’s why she’s waiting for him in the near darkness like some kind of mob kingpin ready to mete out punishment for going against the family. Dan isn’t about to offer up any information until he absolutely has to, though, so he conjures up his most innocent expression and shrugs. “She really doesn’t have any reason to--”“I already had this conversation with her,” Selina says, “But I’m pretty sure you need to hear it more than she did. I don’t really care if you two want to fuck all the way from New York to D.C. and back again. In fact, as I told her, we’re all probably better off if you can fuck some of the tension out of her because we both know she’s wound way too fucking tight.” He can’t help the laugh that huffs out of him. “Ma’am, I really don’t-”“But I’ll be fucking damned if whatever little psychosexual drama you two’ve got going on derails my final shot at the presidency. And if she’s right, and you’re just playing with her fucking head, Dan, knock it the fuck off. Now.” She narrows her eyes, and for a moment, he thinks that he’s in line for some sort of pseudo maternal warning about how, if he breaks Amy’s heart, Selina’s going to use his balls as a keychain -- which is so out of character for her that he doesn’t know how to react. “We want Amy at the top of her game,” she continues, “We both know how valuable she can be when she’s at the top of her game. But she’s also way too fucking sensitive… I mean, I still don’t know what the hell brought on the fucking temper tantrum that had her abandon me in the middle of my last campaign. And how fucking unhinged do you have to be to think moving to shitstain Nevada is a proper response to … well, just about anything in this trainwreck of a world?” He nods. “Yeah, she really didn’t think that one through. She gets … emotional sometimes.”“Exactly. So we don’t need her pulling the same stunt because you get a kick out of seeing how far you can push her before she blows the fuck up. We don’t need her running back to fucking Reno or whatever other inbred town she chooses this time. Not when getting this campaign right is in all of our best interests, right?” Of course, Selina’s only interested in Amy’s state of mind for her own selfish reasons -- but that makes perfect sense to Dan, so he knows how to respond, even if he feels unnerved in a way that he doesn’t like. “Right, ma’am.”“Good. Then we understand each other.” Gary flitters in from whatever dark corner he’s been hiding in -- because of course he’d never really leave Selina alone -- and she quickly makes her exit, so she really must have been waiting for Dan to show up just to make her point. He pretends that he has some calls he needs to return so he doesn’t have to walk out with them, but all he really does is open his text thread with Amy and read over his last few messages. He considers sending another, something more substantial than questions about baby furniture, something that might actually convince her to talk to him. The trouble is, he has no fucking idea what to say -- and even if he did, she wouldn’t believe him. He could go to her apartment, because having a conversation face-to-face, where she can’t hide from him, would probably be easier. Dan could wear her down that way, get in her face until she sees fucking reason. Suddenly, though, he doesn’t think he’s in the mood for it anymore, like all the energy’s been drained from him and he just can’t face her right now. So he takes a cab back to his hotel, but instead of heading up to his room, he makes a beeline for the bar off the lobby. No good can come from sitting alone in his hotel room like a fucking asshole -- he learned his lesson last night -- and even though he doesn’t feel like dealing with anyone who might actually expect something from him, there’s bound to be some clarity in the bottom of a bottle.His conversation with Selina is fucking with his head, but not because of her accusation that he’s playing with Amy’s head (because yeah, maybe he does that sometimes because she always reacts so strongly that it’s too much fun to resist). It’s the suggestion that if he doesn’t play things just right, Amy might really disappear again, take off for parts unknown with their kid and never be heard from again, that has him rattled. Dan’s considered the possibility himself, so it’s not a surprise, but it’s different to hear someone else suggest it, to know that it seems like a real possibility to Selina, to Ben, to probably anyone who was within eavesdropping distance of their fight this morning. It’s a Thursday night, and the hotel lounge is pretty packed, so there aren’t any tables available, and Dan has to grab a seat at the bar. That’s probably for the best, though, since meaningless small talk with a bartender has got to distract him at least a little. He’s feeling patriotic, so he orders bourbon instead of the usual scotch. The bartender, a guy who’s probably just a few years younger than him, pours quickly and efficiently, but when he slides the glass over, he makes a face that’s clearly meant to be sympathetic, which is probably a testament to how shitty Dan looks. “Rough day?”Dan laughs, because this couldn’t be any more of a cliche if the guy tried, and yet he drains his glass and shrugs, ready to play along. “You could fucking say that,” he says, “I’m gonna have a kid. A daughter.”The bartender smiles. “Oh, hey, congratulations.” He reaches for the bottle to refill Dan’s glass. “This one’s on me.”Dan raises his glass in a sarcastic salute, though he’s pretty sure it’s lost on the bartender. “I’ve never wanted kids,” he admits, though he doesn’t really know why. “And anyone who knows me would agree I’m not cut out to be anyone’s fucking father. And Amy… she’s…” He hesitates, because he doesn’t know how exactly to describe her -- she isn’t his girlfriend, she isn’t strictly his friend, she isn’t just someone he knocked up. She’s nothing that can be put into words and probably the only real thing in his life at the same time. “She’s the mother,” is what he finally settles on. “But she isn’t what most people would call mother material either, so I don’t know how any of this is going to fucking work.”“I think that’s normal, man. Does anyone really think they’re gonna be any good at raising a kid? You just do it, hope you don’t screw up too much.”Dan swirls the bourbon in his glass, sighing. “I think they only way it works, the only way we can really do it, is together. And I don’t even mean getting married and buying a house and a minivan or any of that other bullshit… but she’s still pissed because I fucked her sister once, years ago, and she can’t get over it, even though it meant fucking nothing. Fuck, even that might be overstating it.”“You fucked her sister?” the bartender laughs. “Holy shit. You’re lucky she’s even talking to you, forget about having your kid.”Dan glares across the bartop as he drains his glass because what does this fucking dick know? He doesn’t know Amy, doesn’t know that she’s unlike anyone else in the world, that she’s simpler and more complicated at the same time, that she’s smarter, sharper, and stronger, that she knows exactly who Dan is and still keeps coming back somehow. But if Selina’s right, if Ben’s right, if this fucking no-nothing bartender is right, maybe that can’t go on indefinitely, not when there’s a kid to worry about. Dan doesn’t like thinking about that, though, doesn’t like how real a possibility it is. Because all those months when she was in Nevada, playing doting fiance to that fucking bumpkin, and Dan was turning heads on TV, there were times when he’d find himself in a weird mood late at night, excited about something in the middle of the day, and he wanted to call her, text her, get her opinion on whatever minor crisis he’d made for himself. But he couldn’t because he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing he was thinking of her or didn’t want to be on the other end of some chilly, disinterested response or refused to confront the fact that he might have burned the only bridge that led any place he’d want to go back to.He doesn’t want to feel any of that again, not when she’s finally found her way back to his side and is having his fucking kid. He can’t just let her leave again, not when it’s obvious how much more he likes his life when she’s in it.Not just in it, actually -- when Amy’s somewhere right at the center of it, where he can be in her face and at her side, scheming and fighting and mocking everyone who isn’t as smart, capable, or clever as they are. That may even be when he feels most like himself, when he feels like he’s at his best.Because Dan doesn’t care about anyone, but fuck... he cares where Amy is, what she thinks, whether she’s thinking of him, how far she’ll let him in.He feels whatever he feels for Amy, however he defines it (the need to keep her close all the time, the persistent, little thrill whenever he has her full attention, the desire to be the first person she tells everything to), and he’s starting to think that maybe he’ll also feel it for a little girl who has her eyes (and the kid is definitely going to have Amy’s eyes. He knows that somehow, knows that whenever he looks into his daughter’s big, blue eyes that see fucking everything, it’s always going to be Amy looking back at him) and smart mouth, who inherits his skill for manipulating people into giving her exactly what she wants.Or at least, he could, possibly, feel it if he actually gets a chance to know her -- which won’t happen if Amy takes off with her to parts unknown for another year or two. He just can’t figure out how to stop it from happening.He’s got an early flight back to D.C. in the morning, but part of him wants to just say, fuck it, stay in New York, and try again with Amy. Ben and Kent are already pissed, though, so blowing off tomorrow’s meetings probably isn’t a good idea. So Dan pays his tab, leaving the bartender a generous-enough tip considering the guy was a fucking asshole, and heads up to his room. He can’t resist the urge to text Amy again, but he still doesn’t know what to say. The truth is probably the best answer, but he still doesn’t know what that is. He goes for confrontational instead.It would be nice if you could bother to reply, he writes. So I know you’re not fucking dead.She doesn’t respond. -------When Amy reports back on the horror that was the touchy-feely parenting documentary she was forced to go to with Catherine the next morning, Selina is in an obnoxiously good mood. Mainly because she was about to get out of it herself, but also because she’s more than a little amused at the idea of Amy having to sit through all the ridiculous psychobabble. If she knew that Amy is having a child of her own, she’d be even more amused -- well, once she got past her inevitable rage over the fact that Amy hid the news from her for so long.It’s a pleasant surprise, though, that Selina’s willing to spread the good feelings around -- she tells Amy that Ben, Kent, and Dan are all scheduled to be down in D.C. until the middle of next week, because she knows that Amy will be relieved. She is tired of fighting with Dan, of ignoring Dan, of feeling like everything in her life is somehow dictated by Dan and how she’s feeling about him at any given moment. Five or six days without him breathing down her neck is exactly what she needs. (He’s still texting, of course, because he is a ridiculous child who always has to get his way, demanding her attention like he’s entitled to it just because he’s decided he wants it. She hasn’t replied to a single message, so she keeps expecting him to give up, to get bored and find something else to fixate on. If he keeps it up, though, she knows she’s eventually going to have to discuss all the baby details with him, that she’s going to have to acknowledge what it means that they’re having a kid together, no matter what feelings she might or might not have for him. From a practical standpoint alone -- they fucking work together; she can’t carry on like a high schooler who’s been slighted by the star quarterback -- something has to give. Right now, she suspects that at least half the reason he’s acting so determined to have some kind of relationship with their daughter is the fact that Amy’s resisting so hard. If she gives in, maybe he’ll give up.) Unfortunately, there is obviously some law of the universe that decrees she must deal with at least one annoying element in her personal life per day because she is barely in the office an hour before her mother calls and informs her, very matter-of-factly, that she is on a train due at Penn Station a little after ten and she is counting on Amy to come and meet her. She has to catch a 5:30 train back home because Sophie is going away for the weekend and Mom is stuck with the usual babysitting duty, but she wants to spend a little time with Amy -- do some shopping for the baby, have lunch, spend a day full of the traditional mother-daughter bonding that Amy normally avoids. There’s no way to get out of it, though, because her mother is nearly three-quarters of the way to New York (maybe she knows her daughter better than it seems because springing this on Amy at the last minute is pretty much the only way to ensure that it would happen), and even she isn’t cold enough to turn around and send her mother right back home after she trekked all the way up here. When Amy explains the situation (baby details omitted), Selina just shakes her head and mutters, “Fucking mothers.” She must still be feeling generous because of the documentary business, though, because she tells Amy that it’s fine for her to take the rest of the day off, as long as she keeps her phone close in case anything comes up. Amy goes down to the track to meet her mother’s train because she doesn’t quite trust her mom to find her way up to the waiting room on her own -- and it’s hardly a surprise that she is beaming as soon as she spots Amy, as if all she’s ever wanted is to have this kind of day with daughter, when it’s all babies and motherhood, not campaign platforms and political maneuverings. So Amy tries to smile back when her mother reaches for her hands and holds her arms out to get a look at her belly through the gap in her open coat. “I thought you’d be much bigger by now. You can hardly tell if you’re not looking for--”“Since it’s my first baby, the doctor said it might take a little longer before I got really big, but …” Amy pulls her loose-fitting blouse tight across her stomach to show off her somewhat modest but still obvious bump. “It’s coming along.”If it’s possible, her mother’s smile actually widens, and she lays her palm gently over her daughter’s belly. She is the first person to do this, to touch Amy’s stomach in this sort of reverent way (Dan’s had his hands on it, but it was in the middle of sex, and she is pretty sure he wasn’t thinking about the baby, about the beauty of new life surging forward, when he stroked his fingers over her bare skin), and suddenly, Amy finds herself unexpectedly, embarrassingly, crying.It’s really just a few stray tears that trip their way down her cheeks, but her mother doesn’t miss them.“Oh, honey,” she whispers.“What’s wrong?”Amy reaches up to quickly wipe her cheeks, and her mother pulls a tissue out of somewhere to offer her. Mothers have to do that, she thinks, carry an endless supply of tissues and bandaids and fruit-flavored lip balms. She remembers suddenly that her mother always used to carry a little Ziplock bag of Hershey’s Kisses too, and whenever she or Sophie was having a bad day, smarting with some private pain, their mother would reach over and press one of the chocolates into the palm of their hands without a word. Amy hasn’t thought of that in years, wonders if the candy is still there in her mother’s bag, if it still has the power to make her feel better when everything seems so fucking hopeless. “It’s nothing,” she insists, “Just all the hormones, you know. And it’s … nice that you’d go to all the trouble of coming up here like this.”It isn’t just a line, a way to cover for her uncharacteristic display of vulnerability, either. She can’t help but feel comforted by the fact that her daughter is going to have people in her life who love and care about her, no matter how screwed up her parents may be. Hell, even Dan’s parents want a connection with the baby, even if that’s only manifested so far in a desire to buy a crib that costs almost two thousand dollars. Her mother nods automatically, like she understands what Amy isn’t saying, gets that her daughter doesn’t really want to talk about any of it. So she suggests that they get going since their time's limited and immediately drags Amy to the nearest maternity store because she is horrified to learn that her daughter's only bought a few pieces of maternity clothing so far.She insists on buying Amy a few dresses that are suitable for work, even though Amy is perfectly capable of buying them for herself, and then her mother makes sure that they stop in not one, not two, not even three, but four different baby stores that all seem to have the same exact stuff. But Amy lets her buy some things for the baby too, even the stuffed koala that looks just like one Amy had when she was little, because the kid is going to need clothes and toys and all that shit, and so far, all she’s bought is a onesie that reads “Watch Out, I’m a Future Voter” because it amused her (She tried to do some shopping online the other night, looking at strollers and car seats and pack ’n plays, but it’s all so fucking overwhelming that she gave up. It would probably be easier if she just lets her mother handle all of it). Amy does put her foot down about the nauseatingly pink, frilly dresses, though -- the floral-print onesies are girly enough in her book. For lunch, she is craving deep dish pizza (which is really poor timing because she was in Chicago a few weeks ago and could have had the real thing, but she was in the midst of a Thai curry obsession then that blinded her to all other food possibilities), so they take the subway to Soho, where she knows there’s a restaurant that specializes in it. “Your father really wanted to come too,” her mother tells her when they’re seated at a table near the front window. “But he has a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, and his cardiologist gets booked up so fast that it would’ve been weeks before he could reschedule.”“That’s definitely more important,” Amy says, “How’s he doing?”“Oh, you know, good. He hates the new diet because of al the restrictions. But I think maybe your news has gotten him to come around a bit. The prospect of having another granddaughter to dote on is just the incentive he needs.”It makes sense -- this kid, still months away from actually emerging into the world, has already started pulling the strings with her, has made Amy think about her life in an entirely different way, so getting her grandfather to reconsider eating mounds of kale and bland grilled chicken seems like a pretty easy task. “So what does everyone think about your good news?” her mother asks, “Were they as surprised as we were to hear?”Amy fiddles with her place setting, avoiding her mother’s eyes. “I haven't really told anyone else yet.”“Oh, honey, why not? You’re in your second trimester. I’m sure it’s safe to do it now.”“They’re just going to have a lot of questions, and I don’t feel like dealing with all of that right now.”“What about Selina? She must--” “I haven’t told her yet either,” Amy admits, “I’ve been trying to find the right time. It’s just … she has a lot on her mind at the moment, and I don’t want to add to it.”“But you won’t be able to hide it forever. So you’re going to have to tell her sooner, not later.”Why, Amy thinks petulantly. She’s heard stories about girls popping out kids in the bathroom during the prom, with no one even knowing they were pregnant in the first place. Can’t she go through the rest of pregnancy with Selina being too distracted to catch on? Isn’t that possible somehow? Across the table, her mother sighs, frowning in a way that usually means a passive aggressive dose of tough love is on its way. “Honey, I don’t mean to pry, but--”“That’s exactly what someone says right before they pry.”“I know you don’t want to talk about the baby’s father,” her mother continues, and in that moment, Amy is suddenly certain that Sophie’s told their parents about Dan, that she went running to them the first chance she had to explain what a fucking shitshow Amy’s life has become. “And I’m trying to respect that, I am. But I just want to be sure you understand what a difficult thing this is to do by yourself. Especially for someone like you, whose work is so important to them.”“I understand, Mom. I know I’m going to have to find a really good nanny or daycare and --”“Well, of course, your father and I want to help. We’ve always done that with Sophie and the kids, so we’ll obviously do it for you too.”Amy nods. “I appreciate that, I really do. But I don’t even know where I’m going to be living after the baby’s born. I might still be here in New York, or maybe back down near D.C. I could even be stuck someplace like Iowa... and then if things go the way we hope for Selina, there’ll be even more traveling on the campaign trail and I’ll want to bring the baby with me.” “Maybe I could come along and--”“Mom, I don’t expect you to leave Dad all alone at home to play babysitter for me,” Amy says, letting the “like Sophie” go unsaid. “This is my kid, my responsibility. So I’ll figure it out.”Her mother sighs again, looking worried in a way that Amy is certain she’s never really appreciated before -- because she couldn’t understand what it felt like until now, until she found out that she was going to have a child, and suddenly, the thought that there could be something, anything, out in the world that might hurt her daughter has become so unbearable that it nearly steals her breath. “This is where having the father in the picture would really help,” her mother tells her. “He could be there for--”“Mom, please.”“Just listen to me for a minute, okay? Being a mother is wonderful… it really is. It’s fulfilling in ways you probably can’t even imagine right now, but it’s not everything. It’s actually pretty lonely sometimes. You need balance in your life, and that’s hard to pull off when you’re doing it all by yourself. Just look at your sister…” Her mother lifts her shoulders. “Don’t you want love in your life, honey? A partner who’ll help shoulder some of the work, who you can share it all with?”Amy laughs, and her mother seems to go all stiff, obviously startled, but she isn’t in any frame of mind to censor herself. She’s not about to explain to her mother that Dan will never love anyone the way he loves himself, will never commit to anything for more than five minutes at a time if he’s not getting something concrete out of it, and that’s where it all begins and ends for Amy and the baby. “I think that’s a nice idea,” she tells her mother. “But I’m just not sure it’s really practical.”Her mother frowns, but it’s not clear whether she’s confused or concerned or just taken aback by the fact that her daughter is such a cynic. Amy looks away, not really caring one way or the other. -------No matter how fucking pissy Ben and Kent were about it, Darryl Collins clearly wasn’t even a little bit put off by Dan’s behavior in their meeting. He’s actually so gung-ho about his possible Senate run and what BKD can do for him that he shows up at their offices the next afternoon, completely unannounced, because he happens to be down in D.C. for some committee meeting. They’ve just fucking met with him, so Dan has no idea what else there could possibly be to say, but Collins is so fucking earnest and so full of ideas that he can’t seem to contain himself.It would be a novelty, backing a candidate who actually believes governing is about helping people, who’s excitable but only when it comes to his ideals, and the guy has a lot going for him otherwise. He’s relatively young, black, and represents the fresh kind of voice that younger voters in the party respond well to these days -- and that’s not even mentioning his environmental lawyer wife and twin boys who are as photogenic as fucking Gerber babies. So Dan knows that getting this guy elected would be the easiest gig he’s ever had -- which is probably why he’s so fucking bored, why he tunes out for a good chunk of the meeting again, glancing at his phone every few minutes, doodling on a legal pad instead of taking any notes, bouncing his knee restlessly beneath the table. It’s just no challenge.“Well, that would be something,” Ben says after Collins has finally gone. “Can you even imagine? A smart, thoughtful, well-adjusted candidate who’ll do exactly what we tell him to? It’s every fucking wet dream I’ve ever had rolled into one.”Dan shrugs. “Almost seems too easy.”“Oh, so you were paying attention? Seemed like you were a little distracted. A-fucking-gain.” Ben’s tone is decidedly snide, which seems uncalled for -- it’s not like Collins is that fucking inspiring. “And let me remind you that if things break right, we’ll be handling Selina’s campaign at the same time as his Senate run and we’ll welcome a cakewalk candidate like this. But that is something we should think about… we’re going to have our hands full with Selina, so we need to start thinking about rounding out the staff here.”Kent nods. “I’ve compiled a short list of people we should talk to.”“Hey,” Ben says, turning back to Dan. “Did you ever talk to Amy about sitting in on some meetings until Selina’s campaign really heats up? We could maybe use a female point of view around here.”Dan fiddles with his phone. “She’s considering it.”It’s only a half lie, he thinks. She may have outright rejected the idea when he broached the subject, but that’s just because she was too fucking pissed off at the time to think straight. She’ll come around -- it only makes sense professionally-speaking, and Amy usually makes the smart play when it comes to her career.“Well, she does have a lot on her mind,” Ben muses, “What with gestating a kid who’s half fucking demon.”Dan rolls his eyes, but it’s half-hearted at best. “Oh, Dan, that reminds me…” Kent slides a thin binder in a garish bubblegum pink shade across the table to him. “I’ve put together some statistics regarding children with absent fathers. They’re at four times the risk for poverty, two times the risk for dropping out of high school, and three times more likely to deal drugs and carry guns, among other things.”“Gee, thanks, Kent. How fucking thoughtful of you.”“And Amy’s having a girl,” says Ben. “Which probably means the kid’s 400 times more likely to start stripping … or hooking.”“I don’t have statistics on that,” Kent offers, “But she is seven times more likely to become a teenage mother.”“Fucking enough,” Dan snaps, pushing his chair away from the table to stand. “I’m not absent, all right? I’m right fucking here.”Ben smirks, clearly unimpressed. “Where’s Amy again? All the way back in New York, right?”“I don’t know why this is all on me. She’s the one who won’t take my fucking calls. She’s the one who can’t answer a Goddamn text. And it’s not like she doesn’t know where to find me.”“So that’s your brilliant plan? Have the mother of your child chase after you in the middle of her pregnancy to make sure you don’t become a deadbeat?”Dan is pretty sure that he scowls, but he manages to keep his voice relatively calm when he says, “Ben, why don’t you worry about your own fucking kids, okay?”That gets him to shut the fuck up, so Dan takes the opportunity to retreat to his office where he can get a little peace and quiet to deal with the headache he feels brewing. It’s all Amy’s fucking fault, really. If she’d kept her mouth shut, hadn’t confirmed the pregnancy for Ben, then he and Kent would have nothing to abuse Dan about right now. Maybe that’s why she did it -- he can certainly respect that, but he wants to kill her too. He’s still thinking about Amy when his phone rings, so he practically leaps across his desk to grab it, convinced it might actually be her, finally ready to hash this fucking thing out once and for all. So when he sees his mother’s number flash across the display, it’s a serious fucking letdown.Still, Dan answers because his mother has left him at least three messages this week and he hasn’t gotten back to her yet. He knew that telling her about the baby would mean she’d want more contact than she’s been used to over the past ten or so years, so he can’t be surprised that he’s suddenly in such hot demand with her, no matter how much of a fucking hassle it might be. Fortunately, all she’s interested in is whether he and Amy have decided which crib they like best because she wants to order it ASAP, so they have plenty of time to set up the nursery before the baby arrives. Of course, since Amy won’t even answer a simple text about baby furniture, he has no fucking clue what she wants and can only stall him mother by telling her that they’re still trying to decide, but he’ll get back to her as soon as they settle on one. “Oh, that’s fine,” his mother says breezily, giving in so easily that he’s sure she must be gearing up for something he’s not going to like. “By the way, your father and I were thinking that it’s time we come for a visit. It’s been what? Nearly seven years since we’ve been to Washington? That’s just absurd, especially now with everything that’s going on…”“Mom, I appreciate that, but I’m swamped at the moment. There are a lot of things going on with work right now and we can’t really--”“Well, then, when would be a good time?” she asks, “The baby’s going to be here before you know it. Don’t you think we should meet the woman who’s going to give birth to our grandchild before the little one actually makes her first appearance?”“I get that you probably--”“Just think about it from our point of view, Daniel. As your father said, she must be a pretty remarkable woman if she’s gotten you to settle down after all these years. That’s probably someone worth getting to know. ”“Don’t get too excited, Mom. It’s not really settling down. It’s just--”“No, I know,” his mother assures him. “There won’t be any pressure from us about engagement rings or weddings or any of that. But you are starting a family, which is an even bigger deal so… we just want to meet Amy. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”It isn’t, probably. Most people usually introduce the mother or father of their child to their families at a bare minimum, but Dan hasn’t brought a woman around to meet his parents since he was 18 years old and taking Samantha Taylor to the prom -- because there’s never been any point. (Amy is a different story altogether, though. He gets that.) “It’s just not the best time,” he says, feeling fucking out of sorts because he is starting a family and Amy won’t fucking talk to him and the whole thing is so fucked up that he can’t see any way to unravel it. “Things are just complicated right now, so I’m not--”“Complicated?” his mother repeats, with the same vaguely judgmental tone he can remember from when he was a kid. “What does that mean?”His instinct is to give her some work excuse because he can’t even remember the last time he confided in his mother about anything -- it had to be sometime before his tenth birthday, at least -- but he’s not sure how long that will put her off and the last fucking thing he needs is his parents showing up unexpectedly and making the situation even worse. “Amy’s just a little … overwhelmed at the moment. So she’s having some doubts, you know, about how everything’s going to work out.”“Oh, well...” His mother pauses for a long moment, no doubt struggling to rationalize so she doesn’t have to worry about her son’s life taking a tawdry turn that she has to hide from her friends at the country club. “She must not know you very well then. Because you’ve always been so dependable.”Dan laughs, because no one who actually knows him would ever describe him that way. No one who knows him would have any trouble understanding why Amy’s keeping him at arm’s length, giving him the fucking deep freeze.“We’ve known each for years, Mom,” he says, “If anything, Amy knows me too well.”He told his mother that when he shared the news about the baby because he figured she’d assume he’d knocked up some girl he barely knew, some mistake of a hookup he’d only just met. Letting his mother think that he and Amy were some kind of tragic on-again, off-again deal, where the timing never seemed to be right until the kid came along to make everything so clear, just seemed like the best way to get her off his back. (It’s certainly a much easier story for his parents to accept than the truth, that Amy has never been his girlfriend, that it happened completely out of the blue, that there was alcohol and the threat of prison time in the mix.)“You’ll convince her,” his mother says, “You’ve always been able to talk anyone into anything. And you’ve still got plenty of time.”In his mother’s mind, everything will be fine as long as he’s able to get it all straightened out in time for he, Amy, and the baby to pose for some fucking embarrassing Christmas card in matching sweaters like his brother’s family is always sending out. Somehow, she even gets Dan to promise he’ll call back with a good time for a visit before she says her goodbyes, though he doesn’t really plan to make good.Maybe he agrees because he hopes his mother is right and he’ll figure out somehow to convince Amy that he’s in this for the long haul before the kid actually shows up -- and torturing her with some awful, awkward meet-the-parents scenario that she’d hate every minute of might almost be fun. (He’s had to meet her fucking father, for shit’s sake. It’s only fair that she suffer through the same fate.) The problem, though, is that, despite what his mother may think, Dan can’t just talk Amy into believing anything. She’d never take anything he says at face value because she knows he’s full of shit nearly all of the time, has seen him lie through his teeth in the most convincing of ways any time it was even remotely to his benefit. But it’s not like he can think of anything that he can actually do to convince her that he’s for real either. Getting down on one knee and thrusting some sparkly diamond in her face would work with a lot of women, but he knows Amy -- she would laugh in his fucking face. She’d assume it was just a stunt to further some selfish agenda of his or another, which only makes sense because it would be so stupidly out of character that he doubts he could get through it with a straight face -- because he’s never done it before when he actually meant to see the whole thing through. So where does that fucking leave him? Leaving her alone, giving her time and space to cool off, is too fucking risky, because God only knows what crazy ideas she’d get in her head. She drifted away once before, and he let it happen because he thought he was moving on to bigger and better things, but Dan’s starting to wonder if it can ever be that simple, if maybe there’s just some fundamental piece missing when they’re not close enough to drive each up the fucking wall. He thinks about the baby too, this kid who’s made everything so fucking complicated, because now if Amy picks up and moves her life to Nevada or North Dakota or the fucking Ivory Coast, the kid goes with her … and then what? Amy marries some fucking sandy-haired, mumble-mouthed drip, and he plays daddy, molding their daughter into some boring, mediocre little sad sack. Fuck that.(That’s definitely how it would play out too, because except for Dan, Amy’s got shit taste in guys. He wonders sometimes if that’s his doing, if she liked him so much once upon a time and got so burned that she’d decided to go for the blandest, most watered-down motherfuckers she can find, the kind of unimpressive dicks who think the G-spot is a myth and have no fucking clue how to make her laugh, as a kind of one-eighty from everything that Dan is. It’s the only logical reason why she’d waste her time on such pathetic fucking shitsacks.) He doesn’t want them to go anywhere -- he wants Amy and the kid and whatever fucked up little family they can make themselves because he spent a year living without her and it never really felt right. The past couple of weeks when she’s refused to speak to him or spare him a look hasn’t felt fucking right either. So maybe the fact is everything’s always a little easier when Amy’s at his side -- and even though there isn’t any part of him that can imagine himself as anything other than a shit father, he’s also starting to think that a kid who’s half him and half Amy will be just like her, one of the only people in this world he doesn’t mind spending time with.(And the kid is his, his and Amy's, so he isn't about to let some other asshole take his place in her life. If anyone is going to screw her up, it's going to be him.)But he can’t just ask Amy to marry him or buy her some white picket fence dream home in a good school district and expect it to sell her on anything. She’s not some idiot ingenue in a predictable romantic comedy -- some lame grand gesture isn’t going to sell her on fucking anything. He needs to convince her that he’s making room for her and the kid in his actual life, changing it just enough that there’s a place where they fit perfectly. So he grabs his phone and fires off a few texts and emails that seem like a good first step. The hardest part, Dan knows, is the call he has to make, but surprisingly enough, he doesn’t have to bully Gary too hard to actually put Selina on the phone.“What did you fuck up now?” she demands. “Nothing, actually. I’m trying to... can we revisit the conversation we had yesterday?”“You mean the one about how I don’t want your fuckfest with Amy to derail my Goddamn campaign?”Dan grins. “That would be the one. There’s actually a really easy way to make sure that happens,” he tells her, “But it’s something only you can do.” It takes some convincing -- and if he had the time or inclination, he thinks he’d like to know why it’s such a hard sell, what kind of emotional baggage is at play there, but he’s got more pressing things on his mind -- but he eventually gets Selina to agree. And as luck would have it, there are still some seats on the next shuttle to New York, which only confirms his instincts that this is something he should take care sooner rather than later. Amy is probably all smug and superior in the belief that she can hide from him all she wants, that she won’t have to deal with him at all if she keeps a low enough profile, but that’s only because she isn’t expecting him to chase after her. So he’s got the element of surprise on his side.She’ll never see him coming. -------Her mother makes her train home without incident (Thank God, too, because Sophie would undoubtedly blame Amy for ruining her plans if their mother was so much as a minute late for babysitting duty), and Amy is surprised to find that she almost, sort of, enjoyed their day together -- even if her mother made her get a mani-pedi after lunch and snuck a ridiculous pink headband with a giant satin rose into the bag of baby stuff even after Amy swore up and down that her daughter would only wear something like that over her dead body.She’s able to keep herself from crying when she hugs her mother goodbye on the train platform, but she is feeling vulnerable enough that she promises to make a visit home as soon as she can since her father would really like to see her.Of course, she’ll delay the trip as long as she can, though -- she has too much to deal with as it is without having to add her father’s concern and Sophie’s not-so-subtle hostility to the mix. She is thoroughly exhausted by the time she makes it back to her apartment, but it’s Friday night, and Selina is taking the weekend off from campaigning, so Amy’s plans for the next 48 hours involve a whole lot of nothing. She soaks for a while in a warm bath, puts on her most comfortable pajamas, and orders rigatoni ala vodka and garlic bread for delivery, which is peak self-care as far as she is concerned. There’s a pint of Chunky Monkey in the freezer for later too, so her night is shaping up to be near perfect.Of course, that’s probably why Ben calls just as she’s settling in bed with her pasta and Silence of the Lambs, a movie that somehow suits her mood, starting on Hulu. She could ignore him, send the call to voicemail, but he usually has the decency to keep his conversations brief, so it’s probably best to just deal with him and be done with it.“Did we ever nail down the specifics for the fundraiser with Senator Perez’s office?” he asks.“Three weeks from tonight at the Washington Hilton. Selina’s giving the keynote, and Craig Taylor is confirmed to be attending so we can gauge his interest in another run. I know Dan’s been schmoozing with him already, but a little face-to-face never hurts.”“Sure, all right. Nice work.” He clears his throat and sighs heavily into the phone. “Speaking of Dan…”Amy frowns. “Were we?”“Now, don’t get me wrong,” says Ben. “I know what a raging prick he is, and I couldn’t pity you more for the fact that you were stupid enough to let him fuck his way into a permanent place in your life … but Amy, the dickhead is so tied in so many fucking knots that it’s starting to affect his work… and I know none of us want that. You’ve seen him have a fucking meltdown, for Chrissake… you really want to deal with that raging shitshow again?”“I don’t think--”“So do me a favor… the next time he calls, pick up the fucking phone, okay?” “Ben, I would never want to make your life any more difficult, but I really--”“Is that right? Because you have, on at least six dozen fucking occasions in my conservative estimate.”“But if Dan is distracted or preoccupied or just fucking incompetent, then it’s much more likely related to whichever barely legal Congressional intern he’s screwing at the moment.”“Jesus, Amy,” Ben chuckles. “Do you seriously not realize how much power you’ve got over that egomaniacal shithead?”She shakes her head emphatically, even though Ben can’t see her, like a reflex she can’t control. “See, this is one of the few instances where me knowing Dan better than anyone else actually comes in handy. Because that’s just not true. Even a little fucking bit.”“Who got him to run that fucktard Jonah’s campaign? That was some miracle worker-level shit.” “Yeah, because he knew it was in his own self-interest,” she says, hoping she doesn’t sound as sulky as she suspects. “But you don't know all the fucked up shit he's done… if I really … if he actually…”She stops herself from saying too much, from giving it all away. It probably doesn’t matter, though, because Ben can likely guess at what she’s not saying. But he doesn’t know the full story, doesn’t know how fucking easy it is for Dan to carve away at her heart without a second thought, doesn’t know how little she actually factors into Dan’s thinking. (Dan fucked her sister, for fuck’s sake. If she had even the smallest bit of influence over him and anything that he does, she has to imagine that wouldn’t have happened. Or at the very least, he would have fucking apologized at some point. But he doesn’t really care, so he didn’t and won’t -- and all she can do is force herself not to care either.)Ben groans, making it clear just how much he hates having conversations like this with anyone he works with. “I’m not telling you to marry him for fuck’s sake. In fact, I’d advise pretty strongly against that. At least not without an ironclad prenup that says you get all of his shit the first time he fucks up even an inch. But I’d like both of you to be ready, fucking focused on that brass ring when we hit primary season. And you can’t do that if you two are still fucking around like a couple of --”“Ben, I assure you, I’m completely focused on--”“Listen. You’re gonna realize pretty fucking quickly that having a kid on your own is Goddamn hell on earth,” he says, ignoring her completely. “Which means you’ll also realize that having Dan around may not be the worst thing in the world. Three a.m. feedings when you have to be at a VFW pancake breakfast with Selina at the asscrack of dawn are.” “You probably think Dan and I--”Ben barks out a laugh. “Oh, sweet mother fucking Jesus. This isn’t me trying to play matchmaker because I think you two crazy kids are made for each other. All I’m trying to do is keep the rest of us from becoming collateral damage because you two are so fucking determined to tear each other to shreds. I’d rather be doing just about anything else on fucking earth than talking about this soap opera bullshit with the two of you. Like getting a prostate exam from a med school dropout with a hook for a hand.”Amy sighs heavily, feeling irritated and frustrated that she’s somehow being painted as the same kind of melodramatic, selfish asshole that Dan is. Which… not even close. “Well, if you’re so sure Dan’s toxic,” she says sullenly, “why would you start a fucking business with him?”“We both know he’s got a certain skill set and it’s not he’s afraid of getting his hands dirty, right? There’s the fact that he’d even go for it too. He’s got to have matured just a little if he’d give up having his dick sucked by television audiences on the daily for the considerably less glamorous world of political consultancy. Don’t you think?”“I gave up trying to figure out how Dan’s twisted brain works a long time ago.”“Well, it’s barely working at all now,” Ben complains, “That’s my point. And this all happens to be in my self-interest, all right? Let’s get Selina elected once and for fucking all, put BKD on the map, and then you can torture Dan as much as the asshole deserves, okay? I’ll even help… I’m too old and tired to actually do it, but we can fake the fucking tawdriest affair D.C.’s ever seen if you think it’ll teach him a lesson.”Amy laughs. “I appreciate that.”“You can show me how much by talking to Dan, okay? This kid’s going to need one parent who’s an actual grown-up, Amy, and that’s obviously going to have to be you.”Ben can’t just leave it at that, though -- she’s barely off the phone with him 30 seconds before a text comes through.You think I’m kidding? Dan’s “notes” from our meeting with Darryl Collins, he’s written beneath an off-center photo of a legal pad with Dan’s chicken scratch scribbled across it. Of course, Amy is well-versed in translating the mess he tries to pass off as handwriting, so it’s easy to decipher.
Lily*
Alyssa
Chloe*
Sadie
Mia*
Alexandra
Madelyn*
Julia
Lucy
Caroline*
She wrinkles her nose in disgust, because she can’t even begin to understand why Ben would think that sending her what’s clearly a list Dan made of women he’s slept with recently might convince her to talk him. She definitely doesn’t want to know what the asterisks mean -- they have to be some sort of sexual rating system, she’s sure -- because she feels sick enough already. But then, she spots a couple of lines at the bottom of the page.Eva Egan, he’s written, and replaced it with Eva Brookheimer-Egan*, followed it up with Ella Brookheimer-Egan*.And then it’s just like earlier this morning on the train platform with her mother -- Amy feels tears seeping from beneath her lashes before she knows what’s happening, faster than she can wipe them away. It is nothing but ridiculous to imagine Dan sitting in a meeting with someone who has to be the least problematic potential candidate in all of D.C., a guy who they could get into office without breaking a sweat, who would give them all of the glory without any of the headache, and instead of focusing on Darryl Collins, he’s brainstorming baby names (his instincts aren’t even that terrible, because those “E” names sound awful with just Egan, but she doesn’t mind them with the hyphenated last names) like someone who doesn’t feel like becoming a father is a fate worse than death. (Because it’s so absurd, because it doesn’t make any kind of sense, she doesn’t know what to make of it, what it means, why it leaves her chest aching like something is trying to break free inside her.) Somehow, that image hurts more than the idea of Dan fucking his way through a list of every female staffer on the Hill under the age of 30. She wants to call and scream at him for turning all of it to shit, for reminding her once again that she can never trust anything that he makes her feel, and she also wants to call and tell him that some of the names he’s come up with are just God-fucking-awful (Does he honestly think she would ever name her daughter Alyssa? Come the fuck on) but maybe they could talk about a few of the others, see if there are any they can agree on, and she wants to call and tell him to let his mother buy that damn overpriced white crib because it’ll look perfect with the little stars and moons crib sheets her mother bought, and she wants to call and tell him that she loves him a painfully embarrassing amount, even though he doesn’t deserve it, and she hates him just as much for that.But she can’t. She won’t let herself. So she shoves her phone under her pillow and forces herself back to her pasta and movie, the perfect, low-key Friday night she planned for herself. She won’t waste her time trying to figure out what Dan is thinking or feeling or what the hell it is he wants from her. She won’t think about any of it for the rest of the night. Which is why she hates herself when, every so often, her hand slips beneath the pillow to slide her phone out, to open Ben’s text and look at Dan’s list again, to hover over his name in her contacts list for the briefest of seconds.She still hates him more, though.