K. Linde - Off the Record

Victoria gave her a smug look and then sauntered into the bathroom. Liz heard the shower running a second later. She knew that meant she would be occupied for at least the next half hour, and the room would be like a sauna when she exited. Liz could have put off the phone call, but now that it was in her mind, it was like a disease spreading through her body. She couldn’t let the thought go.

She wanted to see Hayden even though she was seeing Brady. Well, she wasn’t seeing Brady. Okay she was, but it was different. It’s not as if she could walk around in public with him or anything. They were a behind-closed-doors kind of couple. Still, she had freaked out when she had thought Brady was seeing someone else; would it be hypocritical to then go see Hayden? Even if nothing happened, she was sure two years of crushing on him wouldn’t disappear just like that.

But she didn’t even know if he still wanted to see her. So maybe one phone call couldn’t hurt.

He picked up on the second ring. “Liz, hey!”

“Hey. How are you?” Liz said, surprised by Hayden’s enthusiasm.

“Good. It’s good to hear from you.”

“Yeah, it’s been a while,” she said, walking into her bedroom and shutting the door.

“Sorry about that. I’m sure it’s my fault. You know how I said they just had me getting coffee?”

“Yeah,” she said, lying back on her bed.

“Well, I still do that and about five hundred million other things every single day. I’m working ten- to fourteen-hour days.”

“Geez! You must be exhausted.”

“I’ve never worked this hard in my life. I can’t wait for you to come up and visit. That will be my first full weekend off. It’ll be good to see you and not have to deal with everything else,” he said.

Liz smiled despite herself. It was nice to hear that he hadn’t forgotten, and he wanted to see her still. Butterflies fluttered around in her stomach. “So, you’re still set for me to visit?”

“Yeah, you do still want to come, right?” he asked a bit tentatively.

He hadn’t had any hesitation when talking about seeing her. Why was she so hesitant then? With how enraptured she had been with Brady so far this summer, it was strange to even think of Hayden like that. But he still had a pull, even if it wasn’t like Brady. Still, she wanted to see Hayden—that much she knew—but it felt unfair to Brady.

She knew Brady wasn’t going to be happy with her going to D.C. to hang out with another guy. He hadn’t been happy at the lake house when she had mentioned she was seeing someone, and she had been jokingly talking about him. Then with the incident with Justin…it was asking for trouble. She was playing this game on Brady’s terms. That was the agreement.

But she still wanted to see Hayden even though she knew it would make Brady angry with her. She and Hayden were friends after all. She was allowed to visit friends if she wanted.

“Yeah, I do. Last weekend in July, right?”

“I think exactly a month from today. Let me check.” She heard noise on the other end of the phone as he checked the date for her. “Yeah. I was right. One month. July twenty-sixth is when I get to see you. Are you driving?”

“Yep. It’s not that far.”

“Cool. I’ll have to find you parking. There isn’t much up here. But let me worry about that; tell me how you are. Tell me about the paper.”

She could hear a smile in his voice. The paper was his baby, and he was probably dying being away from it for so long. She proceeded to fill him in on everything. She informed him about her articles and what she was doing in her class to improve them. He thought that it was good for her, even if he still liked her subjective articles too. They agreed too much on the politics of the matters for him not to like them.

By the time she was getting off of the phone with him, she realized an hour had passed. Where had the time gone? And how had he been able to get away from his busy schedule for a whole hour to talk to her? She certainly hadn’t meant to distract him so thoroughly, but damn, it had been good to talk to him. Their conversation had flowed so easily. It actually made her want to call and talk to him more. Maybe she would…

“I hate to cut this short, but I really have to get back to work now. Great talking to you, Liz,” he said. She nearly corrected him about the amount of time they had been talking, but then she stopped herself. He clearly hadn’t noticed the time passing either.

“It was great talking to you too. Good luck with work. I’m sure I’ll talk to you again before I come up there.”

“I hope so.”

When they hung up, Liz stood and walked back out into the living room. Victoria looked up at her smugly, as if she knew what had happened before Liz had even opened her mouth.

“So, I guess you’re still going to D.C., huh?” she asked.

“I guess I am.”

“That’s what I thought,” Victoria said, turning back to face the television.

Liz stared at the screen, not really seeing it at the moment. Her mind was elsewhere, racing back to the conversation she’d had with Hayden. They had talked so thoroughly about his job, the paper, her articles, the campaign, and now her mind was working. She enjoyed having someone to discuss her work and what she loved most. She had missed that. She and Brady talked, but it was usually sex first, talk later. They tiptoed a lot around politics, which she didn’t have to do with Hayden. It was a nice change of pace.

In fact, Hayden had given her a good idea for the next feature. It was broader than her last article, as Professor Mires had suggested. If she could tie it back to the students, then they would be more interested in who was running for the state legislature.

She smiled, walked back into her room, and started writing.

Liz spent all afternoon researching the article she was working on for the paper. Victoria complained enough about Liz’s obsessive behavior that she finally took a break from the computer to get some dinner. But even when she was away from her work, she was still thinking about it. She wanted to make sure she had all of her facts right first, but she was itching to start writing it.

Even after dinner, Victoria was insufferable. Liz had missed her while she was gone, but it had been nice having the house to herself to work. The girls sat around and watched a movie into the evening, and Liz was bouncing with jitters the whole time. Victoria finally rolled her eyes about three-quarters of the way through and told her to leave.

“Just get out of here. You’re making me nervous, and I’m not going into the lab until tomorrow,” she said, turning back to the movie.

“I love you,” Liz said, bolting out of the living room.

She grabbed her laptop off of her desk and was on her way to the office a few minutes later. Hayden had had a brilliant idea about comparing candidate platforms to the student government initiatives. Every spring semester, candidates ran for student government on campaign platforms as wide-ranging as implementing a bicycle-rental facility on campus to decreasing in-state tuition and fees. Hayden thought it would be an interesting article if she could string the two together. Show all of the policies and procedures that mirrored general governmental policies happening within the state and federally. Basically showing the campus that what they cared about here, mattered out there.

It was brilliant. She had always known why Hayden had been chosen editor, but he continued to reinforce it.

When Liz walked into the building, Meagan was sitting at her desk, which was covered in hot-pink Post-its and a collection of brightly colored candies. Liz scrunched her eyes at the display.

“Liz!” Meagan said, whirling around in her chair. “I didn’t know you were going to be in tonight. Are you hungry? Have you eaten? I’m kind of starved, and I can’t stop eating candy. We could go get something.”

“No, thanks. I just ate. Need to work on this article for next week,” Liz said.

“Are you sure? Do you need any help with it?”

“No, thanks, Meagan. I think I got it.”

She hurried across the room and into Hayden’s office. They had less than half the amount of normal staff, and no one had said anything when she had taken it over. She had a lot of work to do and she knew that she was going to be here well into the wee hours of the night.

A few hours later, Meagan came back to her office to tell her that she was closing up and asked her again if she needed any help. Liz smiled and politely told her no, though she knew she would be there well past building close. The article wasn’t coming together as smoothly as she would have liked. She had it sitting in pieces on her laptop and even some printed documents that she had scribbled all over.

She was starting to see double when she stared at the screen, and knew it was time for a break. She grabbed her water bottle and trekked down to the water fountain in the hallway. As she was filling up her Nalgene, her phone started vibrating from where it was tucked away in her back pocket. Liz fished it out of her pocket and pressed it between her ear and shoulder so she could continue filling the bottle.

“Hello?” she said.

“I’m going to come pick you up. Be ready in twenty minutes.”

Liz’s heart skipped a beat. She hadn’t seen Brady in three days. He had been busy in Raleigh all week working on campaign-related materials. He hadn’t really said much else about it. Now here he was asking to see her when she was busy working on the article Hayden had recommended to her.