Jude
Tyson’sabout to fucking combust. Right here in front of me, I swear the guy’s gonna just burst into flames.
“How can they not do any follow-up whatsoever? This is complete bullshit. They owe us a retraction on the same page they ran that phony story.”
I shrug. “I guess, in their minds, they weren’t wrong. I was having a tryst. It was just with my wife.”
He shakes his head vehemently. “Men don’t havetrystswith their wives. The word implies something illicit and clandestine.”
I push a few buttons on my phone screen. “Tryst—a private, romantic rendezvous between lovers. Yeah, that’s what it was.”
Filthy sex is romantic, right? I smile to myself as I remember the night spent between my wife’s thighs.
“Why are you so cool about this?” Tyson demands. “On the heels of the Culbertson accusation, this could be the one-two punch that ends this campaign.”
I shrug. “I’ll own up to a tryst with my wife any day of the week. There’s a right-wing talk show host who called me earlier and asked to interview me about it.”
“Don’t do it.” Tyson’s eyes widen. “He’ll question you about the Culbertson thing, too.”
“I hope he does. I have nothing to hide because I did nothing wrong.” I clap him on the shoulder. “Relax, Tyson. This shit’s a marathon, not a sprint. The talk show host is a good friend of the Branch brothers. This is gonna be a softball interview.”
He exhales deeply. Poor Tyson. His clothes are wrinkled, and his hair is getting grayer by the day.
“You need a day off, man,” I tell him.
“A day off? Are you kidding me? In the middle of all this?”
I nod. “It’s nothing the rest of us can’t handle for a day.”
“Glad to know I’m needed,” he grumbles.
“Youareneeded. That’s why I want you to take a day to recharge. Have some fun. Eat some food you don’t have to shovel into your mouth in five minutes or less on the bus. Put on some clean clothes, maybe.”
He glances down at his shirt. “My clothes look dirty?”
I shrug a shoulder. “A little wrinkled, maybe.”
“I slept in these clothes last night,” he admits.
“You slept in those clothes the night before last, too.”
“Oh, shit. Did I really?”
“Tyson, if I see your face in the next twenty-four hours, you’re fired.”
His lips quirk in a smile, followed quickly by a skeptical expression. “Really?”
I nod. “Get your ass out of here, man. I’ve got this.”
He takes out his phone and looks at the screen. “Oh, shit. Maybe another day.”
“What is it?”
He turns the screen to face me. There’s a posed photo of me smiling with one man and three women. Looks like it was taken at a recent rally. I arch my brows at Tyson in question.
“The woman to your immediate left is Jessica Culbertson,” he says. “Looks like a blogger located it before the people I hired could.”
“So, this proves…what? Just that she met me at a rally. In public.”
