We’d needed a war room, and with reporters dogging Governor Mane’s and Dakota’s every step, it needed to be off the beaten track—none of our offices and neither of their homes would do. Wendy had volunteered her condo as refuge.
It had been twenty-four hours since news of the affair broke, and by now the national outlets had sunk their teeth into the story, with splashy articles everywhere, from theWall Street Journaland theWashington ExaminertoUSA TODAYandPolitico. But what really gutted me was the coverage in theNew York TimesandWashington Post. How quickly the papers I’d most admired turned on two of their darlings: Dakota, the feted female inventor revolutionizing the auto industry, and Grover Mane, the more-acceptable-than-most governor of Texas, now simply fodder for prurient gossip.
But they weren’t the only former friends to betray us. I couldn’t get a single reporter at a radio, print or TV outlet to take it easy on Dakota, or even press pause in their coverage until they got all the facts. When I’d reached out, all they’d wanted was a quote. Apparently, none of the relationships I’d spent years building held water when it came to a scandal the entire state of Texas, if not the country, was watching. I’d peeked once at Twitter yesterday—just a glance at Lise’s mentions—then shut my entire computer down and considered burning it. God help us.
“Where do we begin?” Dakota asked wearily. She’d arrived this morning in sweatpants, looking wan, her eyes bloodshot. She had to have spent the last twenty-four hours talking through her affair with her husband, George, and maybe even with her children. I had a flashback of confessing I’d cheated to Ben, and felt a wash of sympathy. I knew how painful that conversation was.
Speaking of Ben—he was in the kitchen helping Cody, who was once again cementing his title as world’s best husband.
“We begin,” Cody announced, walking out of the kitchen in oven mitts, holding a tray of baked goods, “with homemade banana bread and blueberry muffins. Ben has orange-cranberry scones cooling on the counter, so don’t fill up too much.”
Ben walked out of the kitchen behind Cody, fingers wrapped around a mug of coffee. Our eyes caught and he looked away quickly.
“Comfort carbs,” said Cody sagely, then scooted back to the kitchen.
“It has to be Slittery who leaked it.” The governor picked up a muffin and settled into Wendy’s couch. “I don’t know how he found out, but it had to be him.”
“We were about to win,” Wendy pointed out. “Makes sense that he pressed the nuclear button.”
“I’m going to assassinate him,” said the governor, then looked around guiltily, as if he was being recorded. “Politically speaking, of course.”
“It doesn’t matter who leaked it, at the end of the day.” Ben drew his ankle up to rest on top of his knee. “What matters is we’re up shit’s creek.” He was casual today, in jeans and a soft-looking gray sweater. He had to have gotten a haircut in the last twenty-four hours, because his hair was shorter than it had been in the conference room. Maybe he was preparing in case he needed to go on camera. I found myself transfixed.
It looked good, and made him seem a little younger, closer to the Ben I’d met in grad school. His was my favorite face, I realized. For one brief moment, I let myself remember the way he’d looked at me when we stretched out in bed at the Governor’s Mansion, right before we’d heard the footsteps.
Ben’s eyes flicked to me, catching my staring, and I blinked away in shame.Come on, self. Cool, calm and collected. Step up in this moment of trial and tribulation.
“Ben’s right,” I said, injecting confidence into my voice. “We need to focus on damage control. Lise’s stock is tanking, and there’s already rumors the Tea Party might try to run someone new when the governor’s term is up.”
“What else do we know?” Wendy asked.
I blew out a breath. “I don’t have the polling back yet on public opinion. But I think it’s safe to say, given the headlines and the tenor of social content, that we are deeply unpopular right now. The main headline—” I winced “—is that Dakota slept with the governor to get a bill favorable to her company passed. Quid pro quo, so to speak.”
“As if I wasn’t a perfectly eligible bachelor in my own right,” the governor grumbled.
“Not the point,” Wendy said icily.
“I’ve been weighing a few different plans,” I said. “We obviously need to put out a more fulsome statement than the one we’ve been giving about it being a private, personal matter with nothing to do with the Green Machine bill. I think if we confront this head-on, and don’t try to hide from the discomfort, we could start a bigger conversation about the gendered response to this news. I mean, 99 percent of the chatter has been about Dakota and what an evil, cunning seductress she is. People are calling for her to step down from Lise, as if her work performance has anything to do with her personal life.”
“We have investors calling us with the same request,” Wendy said, with a pained glance at Dakota.
“Beyond a few rumors about running another candidate—rumors that will probably blow over soon, let’s be honest—where’s the outrage for the governor?”
“Now, wait a sec,” Governor Mane said, holding out his hands. “I don’t think the answer is to stoke more anger, just at a different person.”
Ben and I rolled our eyes at the same time.
“That’s not what she means,” Ben said. “Lee’s saying we should call the media and the public on their shit. Let’s try to save this, obviously. But if we’re going to go down, let’s go down swinging.”
There. Ben got it. As I shot him a grateful look, it hit me: Annie was right. Weirdly, though Benhadhurt me multiple times in the past, I continued to trust him. It was me I didn’t trust.MeI was worried was too messy, not right, worthy or strong enough. My problems were between me and me.
“I have to apologize,” Dakota cut in. She spoke softly, staring at her hands like they held a scrying bowl with a vision of the future. “I’m the adulterer. I’ll say it was my fault and step down. It’s the only chance of saving the bill.”
“Sorry, Dakota, but the bill’s fucked,” Wendy said. “At this point we need to be worried about saving the company.”
“And that’s a huge, giantno.” I rose from my seat. “You are not falling on your sword over this. That’s not fair. The governor is equally to blame.”
The look on the governor’s face told me he did notlikethatpoint, but I didn’t care.
