“Eat,” he ordered, dropping onto the sofa.
It wasn't a suggestion.
I reached for a slice, mostly to stop him from staring at me with that worried look on his face.
He let me get a few bites in before he said, his tone deceptively casual, “So, today was kind of crazy.”
I took another bite and pulled the slice away, watching a thread of mozzarella stretch between my mouth and my hand. “The Kendra stuff?” I asked through my mouthful. “I know I pushed hard, but?—”
“I’m not talking about Kendra.” He stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankle, and folded his hands over his stomach. “I’m talking about how you came out in one sentence and in the next said you and your boyfriend had broken up.”
I set the pizza down and wiped my hands on a napkin. “It’s complicated.”
“It always is.”
“No, I mean …” I exhaled loudly and leaned back in my chair, staring at the acoustic ceiling tiles. “It’sreallyfucking complicated. Not just the regular kind of complicated.”
David waited for me to explain. He was good at that. He didn’t fill silences with suggestions or reassurances.
“The fight we had,” I said slowly, dropping my head forward. “It was about Wyatt.”
I met David’s concerned gaze and held it, letting him see what I’d avoided confirming the last time we’d spoken like this.
His nostrils widened slightly, and then he gave me a small nod. “Does Taylor know about you guys?”
I picked at the edge of the napkin, tearing it into thin strips. “He knows everything. That’s sort of the problem.” I swept the strips into a pile. “He thinks I’ll never be able to fully commit to him as long as Wyatt is in the picture. That I’ll always put Wyatt’s career first.”
David rubbed his hands along his thighs. “And is he wrong?”
I opened my mouth to say “yes, of course he is,” but before the words could form, my phone screen lit up with an incoming call.
Wyatt’s face filled the screen—a photo I’d taken of him at one of his earliest fundraisers. He was dressed in a tux, bow tie hanging loose around his neck, and his jacket slung over one shoulder. He was leaning against a mirrored elevator, looking directly into the camera with a half-smile that had nothing to do with the success of the evening and everything to do with who he was heading upstairs with.
It was undeniably stupid to have such a blatantly personal image as his contact photo, but I’d set it around the time he and Celine had announced their engagement. It was petty andfoolish, and worst of all, hadn’t fazed her in the slightest. I’d meant to change it about a thousand times, but had never quite gotten around to it.
God, what would Taylor have said if he’d ever seen it?
David glanced at my phone, then back at me. “Do you need to get that?”
I silenced the ringer and turned it over. “No.”
He uncrossed his ankles and leaned forward, planting his forearms on his knees. “Have you told him to stop calling?” He notched his chin toward my phone at the same time a quiet ding sounded, alerting me to a voicemail.
“I was kind of hoping ignoring him would do the trick.”
He huffed out a laugh and shook his head. “And that's working so incredibly well.”
I pushed my plate away, my pizza only half eaten, but I couldn't stomach any more.
“I just need to put my head down and get Kendra elected. My love life is the least of my worries right now.” The words rang false, but what else was I going to tell my colleague?
David studied me for long enough that I felt the urge to look away.
“And how’s that working out for you?” he asked quietly. “Because, and I say this as a friend, you look like shit.”
A dry, humorless laugh scraped out of me. “Gee, thanks.”
“I’m serious. You’re not sleeping. You’re barely eating.” He gestured at my plate. “You’re running on caffeine and pure stubbornness, and at some point it’s all going to catch up with you.”
