this weekend and happy to meet. I live in Queen Anne. Will you be nearby? Or I can come to you.
All best,
Doug Smith
Cleo didn’t know why he signed his first and last name, since she clearly knew who he was by emailing him in the first place, but she didn’t want to be nitpicky. She also didn’t want to correct his assumption about why she was reaching out. She was intent on being truthful, but she was still a politician and knew that sometimes obscuring the full facts led to the better end result, even if it made you feel a little dirty while you were doing it.
Cleo had proposed the vegan restaurant where she and Gaby and Lucas had eaten just weeks before—it was at least one less surprise, familiar ground, and besides, now that Cleo was dabbling in new things, she thought maybe she’d like a vegan omelet after all. Cleo sat in the back of the Uber with Lucas, who was fidgety and nervous but trying not to act like it by ignoring his mom and otherwise being snappish, and she marveled that it had been only a few weeks since their prior visit. She’d read that it took several weeks of consistently drilling down a habit to ensure real change, and she wondered if this couldn’t also be true for her: if by practicing being more open and asking for help and welcoming support when she genuinely needed it (and eating a healthy breakfast), it wouldn’t just become second nature by the time her campaign was in full swing this summer. She hoped so. Even with all the recent upheaval, she felt more settled than any time since her parents had died. And twenty years was a long time to be unconsciously spiraling.
Her leg jittered in the back of the car, and her underarms were clammy, and her eyes felt like they were sinking into the back of her head. She hadn’t slept well for obvious reasons, and she rehearsed her script in her mind because what she was about to say mattered. She didn’t care if Doug Smith hated her forever, but she cared for Lucas, and for that reason, this speech felt more critical than anything she’d ever delivered on the Senate floor or on her reelection trail.
Too soon, they were there.
She’d discussed the plan with Lucas—let her go in first, explain the situation, as if she could possibly explain the situation over a cup of coffee. She wasn’t sure if she’d even recognize Doug Smith. That’s how vague that night was for her; that’s how poorly she knew him. But then she saw him through the vegan restaurant window, and she didn’t know if she recognized him from back then or if she recognized him because he was so familiar—he was honestly a snapshot of who her son would be in two decades—but there he was, hunched over his table, scrolling through his phone.
“Hey, Doug.”
He peered up and stood, a grin on his face. Cleo went to shake his hand, and he went in for a hug, so she tried to act casual and laughed and accepted his arms folding around her. He was still athletic; Cleo now remembered that—his broad back, the way he could absolutely kill it at beer pong, which was of course not a sport but gave you an indication of hand-eye coordination—and he had Lucas’s eyes and jawline and brown-black hair. Now that she was staring at him, it was hard to believe that she’d ever thought Lucas looked like her at all.
“I didn’t know what to get you,” he said. “The choices for lattes are almond milk, oat milk, cashew milk, or soy milk.” He shrugged. “I went with cashew. I don’t know why. I think I was intimidated by the choices.”
Cleo’s gut roiled, and she couldn’t imagine drinking a cashew milk latte, so she asked the waitress if they could just bring her a plain drip coffee, which they could not—they did not offer plain drip coffee—so she agreeably opted for cashew milk because her brain was racing too quickly and she just wanted this to be over, one more disaster behind her. “Only Forward!” she thought, though she also realized that they were going to have to change this campaign slogan in light of the past few weeks.
“It’s great to hear from you!” Doug said. “I can’t believe that all these years later, you even remembered me!”