I don’t see them a lot. It’s not like a constant dinner party with MaryAnne and her crew.”
Cleo hadn’t been to a dinner party other than a mandated work dinner party in a long time. Emily Godwin, her sole mom friend in DC, was often kind enough to invite her to such things. Every few months she’d try to nudge her out, to come over for dinner. But Cleo was almost always too busy and besides, she knew that these were couple-y things, and her singleness threw off the table setting and dynamic as well.
“I go on a lot of dates,” Matty was saying. “Meet a lot of women. I think everyone I know has tried to set me up.”
“Ah, the beauty of being a single man at thirty-seven as opposed to a single woman at the same age,” Cleo mused, then ordered another drink. She was having more fun than she expected, and Cleo almost never had time for fun.
He laughed, though she wasn’t sure why. “Sure. But it also probably has to do with the fact that I am, as you have noted, too nice, an easy fix-up, and you . . . are . . . not?”
Cleo didn’t appreciate this intonation because she absolutely hated that female politicians were expected to be placid and nice, as if being demanding and being a bit of a hard-ass weren’t compatible with the job, when, in fact, they were much more compatible than being sweet. But before she could chide him, he said, “I think that’s why I admire you so much. Your edge. I think I kind of regret being such a pushover. I mean, you were pretty firm with me when we broke up.”
“Oh, I am sorry for being so cold back then.” Cleo softened. She could be a bit of a hard-ass. “I regret things too, of course.” Two hundred and thirty-three things.
“But not that, not us,” Matty said, laughing again. “No, we never would have worked. You had your sights set on something bigger. I had my nose in a coding book.”
“I can’t like a nerd?” Cleo found herself very much considering reliking this nerd. And that he was dismissing her made him all the more appealing.
“I find that offensive. We consider ourselves more geeks than nerds,” he joked, which kind of astonished her because she didn’t remember him ever being even remotely funny, much less sarcastic. “But no.”
Something about his no felt definitive, and Cleo sank an inch in her barstool. Maybe it was the two martinis; maybe it was the heady whirl of nostalgia these past two days had brought, but she suspected she wasn’t thinking very clearly. She very much wanted Matty to kiss her, twenty years later, in the bar at the Sheraton, but perhaps he could see it better than she could, and they really would never have worked. (Something Cleo would have sworn to not ninety minutes earlier.) He had always been good at advice and even better at listening. Back then, she took this as a form of weakness. She had wanted someone stronger than her, but two decades later, Cleo realized that perhaps she hadn’t needed, still didn’t need, someone stronger than her. What she needed was someone to complement her. She resolved right there in the Sheraton bar to make sure that Matty remained in her life, even if he wasn’t going to buckle her knees with a kiss right now. (She wouldn’t protest.) She wasn’t long on friends, and yes, that was a real regret, whether or not she had added it to her list. (She may have, though; she’d have to check.)
“Do you think I was a bitch to MaryAnne in high school?” she asked. Matty would tell her the truth.
“I think MaryAnne is working out some of her own issues, especially with that stuff about the affair. We’re rapidly approaching our midlife-crisis age.”
Cleo had evaded enough interview questions in her time to know a dodge when she heard one.
“But I was a bitch?”
Matty sighed. “It’s a confusing time.” He waved to the bartender. Cleo hoped he wasn’t signaling for the check.
“High school?”
“Well, I mean, sure, but I was talking about now.”
Cleo still wasn’t clear on what he meant, but she never liked to betray any unknowingness, so she said nothing. In politics, unknowingness made you a target. Probably in life too. She wasn’t sure because she never let on. Instead, she’d research and she’d study and she’d dig deeper, staying all those late nights