to me about secret relationships in and around this campaign, princess.”
“Point,” Alex concedes.
She brushes past the topic as June starts wiping syrup off the bed with her pajama pants. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover this morning, so focus up, little Claremonts.”
She’s got detailed agendas for each of them, bullet-pointed and double-sided, and she dives right in. They’re already on Thursday’s voter registration drive in Cedar Rapids (Alex is pointedly not invited) when her phone pings with a notification. She picks it up, scrolling through the screen offhandedly.
“So I need both of you to be dressed and ready … by…” She’s looking more closely at the screen, distracted. “By, uh…” Her face is taken over with a horrified gasp. “Oh, fuck my ass.”
“What—?” Alex starts, but his own phone buzzes in his lap, and he looks down to find a push notification from CNN: LEAKED SURVEILLANCE FOOTAGE SHOWS PRINCE HENRY AT DNC HOTEL.
“Oh, shit,” Alex says.
June reads over his shoulder; somehow, some “anonymous source” got the security camera footage from the lobby of the Beekman that night of the DNC.
It’s not … explicitly damning, but it very clearly does show the two of them walking out of the bar together, shoulder to shoulder, flanked by Cash, and it cuts to footage from the elevator, Henry’s arm around Alex’s waist while they talk with Cash. It ends with the three of them getting off together at the top floor.
Zahra looks up at him, practically murderous. “Can you explain to me why this one day of our lives will not stop haunting me?”
“I don’t know,” Alex says miserably. “I can’t believe this is the one that’s—I mean, we’ve done riskier things than this—”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better how?”
“I just mean, like, who is leaking fucking elevator tapes? Who’s checking for that? It’s not like Solange was in there—”
A chirp from June’s phone interrupts him, and she swears when she looks at it. “Jesus, that Post reporter just texted to ask for a comment on the speculation surrounding your relationship with Henry and whether it—whether it has to do with you leaving the campaign after the DNC.” She looks between Alex and Zahra, eyes wide. “This is really bad, isn’t it?”
“It ain’t great,” Zahra says. She’s got her nose buried in her phone, furiously typing out what are probably very strongly worded emails to the press team. “What we need is a fucking diversion. We have to—to send you on a date or something.”
“What if we—” June attempts.
“Or, fuck, send him on a date,” Zahra says. “Send you both on dates.”
“I could—” June tries again.
“Who the fuck do I call? What girl is gonna want to wade into this shitstorm to fake date either of you at this point?” Zahra grinds the heels of both hands against her eyes. “Jesus, be a gay beard.”
“I have an idea!” June finally half shouts. When they both look at her, she’s biting her lip, looking at Alex. “But I don’t know if you’re gonna like it.”
She turns her phone around to show them the screen. It’s a photo he recognizes as one of the ones they took for Pez in Texas, June and Henry lounging on the dock together. She’s cropped Nora out so it’s just the two of them, Henry sporting a wide, teasing grin under his sunglasses and June planting a kiss on his cheek.
“I was on that floor too,” she says. “We don’t have to, like, confirm or deny anything. But we can imply something. Just to take the heat off.”
Alex swallows.
He’s always known June was one inch from taking a bullet for him, but this? He would never ask her to do this.
But the thing is … it would work. Their social media friendship is well documented, even if half of it is GIFs of Colin Firth. Out of context, the photo looks as couple-y as anything, like a nice, gorgeous, heterosexual couple on vacation together. He looks over to Zahra.
“It’s not a bad idea,” Zahra says. “We’d have to get Henry on board. Can you do that?”
Alex releases a breath. He absolutely doesn’t want this, but he’s also not sure what other choice he has. “Um. Yeah, I. Yeah, I think so.”
* * *
“This is kind of exactly what we said we didn’t want to do,” Alex says into his phone.
“I know,” Henry tells him across the line. His voice is shaky. Philip is waiting on Henry’s other line. “But.”
“Yeah,” Alex says. “But.”
June posts the picture from