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The dull drone of an announcement crackled over the speakers. Eliza listened just long enough to hear something about a delayed southbound train, then tuned it out once again. The line for coffee, which snaked back and forth through several loops of sleep deprived passengers, inched forward a little more, only for the woman who’d finally stepped up to counter to hesitate over her order. Apparently, the fifteen minutes she’d been standing in line wasn’t quite enough time for her to work out what she wanted, Eliza thought with an internal huff.
Trying to block out her frustration, Eliza swiped at the screen of her phone and opened the photo gallery. Alexander’s handsome face grinned at her from the latest picture. It was a photo she’d snapped just hours ago in their cramped hotel room. He’d already removed his jacket and loosened his tie, and he was trying to entice her to join him in the shower.
“I sat through a two hour meeting about climate change and the importance of water conservation today. I’m feeling very motivated.”
“We’re supposed to be washing up and taking a nap,” she’d reminded him, lying atop the covers on their bed scrolling through her phone. “Our train leaves at three in the morning.”
“Yeah, of course,” he’d agreed innocently, slowly removing his tie and backing up towards the bathroom. “This is just about being responsible with precious natural resources.”
“Uh huh.” A dimple had appeared in his cheeks as she’d hummed with disbelief. She’d snapped the picture just before she pushed off the bed to follow him, unable to resist. They’d never quite gotten around to properly washing up or napping. But a little sleep deprivation wasn’t such a high price to pay when he’d looked so damn cute, she granted herself.
Usually when Alexander traveled to D.C. with the Senator, she remained behind in New York. This time, though, the dates of his trip happened to line up with a child welfare conference that she’d been wanting to attend anyway. Not being away from her new fiancée for a full week had only been an added benefit.
When Senator Washington heard she had accompanied Alexander to D.C., he invited them both to his second home on the Potomac for a quiet dinner. In Mrs. Washington’s kind and capable hands, that quiet dinner had turned into a surprise blowout engagement party, complete with many of Alexander’s oldest friends, a live band, and thousands of white lights strung up from the house all the way down to the river. Eliza wouldn’t have traded that magical night of laughter and dancing for anything in the world.
She was playing with the filter on a picture of the two of them down by the water when she finally found herself at the front of the line. Thrusting her phone into the back pocket of her jeans, she stepped up the counter to order two black coffees and, impulsively, a buttery croissant from the bake case. The two coffees were passed to her over the counter as she paid, allowing her to bypass the huddled mass of customers waiting on lattes and macchiatos. She placed her brown pastry bag on the coffee station to add a half and half to her cup, then headed back towards the benches with her purchases in hand.
Alexander had long since traded his suit jacket and tie for his ratty Columbia sweatshirt before they left the hotel, and thick framed glasses were sliding down his nose. The light from his laptop screen reflected in the lenses while he pounded at the keyboard. His eyes always carried a slightly bruised quality, but the circles seemed darker in the harsh unnatural lighting, and his face and shoulders looked tense.
“Hello, handsome. Is this seat taken?” Her voice was heavy with exaggerated flirtation and she batted her eyes ridiculously as she sat beside him, hoping to make him laugh.
He smiled weakly and accepted the coffee from her. The drink was still piping hot, but he gulped it down like it was room temperature. Putting the cup down on the bench on his other side, he jabbed his finger at his laptop and said, “Look at this.”
She scooted closer so their shoulders were pressed together while she looked at the screen. Twitter was open, and he was gesturing at a tweet from a senator’s aide in the opposition party. Why he insisted on reading that garbage and getting all riled up over it, she still didn’t understand.
Pressing a kiss to his cheek, she answered vaguely, without really taking in the content of the tweet, “How awful.”
“This kind of blatantly racist bullshit is why we can’t have intelligent, rational conversations about immigration in this country,” he fumed, and switched tabs to a google doc to resume his furious typing. He’d already filled a page and half with text, she noticed. A smile crept over her face as she tried to figure out whether he was writing some kind of op-ed or just an extremely long thread of tweets. She had him muted for a reason, after all.
“Any updates on the train?” she asked, interrupting the rant she heard gathering steam under his breath.
“I guess it was delayed coming out of Richmond,” he answered, still focused on his computer. “They’re estimating another thirty minutes.”
She sighed and pulled the croissant from the paper bag. Splitting the pastry down the middle, she offered Alexander half. He gave it a sidelong glance and shook his head. “I’m not that hungry.”
“You’re sure? You didn’t eat much before we left.”
“Yeah.” He slid his left hand under his glasses to rub his eyes. “My head is killing me.”
“That’s what you get for using up our nap time.”
He smirked and readjusted his glasses. “Nah, it was worth it.”
Leaning over, she placed a kiss against his lips and pushed his laptop closed. He chuckled warmly, although the tension in his brow remained. She ran her fingers through the hair at his temple tenderly. “I think I have Tylenol in my purse. Do you want some?”
He nodded. She bent down to rifle through her bag until she felt the travel sized bottle on the bottom. Dry swallowing the two pills she handed him, he chased them with another gulp of coffee.
“Want to look at some pictures from the party?” she offered, a transparent ploy to keep him away from twitter. “People have been sharing them with me all day.”
Thankfully, he gave in easily despite the obvious tactic. Twisting on the bench to face her, he invited “Let’s see ‘em.”
She shifted closer so they could both see her phone. He laughed at the first picture of him, Gilbert, and Mulligan with their arms around each other, though she thought she heard a hint of melancholy in the sound. She’d seen dozens of similar photos of the group from over the years, but always with a fourth member: the legendary and beloved Jack, who’d been killed on his third overseas deployment a few years earlier. She didn’t linger or press, and his laugh turned lighter when she showed him the next picture of him looking at the buffet table. “Oh, God, please get rid of that one. What is that face I’m making? I look like I have three chins.”
“You do not,” she laughed.
“No?” he asked as he made a goofy face and pulled his chin back towards his neck.
She snorted and broke out into giggles. “So sexy.”
“Wow, I need to borrow those love goggles of yours.” He reached out and slid his finger over the screen to look at the next photo: a selfie she’d meant to delete already because her eyes were half shut. “See, now, that’s better.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think you need to borrow anything.”
They spent the next several minutes sipping at their coffees and scrolling through the rest of the photos.
“I want to print this one,” she told him, stopping again on the photo of them by the river, the same one she’d been fussing with in the coffee line. Mrs. Washington had snapped it early in the evening, so they both looked fresh faced and happy. Eliza was smiling for the camera, but Alexander was looking at her with the sweetest, softest expression she’d ever seen him wear. The pure love she saw shining in his eyes made her heartbeat quicken and her stomach fill with the wonderful kind of butterflies.
He nodded seriously. “We should. That came out nice.”
She cuddled closer and leaned her head on his shoulder. “It was a beautiful party.”
“It was,” he agreed, twirling a finger through the loose hair on her shoulders.
“I’m just glad I didn’t embarrass you.”
The words had tumbled out of her mouth before she’d really thought them through. He stilled beside her and then straightened. She could feel him trying to catch her eye.
“What are you talking about?”
She winced. Exhausted as she was, she’d let slip the insecure thoughts that usually floated, safe and unspoken, around in the back of her mind. She had a healthy amount of self-confidence, really. She knew she was kind, moral, beautiful, and far from stupid. But ever since she’d started dating Alexander, she’d had a deep, dark fear that one day she’d say something in a group of Alexander’s genius friends that would make him realize how much she didn’t fit in with them. It was something she worried about secretly, late at night, when she watched him sleep beside her and wondered what sort of miraculous, world-changing ideas were brewing in his mind.
“It’s just…everyone there was so accomplished. So brilliant.”
“You’re brilliant.”
She scoffed. “Not like they are. Not like you.”
“Eliza, you are the most beautiful, compassionate, loving, amazing person I’ve ever met.”
Her gaze fell to her lap, not able to look at him as she tried to explain. “I barely made it through college. I’m never going to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a scientist. I only have the chance to do so much volunteer work because my family has money. I just, I worry that someday you’re going to look at me, and….”
“Hey.” He tilted her chin up. “You go to work every day and help dozens upon dozens of kids in awful circumstances. I see the kind of hours and the commitment you put in. You fight for those kids, you raise money for them, and you care about each and every one of them. You are smart, and capable, and driven. And I am so proud of you.”
Her throat went tight with emotion, and her vision turned a little blurry. “Really?”
“Yes, really,” he assured her. He gave her a sweet, soft kiss. “We all sit around and talk about policy language, and rant at each other on social media, but you’re the one doing the real work. It’s one of the first things that drew me to you. If everyone took the privileges they were given and used them for good the way you have, the world would be a beautiful place.”
A strange, but wonderful realization dawned on her.
As she’d gotten to know him, she would from time to time pick up on his insecurities, and she’d always find herself puzzled. It seemed to her that the things he felt the most self-conscious about were, in reality, his greatest strengths. He worried about his past, about his job, about his lack of money, but all she saw was someone who’d overcome long odds, who did great and important work, even at the cost of personal glory and fortune.
Now, seeing all that love in his eyes again, she realized for the first time that he felt the same about her. All those things she worried about late at night in the dark, the parts of her she’d tried to hide from him, he’d seen in her all along. He’d seen her, and he loved her, not in spite of those parts, but because of them. Never before in her life had she felt so wholly and completely loved.
“I love you so much,” she whispered.
He smiled. “I love you, too.”
The grainy voice announced their train would be arriving at platform ten, intruding on the tender moment. They shared a quick kiss before they stood and collected their baggage, Alexander shoving his laptop back into his bag while she popped up the handle on her carry-on. They fell easily into step as they made their way to the platform.
They didn’t speak as they stood under the orange lights on the platform to wait for the arriving train. Eliza turned to face him, and she wrapped her arms around him, holding him close in the cool spring night air. Hardly anyone was around for the late night train to the city.
She felt the powerful whoosh of air as the train approached, and she reluctantly released him so they could board. Thankfully, the cars weren’t particularly full. They found seats towards the back of the car and settled in next each other. She’d expected him to pull out his laptop again when they settled in for the three and a half hour ride home, but instead he rested his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.
“How’s your head?” she asked softly.
“Better. I’m just really tired.”
She tugged him towards her, so that his head rested against her shoulder. He removed his glasses, shoving them into the pocket of his sweatshirt, and adjusted to rest against her chest, his arm stretched out to embrace her. Her hand traced patterns over his back as the train pulled away from the station towards home.
In the quiet of the train, as Alexander began to snuffle softly, she gazed down at the diamond ring on her left hand and smiled. She was engaged to the love of her life. All the little frustrations and worries from the past hours had melted away. Delayed trains and long lines, angry politicians and sleep deprivation—none of those things mattered in the slightest. Not when Alexander was in her arms.