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They met at a Yankees game, though if Andrea told the story, it was an Orioles game. It was the third inning and she was at the concession stand putting mustard on a hot dog. She turned around and the mustard ended up more or less covering the NY on this man’s shirt. She laughed and apologized and tried to wipe it away, and he mumbled and stammered an apology of his own.
She was in New York for a long weekend, a break from her practice in Baltimore, but she lived on the coast. He was in New York because he was from New York; he was between clients and had come to visit his mother, he said with eyes cast down a bit. They missed the better part of two innings talking, unthinkable for him, and he laughed when cheering erupted and he realized he missed a home run. She would come to know later what a treat that had been, what a wonder, and she would try every day she knew Toby Ziegler to get him to laugh.
They went for beers after the game, and on the way, he admitted to her in a kind of bashful voice that when he said he was between clients, he meant candidates. “I’m, uh, I’m into politics, you see.”
“Funny,” she said, smiling. “Me too.”
-
The first night they spent together, they were at her place, so close to the coast you could smell the sea. He was leaving the next day to talk to a potential client in the Minnesota 4th.
Toby’d spent as much time as he could manage in Maryland, but a political hack has to go where the money is. So she invited him up, and told him she’d be waiting, but there was something she wanted to do before he went.
He didn’t laugh, but his grin was wide as he asked her a question she thought he already had the answer to.
“Can I call you Andy?”
“Smile at me like that, and you can call me anything you’d like.”
So he took her in his arms and whispered her name in her ear.
She reached up and touched his face, and kissed him.
Toby missed his flight to St. Paul the next morning.
-
When Andrea met C.J., Toby fidgeted off to the side, trying to appear like he wasn’t listening and wasn’t interested at all, really.
They both reached out to put a hand on his shoulders, and laughed together, their voices mingling, setting Toby’s world on fire. He trusted C.J. above…well, above everyone, if he was pressed. He was coming to trust Andrea like that, too, and he needed them to get along.
It also scared him shitless, if he were honest, because what C.J. could tell Andy that Toby would much rather she didn’t could fill a book.
But he watched the women in his life – the only ones, now – take an instant liking to each other and he was more relieved than anything, and the smile on his face melted Andy’s
C.J. told Andy about the time Toby tried ice-fishing as a way to sign a client in Alaska; Andy told C.J. about the time Toby took her to a game at Fenway and nearly got them kicked out from all the screaming he did at the umpire. They swapped stories late into the evening, Toby hardly contributing a word.
He felt a bit like he’d been hit over the head with a mallet when the stories changed to swapping political opinions; he was certain the scotch C.J. had on hand had been spiked, because as the women talked he had trouble telling them apart.
“This woman should run for Congress, Toby.”
He was dazed. “Yeah.”
C.J. leaned over and smacked his arm. “Did you hear me, Tobias? I said, your girlfriend should run for Congress.”
Andy sat back and watched, her face intent as she searched Toby’s.
“What do you think, Ziegler? Want to take on a race in Maryland?”
They ended the evening sketching a campaign plan on a napkin, and polishing off the bottle of scotch.
-
C.J. pulled Toby aside before he could climb in the cab behind Andy, and hugged him.
“She’s a keeper, Tobias. Don’t let her get away.”
He broke the hug. “I won’t,” he replied.
-
He proposed at Camden Yards, during the seventh inning stretch, the same day Ripken surpassed Gehrig’s streak. The stadium was electric, and Toby had even deigned to wear an Orioles hat for the occasion. Andy knew something was up, but let Toby have it his way.
Toby’d put the ring in an empty Cracker Jack box. “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,” he sang in her ear. “And then marry me.”
She kissed him and murmured her yes, and they barely watched the rest of the game.
-
He told his mother about Andy.
“Ma, I met someone. I met her awhile ago, actually. She’s not Jewish, and she’s an Orioles fan.” He put his hands behind his back and jutted his chin out in defiance. “She is a Democrat, though, that’s something. I, um, came here,” he cleared his throat, “because you should know, I’m gonna marry this girl. I think she’ll, I think we’ll be happy. I haven’t told David. I will.”
He looked up at the sky, clear and sunny. The kind of days his mother lived for, she would tell him, pushing him out the door with his baseball glove and a ball, and an admonition to not come in before dark.
She’d died on a cloudy, cold winter day, and he hadn’t had Andy to pull him up then, hadn’t had anyone with C.J. far away and David on a mission.
Waiting for him in Baltimore was warmth and a love of sunny days; he’d thought for awhile, his chance at those things had gone.
Toby put the roses, and a rock from Chesapeake Beach, on the tombstone.
“I miss you, Ma.”
He went home and buried his face in Andy’s hair, and he didn’t cry.
-
Andy did run for Congress, but Toby wasn’t there, not helping the campaign, anyway. He’d been called to work a presidential, an outside-chance primary campaign for a Democrat from Kansas. He joked with Andy that he preferred rogues, and she was no such thing, even if she was on track to be the first woman to represent her district.
She frowned when he reasoned with her but didn’t balk, because a presidential was huge, no matter the candidate.
And she won the primary with seventy percent of the vote, was expected to rout the Republican in a few months' time. Toby’s Sunshine State sojourn had cost him more than it earned him, and was over before the South Carolina primary anyway; he'd come back with a sardonic look that melted after five minutes in her company.
"I'm home with you. It was meant to be this way, don't you think?"
He didn't believe in fate, not really. He took Andy's hand, kissed her knuckle above the ring he'd given her. Looked up in her eyes and saw his future, and was not worried or scared, but excited.
She felt rather than saw what he was feeling, and her concerns washed away.
"Meant to be. Definitely."
-
He wrote her acceptance speech and he wore a Wyatt for Congress t-shirt to the victory party.
They stayed as long as either could stand, and she nearly ripped the shirt off him when they walked in the door at home.
She kissed him and he responded; he ran his fingers through her hair and told her he was in awe of her.
“Congresswoman Andrea Wyatt,” he whispered, trying to make the words sound enticing. They were, to him.
“I prefer Andy,” she countered with a smirk, and he laughed.
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