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On a bench in Times Square, surrounded by lights and sounds and sights and people, she lets herself fall apart. There’s an anonymity to being in this place, with its brightness and its garish attempts at happiness, and she relishes it.
Sitting on the bench, coat pulled tight around her shaking frame, she lets herself become invisible.
C.J. is not the press secretary here, not Ms. Cregg, or ma’am, or any of the other masks she slips on and off at a moment’s notice. She’s just a woman on a bench, a mere speck in the masses, and no one notices the hitch in her breath or the tears streaming down her face. She pinches the bridge of her nose and tries to regulate her breathing, tries not to dwell on the could have, would have, should have beens, on the broken promises and dashed hopes of this night.
On Milky Way bars, roses, tuxedos and earpieces. On shooting ranges, relative measures of tallness, spark plugs, sunshine, on that damn Vera Wang.
The fabric feels constricting all of a sudden, itchy and far too tight and she wants to shed it like a snake sheds skin, wants to rid herself of all the memories stitched into its threads—the hand on the small of her back, the voice in the shell of her ear, the kiss pressed to her lips.
She wants it all gone.
Life is short and unpredictable, she knows this all too well, and fate doesn’t deal its cards lightly. But tonight is cruelty to an unnecessary degree, a quid pro quo she wants desperately to reverse. Simon, or the stalker? It’s a choice she never asked to make.
It doesn’t matter, though.
In fifteen minutes, there will be no more room for grief, for loss, for should have beens. She will get up from this bench, take a deep breath and wipe the runny mascara from her cheeks. C.J.’s mask will slip into place, immaculate and strong, and she’ll go back to staffing the president, to dealing with the press, her grief locked behind an easy smile and lighthearted quip directed at one of the poolers.
She’ll ignore the way the silk digs into her skin, a cloying embrace, the way her throat runs dry at the mere thought of a drink, the way she misses the feeling of a steady presence behind her—watching, protecting.
She’ll leave her grief on this bench with a piece of her heart and let it dissolve into the night until no one knows it was ever there to begin with.
—
“And that’s it from me, folks,” C.J. announces, closing the cover of her briefing book. “Thank you all, I’ll see you tomorrow at ten.”
She ignores the lingering clamour of reporters and ducks out of the briefing room under Carol’s watchful gaze. They both know what day it is, and they’ve both declined to acknowledge it. Still, she feels like Carol is walking on eggshells around her, knows that Josh is trying (and failing) to act nonchalant, that Toby and Leo’s brows have been furrowed in worry all day. The president gave her shoulder a pat during the morning meeting in the Oval, and if he weren’t her boss or the leader of the free world she thinks she might’ve screamed.
She wants none of it—the undue attention, the pity, the concern—she wants to ignore this day and all that it means and forget any of it ever happened.
Except it did. It happened and the memories of those weeks sit at the back of her mind like an ever-present shadow, creeping into the forefront if she doesn’t shut them down.
Like today.
Like today, when she drove into the office in her Mustang and thought of spark plugs and windshield wiper fluid and Sam and Josh putting her car back together after New York in what they thought was secret.
(It wasn’t. C.J. knew from the second they started, because the oil stains and shouts of frustration were unmissable, and she doesn’t trust either of them with a wrench. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to drive the car for weeks after it got fixed—by an actual mechanic this time—took cabs and the Metro instead, until she convinced herself it was stupid to attach any sentimental value to an object she hadn’t even seen him with.
The first drive still felt like a betrayal.)
Like today, when she glanced at the space next to her office door, expecting an I’ve got Flamingo or a check of her emails. When she kept looking over her left shoulder or unconsciously touched her fingers to her lips. Sometimes, she thinks she can still feel the ghost of the kiss, lingering. The ghost of him.
You’re quiet, you’re polite, and you’re there—you’re always there. I can’t shake you.
He was always there, for those weeks, like a shadow or a puppy, and as much as she hated the feeling then, of being watched, she aches for it now. She’d gladly take her car apart, piece by piece, or allow a detail to rule her waking hours, or even let an agent in the press room, if it only meant he were alive again.
He’s not though, and C.J. knows it’s not worth dwelling on. Not now.
Not today.
Today, she files more reports, coordinates with staff, eats a salad from the mess and finally, finally, calls the lid and tells Carol to leave too. C.J. herself wants nothing more than to drive home in her Mustang and feel the wind in her hair and then curl up on her couch with a glass of wine and a crappy movie and forget today ever happened.
D.C. street parking is impossible as usual, so she parks her car half a block down from her apartment and spends the walk running through the mental Rolodex of her movie collection, wondering whether she should take a chance on the crappy sitcom reruns airing this late at night.
She’s so distracted that she doesn’t look up as she’s climbing the steps to the front door, too busy trying to fish her house keys out of her purse that she almost misses—
“C.J.”
It’s Special Agent Sunshine, but that couldn’t matter less.
I just like your smile, is all. I wouldn’t mind seeing it more.
I like that you’re tall. It makes me feel… more feminine.
It all comes back in a blinding rush at the sound of the voice, that voice, but it can’t be. That voice can’t exist anymore. That voice is a figment of her imagination, a distortion, her mind playing tricks and the cruel betrayal of her own heart.
That voice clearly belongs to someone else, someone she’s currently rudely ignoring as she stands there, stopped dead in her tracks.
She forces her eyes upward, sees dress shoes and slacks and a sport coat and a tie, and her heart stutters out an irregular rhythm as his face comes into view.
He hasn’t changed at all. His eyebrows are still bushy and expressive, darker than his silver hair. He’s still tall, deceptively buff under all those angles and planes. His eyes are just as soft as she remembers and his smile is just as sad. He’s holding a Milky Way bar and a single rose.
“C.J.,” he says, again, softer this time.
She slaps him across the face, hard.
Simon winces, raising his hand to his cheek to cover the redness blooming where her hand had been. “I guess I deserved that.”
C.J. can only stand there, mouth agape. This is not happening. She’s hallucinating, there was something in her salad— e. coli, probably—and now she’s experiencing the first onslaught of symptoms. That has to be it; she has to be ill, because the alternative is almost too much to bear. It’s one thing to wish desperately for Simon to cheat death and reappear in her life, it’s another thing for it to actually happen.
She’s a swirl of emotions, flashing between anger and pain and betrayal and the faintest flashes of relief and joy, threatening to burst outward. She’s on the highest peak of a rollercoaster; her stomach lurches, and she teeters on the verge of free fall.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” she says, matter-of-fact. It should be true, has been for the past year. Why would today be any different?
Simon winces. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” C.J. scoffs. “You show up on my doorstep a year into being dead and expect me not to have a heart attack and then you’re sorry? Well, I’m sorry if that just isn’t cutting it for me right now.”
She tries to push past Simon and unlock her front door, but he’s faster. Secret Service reflexes really are no joke, and he gently, oh-so-gently steps between her and the doorknob and places a hand on her forearm. Suddenly, at the whisper of his touch, it’s all too much.
C.J. can feel him through the layers of her suit and coat, heat bleeding through the fabric. It’s like he’s burned her with one touch, seared his name into her skin. A shiver runs up her spine at the feeling, and she screws her eyes shut. She concentrates on breathing, in and out, in and out.
But the reality of being face-to-face with him again—she still has no idea how—is overwhelming and she can’t think straight.
Simon’s touch sends a shock through her body, catapulting her back into the present, and she’s distinctly aware that they’re standing on her stoop in the middle of the night, where anyone could see.
“For God’s sake, let me in,” she hisses, “and let’s try not to make a scene.”
Simon steps aside, ever conscientious, and she unlocks her door. C.J.’s hands are shaking, and part of her wishes he would just take the key and unlock it himself. God knows he’s done it before—when he followed her every move, when he was still alive.
(He is still alive, a voice inside her head shouts. She shuts it down immediately, focusing on the lock. She’s still not ready to believe it.)
She pushes open the door and barges inside, dropping her coat on the nearest piece of furniture, her heels and bag following in a clatter. She assumes Simon will follow, diligently shutting and locking the door behind them, like he’s always done. She's angry, and confused, and terrified of being hopeful—and the best victim for her frustrations just happens to be standing in her entryway.
C.J. takes a deep breath and turns back toward the door, toward Simon.
He’s waiting there, not moving a muscle, with his rose in one hand and his Milky Way bar in the other, looking like he’s never disappeared. Like he never died for a year and then materialized again on her doorstep one evening. He smiles, but it’s a sad one, like he knows what his death did to her, how much it hurt and tore her heart to pieces. The thing is though, he doesn’t, could never.
Wherever he spent the last year, it wasn’t here, with her, watching her crumble. No, she put herself back together again all on her own, smoothed over the jagged edges and picked up all the pieces.
“So,” she says, voice sharp as flint. “How long have you been not dead and when did it occur to you to maybe tell me?”
Simon flinches, and his eyes narrow as he takes an inadvertent half-step backward. C.J. scoffs. He probably thought this would be easy, forgot how much she can make his life difficult if she wants to. God knows he made hers hell for weeks. (She’s not thinking about the stalker—Simon’s death made even the most stringent orders he gave when he was on her protection detail seem like a vacation.)
He scrubs a hand over his jaw, takes a deep breath. “It’s a long story,” is what he finally settles on, and he grimaces at the words as soon as they roll off his tongue.
“Well,” she bites back, “it’s good that I’ve got all night.”
She gestures at her living room, an unspoken order for him to sit down on the sofa while she claims the armchair in the corner. It’ll do for now; she might have to break out the scotch later, depending.
Simon obliges her, sinking awkwardly down into her couch cushions and she realizes suddenly that for all the time he’s spent inside her house, he’s never once sat down. It crashes in on her, the feeling settles low in her belly, spreading out through her veins. He’s here, but he shouldn’t be. What is going on?
“Before I worked for the Secret Service,” Simon starts, clasping his hands together, “I was with the FBI for a stretch. There was an undercover operation, and for reasons I’m not at liberty to discuss, it became necessary for me to drop off the grid for a while.”
“So you died.”
There’s a pained look on Simon’s face. She ignores it. “I didn’t know it was going to happen that night,” he says, his features appropriately contrite. He wrings his hands, fingers turning white where they’re twisted together. “If I’d known, God, I wouldn’t have—”
“Wouldn’t have what?” she asks, fighting to keep the wobble out of her voice. “Wouldn’t have kissed me, asked me out for a drink, made me feel like this thing between us could go somewhere?”
Simon winces.
“Ron told me, you know. Found me at the theatre and led me into the hallway and told me you’d been shot and I didn’t believe him, not at first. He was adamant though.” She takes a deep breath. She’s never been good at opening her heart but with Simon, it feels like it’s beating outside of her chest, fragile and exposed. “And so I mourned you. That night, and the next night, and I kept having to listen to all these people tell me how sorry they were that I’d lost you but they had no idea, now did they?”
“C.J.”
“No, they didn’t, because they didn’t know about the kiss or the drinks or the Milky Way bar or the rose, or any of it.” Tonight’s Milky Way and rose are lying on the coffee table before them, taunting her. “Nice touch, by the way,” she scoffs, glancing at them.
“I’m sorry.” He’s starting to sound like a broken record.
She lets out a chuckle, raw and hollow. “You’re sorry? I would goddamn hope so.”
“If there were any way of telling you, of giving you a heads-up, I would have done it.”
C.J. looks over at Simon, in all his buttoned-up sincerity, and finds her eyes misting over. All the anger and rage dissipate, like fog clearing, and she’s left feeling hollow and drained.
“I know,” she says, voice barely a whisper.
The enormity of it all hits her like a tidal wave—all the words unsaid and opportunities lost. All the ways this thing between them could have gone, infinite possibilities and all of them nipped in the bud. But now he’s here, and he’s alive, and she’s too scared to deal with it so she’s lashing out and it’s cowardly, she knows this, but sometimes C.J. isn’t strong.
Sometimes she’s not the press secretary, or Ms. Cregg, or ma’am; sometimes she’s just C.J., who doesn’t want to be a woman in a man’s world who’s never allowed to show weakness. Tonight is one of those nights.
“You’re the first person I wanted to see,” Simon says. His voice sounds like he’s miles away and she snaps her eyes up to meet his and shakes herself out of it. “After I was debriefed, I mean. I went straight from the Hoover to your building.” He lets out a wry chuckle. “Well, almost. Stopped at a 7-Eleven on the way.”
“Really?” Her voice has gone soft and raspy, and she’s stopped trying to hide the wobble.
He smiles, a sad thing that tugs at the corners of his cheeks. “Yeah. Thought about you a lot, this past year.”
“Me too.”
(He was a constant, niggling presence in the back of her mind, no matter how hard she tried to ignore him.
I like that you’re tall. It makes me feel… more feminine.
I just like your smile, is all. I wouldn’t mind seeing it more.
It’s Special Agent Sunshine, but that couldn’t matter less.)
“I thought about this a lot too,” he says. “What it would be like trying to tell you I wasn’t really dead.”
She scoffs. “Did I live up to your fantasies?”
He chuckles. “Well, a whole lot of the scenarios ended with you throwing a shoe at my head.”
Now it’s C.J.’s turn to laugh, and she feels her muscles go slack as she sinks deeper into the cushions of the armchair, lets the warmth of her apartment and Simon’s presence wash over her. “Hmm,” she muses, a smirk playing at the corner of her lips. “There’s a perfectly serviceable pair of Jimmy Choos over there.”
“Well, you’d hate to be predictable, now would you.”
He has a point, she’ll give him that. Slipping back into their regular banter is effortless, as easy as breathing, as though New York was just yesterday.
“Simon,” she starts, tone serious again. “What happens now?” She sees his eyes widen and his head angle forward just a fraction, so she course-corrects, hard. “I mean, professionally, you know, with your job and all.”
“The Bureau is no longer in need of my services, so it’s back to the Treasury,” he says, “White House detail, probably. Standard stuff.”
She nods, lets it sink in. “So you’re not planning on faking your death again anytime soon.”
“No, not currently.”
C.J. fixes Simon with a look.
“Not ever, if I can help it.”
She takes a deep breath. “Okay.” And then, because she’s feeling bold, “We should decide on a code.”
“What?”
“A code, for if you ever need to do it again. The fake-dying, I mean.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, you know, considering you’re back now and I know you’re not dead and…” She’s rambling, awkwardly running a hand through her hair and she only stops when she feels Simon’s gentle touch on her knee. It sends a jolt of electricity straight through her system.
He’s smiling, properly now, like he’s trying his hardest to really earn the title of Special Agent Sunshine. It makes her smile too, and blush, and when did she become this version of herself, that blushes and stumbles and trips over her words?
(A year and six weeks ago, if anyone’s counting.)
“Okay,” he says, in that calm and collected way of his, “I’ll make sure of it.”
“Okay.”
It goes silent between them then, for an agonizing minute. Time crawls by like it has something to prove, and C.J. holds her breath until Simon speaks again.
“I can’t tell you much about the past year,” he says, eyes cast toward the floor, “but I can say that I never… I didn’t, um, well, there was no one.”
He scratches awkwardly at the back of his neck and C.J. fights the urge to hug him, to convey without words how much it means to her that he’s waited, for her, for a whole year. He waited, and he didn’t know if she would even talk to him again.
Simon seems to take her silence as an admission, hurries to add, “If you did, I completely understand. You had no reason to believe that I’d ever—”
She cuts him off with a shake of her head and a watery smile. “I didn’t either. I couldn’t bring myself to.”
“Well,” he says, his voice wavering just slightly. It’s the most emotional she’s ever seen him. “That’s good.”
C.J. laughs, and it’s a choked, watery thing. “Yeah, it is good. Really good.” She studies him for a few moments. “You being back is really good. Better than good.”
It’s overwhelming, the emotion that surges up within her, and she has to fight back tears as she sits across from Simon, who’s not dead and never was and waited for her, without expecting her to wait too.
“I meant to tell you, back then,” he starts, nothing but fondness in his expression, “that I like your smile too.”
A grin spreads across her face, wide and toothy and she’s sixteen again, doe-eyed and waiting to be taken to the prom. “What happens now?” she asks, voice scarcely above a whisper. She’s scared to break this moment between them, fragile but full of so much hope.
“Whatever you want.”
What does she want? Sunday morning lie-ins, dinner with a good bottle of cab, Simon riding shotgun in her Mustang, Simon picking her up at her office in the evenings, Simon in her living room, Simon in her bed… Simon.
She gets up from the armchair and tries to calm her racing heart. Simon follows a second later and then they’re both standing in the middle of her living room. The tension in the air is so thick she thinks she could cut it with a knife.
“I think,” C.J. says, drawing out the words into what she hopes is a casual drawl, “that I want that drink you promised me, back in New York.”
She steps forward, into Simon’s personal space, and she can feel his hot breath on her skin. It makes the hairs stand up on the back of her neck, and something within her starts to hum in anticipation.
Simon, bless him, looks down at her, eyes wide. It clearly wasn’t what he was expecting to hear, and she takes a second to memorize the look of shock and confusion on his face. It’s incredibly endearing. When he looks like he’s about to stammer out something, she decides to put him out of his misery.
“And by drink, I absolutely mean this.” She leans in so their lips are almost touching, breath mingling. It’s a heady feeling, being this close to him, to the precipice, to the pull of free fall. It makes her feel brave and afraid all at once.
Simon moves to wrap his arms around her waist and she shudders. He’s impossibly close. “Oh, thank God,” he murmurs, and then his lips are on hers.
It’s everything she remembered and so much more and she sinks into it, pressed up against Simon in her living room on a Thursday. She pushes herself up on her tiptoes to get a better angle, and she’s reminded of the fact that he’s taller than her. He’s taller than her and it still makes her feel just as feminine and vulnerable as it did that day at the shooting range.
C.J. wraps her arms around his neck and runs her fingers through his hair and practically preens when he shudders. Simon traces the seam of her lips with his tongue, wordlessly asking permission, and she keens when he licks into her mouth. This is further than they got the last time—when a stolen moment held promises for so much more—and she relishes the feeling.
When they break apart they’re breathing heavily, standing with their foreheads pressed together and holding on to one another like they’re adrift at sea.
Simon is looking at her as if she’s something infinitely precious, and she wants to both run and hide, and bask in the feeling of his eyes on her. It makes her feel exposed and cherished all at once.
“C.J.,” he rasps, pupils blown, breath heavy on her skin. “I’m so sorry I—”
She cuts him off with a fierce kiss. “Not now. Later.”
Simon nods, and a whisper of understanding passes between them. Discussions and plans and logistics can wait for a while. What’s important is the here and now, the primal need to reconnect and reassure.
—
C.J. thinks she can count on one hand the number of times she’s felt this safe and protected. She’s wrapped in Simon’s arms, her head pillowed on his chest, and the sheet is draped loosely over their bodies, cooling rapidly.
He’s tracing patterns over her shoulders, down her back, and she has half a mind to tell him it tickles. But she’s loath to burst the bubble and catapult them back to real life. Instead, she settles for using her fingers to map out the constellation of freckles that litters his chest.
Simon hums, and it vibrates throughout her body, a tingle running down her spine. “I’m really glad you’re alive,” she says, and Simon’s hand stills.
“I’m really sorry I had to leave.”
“It’s—” It’s not okay, might not ever be, but it’s worth it, that she’s sure of. Every new day with Simon will slowly make up for the pain that followed her for the better part of a year. “It’s a chance for a new beginning.”
A new start, without the stalker and the shooting and everything in between.
“I’d like that,” he says, pulling her closer. “I’d like that more than you could ever know.”
She thinks of new beginnings, of Sunday morning lie-ins and dinner with red wine, thinks of the feeling of Simon’s lips on hers and his hands in her hair, everywhere. She thinks of new beginnings and how she never wants this one to end.
“Stay, will you?” she whispers into the half-dark of her bedroom. “So I know you’ll still be here in the morning? So I know this wasn’t a dream?”
He presses a kiss to her shoulder blade, soft and sweet.
“I’ll stay for as long as you’ll have me.”
Inside her head, a little voice whispers forever.