"So," Donna said.

"So," Josh answered. They were sitting at the kitchen table, having one last cup of coffee together. Donna's bag was packed and standing in the hall beside the front door.

"I should be getting back."

"You should," Josh said, smiling a little. "You are the White House Press Secretary, after all."

"I am."

"I imagine you have a few things to do before tomorrow's briefing."

"I do."

There was a pause. Josh cleared his throat. "Will you—that is, do you think—you might—want—to come back sometime?"

Donna flushed a little. "Do you want me to?" She was being a coward, she thought, stalling like that, but she couldn't help it.

He reached out a hand and wrapped it around hers. "Of course I do."

"Then—yes, I want to. Of course I want to. It's just—"

"You don't know when." He sounded accepting, resigned.

"I often have weekends free, unless something big comes up. I'm sure I can come again. But—"

"But what, Donna?"

She flushed more deeply than before. "I—" She couldn't go on, couldn't say the thing that had been whispering to her last night and all but screaming at her all morning, ever since she'd started thinking seriously about the implications of what she was doing with Josh.

Josh bit his lip, and dropped his eyes. "It's the job, isn't it?" he asked. His voice had gravel in it.

"I'm the White House Press Secretary, Josh."

"I'm not a member of the White House Press Corps. I'm not even a journalist. I'm helping run a largely apolitical foundation."

"You do more than that, Josh. You know it."

"I've written a few op-ed pieces, been a talking head on 'Washington Week' a few times. So what?"

"You know what they'll say."

"That two single adults with somewhat different political views are having a relationship? So what? We're both Democrats, for God's sake; it shouldn't make any difference at all."

"It will, though. You know that, Josh."

"Yeah," he said, taking his hand away from hers and pushing his chair back from the table a little. "Yeah, I suppose to a few people it will."

"I can't make bad press for the White House, Josh. I'm not supposed to be the story. You know that better than anyone."

"You want to protect this White House?"

"Of course I do, Josh. It's my job! My job to get this White House the best press possible, not a run of stories about how the Press Secretary is sleeping with one of her boss's biggest critics. It wouldn't go over well at all, Josh, if people found out. Will expects loyalty from his staff. The President expects loyalty from his staff."

"Yeah," Josh said, a touch of bitterness in his voice. "Yeah, I see." The word "loyalty" stung him to the core, and yet of course he did see.

"Josh, I'm not saying I don't want this thing between us to go on. That's not what I'm saying at all."

"What are you saying then, Donna?"

"I'm just saying I can't do it right now. This isn't a good time for us to do this."

"And when will a good time be? Four years from now, when you're out of office? Or eight, if the next election goes your way?"

"No, Josh, I'm not saying that. I'm just—can't you see how bad it would be, if the press found out I was involved with you right now? You were fierce about us on that show Friday night. You took us apart in that last piece you wrote for the Post. You've criticized everything we've done."

"Donna, your administration hasn't done anything. That's what I've been criticizing."

"You're not being fair, Josh. I know we haven't done everything the way you'd have done it, everything you'd like to see done. But you weren't there to do it. Maybe if you'd—" She broke off suddenly.

"No," he said, "I wasn't." With his right hand he started fingering the cuff of his left sleeve. Donna took in the gesture and swallowed, hard.

"Josh," she said, in a different tone. "I'm sorry. I know you couldn't be. I know it's my fault you couldn't be—"

"It wasn't your fault," he interrupted her. "It wasn't your fault, Donna. Don't ever think that. And Will made me an offer right after the convention; I turned him down."

"I know."

"I didn't turn him down because I was cracking up, Donna. I turned him down for the same reasons I turned him down the fall before, when he asked me to come in and run Russell's campaign. I turned him down because I didn't think Russell should be President. I couldn't make myself go and work for someone I didn't think could do the job. And how you can talk about loyalty to that bumbling, semi-literate, conceited, cardboard excuse for a man—"

Donna felt the flush creep over her face again. "Josh," she said. She didn't have to say anything more. He looked at her, and sighed.

"I'm sorry, Donna," he said, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his hands over his face, the way he did when he was tired. "I shouldn't have said that. I don't want to argue with you. I'm sorry."

"He is the President, Josh."

"I know."

"And this is my job, Josh. It's my chance. You had your chance, and you took it. You told me the other night you wanted me all those years we worked together, and yet you never said anything, never did anything about it, and you know it was because of your job. You didn't think you could do it as well if I wasn't there to help you, or if the press got hold of it and made a big thing out of it, out of us. And they would have. And they still would."

"It wasn't as simple as that, Donna."

"Wasn't it?"

"No, it wasn't! I didn't know—I never knew what you wanted, what you thought of me. Most of the time I didn't think you ever thought of me that way."

"You must have had some idea, Josh."

"I didn't."

"I think I was pretty obvious sometimes."

"Not obvious enough. Yes, there were some times, after I was shot, that I thought, maybe, if I was lucky as hell—but then you changed. I thought you'd changed your mind. I thought you'd just been feeling sorry for me. I really didn't think you thought of me that way."

"Well, I didn't think you thought of me like that, either."

"I couldn't do anything, Donna. I was your boss—how bad would that have been, to come on to you when you had to work with me every day? What could you have done, if you hadn't wanted me to? Told me to bug off, and then have to go on working with me? File a complaint? Quit? What kind of jerk would I have to have been, to put you in that position? And—maybe I was a coward, but I couldn't put myself in that position, either. There was always someone else you were talking about, someone else you were with. Until you showed up at my door at one o'clock in the morning the other night, I really didn't think you'd want me if I told you what I felt. Though I honestly thought you knew, after I flew to Germany, after you'd been hurt. And you never seemed less interested than you did after that."

Donna bit her lip, trying to calm the rush of emotions that was swirling around her. This was the most important conversation she'd ever had with Josh. She didn't want to mess it up, and she had a terrible feeling she was doing just that.

"Josh," she said, feeling as if she was pleading with him to understand. "I do want this to happen. I do want to be with you. I'm just asking you to give me a little time. Not four years, not eight years, just—a little time."

He looked at her. He was breathing hard, as if he'd just been running. "You do? Want—to be—with me?"

"Oh Josh," she said, her voice breaking. "Of course I do. I just need to figure out how to do this, what the best way is. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal. Maybe I just need to go back, talk to someone—talk to Will. He's known both of us for a long time; maybe he'd understand. But I need to find the right time to do that. I just don't want to make a mess of things with this job. It's the most important job I've ever had, the most important job I probably ever will have. If I can't make it work so I can be with you, I'll quit. But I want to have given myself a decent chance to make things work first, and this isn't the right time for me to bring this up with Will. I've got that wording to talk to him about, in that bill you looked at, and he'll be angry about the things you said the other night, and—it's just not a good time. And if I do quit, I want to do it the right way. I don't want to make a mess for the President and then leave in the middle of it because I have to, because I've made the mess. You understand that, don't you? You'd do the same thing if it was you, you know you would."

Josh looked down, and sighed. "Yeah," he said. "I understand. You're right—I would do the same thing. I just—" He broke off, and sat silently, playing with the cuff of his left sleeve.

"Just what, Josh?"

"I just—wouldn't be doing it for this President. But yes, he's still the President, and yes, I understand what you're saying, Donna."

"Thank you."

He smiled at her, painfully.

"So—basically, I'll hear from you when I hear from you?"

"I'll be in touch, Josh."

"Yeah."

"Soon."

"Okay."

"Really."

"Okay, Donna. It's okay."

"Josh?"

"Yes, Donna?"

"I do love you, you know."

"I love you too, Donna. I really do."

He stopped playing with his sleeve and put his hand over hers on the table again. They sat that way, silently, for a long time. Finally Donna said, "Well, I'd better get going." "Yeah," Josh said. "It's a long drive." He carried her bag to the car, gave her a quick kiss goodbye, and stood at the curb watching as she drove away. It was starting to rain again, but he stood there for a long time after her car had disappeared, looking after it. Then he turned and walked back into the house, turned on his computer, and tried to think about his work.

Donna cried all the way down the New Jersey Turnpike and through most of Delaware and Maryland. It was only when she turned off the Beltway at her exit that the thought of what she was going to even began to balance out the thought of what she had left behind.

"It's just for a little while," she told herself. "Just for a little while, until I get things sorted out."

She wanted desperately to call him when she got back, but she didn't think she'd ever be able to hang up the phone, so she sent him an email instead.