The cancelled room reservation he can't explain.
Nadine thinks it's his fault, of course, and doesn't seem to believe his insistence to the contrary. As if he wanted this.
The problem is that they have a whole block of perfectly legitimate room reservations at the Des Moines Marriott, with a place for every single person on Elizabeth's campaign team to lay their head tonight except for, it seems, Nadine Tolliver.
Mike really isn't sure how that happened.
Nor is he sure how his room got offered up to share, but here they are. Sharing his hotel room.
Mike honestly didn't think she'd stand for it, but then she doesn't have a ton of other options. Practically every hotel room in the city is booked for all the presidential campaign teams slogging the trail. The Iowa caucuses are critical. And Nadine knows that — she has to stay close at hand, she can't go home or go elsewhere just because she has no place to stay. Not before Iowa. She's going to suck it up, and so will he.
Mike makes a note to his future self to find the intern responsible for this fuck up and fire them summarily. This is the last thing either of them needed in their lives.
It's been almost three years since their break up, but Mike doesn't have any practice interacting with her as his ex-whatever-she-is. And of course he couldn't just ease into it with coffee or maybe a working lunch — no, he has to share a hotel room with her for two whole days without any practice or preparation to speak of. It's like tossing a toddler into the deep end of a pool.
Mike unlocks the door with his key card and lets her in ahead of him. The door swings shut behind them both as they take stock of what they're working with.
Only one bed, of course. Because why should anything be easy?
They're both silent for a long time. Then, in a peculiar voice, Mike says, "We can be adults about this, right?"
"Right."
"You're not gonna make me sleep on the floor are you?"
She doesn't answer for a long time, thinks it over hard. "No," she says finally.
"Bathtub?"
"…Maybe."