XXII
Zoey continued to stare, mouth agape, at the TV screen. Not entirely pointlessly, since they were after all re-running sections of the president's address ad infinitum. Maybe after the hundredth or so she might be able to believe it.
"Mom, did he just- Am I, you know, losing it, or did he actually just-?"
"I don't know, honey." Her mother was still watching the address on repeat, with a slightly glazed smile that Zoey was doing her best to ignore - because she had a vague idea of what was going on behind it, and anything involving her mother, those kind of thoughts, and her father, she was not touching with a barge pole, no sir.
Of course, had they been in some dangerously warped parallel universe where her mother could have those kind of thoughts and her father was somebody about whom such thoughts could be thought, then that speech would probably have been able to spark them. Zoey could see the way her father had been on fire, so caught up in the passion of his words that he practically glowed even through the TV screen.
Zoey knew her father loved Charlie; had never doubted it, even through the distinctly nerve-wracking period when their secret engagement had hit the newspapers before her parents heard about it. But to hear him stand up before the nation, before the world, and make a speech like that...
It wasn't a political manoeuvre. Oh, you could call it politics, but something so passionately felt and so close to home; if he'd wanted to score points, there were safer ways to do it. Even a novice like her could tell he'd left himself open to attack about pushing personal agendas or ignoring problems until they landed in his own backyard.
But the words hadn't rung that way to her, and she was willing to bet that they hadn't to the majority of Americans, either. Because could anybody, anybody, watch that speech and believe her father didn't mean every word of it? You couldn't pass it off as some kind of grandstanding or empty promises when he poured that much of his soul into it.
Deanna was sniffing back tears beside her, and trying to keep her composure in the awkward way of someone well aware they were the youngest in the room and trying not to seem it. "You okay, Deena?" Zoey asked softly, slipping back into the nickname she'd supposedly grown out of, although she didn't seem to notice.
She nodded, jaw trembling, and swiped her eyes aggressively with her sleeve. "That was- That was amazing."
"I don't know," came a weak, slightly ragged voice from behind them. "I thought he was kind of ropey on the second section. And that whole thing with the leaning his arms on the desk-"
"Charlie!" Zoey squealed. She and Deanna rushed over to huddle up to him, and just as quickly pulled back at the first twinge of pain to cross his features. Her mother beamed, and immediately clicked into doctor-mode.
"Okay, Charlie, could you look at me a moment? I just want to check a few things..."
But Zoey didn't need to hear the medical diagnosis to see what was important. Charlie was awake, and he was still Charlie. And nothing, nothing else mattered.
Later, much later, they were back in the Residence. Alone for the first time, with the jubilation of Charlie's recovery fading to a muted glow of relief, Jed and Abbey locked eyes.
"So I guess we should talk," Jed conceded softly.
"I guess we should," she agreed neutrally.
Jed sighed, and looked at the carpet for a moment. Not - for the first time in days - as an attempt to avoid her gaze, but rather an acknowledgement that she had the right of the matter. As she always did.
He looked up. "I... I know I was making promises. Grand promises, when I should be..." Even now, the admission was hard to choke out; "When I should be seriously thinking about whether I can continue to do this job at all."
And Abbey smiled at him, and crossed the room, and kissed him tenderly. "Jed," she said, in the way that always made his own name sound more complex and beautiful than he could ever have imagined. "I turned on the TV tonight, and you know what I saw? I saw my husband. And it wasn't until I saw him up there that I realised how much I've been missing him lately."
She was silent for a moment, a beat of his heart which didn't sound. "Jed, I don't want you to resign. Not... not like this. Not as a pre-emptive measure. We've come too far to walk away on a maybe. I love you, Jed, and I'm terrified. But I don't want to steal your soul to try and save your life. Jed... you're the president. It's not just who you are, it's what you were born to be. And as much as it hurts, I know you belong up there, and I know it's wrong to make you walk away one second before you have to."
And there it was; the capitulation that he'd in his secret moments prayed for. And yet... For her...
"Abbey..." he said slowly. Tasting the name, and everything it meant to him. "You know that if you asked me to resign, I would do it."
Her smile could have broken his heart in so many different ways. "I know."
"And I wouldn't hate you for it," he said earnestly. "I could never hate you."
"I know," she nodded softly. "And sometimes I think that's what hurts the most."
There was a long moment of silent communication, in which worlds rose and fell, and a lifetime of love was spoken, shared and understood.
As always, the words were completely unnecessary, and the only thing in the world worth saying.
"I love you."
And Abbey smiled back. "I love you too... Mr. President."
They kissed, softly, almost chastely; an echo of a kiss on the front steps of a library when he'd watched her laugh and talked about nothing and never quite admitted that he'd never kissed a girl before. For an instant he was twenty, and he didn't know what it was like to be anything but invincible.
And then she pulled away, and he wasn't twenty anymore, but that didn't matter, because there were things in life that were better than twenty. And she would always be one of them.
Her smile folded itself away, but it was not into sorrow or dismay but determination.
"And now we do need to talk."
He sat down on the edge of the bed, and smiled faintly up at her. "How about you do the talking, and I'll listen?"
Her smile was dry, and laced with something stronger than steel. "Yes. You will."
For once, he seemed able to do it right, and simply watched and listened. Abbey sat down beside him, and tilted his chin with her hand to look him in the eye.
"You want to be president. I want you to be president." The flash of fear and pain in her eyes cut through his very soul, the more because he knew she didn't want it to. "But I don't want to lose you, Jed. I don't want to see you fade away from me. I don't want to see you hurting."
He kissed her forehead; not a silencer, just comfort. She laid her head against his shoulder for a moment before straightening up again.
"Jed... I need you to understand this. I need you to be able to believe this. That this is real, that this is you, and you can't run away from it. You can't pretend it doesn't exist, and you can't... You can't make it not real. You have to let it be real, and you have to deal with it, and you have to do that every day."
He kissed her again, and surrendered to the future he'd been fighting for a decade. "I know."
Abbey sat up and pulled away from him. He could see the mental shutters go down as she became the voice of authority. "Then this is what you're gonna do."
He waited, resigned to his future.
Well, maybe nine parts resigned to one part nervous.
Scared, even.
Terrified, possibly.
...Help?
Abbey folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. "You need to look after your health. And when I mean that, I mean that. You will go on a diet, and no, I mean a real diet. You will give up all those saturated fats you love so much. You will eat a large portion of vegetables every day, and not just as a side dish to your big juicy steak. You will eat fish instead of red meat, and if you so much as breathe in a room containing junk food, there will be trouble. You will eat fresh fruit, and you will give up sugar. You will exercise. You will not smoke. You will drink less coffee and less alcohol. You will rest when you need to, and no, I don't give a damn about your presidential schedule. You will do what I tell you, because this is the new deal, and if you break this one, all bets are off."
Wild horses wouldn't have dragged him into making an interjection right then. She tilted her head challengingly.
"And now you think I'm telling you this, but you don't know the half of it. You see, I'm not just talking to you. I'm talking to Leo, I'm talking to Charlie, I'm talking to the senior staff. I'm talking to your doctors, your chef, and the Secret Service. I'm talking to housekeeping, admin, and the guy who polishes the hubcaps on the presidential limo. Don't think you can manipulate anybody into helping you break this diet, because it will not happen. I know you are not unreasonable enough to have somebody fired if they won't bring you junk food, but I can - and I will - make it happen if they do. From now on, helping you to break your diet will be classed as an attempt to cause the president physical harm, and will be treated as such. Are we absolutely, perfectly clear on this?"
He gave a quick, nervous nod, and she suddenly flashed a grin at him.
"Still want to be president, honey?"
He smiled back, and waggled his eyebrows. "Did I ever tell you that you're hot when you're like this?"
She laughed, a sound that sent tingles through every imaginable part of his body, and wrapped him in a hug.
"I'm dead serious about this," she said into his shoulder.
"Okay."
"Especially the diet."
"Okay."
"You're starting tomorrow morning. In fact, you're starting now."
"Uh-huh."
"Those cookies in the box at the bottom of the cabinet? Lose 'em."
"Okay."
"And the secret candy stash in the Oval Office you think I don't know about."
"Okay."
"And take that bag of cheese puffs out of your jacket pocket."
He pulled away from her embrace. "Hey! How did you-?"
She smirked triumphantly. "I know everything."
Jed smiled. "I noticed that too." He kissed her nose. "Did you know you can burn twenty-six calories in a minute-long kiss?"
She gave him a look that didn't quite cover the amusement underneath. "Jed."
"And sex burns three-hundred and sixty calories an hour."
"An hour?" Abbey looked at him from under her lashes. "My, we're ambitious."
He reached for her. "I have it on good authority that the First Lady of the United States finds grand ambition very sexy."
"Does she now? And how does she feel about delusions of grandeur?"
"She likes those too, as long as they're mine."
"She does," Abbey agreed.
He kissed her again, and she kissed him back.