Now that Josh was asleep, Donna could admit that she had a thing for her boss's hair. She loved how it stuck up and how he looked like he had just gotten out of bed in the morning. How it curled around his nape and how soft it was.
She told him how it looked like he stuck a fork in a socket, but she was just teasing, hoping that the banter masked the growing affection she was feeling.
She stayed until she started to fall asleep herself and was tempted to just crawl next to him and fall asleep.
She made her way to the sofa before she did something that she didn't want to explain in the morning.
She was so damn tired. She hoped that meant that she wouldn't have any nightmares, nor would she be unable to sleep, because all her things were at home. She didn't even have pajamas with her.
Oh well. She'd get them tomorrow. Or just borrow one of Josh's shirts.
"Please, I'm Donna Moss, I work in the West Wing, senior assistant to Josh Lyman."
"I'm sorry, Ms. Moss. We can't let you in unless we can confirm your identity."
"But my boss-my friend-he could be…"
"I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do."
The dream shifted. Now she was standing in the waiting room, everyone's eyes on her.
"Donna, Josh's dead."
It felt like ice water had been dumped on her.
"What? What do you mean he's dead? I just talked-"
"They were too late. There's was too much-"
She screamed. She felt CJ hug her, telling her that she'd have a job, that it was ok. That Josh didn't suffer.
"I loved him."
Donna woke. She felt like she was going to be sick-she hated these dreams.
Josh could have died. No one seemed to understand that, not like Donna understood the concept. They went back to their lives, visiting him every once in a while, when they felt like it, but they went back to their jobs and pretended everything was back to normal.
She felt cold, even though it was probably still eighty degrees outside. She wrapped the blanket around her more tightly, going into the kitchen to get a glass of water.
Josh was alright, she reminded herself. He was safe and for the most part healthy. He would complain about being bored tomorrow.
He survived.
She went to check on him anyway. He was asleep, still, completely unaware that his assistant was acting crazy.
Satisfied that he was there and still asleep, she went back into the living room, turning on a couple of lights, hoping to find a book or magazine or something to keep her mind off of her nightmares.
There were tons of law books, the ones that Josh had liked and hadn't put them into the category of books he would sooner eat than read.
She pulled one on Constitutional Law from the shelves. She wonder if Josh had notes in the margins like other college students.
Just like she thought, she found his cramped, uneven handwriting all over the margins.
Ridiculous argument. No one in their right mind would interpret the law like this. Read one of the comments.
She laughed. It figures that Josh would argue with a text book. There were more comments, most of them disparaging remarks about Republicans.
She had a feeling that Josh was exactly the same now that he was in college, even down to his eating habits. One of the guys she should have met in college, instead of Dr. Freeride.
Still, if she hadn't met Dr. Freeride, she wouldn't have gone to find herself in the Bartlet campaign, and then she wouldn't have met Josh, so maybe it all worked out in the end.
She put back the law book, deciding to look through the cookbooks she bought, hoping that maybe she would find something even more impressive than spaghetti.
There were a couple of stir frys she wanted to try, along with a recipe for chicken alfredo.
She didn't even realize it when she fell asleep among her notes, the cookbooks scattered all over the place on the table, the place Josh found her the next morning.