“My daughter would be rolling her eyes right now that I didn’t know that.”
“You have a daughter? What’s her name? How old is she?”
“Her name is Brenna, and she’s sixteen. She hates being in the public eye for the campaign, so I try to protect her privacy. Her mother’s, too, for that matter. Neither one of them signed up for office. My ex likes to say we divorced just in time so she wouldn’t have to go through all this campaign stuff.”
“How long have you been divorced?”
“Five years,” he says. “I wasn’t the best husband or father. I generally neglected my family in favor of work. My ambition paid off, but it also cost me everything. I’m still rebuilding my life.”
“Is that what running for office is? You rebuilding?”
“Maybe some. My family was gone, and that left me with the business I’d poured everything into. I guess I found it wasn’t as satisfying as I thought it would be, and I started wondering what else therecouldbe.”
“Well, you’ll probably get my vote,” I say, only half teasing.
“Probably?”
I laugh as he intended and shrug. “What can I say? My vote cost too many people too much for me to just give it away.”
“Seriously.” He tosses his napkin onto the table and leans forward, holding my eyes. “What concerns would you want to see addressed?”
“Many, but the thing I’m really curious about is how you plan to deal with gentrification.”
The same groups bringing money and resources into Atlanta’s historically Black communities are the same ones pushing longtime citizens out.
“I think there are solutions that can benefit all involved,” he says.
“Don’t get diplomatic on me.” My smile holds, but stiffens. “People who have lived in those communities for decades have the right to stay there if they want, not be bullied or taxed out of them, and that’s what’s happening.”
“My plan includes affordable housing for those being displaced and protections for most who live in those communities currently.”
He grins, a rakish sketch of unnaturally white teeth that’s probably been getting him in and out of trouble since high school. “We could spend the rest of the night discussing my plans for the district, but I was hoping for a night off with a beautiful woman.”
I huff out a laugh and resume eating. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrogate you.”
“Hey, if I can’t take it from my date, I’m not ready for the big stage.” He leans back in his seat. “But I can think of a better use for our time.”
His eyes wander over my face, moving to my bare shoulder and then, inevitably, as men always do, to rest on my breasts. I resist the temptation to snap my fingers and remind him that I’m up here, but what’s the use of dressing to draw his attention if I can’t enjoy it when I get it? It’s been a long time since a man looked at me this way, not counting wolf whistles and rude comments from random men on the street. This focused, sustained, intense regard heated by desire. I let it warm my skin and I return his smile.
“So I’m your first date since the divorce,” he says.
“Yes.” I raise my glass and smile at him before taking a sip. “What gave it away? The Wade welcome committee assembled in my foyer? My ten-year-old demanding to know your intentions?”
“I’m pretty sure those flowers are in the trash by now.”
I almost spit out my wine. “Why would you say that?”
He hesitates, narrowing his eyes and watching me closely before going on. “Do you mind if I ask what broke you and Josiah up? Everyone was shocked by it. You guys seemed so unshakable.”
“We were until we weren’t.” I laugh bitterly. “There’s no Richter scale for the size of our earthquakes, one after the other.”
“You loved him,” he says it as fact, not a question.
I swallow the sudden heat in my throat. “Very much.”
“And he loved you.”
I will love you until the day I die.