Private Politics (The Easy Part) by Emma Barry Read Free Book Online Page B

Beautiful, like every part of her.
    Finally, and he hoped a little bit regretfully, she released her arms from around his neck and pulled away. He shoved his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t be tempted to pull her back.
    She wasn’t looking at him. Her attention was riveted to the floor, where she trailed a toe over the ground between them in little swirls. “Sorry. It’s been a long couple of days. I guess I needed that.”
    “I’m the hugs-on-demand guy. Whenever you need them. Whatever you need, Alyse, I’m here. For you, anything.”
    Over the years, he had watched his friends who were better with women evade, cajole and generally not say what they wanted and get it anyway. With this woman, he was George Washington and the cherry tree. He could not tell a lie, nor did he wish to. If there was the slightest chance, he was in. Now he’d made that almost obnoxiously clear.
    She made eye contact and nodded once, short but committed. “I know.”
    Two words, two syllables. No utterance could be more simple, yet nothing about it had been. He had watched her closely over the past six months and he felt like he understood her despite the barriers she erected. But those words felt honest and revealing like almost nothing else she had said to, or near, him had. She knew, knew it all. Knew how he felt, knew what he would do for her. She was apologizing for not wanting it, which of course she didn’t need to do. And yet there was sadness in her voice, as if...well, hell, he didn’t know.
    By the time he had worked through the thought, she was gone.
    He sat down and tried to get back to work, but the words for the post he had been writing wouldn’t come. Her scent lingered—maybe, hopefully, adhered to his clothes. She was in his eyes, on his hands and humming in his ears. He was sinking into the crush and didn’t want to stop, even knowing she would almost certainly stomp on his heart.
    He abandoned the post and turned to Doug’s emails, rereading them for a missed clue. In this way at least he might be able to help her.
    * * *
    “I set up another J-Date profile for you.”
    Liam shuffled through a pile of books in his living room later that night while his mother chattered away on the phone. He had had dinner plans with Michael, who’d shared a room and then an apartment with Parker and him in college. Michael was stuck in a campaign staff meeting and had canceled, however. Nothing like a Friday night cleaning your apartment and catching up with your mother.
    The decision about which books to display, which to stick in storage and which to give away was surprisingly fraught. He didn’t think he was obsessed with self-image. Friends described him as an anti-hipster, but putting
Infinite Jest
on the living room bookshelf—what did that communicate? He’d read it, all of it, and found it pretentious and brilliant by turns, often at the same time. But wasn’t putting it out there for public consumption the most pretentious move of all? He needed to get an e-Reader.
    He stopped moving books around and processed what his mother had said. She was back on the marriage and dating thing?
    “But I deleted the last one.” His words interrupted what had been a several-minute-long monologue.
    “Yes, I know. That’s why it’s
another
one.”
    “I’m not sure what precisely you’re hoping to accomplish. Celebrate how well you did with Ben and Isaac.”
    His older brother’s wedding had been scarcely six months ago. It was his younger brother Ben he should resent. That bastard had gotten married right out of college, thus making life awful for the older two.
    Okay, so he could admit that was an exaggeration and unfair to his mother to boot. His family was more culturally Jewish than anything. He remembered entire years when they’d never darkened the door of a synagogue. His bar mitzvah experience had been pretty laid-back. The pressure to marry a nice Jewish girl hadn’t really been there as it had been for some