Red, White & Royal Blue (46 page)

The way Henry’s looking at him in the picture is so affectionate, so openly loving, that seeing it from a third person’s perspective almost makes Alex want to look away, like he’s staring into the sun. He called Henry the North Star once. That wasn’t bright enough.

He thinks again about Brooklyn, about Henry’s youth shelter there. His mom knows someone at NYU Law, right?

He brushes his teeth and climbs into bed. Tomorrow they find out, win or lose. A year ago—six months ago—it would have meant no sleep tonight. But he’s a new kind of icon now, someone who laughs on even footing with his royal boyfriend on the cover of a magazine, someone willing to accept the years stretching ahead of him, to give himself time. He’s trying new things.

He props a pillow up on June’s knees, stretches his feet out over Nora’s legs, and goes to sleep.

Alex tugs his bottom lip between his teeth. Scuffs the heel of his boot against the linoleum floor. Looks down at his ballot.

PRESIDENT and VICE PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES

Vote for One

He picks up the stylus chained to the machine, his heart behind his molars, and selects:
CLAREMONT, ELLEN and HOLLERAN, MICHAEL.

The machine chirps its approval, and to its gently humming mechanisms, he could be anybody. One of millions, a single tally mark, worth no more or less than any of the others. Just pressing a button.

It’s a risk, doing election night in their hometown. There’s no
rule,
technically, saying that the sitting president can’t host their rally in DC, but it is customary to do it at home. Still, though.

2016 was bittersweet. Austin is blue, deep blue, and Ellen won Travis County by 76 percent, but no amount of fireworks and champagne corks in the streets changed the fact that they lost the state they stood in to make the victory speech. Still, the Lometa Longshot wanted to come home again.

There’s been progress in the past year: a few court victories Alex has kept track of in his trusty binder, registration drives for young voters, the Houston rally, the shifting polls. Alex needed a distraction after the whole tabloid nightmare, so he threw himself into an after-hours committee with a bunch of the campaign’s Texas organizers, Skyping in to figure out logistics of a massive election day shuttle service throughout Texas. It’s 2020, and Texas is a battleground state for the first time in years.

His last election night was on the wide-open stretch of Zilker Park, against the backdrop of the Austin skyline. He remembers everything.

He was eighteen years old in his first custom-made suit, corralled into a hotel around the corner with his family to watch the results while the crowd swelled outside, running with his arms open down the hallway when they called 270.
He remembers it felt like his moment, because it was his mom and his family, but also realizing it was, in a way, not his moment at all, when he turned around and saw Zahra’s mascara running down her face.

He stood next to the stage set into the hillside of Zilker and looked into eyes upon eyes upon eyes of women who were old enough to have marched on Congress for the VRA in ’65 and girls young enough never to have known a president who was a white man. All of them looking at their first Madam President. And he turned and looked at June at his right side and Nora at his left, and he distinctly remembers pushing them out onto the stage ahead of him, giving them a full thirty seconds of soaking it in before following them into the spotlight.

The soles of his boots hit brown grass behind the Palmer Events Center like he’s coming down from a much greater altitude than the back seat of a limo.

“It’s early,” Nora is saying, thumbing through her phone as she climbs out behind him in a plunging black jumpsuit and killer heels. “Like, really early for these exit polls, but I’m pretty sure we have Illinois.”

“Cool, that was projected,” Alex says. “We’re on target so far.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Nora tells him. “I don’t like how Pennsylvania looks.”

“Hey,” June says. Her own dress is carefully selected, off-the-rack J. Crew, white lace, girl-next-door. Her hair is braided down one shoulder. “Can’t we, like, have
one
drink before y’all start doing this? I heard there are mojitos.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nora says, but she’s still staring down at her phone, brow furrowed.

HRH Prince Dickhead

Nov 3, 2020, 6:37 PM

HRH Prince Dickhead

Pilot says we’re having visibility problems? May have to reroute and land elsewhere.

HRH Prince Dickhead

Landing in Dallas? Is that far?? I’ve no bloody clue about American geography.

HRH Prince Dickhead

Shaan has informed me this is, in fact, far. Landing soon. Will try to take off again once the weather clears.

HRH Prince Dickhead

I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. How are things on your end?

things are shit

please get your ass here asap i’m stressing tf out

Oliver Westbrook
@BillsBillsBills

Any GOPers still backing Richards after his actions toward a member of the First Family—and, now, this week’s rumors of sexual predation—are going to have to reckon with their Protestant God tomorrow morning.

7:32 PM · 3 Nov 2020