Free The Hopefuls by Jennifer Close

interesting,” Jimmy said, “because it’s this one who acts like she was raised an only child.” He reached out and cupped Ash’s chin. “You should see our bathroom—she has all her potions laid out, taking up the whole counter. I can barely find a place for my toothbrush in there. And she took all the closets in the house for herself, leaving me with just a half of one.”
    “It’s more than half,” Ash said. She rolled her eyes at him, but you could tell she was amused.
    “Listen,” Jimmy said. “Do you guys want to try to sneak out of here and get something to eat? This one will be three sheets to the wind if we don’t get her some food soon.” As if on cue, Ash teetered a little on her heels.
    We all looked across the room at Alan, who was talking intently to another White House staffer that I recognized but didn’t know. The guy looked bored, probably because it wasn’t really a back-and-forth conversation. Alan just kept talking at him. I felt Matt look over at me, like he was sure I was going to make an excuse for why we couldn’t go. But I answered so quickly that I surprised even myself. “That sounds great.”
    —
    Jimmy suggested we go to a wine bar on Fourteenth Street called Cork. It wasn’t that far away, but Ash insisted we take a cab. “I won’t make it one block in these heels,” she said.
    Cork was crowded, but there was one open table in the corner and we were seated right away. “Thanks, Chloe,” Jimmy said to the hostess.
    Ash turned to me. “Jimmy knows every hostess in every restaurant on this block. Before I moved here, I’m pretty sure he went out to eat every night.”
    “I put on fifteen pounds,” Jimmy said, and then he smiled at me. “And I also know all the bartenders.”
    “This looks great,” I said, looking at the menu. “We haven’t really been over this way.”
    “To be honest, Fourteenth Street is still a little sketchy,” Ash said in a low voice. She put her napkin on her lap. “I don’t love walking around here at night.”
    “It’s perfectly safe,” Jimmy said. “It’s changing quickly. Mark my words, in another year, you won’t even recognize this street.”
    The waitress came over then and Jimmy ordered a bottle of wine and a few of the dishes. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked, although the waitress was already gone. “It’s all small plates, so we can share. We can order more, I just wanted to get some food this way, quickly.”
    “Sounds good to me,” Matt said.
    Jimmy turned to me. “Beth, did your husband tell you how we met on the campaign?” I shook my head.
    “We are not,” Ash said, “spending the whole night talking about the campaign. I’ll give you five minutes and then we’re talking about something else,” which made me like her even more.
    “What else is there?” Jimmy asked, and Ash just shook her head.
    We spent much longer than five minutes talking about the campaign, mostly because Jimmy just kept talking. But he was a great storyteller—funny and irreverent—and we all listened closely, even Ash, who must have heard them all before.
    The way Jimmy and Matt met, I learned, was that Matt was helping with a fund-raising dinner in the town house of a donor in New York. He walked in a few hours before it was supposed to start and found Jimmy sleeping on a bench in the front hall.
    “I woke up to him shaking me,” Jimmy said. “He was so polite. ‘Excuse me, sir? Sir? Can I get you something?’ He had no idea who I was or he would’ve been hitting me across the head and yelling at me to get up.”
    Matt laughed. “For all I knew, you were the son of the host or maybe some drunk donor that showed up early.”
    “I hadn’t slept in two days,” Jimmy said. “I was exhausted.”
    The waitress came then with our bottle of wine and Jimmy tasted it and nodded and shortly after that, our food started arriving. It was funny how Jimmy had taken control of our table and how happy we were to let him—he