Red, White & Royal Blue(18)

“Shit,” Luna says, the set of his mouth turning grim. “Chances of your mother facing off against a candidate who’s not the fucking anointed messiah of right-wing populism and heir to the Richards family legacy? Highly fucking unlikely.”

Alex smiles. “You complete me, Raf.”

Luna rolls his eyes again. “Let’s circle back to you,” he says. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you changing the subject. For the record, I won the office pool on how long it’d take you to cause an international incident.”

“Wow, I thought I could trust you.” Alex gasps, mock-betrayed.

“What’s the deal there?”

“There’s no deal,” Alex says. “Henry is … a person I know. And we did something stupid. I had to fix it. It’s fine.”

“Okay, okay,” Luna says, holding up both hands. “He’s a looker, huh?”

Alex pulls a face. “Yeah, I mean, if you’re into, like, fairy-tale princes.”

“Is anyone not?”

“I’m not,” Alex says.

Luna arches an eyebrow. “Right.”

“What?”

“Just thinking about last summer,” he says. “I have this really vivid memory of you basically making a Prince Henry voodoo doll on your desk.”

“I did not.”

“Or was it a dartboard with a photo of his face on it?”

Alex swings his foot back over the armrest so he can plant both feet on the floor and fold his arms indignantly. “I had a magazine with his face on it at my desk, once, because I was in it and he happened to be on the cover.”

“You stared at it for an hour.”

“Lies,” Alex says. “Slander.”

“It was like you were trying to set him on fire with your mind.”

“What is your point?”

“I think it’s interesting,” he says. “How fast the times they are a-changin’.”

“Come on,” Alex says. “It’s … politics.”

“Uh-huh.”

Alex shakes his head, doglike, as if it’s going to disperse the topic from the room. “Besides, I came here to talk about endorsements, not my embarrassing public relations nightmares.”

“Ah,” Luna says slyly, “but I thought you were here to pay a family friend a visit?”

“Of course. That’s what I meant.”

“Alex, don’t you have something else to do on a Friday afternoon? You’re twenty-one. You should be playing beer pong or getting ready for a party or something.”

“I do all of those things,” he lies. “I just also do this.”

“Come on. I’m trying to give you some advice, from one old man to a much younger version of himself.”

“You’re thirty-nine.”

“My liver is ninety-three.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“Some late nights in Denver would beg to differ.”

Alex laughs. “See, this is why we’re friends.”

“Alex, you need other friends,” Luna tells him. “Friends who aren’t in Congress.”

“I have friends! I have June and Nora.”

“Yes, your sister and a girl who is also a supercomputer,” Luna deadpans. “You need to take some time for yourself before you burn out, kid. You need a bigger support system.”

“Stop calling me ‘kid,’” Alex says.

“Ay.” Luna sighs. “Are you done? I do have some actual work to do.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Alex says, gathering himself up from his chair. “Hey, is Maxine in town?”

“Waters?” Luna asks, crooking his head. “Shit, you really have a death wish, huh?”



* * *



As political legacies go, the Richards family is one of the most complex bits of history Alex has tried to unravel.

On one of the Post-it notes stuck to his laptop he’s written: KENNEDYS + BUSHES + BIZARRO MAFIA OLD MONEY SITH POWERS = RICHARDSES? It’s pretty much the thesis of what he’s dug up so far. Jeffrey Richards, the current and supposedly only frontrunner to be his mother’s opponent in the general, has been a senator for Utah nearly twenty years, which means plenty of voting history and legislation that his mother’s team has already gone over. Alex is more interested in the things harder to sniff out. There are so many generations of Attorney General Richards and Federal Judge Richards, they’d be able to bury anything.

His phone buzzes under a stack of files on his desk. A text from June: Dinner? I miss your face. He loves June—truly, more than anything in the world—but he’s kind of in the zone. He’ll respond when he hits a stopping point in like thirty minutes.

He glances at the video of a Richards interview pulled up in a tab, checking the man’s face for nonverbal cues. Gray hair—natural, not a piece. Shiny white teeth, like a shark’s. Heavy Uncle Sam jaw. Great salesman, considering he’s blatantly lying about a bill in the clip. Alex takes a note.

It’s an hour and a half later before another buzz pulls him out of a deep dive into Richards’s uncle’s suspicious 1986 taxes. A text from his mother in the family group chat, a pizza emoji. He bookmarks his page and heads upstairs.