Off the Record (Record #1)(62)

There wasn’t really all that much specifically mentioned about him. She usually wrote articles about individual politicians, but this one was different. She was already nervous about it. She hoped he liked it.

“Hmm…” he murmured as he flipped to the last page.

“Hmm?” she questioned, dying to know what he was thinking.

“This is good,” he said, finally finishing. “I see what you mean about disjointed, but still the writing is good.”

Liz blushed. “Thanks.”

“I just…I have a suggestion, if you’re interested,” he said diplomatically.

“Oh?” she asked. This was different. Not that Brady wasn’t interested in her work. He read all of her articles, and sometimes they discussed them. Nothing too serious. They steered clear of openly discussing politics together.

“Well, I like the idea of comparing platforms to something students can relate to. Youth is the hardest demographic to access. It’s difficult to get them motivated or interested in politics, because everyone is busy partying. It’s not that that’s a bad thing for their age, but there is something outside of college that they’re going to have to enter in four years. Some people call it the real world,” he said with a shrug. Liz chuckled.

“A lot of students have this idea that the real world sucks and inside the four walls of this institution they’re safe, but there are things directly affecting them in the real world. And if they don’t take part by voting or campaigning or speaking to their congressman,” Brady said, gesturing to himself, “then how can we know how to help them in the future? People thirty to forty years older than this generation are deciding the future, because they vote. If all the students participated, that could change.”

Liz smiled. She loved this stuff. She had always felt very strongly about youth participation in the elections. It was part of the reason she had become so active in the paper to begin with.

“You’re preaching to the choir,” she said.

“Of course I am,” Brady said. “So what I’m saying is that students aren’t actually interested in student government.”

Liz narrowed her eyes. “The student government elections on campus are huge. Last semester campus was overrun with campaigns. Everyone was convincing people to vote. I think it’s a perfect analogy.” Plus, Hayden usually had a sixth sense for what people found interesting. He was a natural talent. She trusted his judgment.

“I believe you,” he said, holding his hands up as if he wasn’t trying to start an argument. “However, I think people might care more if you related it to something like basketball.”

“Oh dear lord,” she said rolling her eyes. “One of my tennis instructors keeps bringing up you playing basketball.”

“You play tennis?” he asked with a smile.

“Yeah. Not that often, though.”

“I love tennis,” he told her.

“Maybe we could play together sometime!” Then she remembered; they couldn’t be seen in public. Her face fell with disappointment. It would have been fun.

Brady leveled her with a look that said the same thing she was already thinking and moved on.

“I’m just saying that this is a basketball school. And think about it like this,” he said, warming to his pitch. “Everyone here likes basketball, but not everyone can play. We want to win. We want to make our school look good. So we recruit great players to represent our school, like voting for representatives in politics. We all have a common goal, and we help achieve that goal through various means—participation at games, donating money, tutoring players to help keep them academically eligible, etc. We’re all working toward the common good here, and if students took an interest in the game, in this case politics, and helped us achieve our mutual goals, then we might all come out on top.”

He had a damn good point. She had never really thought about it like that. She knew that if she wrote that article, though, she would have to start over. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it would take a while.

“I see your point. It would make a great article,” she said. She was sure of it. She just had to decide whether or not that was her article. The students would probably love it…

“Well, good,” he said, tossing the papers back on the desk. “That’s my suggestion. I would have been interested in it when I was in college.”

He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back into him.

“Are you finished lecturing me?” she teased.

“Baby, not even close,” he said, kissing her slowly and demandingly, until all the tension from their conversation melted from her shoulders. “I think we should go now.”

“Yeah. Like right now.” She grabbed her bag quickly and followed him out of the building.

Chapter 18

BLACK & WHITE

Her article ran the week of the Fourth of July, with only a couple weeks left before the end of the summer semester. Students were packing their bags for the long holiday, but that article still drove a high volume of readers, especially for the summer. The website went crazy with it, and Hayden called to congratulate her. Despite being so busy up in D.C., he had still been calling her more frequently, sometimes to talk about the paper, but more recently just to chat. She didn’t know whether it was because of the article she was writing, or because her planned visit was fast approaching.