Andy Keeps Trying - Chapter 01

ANDY IS TRYING

Chapter 1: Andy finds a new group

“So, White, where are we at with the survey?”

I went over my latest notes.

“Your numbers continue to rise; they look better with pretty much every demographic. We’re closing the gap with women.”

“That's what I like to hear. What about male voters?”

“There's been progress since the shooting and the trajectory is up, but you're still way behind Broadhall.”

Rebecca sighed.

“Of course, I'm a powerful woman. They hate me for it. How many points behind?”

“Twenty…”

“The good news is that we still have six months to show these idiots that a woman can do it much better than a clown.”

Clown was the official nickname given to Charles Broadhall around the office.

It was not very clever, but I have to admit, it fit him well.

Although, it was not very nice to clowns. Many of them are great artists.

Rebecca asked me a few more questions about how well we were handling and maintaining the sudden outpouring of support following the shooting, and then it was Thompson's turn to speak.

I listened with one ear as I designed the next round of surveys while he spoke about the communication strategy.

I always had too many tabs open on my screen, many of them about Broadhall's latest shenanigans.

He was seemingly everywhere with his colorful suits and ridiculous hats.

When Rebecca was being difficult, I thought of Victor and how he had to deal with the extremist asshole on a daily basis.

I was better off on my team.

Speaking of the team, Laurie ended the meeting by introducing two new staffers.

Kendrick Davis, a 23-year-old communication coordinator who would be working for Thompson (poor guy), and an older guy named Allan Black, who would be working as a political strategist alongside Bradley Philips.

Although visibly stressed for his first day, Kendrick seemed nice enough, and I was glad to have another youngster in the office.

Besides and if I may, he looked delicious sweating in his tight suit as his nipples were poking through the white fabric.

I know what you might think…

Given my history, I should have avoided thinking this way, but come on, harmless eye candy has never hurt anyone!

And the new guy was smoking hot. 

The bulge in Kendrick’s suit pants left no doubt about the fact that he was packing a big black cock underneath.

Those are just the kind of things my perverted brain notices right away.

What was I supposed to do? Close my eyes so I would not see the dick print?

Let’s be serious.

Two weeks without any sort of action had left me too horned-up to think straight.

I promised myself that I would stop thirsting over every guy though, and especially over any new employees!

(For now.)

Allan, on the other hand, was certainly not ugly but he immediately looked arrogant and unfriendly.

Just by the way he shook my hand, I knew he despised me. Too young, too gay, not Republican enough. To him, I was probably the incarnation of everything that was “going wrong” in modern society.

I could be into mature men, but Allan was not doing it for me.

That being said, I was used to this type of entitled authoritarianism by now.

I mean, I was working in politics. You had to expect cocky old brats!

Once they had both introduced themselves, I grabbed my laptop and stood up to leave the meeting room, but Rebecca called me out.

“White, come with me. We’ll have a chat in my office.”

She was not the type of person to ask if I was available beforehand or to use basic politeness to make a request.

She talked and we obeyed.

“Of course, after you.”

I followed her out the conference room to her spacious office on the other side of the hallway.

There, I noticed the latest issue of the Daily Philly News on her desk.

Adrian Park kept covering the primary campaign for the liberal newspaper.

I thought Rebecca hated the paper but apparently, she believed it necessary to read every side of the story.

This week, we were not in any of the front-page headlines.

Honestly, I was glad.

“Sit.” She commanded.

I obliged.

“Why did you want to see me, Ma’am?”

We had kept things formal in the workplace.

This was one thing I appreciated about Rebecca. Despite our history, she had never brought our personal lives into work.

However, in that instance, she seemed hesitant before speaking, which was really not her style.

“Are you okay, White?” She eventually asked.

“Why are you asking? I mean, yeah… I am. Are there any issues with my work?”

“Since the shooting, I noticed you were a bit… How to say this? Off. Just to be clear, your work is satisfactory and I’m not putting that into question here, but frankly, you simply don’t look happy to be here most of the time.”

I was not expecting this at all.

Was this her version of caring for someone?

“I guess I had to deal with the aftermath of the rally. I think like everyone else; we were all shocked by what happened.”

“Have you seen the shrink? The one I recommended when we came back to work.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, maybe you should have. Philips went to see him and it helped him tremendously.”

“I’m fine. I don’t need to go to therapy.”

She scanned me with her brown eyes.

“Suit yourself, White, but you do seem tired and, sometimes, uncomfortable with what we do here. We have the best numbers we’ve ever had; we should celebrate.”

“I guess I’m having issues being happy about the good polls post shooting… It’s a bit sordid to benefit from it.” I admitted.

“That’s the reason why you’ve been uneasy then…”

“People don’t support you for your policies. They’re just acting emotionally.”

To be clear, this statement was absolutely aligned with the data I was gathering.

“And you aren’t? Something bad happened and now, we should all suffer and victimize ourselves? That sounds pretty emotional to me.”

“No… It’s just…”

She cut me off. That was more her speed.

“Look. I know that I maintain a certain distance when it comes to my emotions but what are you expecting of me? Should I crumble, should I break down?”

“Of course not.”

“Don’t you think it was hard to be the target of a random hit-man? Don’t you think it was hard to see my husband lying on the floor, in a puddle of blood? Don’t you think it was hard when the first person he wanted to see after that happened was… You?”

She got me on the last one.

I looked down at the floor, feeling my cheeks getting red.

“I… I’m sorry about that, I…”

She rolled her eyes.

“White, I’m not saying that for you to feel sorry for me. On the contrary! I hate that idea. When my husband makes the headlines because he’s a cheater, I turn it into an opportunity. When an asshole tries to literally kill me, I do the same! What’s the point of crying and whining? I have a mission and I’m doing my best to complete it. I’m not expecting you to act the same way. I just need you to understand that this is how I operate.”

“I do understand, Ma’am. I really do, and believe it or not, I actually admire you for this.”

I was sincere.

“There’s no crisis we won’t try to spin in our interest in this office, are you fine with that?”

“I am.”

She let go of one of her rare smiles.

“Okay then. In that case, you can keep working here.”

I wondered if my spot in the team had really been in jeopardy.

“I’ll get my head back in the game.”

“Listen, White, I’m just worried about your mental health. I don’t want you to snap or fall apart when the campaign gets more intense. I need you at your best. You’ve become a valuable member of this team.”

“I know, and I’m fully focused on my task.”

“As I’ve told you, your work ethic and professional qualities are not the issue here. I think there’s a CwT meeting coming up; you may want to attend.”

“CwT?”

“Cope with Trauma. It started when another shooting happened a couple years ago and I know they’re meeting every Friday night near the townhall. A few people who were at the rally mentioned it to me. You won’t have to talk or anything, just see if it can help you.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll check it out.”

“Your call.”

I walked out of the office but could not resist one last question. The one that had been keeping me up at night.

“Is David feeling better?”

“You haven’t asked him already?”

“No, I… I don’t talk to him. I mean, you don’t have to answer that either.”

“He’s out of the hospital. He’s well enough to file divorce papers so I assume he’s doing just fine.”

Why could not I keep my damn mouth shut?!

“I shouldn’t have asked. Thanks for the advice about the trauma group.”

“Go back to work, White. There’s a lot to do.”

I nodded yes and left.

My mind was reeling as I returned to the open space.

Those were not empty promises that he shared before his surgery, he actually followed up on his words. At the very least, about the divorce part.

I sort of assumed that was just something he had come up with in the heat of the moment.

When you have just escaped death, you might say crazy shit.

I had not checked on him since our last conversation in his hospital room. I felt very uncomfortable with the whole situation.

It was about a couple weeks prior.

My life had gotten way too complicated and I frankly needed a break from the never-ending parade of hot hunks.

Not to mention that my break-up with Darius was still very fresh.

I had already made the mistake of going immediately from David to Darius, I would not do the same thing in reverse.

I needed time for myself.

Since the shooting, I had only had one other conversation with Darius.

We could not break up over a fight in a hospital so we talked it out a few days later.

My decision was already made though.

Darius would never trust me enough, I would never feel secure again, and it was pretty obvious that my relationship with David Crown was not as platonic as I made myself believe.

We were going right onto a wall, one way or another.

Darius accepted the break-up. He was quite gracious about it actually.

In all fairness, things had never been quite the same since the Daily Philly News article anyway.

Still, it was difficult to stop seeing the sexy cook… and his sexy cock!

I had believed in us, I had felt good in his arms, and great in his asshole… I needed time to mourn the relationship.

Also, the shooting did have an impact on me, whether I admitted it or not.

My sleep was disturbed. I had vivid flashbacks of the sounds, the smells, the sights, all that blood. Those thoughts woke me up in the middle of the night.

During the days, having to run polls to measure how the voters were impacted by the bullet that had pierced David's left shoulder was weighing on me.

Since Cody and Laurie were still on break— whatever that meant for them— and since he was done with his final exams at the university, we spent our evenings together, playing chess or video games for hours.

It was a great way to forget about our problems and bury our heads in the sand.

If you were wondering, my roommate was still as hot as he was before— if not more— and still very against wearing pants at home.

Talk about harmless eye candy! This was exactly what I needed: to see his bulge dancing in his Calvin Kleins.

There is nothing like having a Mario Kart battle with a hunky guy wearing tight briefs to get you going.

Honestly though, thank Goodness for Cody. He was my lifeline in this mess.

And I think I helped him, too.

We were alone together.

Despite our argument the morning of the rally, we had never been that close.

*

On Friday, I was unsure about going to the CwT meeting.

It had an AA vibe to it that I was not a fan of.

Laurie told me I should go and I trusted her judgment.

She seemed to be dealing with her own trauma a lot better than I was.

“Maybe there will be an aftershock effect, but right now, I'm just grateful. I imagine it's a bit like a person finding out their tumor isn’t cancerous. I feel relieved, I could have died and I'm still here.”

“Dang. That’s a good way to look at it.”

“I mean, I still jump anytime I hear a door being shut too loudly or any kind of unexpected noise, but other than that, I feel… Alive.”

“I have that too… The noise thing.”

“You should see a shrink, Rebecca’s right.”

“I’m fine though. The rally is still very recent, it’s normal for my brain to be on high alert. And who’s got time for therapy?”

“You’re sleeping okay?”

“That’s the other thing, I wake up constantly and I don’t want to start taking sleeping pills, I’m afraid it might turn into an addiction.”

“See, it’s the opposite for me. I’ve been sleeping like a baby ever since then. I guess I also took my distance with Cody at the same time- the lingering tension between us had been stressing me out in the last few weeks. Now, I just have to focus on work and that’s it, it clears my mind somehow.”

“Well, Cody is finally done with his exams.”

“How did he do?”

“He’s convinced that he failed miserably. I’m not sure if he’s just saying that so he won’t be too disappointed in case he actually did fail, or if he really believes it. In any case, that lifted a weight off his shoulders.”

“Maybe I should call him.”

“Don’t ask me for advice, I learned my lesson. The less I know about you two, the better off we all are.”

“You’re right. I do hope he’ll have a pleasant surprise about his degree though. He deserves it.”

“He does.”

Laurie seemed thoughtful before her phone rang. I genuinely did not know how she felt about Cody anymore.

“It’s Kendrick. I need to see him for a brief.”

“You really are the new H.R. of this team.”

“Please, there’s no H.R. when there are less than fifteen employees total.”

She smiled though.

Laurie had truly been living since she was given more responsibilities at work.

Her role had become much more important since Rebecca had taken over the role of the candidate, and even more so since the primary campaign had been officially launched.

That is the main thing Cody did not understand about her. He asked her to cut down on the hours when she was thriving in her job for the first time ever.

Big miscalculation on his part. If I had to guess, I would say that was the main cause of the “break”.

Laurie left to help Kendrick out and I finished my work.

I had set an alarm to leave at 6 p.m. at the latest and go to the damn meeting.

“Cope with Trauma”, what a program for a Friday evening…

On the way, I kept telling myself that I was free to turn back at any point and that if it turned out to be too cringy, I could just leave.

I almost did as soon as I walked in.

In a depressing room, I saw four rows of about a dozen chairs, half filled with people, some of them already chatting, facing five empty chairs on a little stage.

I stayed for the free cookies and orange juice on a table on the side. I was hungry as fuck.

I glanced at the people sitting. The group did not seem like trauma victims, but what is a trauma victim supposed to look like anyway?

I recognized a familiar face when I sat down.

On the row in front of me, three chairs on my left, Adrian Park, the journalist from the Daily Philly News was there, scrolling on his phone.

I suddenly remembered that he was at the rally, covering Rebecca’s speech.

Even sneaky journalists had trauma and feelings. Who knew?

I say sneaky but I was not too sure I was mad at him anymore.

For sure, I had hated him after the release of the article- he was an annoying rascal chasing me for his scoop- but he did keep his promise of never revealing my identity.

I came to the conclusion that he actually believed in the crap he was telling me about wanting to highlight the conservative’s hypocrisy on gay rights.

He was biting his nails waiting for the meeting to start.

He looked very cute with his short, slightly curly dark hair and his round glasses; he had mixed American-Asian origins but I was not too sure about his ethnicity.

Whatever they might be, his parents genetics had done a great job. Too bad we had started off on such a wrong foot.

Well, maybe it was just my horniness talking.

I thought that I should jerk off once I returned home; that would certainly help me with not viewing anyone I was meeting as a potential option.

Adrian was probably already dating someone anyway. A good-looking journalist can get himself a boyfriend in Philadelphia, easy.

The meeting was held by a black woman named Felicia.

She was bald, in her late forties, and you could tell she was used to dealing with all kinds of people.

She had her way of making everyone feel welcomed and listened to. Truly a rare quality.

And it was not the only one.

Sometimes, you meet someone and you can tell they are a good person right away and that was definitely the case for Felicia.

Her solar energy radiated in the sullen atmosphere of the room.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss survivor guilt.

She called three people who had agreed to share their experience from the chairs on the small stage and they spent the hour talking about their personal traumas and how they had overcome them.

The first lesson I gathered from that was that I was very privileged.

At Rebecca’s rally, nobody died except from the shooter.

The gunshots and the stampede that ensued had been scary as hell, the shock of seeing David lying there had been violent, but no innocent victim had lost their lives.

All three people who spoke during the CwT meeting had gotten into much more dire situations, a mass shooting in a school, an attack at the mall, and a terrible accident involving a child and a gun.

No need to tell you more about this, the mother of the child was the one speaking.

It was honestly gut wrenching to listen to her and I wondered how this would make me feel any better.

The gun lobbies are truly devilish.

I understood much later in the process that the point of these meetings was not to feel better but simply to learn to accept what had happened, to let yourself feel the pain, and to ultimately move on from it.

It did not work on me at the first meeting. It would work later though, when I would cry like a baby, letting go of all my frustration and anger, as I listened to other people’s stories.

Adrian Park was already at this point.

In fact, I spent most of the hour watching him going through his emotions. He had to wipe his glasses countless times because of the flow of tears.

I sincerely felt for him.

At one point, he glanced in my direction and he recognized me.

He also looked embarrassed to be caught like that. He changed his expression, trying to look collected.

I could be an ass sometimes…

When the meeting was over, I felt compelled to talk to him and apologize.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare at you. You’re the only person I recognized in the room.”

He looked much better after the session, biting into a cookie. His tears were dry.

“Is it your first time here?” He asked.

“Yes. And you?”

“Third time. I came here the day following the shooting, I needed to… I’m not too sure what I needed but it helped, so I came back.”

“Rebecca Crown is the one who told me about this group. I didn’t even know it was a thing.”

“My dad was an alcoholic so I’m used to this shit.”

“Oh.”

He chuckled.

“Don’t make that face. That’s okay, he’s dead now, and see, I’ve made peace with that. When I left my parents’ home, the AA meetings helped me understand how he could have turned into the addict who failed to raise me.”

I was obviously startled that he shared so much. I supposed it was the theme of the evening and the right place to do so, but I tried to remain neutral.

“Yeah, I never went to an AA meeting but I thought this was the vibe. I’m not sure it’s for me though.”

“The first session is rarely the most efficient. You should come back. I mean, if you’re here, I suppose that you’re not totally at peace with what happened at the rally.”

“Not totally.”

His gaze was different.

“I thought about reaching out to you, you know. Afterwards.”

“Why?”

“I saw everything. Like, when you went on stage to try to save him, and I know about your… hm… special bond with David. That must have been tough.”

“There’s no special bond anymore.”

“I didn’t mean to… Well, I just wanted to ask you if you were doing all right, but I was afraid you would think it was linked to an article I was writing or something.”

I smiled.

“I probably would have thought that.”

“Yeah. That’s fair.”

“I read your paper about the shooting the following weekend. It was well written.”

“Thank you. The investigation seems to be going nowhere though.”

“Really? You probably have more information than I do.”

“I’m not so sure about that…”

“The shooter was hired by someone, right?”

“Yes, he was a professional hit-man.”

“Crazy that this is real… You should check Broadhall’s activities in the past months. Your old friend might be hiding things from you.”

“My old friend? You know damn well that I hate the fascist prick.”

“I know he’s the one who leaked the pictures of David and I to the Daily Philly News. Don’t you think he’ll be capable of hiring a hit-man?”

Adrian bit his lower lip. He seemed perplexed.

“He was way ahead of Crown in the polls, I don’t see him doing that, but then again, he’s a crazy motherfucker.”

“That, we can agree on.”

We used our glasses of orange juice to cheers to that.

“I’ll find out about who did it though. I need to understand what happened or I won’t be able to move on. It must be some sort of a journalist tic.”

“No, I get it. We all want to know.”

“Maybe you won’t hate me so much when I uncover the truth. You’ll see the point of my work.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t?”

“There’s no point in hating anyone on this Earth, and I’ve told you, I appreciate you keeping your promise after we talked about the affair.”

“I never would have sent you to the wolves.”

“I also read your interview with Galvin.”

He laughed.

“Oh, that… Yeah, a great piece of journalism. How is David Crown doing by the way? I heard he underwent surgery.”

“He’s better, according to Rebecca. But again, am I talking to the journalist or…?”

“No, you’re just talking to Adrian here. I swear.”

“David will be fine. Physically at least.”

“That’s good news. You know, many people see him as a hero now, taking a bullet for his wife, surviving an assassination attempt.”

“My job is to test and analyze opinions, I have a pretty good idea, yeah.”

“I bet.”

We stared at each other awkwardly for a few seconds.

Again, I thought it was too bad we had started off wrong. I wished he had just been a normal guy I could have invited for a drink.

It would have been a great distraction to date someone.

“I guess I should go, it was nice to catch up with you.” I told him.

“You too.”

“Hey, Adrian. Don’t drive yourself crazy trying to solve this mystery of the shooter, maybe we’ll never know.”

“I’m a firm believer that the truth always comes out. Take care of yourself, Andy.”

I left, not sure of how I was feeling anymore.

I got another text from Victor on the way home. My toxic ex-boyfriend from college had been trying to reach out to me a few times already.

I had stayed strong and I did not reply.

You see, it was not that I did not have options for my love or sex life, it was simply that every single one of them came with a huge red flag.

How long would I be a good boy and resist leaning into my urges, though?