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“So, are you bride or groom’s side?” S. Seaborn, also known as the man sitting to the left of Ainsley, finally asks.
It isn’t that Ainsley has been waiting for him, or anything. Well, she has, but only because she already knows everyone else on their table and doesn’t particularly care for any of them; Donna’s friend Casey is some hotshot start-up investor who thinks he’s better than everybody, Josh’s ex Amy is, well, his ex, and it’s the principle of the thing no matter how much Donna claims she’s fine with the two of them staying on good terms, and, okay, she hasn’t technically met M. Hooper, but she’s kind of freaking Ainsley out just from the way she’s been staring. Which is to say that all of Ainsley’s hopes for a pleasant conversation throughout dinner hinge on S. Seaborn. The fact that he’s movie-star handsome doesn’t hurt, even if most of Hollywood vote Democrat.
“Bride’s,” Ainsley says brightly–maybe a little too brightly, if his quick blink is any indication; she rushes to save herself by adding, “Donna and I used to work together. What about you?” She leaves out the part where they really became friends after they figured out they’d both slept with the same local politician and swapped horror stories; it doesn’t seem like an appropriate story to tell at Donna’s wedding to someone who is certainly not Cliff Calley, Republican rep. for the State House.
“Oh, Josh and I used to work together too. Clerked for the same guy after law school,” Seaborn says, which more or less confirms the whole Democrat thing, but Ainsley always knew she was going to be a red dot in a blue sea at this wedding, so she isn’t all that disappointed. A little disappointed, perhaps, but not surprised. He extends his hand to her and says, “I’m Sam. Nice to meet you.”
“Ainsley,” she returns, shaking it firmly. Unnecessarily, she adds, “That’s Ainsley with an ‘N’.”
“People call you Amesly?” Sam frowns.
“More than you’d think,” Ainsley sighs, pointedly not looking at Amy sitting opposite. She glances over at the top table instead, where Josh and Donna are somehow talking to each other a mile a minute and gazing soppily into each other’s eyes at the same exact time. She’s never quite been able to pull that one off. The gazing soppily part, that is; Ainsley can talk someone’s ear off just fine. “I suppose you must have seen this coming for years, if you and Josh have known each other for so long.”
Sam smiles, but only in that placating, slightly-awkward way that the truly bamboozled can pull off. “I don’t think I understand you right,” he says. “Josh and Donna have only been together for–”
“Eight months,” Ainsley finishes for him. It’s not exactly hard to miss; even if Ainsley hadn’t been one of the first people to know when Josh and Donna made things official, on account of Donna needing to beg off being set up with any more of Ainsley’s friends at the local Young Republicans chapter, Donna’s huge Catholic extended family keep muttering the phrase shotgun wedding with little discernment of who’s around to hear it. The ever-present flute of champagne in Donna’s hand hasn’t seemed to do much to shut them up. “But we all knew, obviously, by which I mean everyone knew they were either going to get married or one of them was going to move halfway across the country so they’d never have to see the other one get married to someone else, but now that I think about it with the internet these days they’d have to see that happen anyway, and I think if Donna ever tried to marry anyone else Josh would run for President just so he could commit another gross act of Democrat overreach and make an executive order to outlaw it, although I suppose he could have also just shown up to the wedding and objected, too. I don’t think Donna would stay engaged long enough for a full election cycle. You know, Jesuit priests take it very seriously when someone objects to a wedding, I read a feature about it the other day. Anyway, it’s like how everyone knows Romeo and Juliet are going to die even if they’ve never read any Shakespeare or heard of Romeo and Juliet before, because the full title of the play is The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, and that is just how tragedy works. In the classical sense. Not that I’m calling this wedding a tragedy, I think it’s great, it’s just a foregone conclusion. You understand what I mean.” Ainsley takes a large gulp of wine to punctuate the end of her sentence.
Sam stares at her for a long minute. “Not at all,” he says at last, and Ainsley feels her cheeks pink with embarrassment, but he doesn’t actually look that annoyed. He doesn’t look like he’s making fun of her, either, although his Hollywood-handsome features are twisted with bemusement. “Sorry, this is very much beside the point–I think you had one–but did you say gross act of Democrat overreach just then?”
Oops. On the other side of the table, Amy tears herself away from where she’s ripping Casey a whole new one about the importance of intersectional feminism in the rising tech industry, or something equally as condescending, to chime in with, “Ainsley’s a Republican, Sam. She’s associate counsel for the state party,” before flashing her teeth in a shark-like smile and starting off on Casey again.
And now Sam looks annoyed. “You’re a Republican?” he demands, outraged. “You said you were friends with Donna!”
The implicit text behind that statement is: and Donna’s not a Republican. The implicit text is: how are you at this wedding? Ainsley sniffs, and says, “I am. We volunteered at the same legal aid clinic.”
“I didn’t think Republicans believed in legal aid,” Sam sneers. Great, he’s not just a Democrat; he’s one of those Democrats. The opposite side should hire Ainsley any time they want to fight a DINO allegation; she’s yet to find a Democrat who really is in name only.
“We believe in preserving the original intent of the constitution,” Ainsley says, “and I made it past the Sixth Amendment in law school.”
“Which was, what, Liberty University?”
“Harvard, actually,” Ainsley snaps, and then she remembers she’s at a wedding and she promised, promised Donna she wouldn’t get into any arguments tonight, especially not political ones, and adds, in a smaller voice, “It’s not contagious, you know, you’re not going to catch an NRA membership from sitting next to me. I was just making small talk. You really didn’t know about Josh and Donna?”
She watches as Sam continues visibly bristling…and then as he deflates all at once, like a puppet with his strings cut. It is possible, Ainsley thinks, that she wasn’t the only one barred from talking politics tonight, which makes her feel a little better. “No,” he admits at last, just as the waiter places his bowl of soup in front of him. “I mean, he mentioned her, obviously, but I never thought…well, I’ve been living in California, so I mostly just talk to Josh on the phone these days. I didn’t see them around each other. You’re telling me they were always like that?” He gestures vaguely at the top table, where Josh is full-force dimpling at the mere sight of Donna unfolding her napkin into her lap.
“No,” Ainsley decides. “They were worse. You’re allowed to look at your wife like that. Not so much your paralegal who’s seeing someone else.”
“Ah,” Sam says diplomatically. He hesitates with his spoon above his soup. “I see what you mean.” He looks at Ainsley again, like he’s seeing her for the first time—like he likes what he sees, even—and adds, “I liked the way you put that. You have a good turn of phrase.”
Ainsley preens. She waits until he has a mouthful of soup before she says, “I know. I usually convince people to see things my way.”
Sam waits until the soup course has been cleared away before he makes his next pounce. Which is polite enough, Ainsley supposes begrudgingly, but it doesn’t take away the sting of his pointed question: “So why don’t you have a date?”
Ainsley turns in her seat so fast that she’s surprised her head isn’t spinning; she’s fairly sure she gave Margaret a good thwack with the ends of her hair. Sam quirks his mouth affably at her, but listening to him slurping soup for the past twenty minutes has solidified her against his charms. Mostly. “Who says I don’t have a date?” she challenges.
Sam shrugs. On someone who looks like him, with that chiselled jaw and those piercing blue eyes, it ought to be all charming, fluid movement—and it is charming, in a way, but certainly not fluid. Sam moves with an awkward coltishness, like a man half his age who hasn’t quite grown into his spindly limbs yet, and usually Ainsley finds this sort of thing irritating and affected but on Sam it’s almost endearing. “I do,” he says, which is why it’s only almost. “You get to my age, and there’s suddenly a wedding every week. I’m familiar with the shape of an eligible singles table by now.”
“And I’m sitting next to you, so you’re saying you think you’re also eligible,” Ainsley drawls, syrupy sweet. “Careful, I nearly took that as a compliment.”
Besides, Sam clearly hasn’t been paying much attention to their other tablemates. Amy just called Casey a cunt. Eligible, Ainsley thinks with self-contained eyeroll, is one hell of a stretch.
“Seriously,” Sam insists. “Why didn’t you bring a date? You’re like FOX News’ wet dream of an anchorwoman.” He winces as soon as he says it, and quickly talks over Ainsley’s immediate cry of protest: “You’re very attractive, is what I mean. Physically. Politically, I still find you repulsive.”
“You haven’t the faintest clue what I stand for politically,” Ainsley says dismissively, because capital D ‘vote blue no matter who’ Democrats never do. Still. He has a point. And the worst part is, he knows it, too, judging from how smug his grin is becoming. “Look,” Ainsley acquiesces, “if you must know, I’ve struck out of my usual dating pool, and it’s been a lot harder to swap dates with Donna ever since Josh entered the equation.”
Sam laughs, like he can’t help himself. “I can’t believe someone who looks like you could ever strike out. And you used to trade dates with Donna? But she’s…” he trails off, like there isn’t a polite way to say a college dropout and a progressive idealist and everything Josh Lyman ever wanted, which is to say, the complete opposite of you, so how could you possibly attract the same type of man? Maybe there isn’t. Certainly not at Donna and Josh’s wedding, anyway. And it isn’t as simple as that besides. Donna and Ainsley used to date the same men because they were always everything Ainsley was looking for on paper, and the exact opposite of what—or who—Donna really wanted, and the ends weren’t supposed to be the same even if the means to get there were. It makes sense why Donna never made it work with any of them. Ainsley has never quite been able to get to the bottom of why they didn’t work with her, though.
But that’s none of Sam’s business. “Men are stupid,” she says brusquely, “and they like blondes. Don’t you think Donna and I look the same from behind?”
Sam squints over at Donna—laughing as Josh waves a piece of steak aggressively in the midst of some anecdote or another—and shrugs. “Not really,” he says.
“Well, that makes two of you,” Ainsley says, trying not to sound too resigned. She hesitates, unsure whether to spell out the obvious, then decides, why the hell not, “The other one is Josh.”
“You’d certainly hope so,” Sam says, amused, and then, with a sudden laser-like focus, he adds, “You really don’t look anything like Donna from behind. For a start, your hair is about a foot longer than hers.”
Ainsley giggles, girlish; she can’t help it. “Oh, Sam,” she says. She thinks about putting her arm over his shoulder, because she suddenly feels very, very sad about the fact that he lives all the way over in California and is a presumptuous, judgmental liberal besides. She doesn’t, of course, but she thinks about it. Still, Sam’s smile turns strained, like that isn’t at all the response he was hoping for.
“Women say that to me a lot,” he says. “It isn’t ever a good thing, is it? Which is why I suppose I struck out, too.”
Oh, Sam, Ainsley thinks again, but she has the good grace not to say it out loud this time. He’s looking down at his freshly-presented steak like a forlorn puppy—an absurd simile, Ainsley knows, because what puppy wouldn’t like a nice cut of steak—and she doesn’t even have it in her to mock him for ordering it well-done. Well, she does, but. She doesn’t particularly want to, is the thing. “I hear California is full of freaks, anyway,” she tells him. “Maybe it was for the best.”
“Full of liberals, you mean,” Sam rolls his eyes.
“That, too,” Ainsley says innocently, smiling at the waiter as he places her own steak in front of her—medium rare, the way it’s supposed to be eaten. Donna doesn’t even like steak, Ainsley knows. True love must be something else.
“So when you say you struck out,” Sam starts, gesturing for a passing waitress to refill both their glasses.
The wine is going to her head, Ainsley thinks, because her stomach drops at the unspoken question. Which is strange, because Ainsley prides herself on holding her liquor with the best of them—like all good North Carolina girls are taught to do—and she’s certainly lined her stomach enough, though something sweet wouldn’t go amiss. She can’t remember what Josh and Donna chose for the dessert course, but she really hopes they’re not left wing enough to choose something without refined sugar or gluten. “You’re really stuck on this, huh,” she says, aiming for casual, except Ainsley has never been casual about anything in her life. Not really.
Sam frowns at her over the rim of his wineglass. “I’m just trying to understand,” he says. “You’re beautiful, and a Harvard graduate, and, as much as I wish it weren’t true, there are plenty of conservative men out there. You’re really telling me that not a single one of them wants you?”
“Don’t be so ridiculous,” Ainsley says. “Of course they want me. I’m—convenient. I dress nice and I talk smart and I make liberals crap themselves, but after about five or so dates they figure out that I’m not going to quit my job to pop out ten babies and that I can argue just as well with them as I can with the likes of you, and suddenly they stop calling. It’s no different on the other side of the aisle, except they also think they can make me vote Democrat with nothing but their magical dick and a preschool-level explanation of how Social Security works. Look, Sam, I know what I look like, and I know I can afford to hold out for the real thing. I don’t believe in divorce, so I’d like to get things right the first time. Why shouldn’t I hold out? I don’t need you or anyone else to tell me I can get a date if I want. I don’t want a date. I want whatever made Josh Lyman agree to get married in a church.”
And it really isn’t such an impossible ask. Shouldn’t be, anyway. Except it took the better part of seven years for anything to come of Donna and Josh, even though they were superglued at the hip and finishing each other’s sentences and, hell, celebrating their work anniversaries from practically Donna’s first day on the job, so sometimes Ainsley can’t help but think—if it took that long for them to figure things out, how much longer does she have to wait? She’s never had a Josh. She used to have more male friends when she was younger, but they either turned out to be real douchebags who gave the party a bad name or cut themselves loose after finding wives and girlfriends of their own, women who often looked just like Ainsley but without the word vomit and the willpower. Ainsley doesn’t want to have ten children, but she thinks at least one might be nice. She’d like to have a big white wedding before she turns forty.
And it’s pathetic, but sometimes she’s so lonely. She isn’t going to soften herself for anyone, wouldn’t even think about it, but it’s hard to deny that it makes her life harder. That maybe if she were less honest and less scrupulous and less principled, she would be happier in the long run. That, just by being herself, she makes everything a thousand times more difficult.
“Sorry,” Ainsley says. “I tend to go on, sometimes.”
“I broke off two engagements for the same reason,” Sam blurts out, in a strangled voice that suggests he didn’t hear her apology at all.
Ainsley snaps her head up from the tablecloth. “Excuse me?”
“I mean, I believe in divorce, don’t get me wrong,” Sam says quickly. “My parents—well, I believe anyone should be able to get divorced for any reason, if that’s what they want, but sometimes there really is a reason, if you know what I mean. And my fiancées—they were great women. Gorgeous and accomplished and perfect for me on paper, and I’m certain that I loved them, but. It wasn’t enough. A work thing would come up, and I wouldn’t think twice, you know? Which wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d been the same way, but they weren’t. It wasn’t going to be a happy ending for us, so I didn’t see the point in delaying the inevitable. It just felt disrespectful to the institution.”
“Finally, something we can agree on,” Ainsley says wryly. Maybe she has had too much wine. “When you say perfect for you on paper…”
“We never argued,” Sam says. He sounds a little weepy, but maybe that’s just the wine, too. “Not even about things like the dishes. Sometimes it felt like we were asleep.”
“Are you eating that macaron?”
“Wha—they literally just got here!”
“I know, which is why I’m asking now if you’re going to eat it.”
“I don’t know yet. Where do you even put all that food, anyway?”
“You can’t possibly think that’s a polite question to ask a lady, Sam.”
“I have a genuine intellectual curiosity. There’s no way you can eat like this on a daily basis.”
“I get my steps in, don’t worry.”
“I wasn’t worrying, I was just—Ainsley, that’s Margaret’s plate.”
“She’s passed out on the table. She doesn’t need it. Ugh, what flavour is this?”
“I think it’s mango and bergamot. There’s a reference sheet somewhere.”
“That’s the problem with you namby-pamby liberal types. You always have to reinvent the wheel. What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned chocolate cake?”
“I notice this hasn’t stopped you from eating it.”
“In about two Democrat supermajorities from now, all sugar will be banned. I’m building my reserves where I can.”
“You can’t possibly think that that’s true.”
“Correct, I know it’s true. I read the latest Nutrition in Schools bill that’s entering the House.”
“…Okay, you’re right. Not about the sugar ban thing, that’s ridiculous, but this is a weird flavour combination for a dessert.”
“It’s just not right, is it? And all I’m saying is I don’t think it’s right that the government should regulate what someone chooses to eat.”
“But you think it’s fine they criminalise and aggressively prosecute people who use drugs, I’m sure.”
“That’s very different. Drug use leads to crime and antisocial behaviour, not to mention that the production and selling of illegal substances finances organised crime. Nobody gets killed over a bag of sugar.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t get killed over a bag of cocaine if criminalisation didn’t make the black market a lucrative necessity.”
“I don’t even know where to begin with how naïve that is—oh, this one is blueberry. Try it.”
“…oh, wow.”
“When all else is said and done, I think love is very simple,” CJ Cregg is saying from the top table, champagne glass held aloft as she gives her maid of honour speech. “The first time I met Donna, it was her second day on the job and she was already arguing with Josh like they were an old married couple, which at that point they basically were. I asked Josh who she was, and, by the way, when the hell did he decide to get his own paralegal instead of just bothering Toby’s, and he looked at me like I was stupid. ‘This is Donna,’ he said, like it was that obvious. Maybe it was. The funny thing is, I asked Josh later that night how old Donna was—a little accusatorily, I must admit; she looked a hell of a lot younger than she really was back then—and he didn’t have a clue. He just wanted to pretend she’d always been there so badly, that was all. I can’t tell you the exact moment Josh and Donna fell in love with each other, but I think it was probably around the time they started talking about each other like they’d known one another for years. True love makes you forget how to put your best foot forward. You just hope that the one you usually have matches theirs. I think it’s safe to say after the better part of a decade that all of Josh and Donna match, especially the best parts. To Josh and Donna—it’s about damn time!”
“I would very much like to buy you a drink,” Sam says in an undertone.
“It’s an open bar,” Ainsley says absently, watching Josh dip Donna into a kiss as their first dance comes to an end. The meaning of Sam’s words catch up to her just as everyone around them starts clapping, neatly coinciding with all the blood in her body rushing to her ears, and all she can splutter out is, “Wait, what?”
“I’d like to buy you a drink,” Sam repeats. He has this bright, earnest look on his face, and out of all the looks Ainsley has seen on him tonight—gobsmacked, smug and smirking, melancholy, flustered—this one might be her favourite; it makes him seem like a little boy. “I enjoyed talking to you tonight. I’d like to keep talking—of course, it now occurs to me that you had little choice but to talk to me, and I wouldn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable—“
“Sam,” Ainsley cuts him off before he can bluster his way into a…she’s not sure what, exactly, but he’s talking very fast and she’s mildly concerned he might worry himself into a connipition. “I liked talking to you, too. But you’re a—“ she cuts herself off. You’re a Democrat, she almost said automatically, but that isn’t really why she wants to say no. And it’s a bad reason besides, because it isn’t stopping him from asking her out. “You live in California,” she amends more kindly. “And I’m not that kind of girl.” She’s too polite to say I don’t do one night stands, but he seems intelligent enough; he’ll get the gist.
Sam furrows his brow. “That’s…the only reason you’re saying no?” he asks. He doesn’t sound all that disappointed, which might be an ego hit, except it sounds more like he’s…checking something.
Ainsley thinks for a moment. He’s handsome, that’s a given. Compared to most lefties who are as hardcore as he seems to be, he got over the Republican bombshell incredibly quickly; they had bickered, sure, but it hadn’t felt condescending. She’s sure that if she announced right here and now that she’s going to quit her job and donate her life’s savings to Planned Parenthood then he’d be thrilled, but she gets the sense that wasn’t why he’d been debating with her. He’s sweet, and he seems kind, and, sure, maybe he isn’t her perfect guy on paper, but Ainsley has run out of perfect guys on paper. It’s possible there’s a reason they don’t work for her. It’s possible that CJ is onto something, with that whole love makes you forget how to put your best foot forward nonsense.
He wouldn’t have to live in the same city, or anything. Or even the same state. It’s just—California is an awfully long way away.
“Yes,” Ainsley decides. “That’s the only reason.”
Sam’s face breaks into a smile. She hadn’t quite prepared herself, for the brute-force of a full-on, genuine, all-out Sam Seaborn smile, and Ainsley’s stomach flutters traitorously at the sight. “Then I have some great news,” he says. “I don’t live in California anymore. I moved back here last week to set up a consulting firm with Josh.”
“You’re kidding,” Ainsley says.
Sam shakes his head emphatically.
“If you’re kidding, you’re being exceptionally cruel,” Ainsley says, “and I won’t ever forgive you, and if Donna ever asks me about this I’ll tell her why. I’m not—I won’t change my political beliefs, and I certainly don’t have sex before the third date, ideally not until making things official but I am capable of some compromise, I won’t let you think my beliefs make me a prude although I’d like it stated for the record that America could do with some more prudishness right now. I’m not thin-skinned, I can stand a little teasing—I can stand a lot of it, actually—but I won’t be made to feel as though certain things are changeable about me, or that you want them to change, because they aren’t and even if they were I won’t. Change them, that is. I refuse. I’m not an easy person to be around, and I don’t want to be an easy person, and I think taking women out to dinner without letting them order dessert is cruel and unusual punishment. Sometimes I stomp my foot when I’m mad, and you cannot comment on it. And if you can accept those things, then yes,” Ainsley sucks in a huge breath, “you can buy me a drink, if by ‘buy’ you mean fetch me a mid-range glass of rosé from the aforementioned open bar.”
“Wow,” Sam says mildly, “I am amazed at your lung capacity.”
“Sam.”
“I’m not kidding,” he grins. “Let me get you that drink.”
POSTSCRIPT:
“I have a confession to make,” Donna announces, pulling a handful of pins out of her hair as she flops down onto the bed with an oof. “And you can’t get mad at me, it’s our wedding night.”
“Technically,” Josh starts, “it’s past midnight, so…” The potential strength of this argument is entirely squandered by the dreamy, absent smile that dawns on his face as he says it, like he has just this second remembered that they got married a few hours ago. It’s the same look he’s been wearing all night, and Donna has big plans for it—plus it’s very sweet besides—but he’s kind of ruining the pace of her big reveal here. She tells him as much with a pout, tapping her foot impatiently until Josh reaches over and tugs both her heels off her feet and accidentally drags her down onto the floor along with them while she giggles all the way.
“Stop,” she complains breathlessly, trying to protect her dress from crumpling on the floor, “I have to tell you something.”
“Is it that you love me?”
“Noooo,” Donna whines, and then, seeing Josh’s devastated pout, quickly corrects herself, “I mean, yes, I do, I love you very much. But aren’t you going to let me gloat about my evil scheme?”
“If it’s that you tried to pay off the waiters to switch all my shots with water after ten,” Josh says, “I did actually pay attention to the sensitivities of my system and stopped drinking then anyway.”
“No, that was CJ,” Donna says sunnily. “One half of her wedding present. The other half is, oh, I don’t know, under here somewhere." She gestures coyly at her wedding dress, letting her fingertips skirt the edge of her bodice, but holds up a manicured hand in warning before Josh can get too overexcited. “If you’re very good and listen to my big reveal, maybe you’ll get to see it.”
“You’ll let me see it anyway,” Josh says, cocksure. When Donna simply smiles at him, he adds nervously, “Won’t you?”
“That depends on if you let me gloat. Are you going to let me gloat, Josh?”
“Gloat away,” Josh decides quickly. “Gloat all you want.”
Donna smiles, beatific, and flings herself back onto the bed properly. “I,” she says, “switched Sam and Casey’s namecards at dinner.” She pauses for suitable dramatic effect. When Josh doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of this statement, she clarifies, “I sat Sam to Ainsley’s left. Get it? Because she’s a Republican? It’s funny!”
“I thought you liked Sam,” Josh protests. “You sat him next to Herr Hayes?”
“Shush,” Donna flaps at him. It’s possible she should have taken a leaf out of his book and stopped drinking, too, but then she doesn’t have to worry so much about performance anxiety. “I do like Sam. Which is why I sat him next to Ainsley, aaand…” she wiggles her eyebrows suggestively.
“Oh my God,” Josh says.
“Yes,” she grins.
“That blonde he was making out with—“
“—yeees…”
“—was Ainsley?”
“Love is a wonderful thing, Josh,” Donna declares seriously. “Everyone should have it.”
Josh suddenly beams at her, his eyes crinkling, and she feels such a rush of affection for him that she almost wants to throw up. It’s possible that’s the vodka talking. But then he swoops her up into his arms, and presses a kiss to the crook of her neck, and, nope—it’s just Josh. “Yes,” he agrees. “It is.”