Ex Post Facto
by Cath (button_mush@hotmail.com)
[angst/romance]
Summary: A series of fics looking at events within josh and donna's
lives from different pov's


Ex Post Facto - Part One
Stupidity

[donna pov]

We all have dreams of how we think our lives are going to pan out.

When we are young we dream about the ideology of the perfect guy, the
perfect wedding, and the perfect children. And at this young age,
we're generally too na‹ve to realise that this perfect life probably
won't turn out quite as the master plan intended.

The guy won't be perfect. The wedding might not even happen and, even
if it does, probably not as we had imagined. And as for those perfect
children, well, even they don't become what we had hoped.

Still, we are permitted these illusions, and it's only when the life
in question turns out so completely different to the ideology that we
begin to come to the conclusion that perhaps the perfect life might
not actually exist.

I suppose we'll never know.

I was still quite young when the cracks in this illusion began to
appear. And still only a few years older when it completely fell
apart.

But then I'd not change my life now for the world. Perfect might not
exist, but the achievement of undeniable happiness can almost
certainly replace it.


I guess I should start at the beginning.

Or perhaps even before then.

The night of the Illinois Primary: February 2002.

The senior staff had decided to sporadically attend several state
primaries (preferably the ones that they thought we had a chance of
winning...) and this had been deemed one of them.

It was such an anxious time, we were sitting around too stressed out,
waiting to see whether we'd won the primary or not.

And it was all too goddamn reminiscent of four years previously.
Ignoring, obviously, the facts that we weren't running this campaign,
and that we had better job prospects if it all fell apart.

I think that's what got me, really, what made it worse. I was overly
aware of what Josh was doing, how he was coping with the whole
situation.

His father had died on this night four years ago, and I don't know
whether it was bothering him or not.
Well, actually, subconsciously, I think I was utterly aware. He wasn't
coping too well, and not wanting to get over excited if we did win, in
case there was bad news to follow as there was last time.

Consciously, however, I was working hard, he was working hard, hell,
we were working hard together, and so I hadn't much time to start
conversations casually about the impact that his father's death had on
him. Not that I would have broached the subject if we hadn't been
working so much, but that's irrelevant.

So, instead I was looking for signs.

Then it was announced: we had won.

Time for victory, we thought.

And I almost completely forgot that I was supposed to be seeing how
Josh was getting on.

First, we all hugged each other enthusiastically, even Toby was half
smiling, which given it was Toby was something of a miracle.

Then the champagne was opened.

The atmosphere was something that was indescribable. There was so much
laughing, so much joy, hope, excitement, people shouting, phones
ringing, just a general ambience of success. Which was good
considering it was tentative for a while as to whether we'd even get
the nomination. Considering the President's declaration of his status
of health, hell, it was tentative whether we'd get any votes.

I was so excited that I was even oblivious to Josh's state of mind,
which was saying something considering the way I think everyone
realised I'd been hovering around him earlier in the day.

CJ grabbed a bottle and walked over to me, pouring a glass of the alcohol.

"There may be jobs for us at the end of this, after all," she
commented, practically downing the aforementioned beverage in one
gulp.

"It's looking more hopeful," I replied, copying her earlier motion.
She refilled both glasses.

We sat there for a while in silence, just drinking. Quietly drinking
and reflecting. Might there be a chance for Bartlet after all?

Then she stood up. "I'm going to go share the good alcohol," she said,
walking off in the direction of Toby. I went and joined Sam and Josh,
who were looking fairly inebriated by this point. I think they'd got a
head start on the rest of us, but I wasn't going to voice my
suspicions.

"Drunk already, Joshua?" I asked, fairly hypocritically. I say that,
as those three glasses I had already consumed (well, downed...) had
pretty much gone to my head and soon I'd be joining them.
Josh just grinned up at me.

"We've only had half a bottle," Sam protested.

"Each?" I questioned.

The evening grows a little hazy from there. Sam offered me alcohol, I
accepted. We were celebrating, after all. I think I managed to drink
the best part of two bottles myself, or at least one and a half, but
that's only since CJ has a better memory than I have. She told me that
as far as she remembered, she didn't think that she'd seen any of us
without a glass in our hands all night.

I remember little excerpts of the night, though, they suddenly come
into my conscious mind at the most unwelcome of times, floating round
in a phantasmagoria sometimes, and completely coherent at others. Like
I remember that someone put on music, and we all stood around not
knowing what to do until Sam told us all to dance. Which we did. I
think.

And I remember the conversation that I had with Josh, when we were
both pretty much as drunk as I thought we could get. Apparently not,
as I remember drinking some more after that. I don't recall exactly
what we said in that conversation, but Josh was being quite sweet, and
told me that he found me invaluable and he didn't know what he'd do
without me. Or something along those lines, I think I'm paraphrasing.
I said something about being glad that he came back to us all after
the shooting - I was getting fairly maudlin at this time, I believe.
He also said something about missing his father, but I don't remember
exactly what he was saying. I think I was staring at him too intently
to concentrate on anything else. Or so Sam informs me. I'm not sure
whether I should believe him or not.

I remember dancing with almost everyone, especially with Sam, who kept
telling me that Josh was looking at him as though he wanted to kill
him, and so he held me closer, just to see the reaction on Josh's
face. Apparently it wasn't good, so when Josh came stumbling over, Sam
gladly gave me up so Josh could dance with me.

I remember nothing after that.

Well, okay, when I say nothing, I mean almost nothing. I was certainly
sober enough to remember getting in the cab with Josh and CJ drunkenly
waving us off reminding us to not 'do anything stupid'.

If only I'd listened.

Instead I did something so monumentally stupid that I don't even
believe now that I did it. How I got myself into such a situation.

In fact, I don't even know what possessed us all to get so drunk. It
wasn't as if we'd won the election, and there were plenty more
primaries to go before we could even win the democratic nomination.
Though I suppose it was more of the idea that maybe we could do it.
There could be hope.

But, I'm digressing.

Back to my complete stupidity.

Josh and I somehow managed to get back to our hotel (I tell you, he
can be so drunk he doesn't remember where he lives, but he remembered
the hotel we were staying at). And instead of going back to our
respective rooms, I somehow felt the need to go back to Josh's. There
was apparently some actual reason behind this, I know now, but I have
no recollection of what this was. Really.

And somewhere along the way, we decide that we're wearing far too many
clothes, which was a reasonable thought, considering we had on many
layers of clothing due to the cold weather, and we were now back in a
heated hotel room. However, we decided that wearing no clothes at all
was a far better option. And things progressed from thereon.

Yes, you see where I'm going now, right?

So, okay you're thinking, you made a mistake, slept with your boss
whilst drunk, you get over it, forget it and never mention it again,
the end.

Not in this instance.

You see, I have no problem with the idea of sleeping with Josh, quite
frankly the possibility has occurred to me more than several times
over the time of my having worked for him, but this wasn't just a
mistake.

I never wanted to sleep with Josh whilst I was drunk, so much so that
I forgot the majority of it (although, don't worry, I have some
recollection of the events, the whole remembering almost nothing
worked to my advantage here...). You don't ever want to do anything like
that with someone you love. Or think you might love. You most
certainly want them to at least have some idea of what they've done,
and if the feelings are reciprocated, then great, perhaps something
can develop from there.

But for them to have no idea that what you saw as potentially the most
memorable night of your life (if you have as active an imagination as
mine...) actually happened, and to not remember most of it yourself is
somewhat frightening. And not just in the whole 'oh my god, what did I
do whilst I was drunk' kind of frightening. That's more of an acute
embarrassment in comparison.

So to wake up at 4:47 (yes, that I remember) in the morning, naked and
in the arms of your boss, at this time not remembering any of what
you've done, is not the most reassuring of ways to come into
consciousness.

So, I admit it, I got scared and ran.

Not the best moment of my life, but possibly less embarrassing than
having to face the possibility of, well, having done something
monumentally dumb.

I grabbed my clothes, dressed in as little as could be required of me
if I were to be seen in the hallway, and quickly exited the room.

I couldn't return. I couldn't acknowledge what I had done. And I
almost certainly couldn't look back to see his sleeping form.

I went to my room (I was much less inebriated at this point, and so I
had a good idea of the approximate location of it) and slowly crawled
into bed, not bothering to dress in the pyjamas that I had brought
along with me. Fortunately, I was still drunk enough that I was able
to fall quickly to sleep, otherwise I'm not sure how I'd have managed.

And then I woke up at 7:05, feeling as though I could throw up (I'm
lucky in the fact that I don't get headaches with hangovers, my
stomach just feels like crap for a whole day) when CJ rang me. She
told me that we were getting to the airport at 8:30, instead of the
previously agreed 9:00, and could I possibly inform Josh?

Putting the phone down, I remember hating CJ for sounding as though
she'd had a perfectly good morning, and I ran into the bathroom where
I proceeded to camp out for almost an hour before I decided that I
wasn't going to throw up, not yet anyhow. Then I phoned Josh.

This in itself was somewhat of a task. I remember my hand shaking
violently as I tried to recall what room he was staying in. Praying
that his usual memory loss had occurred and that he would have no
recollection of the previous night's events.

It appeared that he did not.

I'm not sure if that hurt me more. For all that I had hoped, there was
the sadly misguided ideology that he remembered all, and in
remembering might like to repeat the happening sometime in the near
future with no alcohol involved.

Instead he sounded hung over, and pissed off when I told him that he
had to be out of bed immediately and out the door several minutes
after.

I was still shaking and wanting to throw up when I hung up, showered,
dressed and packed for home. And remained in much the same state for
the majority of the rest of the day.


The next few weeks were hellish.

There was none of our usual bantering, instead a deep down almost
loathing for one another, where we bickered and fought and ignored
each other, surfaced and conquered.

I remember that I used to entertain the idea that this was perhaps
because Josh had an idea as to what had happened on the night of the
Illinois primary and was trying to keep me at a professional distance
(hey, I can dream, can't I?). But in my more realistic moments I came
to the conclusion that he was as uninformed as before, and I came to
hate him more and more because of it.

Why should I know when he did not?

Why should I be the one to know what it was like to sleep with him and
wake up with him in my arms when he could not?

It made me bitter, for reasons that I could not understand.

Work became something that I had mixed feelings about. Even as we came
first in primaries, thanks in the majority to the campaign staff, I
didn't always feel as elated as I knew I should.

Could things ever be the same again?

I used to love getting up early and going to work, but now there was
this unease; my attempts to, as I realise now, push Josh away were
getting in the way of my enjoyment of life. It was becoming quite
clear that ours wouldn't be the fairy tale romance that I had (in my
more na‹ve moments when I was still young and, well, na‹ve) fantasised
it would be.

We could no longer stand working with each other, and it was
uncomfortable. Uncomfortable for me, and most certainly for those who
had to work with us.

I left the White House two weeks later.


END OF PART ONE



Ex Post Facto - Part Two
Dealing With The Fallout


[sam pov]

If you were to ask me to pinpoint a moment in time where I began to
question the exact nature of Josh and Donna's relationship, I'd not be
able to tell you one. Their relationship has always been pretty much
as it is, although I think that the aftermath of the shooting brought
them closer, if that was indeed possible.

Were they sleeping together? I doubt it, but it was none of my
business to know unless it affected their working relationship or if
one of them was unhappy and chose to talk to me.

The thing is everyone knew subconsciously that there was more between
Josh and Donna than, say, between Ginger and I, but it was something
that went without saying. Just like Toby's cynicism, you knew it
existed, and the world wouldn't be the same without it, but unless
something was completely wrong, for example if Toby were excessively
cheerful all of a sudden, no one would even begin to think about it.

So when the nature of their relationship changed almost beyond
recognition after the Illinois Primary, it was no surprise that I
began to scrutinise their behaviour to one another more closely, and
started to juxtapose this with what I could recollect of their
previous relationship.

Not an easy task when the said previous relationship was of an
undefined manner, and given that I hadn't actually been taking much
notice of it.

When the arguments became more frequent, and the shouting could be
heard at my end of the office, I knew that something wasn't right.
(Hey, I'm an observant guy...)

They seemed to argue about everything (and trust me when I say this,
CJ occupied the room adjacent and could hear every single word
shouted). Whether it was the appropriate way to compile voting data,
or whether Donna should have her lunch in the mess or at her desk, it
all escalated into a full out war over who was right and who was
wrong. And let me tell you when they're arguing comparative merits of
Donna's filing system over a more conventional approach when you're
sitting in the room next door trying to have a serious conversation
with CJ, it doesn't exactly do much to put you at ease. And I assure
you that in that particular situation, there is no way to tell who is
right and who is wrong, even if you bring in the deputy communications
director to judge.


So, I listened to their arguments, trying to figure out what to do,
whilst at the same time attempting to juggle my own job, my
non-existent personal life, along with flying out for the occasional
Primary or other campaign event.

My conclusion: Do nothing. Leave them to resolve their own situation.

I was foolishly content to believe that a solution could be found
without anyone else's assistance.

It was.

Donna left.


This, however, I doubt would have occurred if Josh hadn't had that
final argument with her.

This time it was serious and there would be no resolution.

It started out pretty much as the other arguments had done. Donna (I
believe, as this part was second hand information from Margaret) had
asked (very reasonably - again, I have no proof of this, Margaret is
Donna's friend, after all) if she would be allowed to leave early the
next day for an unspecified reason. Josh refused to grant this
requirement, stating that because she had been so distracted earlier
in the day (something about some engineers coming in and doing some
repair work near to Donna's desk. Apparently Donna had offered them
coffee and Josh wasn't too happy) she'd need to stay later the next
day to finish all today's work as well as tomorrow's. At this point we
all dashed into CJ's office, where she told us to shut up so she could
hear what was about to transpire.

"I've finished all the work that I can possibly do today," Donna
stated reasonably. "And I shall come in early tomorrow if you
anticipate that we shall have a lot to do." I think this was her
attempt at civility whilst trying to keep Josh at a distance.

"So I'm going to pay you to leave this office when recently you've not
done anything to suggest that you even deserve the pay that you've
received, so that you can go swan off for some date with yet another
gomer? I took you into my office five years ago without question and
all the thanks I get is for you to go try and sleep your way around DC
in hopes that one of the no hopers you date might actually be
interested? Your pathetic little personal life will not get in the way
of me running my office, do you get that?" Josh replied snidely, his
voice increasing in volume. There was no need for us to even be in
CJ's office anymore; no doubt that even Leo could hear the end of that
one.

"Did I even suggest for one moment that the reason that I am leaving
is because of a date?" Donna asked curtly. "Josh, for God's sake, be
reasonable. I just need to leave the office and get away from you just
an hour early, is that too much to ask?" Donna's voice had begun to
get louder too. They would both soon be fighting for all they were
worth, damn the consequences, the hurt. I began to stand up from the
chair that I had sat down on so I could go and try to prevent a
potentially problematic situation. CJ held me back, giving me a look
and shaking her head to suggest that it wasn't my place to finish what
they'd started.

"So you're leaving to get back at me, is that right? That's pretty
damn immature, even for you," he sneered. He actually sneered. It
seemed as though he was trying to bait her; to make her hit him or
something else equally unthinkable.

"Josh get over yourself. Not everything in life is about you, no
matter how hard you try."

"So Miss Donnatella Moss, the uneducated, ungrateful little bitch from
the fucking middle of nowhere is telling me that, for one more time in
her insignificant life, I'm wrong. Well, let me tell you something,
here you are nothing, you mean nothing, and no one gives a damn what
the hell you think. Especially me." It was more to do with the tone of
voice, I think, rather than the actual words. Although if someone had
said that even in the kindest voice possible I'd still hit them. The
silence that pervaded the room after this declaration was almost
deafening.

"Josh, go to hell." We almost missed the final shot, it was said so
quietly and with so much enmity.

I stood up and quickly exited CJ's office at the same time as Donna
left Josh's office.

I looked over at her, she was shaking, colour almost gone from her
already pale face, and without a word she grabbed her bag and started
piling everything from her desk into it.

I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do, so I quickly walked
over to her, and brought her into my arms, hugging her with all my
might. Eventually she pulled back and I looked at her. She was staring
at the door to CJ's office, and turning round I noticed that CJ, Toby,
Margaret and Ginger were standing there, looking about as shocked as I
felt. I looked back over at Donna. She wasn't crying, but the tears
didn't look far off and I figured she'd rather not cry in front of us.

I recall thinking that perhaps I ought try and persuade her to stay,
but I realised soon that it would be a futile attempt. There was no
way that she could stay in the same place as Josh, and it would be
counter-productive in any case.

She continued to place items into her bag, and so instead all I could
do was to help her put some photos in her purse amidst everything
else.

She muttered a quick thank you, turned and fled.

I felt completely useless and helpless, and so very pissed off with
Josh. As I think we all were. CJ and Toby both insist that they were
more than ready to go in there and beat the hell out of him, but I got
there before they could even say a word.

I was seething, seeing red, and there was nothing but lashing out at
Josh and letting him know what a complete bastard he was being that I
thought would help. I needed to tell him how little he deserved any
friends, and was unlikely to be receiving much from me in the way of
friendship any time in the near future.

So I went into that office, slammed the door behind me, and instead
started to talk. I can yell, but I didn't think that it would have
achieved anything, especially since too much of it had been done
recently. So instead I talked quietly, and with meaning.

Josh got the point.

I advised that he go home and get his act together and think about
what he was going to say to Leo in the morning when it was discovered
that Josh had been so unprofessional.

Josh did as I suggested without a word.


I never did find out what Leo said to him, but Josh wasn't the same
for some time to come. Although this could have been attributed to the
fact that everyone was avoiding him pretty much like the plague,
ignoring him where possible, speaking to him without any kind of
warmth or feeling.

Everyone thought that he deserved it and, until I found out his
reasoning behind the whole situation, I agreed.

However, now I know different, and so am quite ashamed of my behavior
in those months, but there's nothing that can be done to change it.

And then everything began to fall apart.

It gave us more reason to hate Josh, which had universally been
decided the best course of action, considering the latest issue was
his doing.

In fact, comparatively, most of us were unaffected by the problem,
which started in mid-April, just after Easter, and was only resolved
months later.


The press had been leaked a story by a seemingly reliable source, and
after having a few facts to back it up proceeded to publish it not
caring about the consequences. The headlines that morning were all
along the same lines: Josh had received money from the tobacco
companies in order to 'do what he could' to put aside the case we were
building against them.

The 'do what he could' allegedly had manifested itself in the loss of
some memos that we had been missing a while back in the office.

When confronted, Josh denied knowledge of any of this, but there was
something in his expression that said otherwise. I knew that I could
no longer trust him, or at least back then I knew.

It couldn't be proved that Josh had had anything to do with the
missing memos, and so he was allowed to remain on staff, but how he
actually managed to stay, I don't think I'll ever know.

He was on his own, he had no friends, and he went home at a reasonable
hour everyday after completing all his work. He talked to no one
unless he had to, didn't join us for drinks, didn't yell at senators,
congressmen or republicans and just kept himself to himself.

His new assistant, who hadn't been there long enough for having
anything to do with the missing memos, was the face of
professionalism, and Josh learned to work with her, but it wasn't the
same.

Josh changed in those few months, became a mere shadow of his former
existence, and it wasn't surprising, but no one really noticed.


The memos turned up again in July, the explanation being that a
nameless temp worker had filed them someplace so obscure that no one
had even looked.

I looked to Josh when this news came to light, and again when the
papers printed their retractions of the story and begged us all for
interviews on what they thought might have been some sort of
conspiracy on the behalves of big tobacco to bring down Josh. Although
I had no hope that he might forgive me for my behavior, I also noticed
that there was no relief evident on his face. I even began to suspect
that he might have known all about it the whole time, but I had no
basis for this suspicion.

No one apologized for how they had reacted towards him, I guess we
were all still a bit shocked about the whole thing, and besides it was
too late to go back to where we had been before. None of us were
entirely too easy around him, and it took a long time and a night of
alcohol and confessions before we could even say that we were friends
again, and before Josh was anywhere near back to his former self.

Not once in any of these months did we hear anything from Donna. None
of us knew where she'd gone, although I suspected that Leo might have
known as he'd mentioned something about a reference. Even after the
whole thing was over she didn't get in contact. It didn't surprise me,
I must admit, but I still would have liked to have kept in touch, even
via emails. Certainly, I could tell that Josh was missing her,
although he'd never admit it, especially after the way that he'd
treated her.


Things were just starting to get back to normal when I received an
invitation to a 40th birthday celebration of a friend whom I'd gone to
law school with. He'd taken a few years out before starting college to
make enough money to go, which is why he was older than me (yes, I may
be getting there, but I'm not that old yet, thank you). The guy's name
was James Banks and he was a partner at a prestigious law firm in
Boston. We'd been quite good friends in law school, although I'd not
actually spoken to him for a couple of years. Apparently the whole
gang from school was going to be there, and it was an opportunity to
catch up with them all, and get drunk, that I couldn't miss.

So I left early Saturday morning late in July for Boston. The party
was from 7 onwards at a nice hotel in the middle of Boston, and I'd
made reservations to stay there overnight.

I arrived at the party at 8, just late enough that things had got
going. The band was playing and people were sat at tables surrounding
the dance floor, chattering away loudly. I looked around, and quickly
found the table where all my old friends were. They'd already set a
seat aside for me, so I sat down after saying hello to everyone and
started to find out what everyone was up to now. The majority of them
were still in law, most were married and had kids. I felt very much
the odd one out, but they were very impressed with where I'd got to
and some admitted that they'd even followed my career somewhat,
especially TV appearances, if only to brag to their friends that they
knew someone in the White House. James finally made his way over to
our table, and thanked me for turning up, albeit an hour late. We got
to talk about his law firm and he told me about his new assistant.
Apparently she'd also worked in the White House, but he wasn't sure
quite what she'd done. However she was very friendly and efficient so
he had no complaints. I was going to ask what her name was (in case I
knew who she was) but then some other people at the table started
reminiscing the past, and we got caught up in that conversation so I
forgot to ask.

After we'd done making fun of me for about the thirtieth time for some
dumb thing I'd done in college (hitting on the wife of one of our
professors to name but one), I excused myself in order to go to the
bar. It was quite crowded, so I ended up waiting there a while behind
this tall blonde girl who looked quite attractive from the back. She
then got to the bar and ordered a screwdriver and started conversing
with the guy serving her.

"Did you know that vodka is made from potatoes?" she told the
bartender. I stood still with shock, ignoring another bartender when
he asked what I would like to drink. In fact, scarily enough the song
'It's a Small World' popped into my head and it was refusing to move.
When asked again, I ordered a beer, and then turned to my right and
tapped the blonde girl on the shoulder. She turned round and looked as
shocked as I felt.

"Sam?" she asked. "Wh...what are you doing here?"

"I could ask the same thing of you, but would I be correct in assuming
that you are the new assistant who James Banks has been telling me
about who used to work in the White House?" I asked, already knowing
the answer. So this is where Donna had gone. She hadn't fallen off the
face of the earth after all.

She nodded. As I paid for my drink she asked, "How are you? How
are...things?" We walked away from the bar and stood in an open space
next to an empty table that I wasn't sure whether we should sit down
at or not.

"I'm fine," I told her. I wasn't sure what else to say and there was
an awkward pause which I felt obliged to fill in. "I knew James from
law school. I'm sure if you tell him you know me he'll tell you a
thousand embarrassing stories about what I got up to at college."

She laughed slightly, politely almost, and it struck me that she'd
changed almost as much as Josh had in the past few months. Or maybe
she just didn't feel comfortable around me. She kept looking over at a
table on the other side of the room where people seemed to be looking
over at her. Or us, I wasn't sure which.

"Listen, you probably want to get back to your friends. Maybe we'll
see each other later," I said after another long pause, almost certain
that it was merely my company that she was uneasy with.

That got a reaction. "No, Sam! You don't need to go. Gosh, I'm sorry,
just standing here and not talking. I just...I just didn't expect to see
you here, is all." She laughed nervously again, before tugging at my
hand. "Here, let's sit down. My friends can ask me all about you when
I'm done." I did as she asked, and sipped at my beer whilst she
practically downed her drink.

"So, how are you?" I asked, hoping that the alcohol would bring her
back to her previous talkative self.

"I'm fine," she said. Then a pause. "I don't know what else to say,"
she admitted through another nervous giggle. She finished off the rest
of her drink in one impressive gulp. "God, I've not seen you in
months. I've missed you. CJ, Toby, Leo, the President - everyone." I
noticed that she hadn't mentioned Josh in there, but I wasn't going to
comment. I gulped down some beer.

"Well, what's not to miss?" I said jokingly, and she laughed. Not
nervously, or politely, but actual laughing. "It wasn't that funny," I
said, looking at her as though she was going mad.

"I'm sorry," she said through laughter. "But when you say that with a
beer mustache, it really is amusing."

I quickly wiped at my face, embarrassed. But it seemed to break the
figurative ice, allowing us to talk for the next 30 minutes, skirting
round the topic of Josh.

We drank more, and then I asked her to dance. Other people were now on
the dance floor, so we joined them dancing to the end of a song that I
didn't know. We danced and laughed a while, then a slow song came on,
and I vaguely recognized it, although I didn't know what it was called
or how I knew it. But Donna went quiet all of a sudden.

"What's wrong?" I asked as we danced slowly round the floor in circles.

"Illinois primary," she said, and I didn't know what she was talking
about. "We were dancing and you wanted to get a reaction out of Josh
so we danced closer. It was this song," she told me, and it was the
first time she'd mentioned Josh all night.

"Oh," was all I could think to say.

"How is he?" she asked suddenly. "When I heard about the tobacco
thing, all I could think was that I was so glad that I left when I
did. Then I heard that he'd been cleared of it all. I knew anyway. He
wouldn't accept money for something like that. He'd rather fight
them," she finished there, and again I wasn't sure what to say.

"What happened between you two?" I asked eventually.

"What do you mean?" she asked, but she didn't fool me, she knew
exactly what I was talking about.

"Nothing was the same after the Illinois Primary. Did something happen?"

We danced around in silence for a while, just listening to the music,
and I thought that maybe I'd gone too far. It was none of my business
after all.

But then she spoke. "Something did happen," was all she said, and I
wasn't going to ask her something that she didn't want to talk about.

The song finished, and she went to go talk to her friends, and I went
back to the table where all my law school friends were sat.

For the rest of the night we all proceeded to get more drunk, more
rowdy, and the stories became more ludicrous as secrets we vowed never
to tell were shared amongst the whole table. Fortunately they weren't
all about me.

At about 1 o'clock things were starting to finish up, and I was glad
that I only had to walk upstairs rather than find my way back to a
hotel or apartment. I said goodnight to James and all my friends,
promising to email them sometime, and invite them all to my 40th, and
to give them a tour of the White House personally if they were ever to
visit.

I looked round the room, trying to locate Donna, as I hadn't seen her
since our dance. But I couldn't find her, so I walked out of the
function room, and all but fell onto her as I stumbled and fell over
my feet, being far drunker than I realized. She was sat on a chair
outside the room, almost asleep.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Too tired. Too drunk," she replied.

"Want to come up and sleep in my room?" I offered. "I've got a king sized bed."

"Okay," she murmured, and I helped her as much as I could to her feet
after I'd got up onto mine. We soon found my room, and I changed into
some shorts and a t-shirt to sleep in as she crawled under the covers
in all her clothes. Managing somehow not to fall over walking to the
bed, I got under the sheets the other side and kissed her on the
forehead saying goodnight. The alcohol then took its hold on me, and
threatened to send me into a deep slumber immediately.

"Sam?" Donna mumbled almost asleep.

"Uh huh?" I replied, in much the same state.

"Thing at Illinois Primary?" she said.

"Uh huh?" I managed to answer.

"Slept with Josh," she told me.

"Uh huh." I commented, then promptly fell fast asleep.


The next day it was back to Washington, having forgotten Donna's
admission. Donna gave me her email address, and jokingly told me that
she was going to brag to her friends that she was getting the Deputy
Communications Director to write to her. Apparently they would all be
impressed.

Then I got in my car, kissed Donna goodbye and promised to write to
her soon, and that she should visit sometime.


I returned to DC to find my world turned upside down yet again, and
writing to Donna far earlier than I had originally planned.


END OF PART TWO



Ex Post Facto - Part Three
And Life Goes On


[cj pov]

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It
goes on -- Robert Frost

The world spins round on its axis, and it doesn't matter what the hell
the rest of us are doing, it continues to spin round and round and
round without fail.

It makes no difference if we're facing a crisis, if we want the world
to stop for just ten minutes to regroup, gather up our thoughts, the
gravity, or whatever it is that makes it spin in the first place,
keeps its hold on the Earth and it rotates regardless.

And that's a frightening thing sometimes.

For someone who is scared of so little, the very fact that we carry on
living is quite a daunting thing.

That year, that time, taught me that.

The election was just around the corner, and I was worrying that life
is going ahead without me thinking about it, days passing by, fading
into each other, and I had no control over it.

And I needed control.

I had watched as Josh had lost control, as his life spun away from him
without stopping for breath once in my life, and I was watching it
again.

And this time I wasn't caring about it.

Okay, so I was, but I was doing a pretty impressive job of keeping my distance.

Josh had changed and that alone worried me. I noticed it when Donna
left with all their bitter exchanges, and I noticed it more when the
tobacco thing reared its ugly head.

He sank into himself, and it was so uncharacteristic. But no one
noticed until it was too late.

We were all too busy thinking about ourselves.

How Donna's leaving had affected us, what consequence a scandal would
have on us and our jobs and the reelection bid. And even when the
truth came out, we were still thinking about ourselves. We were
relieved for ourselves.

Or that's how it was for me, anyway. I'm assuming that everyone else
was just as bitter and angry by Josh's actions, as they didn't go to
help him out either.

Things changed. The world was still spinning round and we were so busy
keeping up with the pace that we didn't notice that Josh was lagging
behind.

Things weren't the same for a long time to come.

I remember a couple of weeks after Josh had been cleared of any
wrongdoing and we all went out to a bar. Sam, Toby and I made
arrangements - we even asked Charlie and Zoey along. I was going back
to my office and I passed Josh's open door. He was standing by the
door looking as though he couldn't make his mind up whether to come
out or not. He'd probably heard every single word we said and it was
then I realized just how much things had changed. We hadn't even
thought of asking Josh along, something that would have been instinct
mere months before. And he hadn't butted into the conversation
assuming that he was invited, either.

I hadn't spoken to him beyond the usual 'hello' or small talk that we
had been reduced to in my anger since February.

It was time to forgive, I thought to myself, and so I followed him
into his office as he returned to his desk.
He sat down, and I stood there in front of his desk, not knowing what
to say. And for someone who used words and communication every day as
part of their job, this was saying something.

"Sit," he finally told me. And I did so slowly. All the time I wanted
to get out, I wanted to leave and never have to face him again. I
still was mad about how he had treated my friend, and then I realized
that he had been my friend too.

"So, Josh," I started, and faltered.

"You don't have to," he said, and I'm not sure what he thought I
didn't have to do. Perhaps he was sensing my awkwardness and was
suggesting that I didn't have to try to speak to him out of a work
situation.

Perhaps not, but I wasn't deterred. "How would you like to come to the
bar with us after work?" I asked finally.

And then I saw it, the first glint in his eye suggesting that Josh was
returning to us in some form. He nodded. "Yeah sure," he said
nonchalantly. "What time?" I could tell that he was a lot more excited
about it than came across in his tone of voice. Finally he was able to
start being friends with us again.

I told him about eight, and he nodded again, and I rose and started to
walk to my own office.

And then he cleared his throat and said. "Thank you, CJ." And I had no
idea what to say. So I nodded and smiled slightly and exited.

We went out that night, and we weren't back to how we'd been by any
accounts, and Josh wasn't the Josh we'd all known, in fact he sat in
the corner and listened as we talked about things he wasn't involved
in. And it didn't seem right, but no one did anything to change it.

Then Sam left for Boston and I can only imagine what he thought when
he returned.

It took far too much for us all to remember what we almost had lost.

Josh was involved in an accident and no one found out until almost two
days later. It had happened on the Friday night after work as he was
driving home.

Apparently some guy had been too busy concentrating on changing his
CDs and swerved across the road, right into Josh, crashing into his
car head on. Fortunately there were no fatalities but it had caused an
impressive pile up.

And I remember sitting in the traffic and cursing as it had prevented
me getting home at a reasonable hour. And I watched as the EMT's came
by with their wailing sirens, and all I could think was to wonder if
it would make the news.

It did, but that's irrelevant.

Josh hadn't been himself in the past few months and we'd all been too
busy to care. It made me feel guilty, I admit. I hadn't noticed that
there was anything wrong. There was no yelling this time to indicate
that he might be having problems, no Donna to know to make things
right, to call Leo and tell him that Josh needed some, any help. And I
had been selfish enough to start complaining that the inconvenience of
someone crashing his car would delay my being able to watch a movie
that was on.

The nurses had managed to get in touch with his mother, and she had
only phoned Leo on Sunday night to inform him that Josh wouldn't be in
work the next day. Or indeed for the next few weeks.

That's how we found out.

Josh didn't even trust us enough to ask for any of us when he needed
someone. We were no longer friends. We were mere work acquaintances.

That night I remember it rained, and I was so glad as it complimented
my mood perfectly. And I went and sat outside after Leo had phoned me,
sat out as it poured down and wallowed in my self-pity once more. And
all I got was drenched for my troubles.

But I managed to get things in focus.

What sort of world is it in which we don't even let our friends know
when we need them? And I made a promise to myself that I'd get over my
pride and I'd try my best to become the sort of friend for him that he
needed. That everyone deserves no matter what they do wrong.

I went to the hospital the next morning, not caring that I should be
at work. This was my friend and he needed help.

I got there and I found Sam sitting out in the waiting room.

"Won't they let us in?" I asked, sitting down next to him on one of
the hard orange plastic chairs.

Sam looked up at me and shook his head. "I couldn't face going in," he
told me. "I'm not even sure he counts me as a friend anymore. Would I
be welcome?" And he looked so lost without his friend, more lost than
he had looked in the many months where Josh was there but not there.

"We've all been so selfish," I said without ceremony. "And we can't
take that back. We can only go and hope that we can change it for the
future."

He gave a tight smile and stood up. He started out the room before
turning back towards me and saying, "But will Josh agree?" And then he
exited and I was left sitting there alone.

I stayed there for a while, allowing Sam to visit Josh alone. We all
had our pain and guilt that I felt we needed to address separately.

We had each other to support us, but Josh had no one.

Sam came back to the waiting room about twenty minutes later. He sat
down next to me, and his eyes met mine. I saw the tears that were
cascading down his face, his eyes red.

And I didn't want to know what he was going to tell me. To tell me
would be to make it seem true.

"It doesn't look good," he told me, despite my protests. And all I
could think of was how was I going to be able to tell the press that
once again Josh was in danger. And this time he'd had no one around
him to help him, no friends to make sure that he was okay. For God's
sake, we'd spent the best part of two days not knowing. How the hell
could we face ourselves let alone face his mother or Donna.

Then it hit me. Donna wasn't even here. We had no idea where she was;
no way of telling her that Josh might not be around for much longer.

I think that was what made me start to cry.

Not the fact that Sam was upset. Not even when I visited Josh later,
his mother by his bedside sitting, hoping and praying that he'd make
it through the next few days, not even the sight of Josh lying there
motionless surrounded by tubes and lines and god only knows what else.
No, it was none of that. It was the fact that this time we hadn't got
Donna to help us through, to make us all strong for Josh. And without
Donna was there much reason for Josh to fight to stay alive?

And I sat alone in that cold, stark room surrounded with posters about
violence in hospitals and no cell phone signs, and other
paraphernalia, and I cried. I broke down and let myself go. There was
no one to comfort me; no one to tell me that everything was going to
be okay.

And so I began to pray.

I can't say that in normal circumstances I'm a religious person. God
isn't the most important person in my life; I don't go to church with
any regularity. But in that desperate situation I needed a solution,
someone I could tell my problems to who wouldn't be judgmental or lie
to me, just someone to listen.

Dear God,
I don't know where to begin. Forgive me for I have sinned? I've been a
terrible friend and I'm so sorry.
Please, please help Josh.
Thank you.

It was just small sentences here and there, nothing major or drastic.
And I knew that as soon as everything had resolved itself I'd revert
back to being the atheist I usually was. But I needed to do as much as
I could to try and make up for where I'd failed.

And the days went by, and there was no change for the better, and it
seemed that no one was hearing me.
We took it in turns, Leo, Toby, Sam and I, to visit Josh, spend time
with him in his unconscious state and tell him things. Talk to him.
Whether he listened or not, I don't know, but it made me feel better
that at least I was trying to do something now.

And it was the next Friday when I walked into the room only to find
someone already there, reading to him from a book. It was a face I
hadn't seen in months, and I had missed so badly.

Donna had come back, at least temporarily.

I stood there quietly in the shadows of the dark room and just
listened to her speak to him. She had managed to put aside everything
that she had held against him in order to spend her time just talking
to him, and it made me so proud to ever have met this wonderful woman.

Finally I made my presence known, and Donna jumped.

"Hey," I said, I couldn't think of anything else to start with.

"Hey," she replied, and nothing more was said for a while.

So I dragged one of the chairs in the room and brought it to a place
beside Josh's bed, next to Donna. We sat there for a long time in
silence. I was just praying to God that Josh would be all right, that
he'd come back to us and tell us that everything was okay. But he was
unconscious, and silent.

Later I spoke to the doctor and asked him if he could give me, a
friend, any information. I only hoped that Josh would consider me a
friend, but that wasn't important.

The doctor seemed to weigh it up in his mind. "Sit down Ms. Cregg," he
told me, and I knew then that something wasn't right. They never told
you to sit down if everything was going to be okay. "Josh isn't well,
you can see that yourself. The internal injuries seem to be worse than
we'd hoped, and we won't know if he has any permanent damage until he
wakes up." Pause. Just get on with it, I remember thinking to myself,
mentally yelling at him. "Ms Cregg, I think you should prepare
yourself for the eventual possibility of bad news." He left then. And
all I could think was how do you prepare yourself for someone telling
you your friend could be dying?

What on earth can you do to prepare?

Convince yourself that he's going to die, so you won't be shocked when
it happens?

How? How?

I didn't understand. I didn't get it; you simply can't prepare
yourself. It's impossible. I knew that I would be shocked and
devastated as soon as I heard that Josh had... that Josh was... that he
would never recover. I wasn't going to allow myself to expect it, and
I wasn't going to prepare myself for it. Josh was alive, he was
strong, he would fight, and Donna was here.

Donna wouldn't let anything happen to him.

I sat in the waiting room for a good half-hour after the doctor had
spoken to me. I thought of nothing, my mind completely blank. I was
going to go back into Josh's room, I was going to talk to his mother,
I was going to talk to Donna and we were all going to get together and
convince Josh that he couldn't leave us.

And in sitting there I realised that I had wasted so much time being
angry with Josh for something that was out of my control, that was
nothing to do with me. If Donna could forgive and come back to help,
surely I should have no problem with it.

God,
I know we've not been all that close, but hear me out, okay? Can you
help me? I have to forgive Josh, but I need him to forgive me. Think
you can give him the message? He doesn't seem to be listening to me.

I went back into his room eventually and sat in the chair next to
Donna. And I thought of all the things that I could say to her, but
all that came out was "Why did you come back after all that he did I
knew as soon as I'd said it that it wasn't the right thing to say, not
now. But Donna seemed to take it in her stride.

"Because he needed me," she said and left it at that.

Josh's mother came back shortly after and we sat in that room talking
to Josh and talking about Josh.
Reminiscing, sharing all the silly Josh things that he'd done, Donna
relating all the times that she'd had to apologise to people for his
behaviour, Josh's mom telling us stories from when he was young, and I
talked about the things we'd done on the campaign trail.

All the time I was thinking, why was I so cold, so unforgiving when he
needed me? I still didn't know about the truth behind the tobacco
thing, but I knew that whether he had been guilty or innocent he had
needed friends, and no one was there for him.

Now was my time to be there for him.

I got home that evening after a day spent with Josh's mom and Donna
and I sat down on the couch. And I sat and cried and listened to
depressing songs and cried some more.

And I prayed to the God that I had never really known, and soon
probably wouldn't even remember.

God, you there?
Please, please don't let Josh die. God?


END OF PART THREE



Ex Post Facto - Part Four
Decisions and Destiny


[josh pov]

The last thing I remember was the bright yellow lights heading in my
direction, coming towards me and a sense of peace that this would be
my last moment here on earth. The lights were almost calming,
something to focus on in the seemingly eternal darkness. I could have
swerved, could have tried to save myself, but I was paralysed into
position, looking into the brightness and foolishly imagining a way
out of the blindness that accompanied the black depths of night.

I can't say that I was suicidal, I certainly wasn't trying to go out
of my way to attempt to get killed, more that I knew that even if I
changed course, slammed on the brakes, there would still be little
hope of getting out of the situation unscathed. It happened so
suddenly that there was nothing that I could do, and so I was
accepting my destiny.

My destiny, it seems, was not my death. Not yet, at least.

I'm not entirely sure if I'm happy about that. This does not mean that
I'm going to take the next opportunity to jump off a bridge, run
across a busy highway with my eyes closed, or grab the nearest gun and
ask someone if they'd kindly put a bullet into my brain. Most
definitely not the last one: been there, done that, got the scars and
have absolutely no intention of replaying the moment.

But for a second time in my life I began to question what the hell I
was actually doing with my life. Where was I going, what were my
ultimate aims?

The ideals of my youth were unattainable - there was little chance
that I was going to be an astronaut, a racing car driver, or even the
president. Even my assured arrogance that I was going to fall in love,
get married and have children that came with my later life was fading
into the distance, an unobtainable fantasy that might have become true
a few years back but looked unlikely now. Ultimately I was looking
forward to several more years of living for my career and remaining
alone.

That scared me more than my fragile mortality.

The days after I woke up were spent in a haze of falling in and out of
consciousness, rarely knowing which I was currently in.

There were times when I was entirely certain that I was awake, my
mother, CJ and Sam surrounding my bed, and then my dad would walk into
the room exactly as I last remembered seeing him, and my mother would
start to cry and he would comfort her. When Joanie would come to visit
me and we'd talk for hours about everything, and she'd make me laugh
so much my sides would ache and I couldn't breathe.
There were other times when I knew I had to be unconscious but thought
I was awake. When Donna sat and held my hand and read to me and I just
lay there, my eyes closed, and listened to the sound of her voice. Or
when she told me that she loved me and the last few months had been
unbearable and could I please stop being so goddamn selfish and start
thinking about everyone else and come back to them. Come back to her.

But I couldn't have been awake because Joanie and Dad were gone
forever, and Donna had left me and wasn't going to return.

And I just wanted to stay safely wrapped in my unconscious cocoon with
my memories, where people who shouldn't be there visited you and
everything was optimistic. There was no pain in the land of the
comatose, no desperation or despair, no loneliness; no one would
reject you, or judge you for your mistakes. It was an ideal world, and
I wanted to remain there as long as I could.

There was nothing for me to go back to, my mother perhaps, but only
because it would be unfair for her to bury two children in one
lifetime.

Donna was gone, and she had been my lifeline the last time I was in a
similar position, and there had been no question about whether I was
going to cling to the final remnants of life, it was inevitable.

Then I had my friends there to support me, to help me. They were still
there for me, but not as they once had been.

If I were to return indefinitely, I'd have to want to do it for
myself. My life would have to change drastically - I'd have to try to
make it worth living. If this near death thing were to occur again,
there'd have to be no question what I'd do. And I'd make sure that I
had someone in my life, that I wouldn't be lonely anymore. Donna had
left and in some ways it was a blessing that she had; she could avoid
all the heartache that would be accompanied by being associated with
me, and God, yes, I'd miss her, but there were other people out there.
I just had to make an effort to find someone that I wanted to spend my
life with.

Did I want to do this for myself? Did I want it enough?

I swayed once more between conscious and sleep, asking myself if I had
achieved all that I possibly could.
The answer was I hadn't, there was more to be done in my life, and I
was going to spend every goddamn minute that I had trying to ensure
that I spent it in the best possible way.

First thing being exerting enough of an effort to stay.

The pain that I experienced the first few days after deciding was only
comparable to the pain that I felt after the shooting. I ached all
over, in places that I never realised could hurt so much, and as a
result I was unaware of my surroundings. My only escape from the pain
was through the medication that sent me straight back to sleep or made
me out of it enough to cope. However at least in these moments I knew
the reason for my unconscious state, the analgesia as opposed to the
possibility of never returning. There was nothing that I could do in
the conscious state that would avoid the pain. If the doctors decided
that they wanted to take x rays that involved movement I would comply
only when they moved my limbs for me, or when they would transfer me
to a trolley so they could take me down to the medical imaging
department.

Soon enough I became aware of what was going on around me, and I
wasn't entirely sure what to make of it.

The excerpts that I remember from those first days when I started to
piece my life back together were enough to make me think twice about
my previous judgements and be thankful that I had deemed the earth
worthy enough for my return.

I remember my mother sitting constant vigil, her eyes always on me,
nothing to distract her but the *beep beep* of the monitors
surrounding me. CJ paced back and forwards, unable to do anything but
glance at me occasionally. Sam sitting, then standing, sitting, then
standing; talking to me about nonsense things that often I couldn't
interpret. Toby, just standing at the bedside, making me feel uneasy,
looking entirely uncomfortable. Leo, there always for my mother,
somewhat fatherly at times in the things that he told me, not
necessarily believing that I would be able to retain information. The
President, Abbey, Zoey, Charlie making occasional visits, making small
talk about everything and nothing, but I was always glad that they had
thought to come.

And finally, Donna. It was more than a shock to me to realise that she
was actually here, that I wasn't hallucinating from the drugs, she was
here. She was almost always here, as in my dream, reading to me,
telling me about her life, about the President, the campaign, about
anything that she thought I would be interested in.

And it was worse to realise that I couldn't reach out to her, I was
too exhausted to converse with her, and I was in too much pain.

But she stayed there, constantly by my side, anticipating my every
need, just as she always had been.
I didn't know why she was here, what had possessed her to return, to
even see me again after the hateful things that I had said to her, but
I was more than glad. She never told me that she loved me like she did
in the dream, though.

Then, finally, I was conscious and pain-free enough to put a voice to
the inner conversations that I had with people, and it was Donna who
was present to hear. I called out her name and she startled, unaware
that I was awake. She came close and held my hand, a tear falling from
the corner of her eye, slowly trickling down the side of her face,
dropping and coming to fall on my sheets. I wanted to ask her why she
was upset, why for God's sake did she care about me enough to have any
emotion, why, why, why? I didn't deserve it, I knew that, but I
couldn't tell her as I fell into slumber yet again, not having the
energy to speak.

When I woke again, Donna had disappeared, and I was starting to
believe that it was just an illusion, my mind playing tricks on me,
and my chest felt hollow, incomplete, and there was nothing I could
do. My mother was here, however, and I throatily told her 'hello'. She
told me how much she loved me, and she cried openly, which I hadn't
seen her do since dad died. I told her that I loved her too, and I
began to wonder why I was so ready to give this up. People cared about
me, and yet it was a mystery to me. I had done nothing recently for
them to have any emotion other than hate towards me, and so when I
spotted CJ in the corner of the room, her eyes looking suspiciously
red and watery, I couldn't respond.

I wanted to remind her that she disliked me, despised me, I was cruel
to Donna, to her friend, but the words got stuck in the back of my
throat and I choked them down. I decided that rule number one of the
improved me was to cut back on the self-pity. It was not an admirable
trait and it had lead to nothing but heartache for those previous few
months. Life could have been so different for me then if only I had
been able to prevent myself from feeling sorry for myself, if I could
have allowed myself to continue living despite my feelings that it
might not be worthwhile. Pity in any form was a weakness, be it from
myself or others, and I wouldn't feel refreshed from these ideas.

So instead I repeated my earlier 'hello', this time to CJ, and she
said nothing, but the tears began to flow. What was it with these
women, surely they'd heard me speak before now? I told CJ to quit with
the tears, but they didn't stop, but she did smile, and I would have
laughed if I knew it wouldn't half kill me, so I made a token effort.
This only made her smile wider.

Soon she'd be telling me to be quiet, I was sure of it.

She told me that she was going to go and get someone, and returned
with Sam, who was seemingly so astonished that I was coherent and
conscious that he came over and hugged me gently. I tried and shrug
him off, but it was useless since it required too much effort and pain
shot through my body so I remained still.

He told me that he managed to find Donna for me and I wanted to thank
him but I suddenly was overcome with tiredness, and I knew that this
would be an almost permanent state for me for a while to come. I fell
asleep quickly, but feeling increasingly assured that I had made the
right decision.

The days were spent much as before, fading in and out, a few words
here and there, conversations becoming longer but still cut short by
my constant lethargy.

Donna was there a lot of the time and I forgot often that she wasn't
supposed to be here. She was supposed to be...somewhere else, wherever
her life was, far, far away from me. But I wouldn't tell her that, I
would only revel in her presence, knowing that although undeserving of
it, I was lucky that she would even consider to spend her time in this
repetitive and often boring way.

However as my strength increased and the time neared to when I would
be discharged and the nurses discussed arrangements for care at home I
began to wonder what would happen. Would my friends still care for me
once I was well? Would Donna go back to where she belonged?

It was decided that I should return to Connecticut and stay with my
mother for a while, as the only way that I could have stayed at home
is if I were to have someone there almost constantly, some stranger in
my apartment, and I didn't want that. I didn't ask my friends or Donna
if they would be there for me, it would have been unfair on them; they
had separate lives to me, and my mother offered anyway.

So just over a month after entering, I was cleared to leave the
hospital and that phase of my life. And it was more daunting than I
ever would have imagined.

I spent the last day in my room; my mother packed my clothes and all
the other items that I had brought with me. Then she left to go to my
apartment to collect everything that I would need for the next month
or so, until I was able to conduct everyday life without assistance.

Everyone else was at work, and I understood that, although they had
said that they would all come visit later to wish me goodbye and good
luck. I was going to be leaving earlier than I had told them. I wanted
to slink into the background unnoticed. I had changed - I had changed
before any of this happened - but I didn't want to say goodbye to my
friends. I couldn't for some inexplicable reason. I knew I would
return soon enough - I'd tell Leo when I was going to return to work.
I knew they'd cope without me.

I looked one last time around my room and thought of the last few
weeks that I had spent there once I had left the ICU. My mother waited
outside the room, collecting all the pain medication and appointment
cards that I would need, as she knew I wouldn't listen to the
instructions that I was given.

Then I heard the door open and I turned around from my seat on the bed.

It was Donna and I had no idea what I was supposed to say to her. She
had been here almost constantly for the last month, more so than any
of my work colleagues, what should I say?

She stood there and I sat and we looked at each other and said nothing
for a while.

"When are you going to Connecticut?" she asked finally, sitting down
beside me on the bed.

"This afternoon," I replied. "In fact, any minute now."

Her hand slowly made its way to mine, or mine made its way to hers,
and our fingers found themselves intertwined. I could get used to
this, but I knew I shouldn't.

"Thank you for being here," I said eventually. It was all I could say.

She smiled slightly, but made no comment about it.

"I wish..." I started. "I wish things were different."

"Don't we all," she replied.

"I'm sorry for how things turned out." I couldn't look at her, see her face.

"Josh, don't," she told me, putting a finger on my lips. "It's in the
past. You can't do anything to change it now, you just have to live
with it."

I can't, I can't, I can't, I thought. I need you here with me; I can't
live without you - I wanted to tell her.
She rested her head on my shoulder, like she used to do. Don't leave
me, I wanted to say, but the words wouldn't form in my mouth, wouldn't
come out. My mother would probably be coming back soon, I thought.

"If things were different..." I started again, but never got to finish
the thought.

She got up and placed herself so she was standing directly in front of
me. She stooped down, and came closer and I had to believe that it was
just coincidental, not what I hoped it to be. I had to believe it.
However I ignored all beliefs when her lips connected with mine for a
moment that was far too short and she gave me a kiss that I don't
think I'll ever forget.

"Maybe I'll see you again," she said, before waltzing out of my life again.

I closed my eyes and tried not to think of the deep hurt in my heart.
I wanted to run after her, tell her that I loved her, but I couldn't
and I wouldn't.

As much as it distressed me, we were no longer what we had once been.
I couldn't demand that she stay for me, I knew that she probably
wouldn't, and that would have been worse than not asking at all.

I was just going to have to live with it, remember that month that she
spent by my side, the years that we had together as friends, and I
realised I had to move on. I had to; there was no question about it.

As much as it tore me apart, I had to accept that she was gone
forever, and find someone new. If only it were that easy.

And I sat there until my mother returned, just thinking, what am I
going to do next?

The next month and a half I spent in Connecticut in my mother's large
house. I hadn't lived in this house in years, not since I had moved
away to go to college, and my room was now a guestroom. I slept on the
couch for the first few weeks though, as I had difficulty climbing up
and down the stairs, and besides, there was no TV in my old bedroom.

We talked little for the first couple of weeks, I didn't want to say
much to anyone and my mother respected my wishes enough to comply. Not
that she would have had much of an answer out of me had she attempted
to talk to me. Then one day I was sat out in the backyard on the
bench, the fall leaves surrounding me in a mixture of colours, and my
mother came outside with two cups of coffee and handed one to me. She
looked around, not standing still, regarding the yard with an expert
critical eye.

"The leaves need raking up," she said finally as I looked on in
puzzlement. I didn't offer any comment. She eventually sat down beside
me, pulling the blanket that was covering me around her. "What
happened?" she asked. "Where did it all go wrong?" She sipped her
coffee and glanced at me. "Why can't we talk anymore?" She pulled the
rug closer to her. "I have all these questions, and no answers. I
can't ask you anything, and I have no idea what is going on inside
that head of yours."

Neither did I, it was all a complete mess, for all these promises that
I had made myself to improve my life, nothing had been accomplished.

"Sam told me that Donna didn't even work in the White House anymore. I
knew it, but you never told me," she continued to try to get me to say
something, anything. "So why was she there at the hospital?" She took
another sip of the coffee. I looked at the leaves, I had forgotten,
living in DC, how bright the colours could be. "I can't make you talk
to me, I know that, but I just want you to know that I am here if you
want to talk," she said finally, and got up off the bench and started
to slowly walk back to the house.

I watched her retreating figure, and I thought about the promise I
made, and I thought about Donna, who had plagued my mind for the last
couple of weeks. I decided that it was about time I make an effort.

"I messed up," I called out. She turned to look at me. "I messed up,"
I repeated, quieter.

She walked back to me, sat down beside me and gave me a comforting hug
that only my mother could give. I felt better for just having human
contact. And then, inexplicably, tears began to fall down my face,
faster and faster, my face cold where the water had been. And my
mother said nothing but held me closer to her, her arms wrapped firmly
around me as the sobs continued, unable to cease.

It was the first time that I had expressed any sort of emotion over
the whole mess of my life in the past few months, but it was a relief.

We remained like that for what seemed like eternity, and I felt like a
little boy again, crying over the death of my older sister who meant
the world to me. But these tears were for myself, and for the little
boy whose dreams would never come true.

Afterwards, my mother helped me back into the house, and we sat in the
kitchen with more coffee, the warmth and lighting a comfort after the
cold dark of the outdoors. My mother made the dinner whilst I sat at
the table and we began to talk as the aroma of the cooking permeated
every part of the kitchen.

"It started over a year ago now," I began, and my mother just let me
talk, her focus divided between the food and me. "I received a phone
call asking me to meet up with some people in a bar after work. I was
curious and they wouldn't tell me what they wanted over the phone but
insisted that I go. So I went to the bar, it was nearly empty, and I
sat in the corner and waited. Finally this guy came up to me, bought
me a few drinks, and then told me about a plan that he had. He would
give me money, I can't remember how much he said, but it was a lot,
and in return all I had to do was lose some papers which supported our
case against the tobacco firms. Things that no one would miss but that
would weaken our case a fair amount."

I paused and took a drink from the coffee mug that I held in my hands
and it warmed me as it went down my throat. My mother said nothing,
but was now sat down at the table with me, her eye half on the stove
but mostly on me.

"He told me that if I was to decline the offer or inform anyone about
it, then I would pay in kind. Then he got out some photos, pictures of
Donna and I together - he obviously assumed that we were involved as
he implied certain things - and told me that if I didn't accept the
offer, well, I don't want to repeat what he said, but basically Donna
would suffer. I think I told him to go to hell, and I stormed out of
the bar. I couldn't tell anyone, I mean who would believe me, for one,
and besides there was nothing anyone could do about it."

I drank some more coffee, and remembered the inner conflict that I had
been through back then, and the covering up that I needed to do to
ensure everyone that I was fine. "I remembered what he said, though,
what he implied. And then there was the Illinois Primary in February."
I paused a minute, remembering the evening, the laughter, the dancing,
the alcohol. It seemed like a fairytale, a fantasy that I had
concocted, it didn't seem as though it was only that year.

"We won, and it such a relief, and there was a huge party. I forgot
all about problems that I had and decided to have a good time, and
there was lots of alcohol involved. Donna and I..." I took in a deep
breath, preparing myself for what I was about to tell my mother.
"Donna and I went back to my hotel room and ... things happened. I'm not
sure if she remembers, or if she knows that I remember, we were so
drunk, but it changed things. I knew that we were too close and if
anything happened to her I would be devastated. So I pushed her away,
told her some unforgivable things and eventually she left." I laughed
bitterly at the memory.

"And after the whole press incident you would have thought that I'd
have been glad. They obviously couldn't get to Donna, so they decided
to come after me instead. And I had managed to push everyone away in
my attempt to help Donna. Everyone hated me, and so when the press
started on about how I'd actually gone ahead with what I'd tried so
hard to prevent from happening, they were glad to have an excuse to
not talk to me. It blew over, but they still couldn't forgive me,
although things were getting slightly better. And then came the crash,
and you know everything from there."

I finished, glad that I had finally managed to tell someone
everything, that there was one less person who would judge me for what
they thought I'd done.

My mother said nothing, and I could see the information going round
and round in her head, trying to process it all. Instead for the
second time that day she moved round the table and gathered me in a
consoling embrace and I wished that I could stay in her arms forever,
shielded from reality.

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" she asked me.

"I couldn't. Besides you have other things to worry about without my
problems," I replied.

"I never have too much to worry about that you can't come and talk to
me," she told me.

She held me closer, and again I dissolved into tears and could say
nothing. Finally someone knew, someone who mattered. And it made me
relieved enough that I wanted to tell more.

It was another few weeks before I could go back to Washington, but in
those few weeks I changed again. I came to be more self-assured, more
like I once had been, and my mother and I had talked a lot since that
evening. None of my friends in Washington knew the truth and despite
my mother insisting that I tell someone and my own urge to divulge my
secret, I had no plans of telling them. I didn't want their pity, and
it wasn't going to bring Donna back. That was the one thing that I
couldn't tell even my mother, what I felt for Donna, or what I thought
I was feeling. It was far too private.

We said our goodbyes one Friday in the fall, I hugged my mother and
thanked her for looking after me, and then left for the plane. It was
hardly any time before I landed in Washington and took the cab back to
my apartment.

I stayed there a couple of weeks more, just getting myself around,
doing mundane things like grocery shopping, or surfing the internet.
In some ways I wanted to go back to work, but I wasn't sure what would
greet me once I was there and so I held off a while.

The day I went back was a Monday, and while no one was overjoyed at my
return and they were all far too busy to hold any sort of welcome back
party, they all were kind and polite and more welcoming than they had
been when I had left. My assistant gave me my schedule for the day and
then I went into my office and closed the door. It was good to be
back, to occupy my mind, to start to work again.

Sam came by at the end of the week and asked if I wanted to go for a
couple of drinks with him in honour of my return, and I agreed. It
wouldn't be like old times, but I wasn't too much bothered about that.

We went to a bar that we used to frequent back in the days before
Donna had left, and we sat there and drank some before we talked.

"So, are you glad to be back?" Sam asked after a long pause.

"It beats sitting at home I guess," I told him and there was another long pause.

We drank some more, several bottles of beer between us before we could
be open with each other, uninhibited and not caring so much about the
consequences of what we said.

"Donna's in Boston," Sam told me out of the blue. I wondered what the
relevance was, surely I couldn't have been that obvious about my
feelings for her. "I found her when I went to a birthday thing. She's
working for my friend in a law firm."

I was interested, naturally, but chose not to show it or be too eager.

"How was she, did she ask after me?" I asked him. Screw not being
overly eager, I thought.

"She was fine, but she told me something. About you." He had a weird
look on his face, and I wouldn't have asked him if he weren't
discussing Donna or I wasn't on the way to getting drunk.

"What? What did she say?" I demanded as uninterested as I could
possibly seem. Really.

He seemed to deliberate over something for a while before elaborating.
"She told me... something about you sleeping together."

Well, that was interesting. She remembered.

Pause, and too late for denial. "Did she?" I asked as intrigued as
possible, but it fell flat.

"You would tell me, wouldn't you, if it was true?"

I had been so lonely the past couple of months, longing for friendship
and he seemed to think that our friendship was back to being almost
the same as it once had. A friendship where we told each other almost
everything and I decided that if he could trust me that much, maybe I
could trust him. Or get him drunk enough to forget anything I told
him.

I thought a little while about what I could say, and I decided to tell
him as much of the truth as I could. I wanted us to be friends, and
this seemed to be the only way. "We did," I said slowly, and his mouth
dropped open like a cartoon character at my admission. "What, like you
weren't expecting it?" I asked him jokingly.

"I... of course I... I..." For a speech writer he was not very good with
words and I laughed at him.

"We were so drunk. It was the Illinois Primary, and I bet even you
don't remember what the hell you did that night." I told him whilst
still laughing. But then I remembered and I sobered slightly. "I woke
up with her in my arms and I thought that life couldn't get any
better, and when I woke again, well, she was gone." I laughed shortly.
"She obviously didn't share the feeling."

Sam was still speechless. I don't think Donna told him quite so much.

"I think she did," he said when he had finally recovered the ability
to talk. I shake my head refusing to be optimistic about the whole
situation.

"If she did then she wouldn't have left," I said, and unsure which
time I was even talking about. Our drunken rendezvous or her leaving
me forever. I couldn't blame her for the second incident, especially
since I spent so much of my time persuading her to go in my own way. I
wondered briefly why I did it, and then remember that she was better
off without me. "She wouldn't have left," I repeated.
We spent the next couple of hours bonding, and he told me about his
possible relationship with Ainsley, and I laughed at him for
succumbing to the Republican's charms, but was supportive about it.
Then he asked me about the press incident and I skirted around the
issue, not wanting to burden him with my problems, not wanting him to
know. He tried to ask me again, but this woman started to wander over
to our table, looking me in the eye and I recognised her from having
seen her earlier, and she was a welcoming interruption.

"I know this is really corny, coming up to you in a bar, but I was
wondering if you wanted a drink," she offered, and I couldn't care
less about it being corny, she was an attractive woman and she wasn't
Donna.

"Aren't I supposed to be the one offering to buy the drinks?" I asked
with a grin, then held out my hand. "Josh Lyman," I introduced myself.

"Maggie Ford." She took my hand and shook it.

"Well, Maggie Ford, what would you like to drink?" I asked, taking out
my wallet. Sam just looked at us.

"Screwdriver if you wouldn't mind," she replied, and she followed as I
walked over to the bar. She was probably in her late thirties with
short dark hair, tall and thin, and very attractive. I couldn't
believe my luck. I ordered our drinks from the bar and whilst we
waited asked her what she was doing in DC.

"I'm here visiting a friend, actually," she told me. "I work as a
doctor in Boston and decided to take the week off to visit my friend."
Wasn't Donna in Boston? I thought briefly, before removing her from my
thoughts. She was past and this was present.

Maggie and I got to talking for a while and it turned out that she
would be staying in DC until the following Wednesday and so I asked
her to dinner the next night. She accepted and gave me her cell number
and her friend's home number. I told her I'd call her the next day,
and had every intention of doing so.

After she left for the night, I went back to Sam, who had managed to
find someone to talk to so hadn't spent the evening alone.

"Found a friend?" Sam asked me after the Congressman with whom he'd
been speaking left for another table.

"We're going to dinner tomorrow," I told him, glad to have someone to
boast to about my proud accomplishment. He said nothing, but smiled
almost knowingly. I wasn't sure what he meant, but didn't ask him
about it. I was fairly drunk for starters. "She was nice. I don't meet
nice, attractive women anymore." I thought about what I'd said and
realised that I had never just met nice, attractive women but Sam said
nothing so I didn't comment.

"What about Donna?" he asked.

"What about Donna? She's gone and I'm glad." Sam eyed me speculatively.

"You're not glad," he informed me.

"She got away from me, she escaped being accused of masterminding a
major conspiracy, I'm glad and I'd bet she's glad as well," I told
him, but he didn't seem to understand. I didn't really want to
elaborate further but he pushed.

"What do you mean? Do you mean that you made her leave because you
knew something?" he accused.

"I knew nothing," I said unconvincingly.

"Josh?" he asked.

"I just didn't want her to get hurt and they were going to hurt her,"
I said cryptically, hoping that he wouldn't ask anymore. It didn't
occur to me to just tell him to mind his own business, but that would
have destroyed the friendship that we had tentatively re-established,
anyway, and I wanted friends.

"The tobacco people?" he asked, and he was no longer accusatory, but
bewildered, almost upset that I hadn't told him. It figured, since he
knew nothing of what had happened. I guessed that I was about to tell
him.

"Yes, the tobacco people," I confirmed quietly. "I knew about it. They
told me about their plans, they wanted to offer me money to lose memos
and I refused. They threatened to get to Donna and so I made sure she
went away. She's better off in Boston." Sam looked shocked.

"You knew?" he said, eyes wide. "You knew and you didn't tell anyone?"

"I couldn't, not until Donna had gone away, and by then it was too
late." I had completely sobered by this point, just wanting to tell
Sam so we didn't have any huge secrets. Secrets were often the cause
of destruction of any relationships, I had come to realise, and it was
fine to keep them whilst I thought I had no friends, but if I wanted
Sam's friendship back I had to tell him.

"I can't believe..." was all he could say. "I can't... All that time you'd
done nothing and we'd hated you. Why... I...."

I hoped he wouldn't feel pity for me after this. That was the last
thing I wanted. I just wanted him to know the truth, full stop.
Finally he met my eye. "Josh, I am so sorry," he told me. I held up a
hand to make him be quiet, but it wouldn't happen. "All that time?
God, you must hate me, hate us all."

"Sam, I didn't tell you so you could feel bad about it. I just wanted
you to know. That's all."

Sam said nothing more, and so I stood up, placed a tip on the table
and put on my jacket before moving towards the door.

"Josh," I heard Sam call and so I turned around. "If we'd known..." he
trailed off.

"Then you couldn't have done anything, and Donna would have known," I
replied, turning back around and leaving the bar.

There was no way to gauge what work would be like the next day, but I
had to go in. All I had to look forward to was my date with Maggie and
the question again of what the hell came next.

And it took a trip out of DC before I could figure that out.


END OF PART FOUR



Ex Post Facto - Part Five
Standing On The Sidelines


[sam pov]

I arrived back from Boston to a different world. A world where I
wandered round in a semi-conscious daze, unaware of the time passing
or what I had been doing for hours. An unreal world, a nightmare that
you'd never want to encounter, hitting you with force every time your
mind decided to remember the reality. Upside-down, an illusion, an
insomniac period where night drifted into day without you realising,
day into night, and where only one thought took over the space in my
mind where others were supposed to be. 'Why?'

There was no answer.

It was ironic, really. I'd been so optimistic that after my weekend to
Boston and meeting Donna that everything was going to be okay, that it
was going to revert back to what it once had been, that we'd all be
one happy big family, hugging and smiling and doing other asinine
things. And pigs might fly, and we'd have world peace at the same
time.

Okay, so these weren't my exact thoughts, but I had hoped somewhere in
the back of my mind that the relationship between Josh and I, the
currently tenuous friendship, might strengthen and become something
more. Something where I wasn't nervous talking to him about certain
subjects, where we could both feel relaxed and start to become friends
again. Things had recently been improving between us, I had managed to
put aside my thoughts of disdain for what he had done to Donna, to us
all, and surely it could only improve? I thought everything was going
to be okay again.

How wrong I was.

I remember spending the evening when I returned doing the usual
post-vacation activities. I unpacked all the clothes and other items
that I had taken with me. I watched the news and called out for
Chinese food because I had neither the energy nor the inclination to
cook. I ate my sweet and sour chicken whilst watching a game that I
had recorded the night before. In reality, I should have known
immediately that something was wrong. I should have been called
urgently to return from my weekend away because I was needed. I
shouldn't have had to rely upon Leo phoning me after I'd gone to bed
informing me that Josh wouldn't be in work the next day because
something had occurred while I was having fun in Boston. Well,
actually, whilst I was driving there, but that's an irrelevant detail.

I hung up the phone, only really registering afterwards what Leo had
told me; the medical jargon passing into my brain and then straight
out again, except terms like unconscious, blood loss, head injury. The
words that I didn't want to register.

I started shaking from the bone-deep cold; the words I had heard
circling round in my head, worse case situations announcing themselves
unwelcome.

I pulled my comforter around me and brought my legs up to my body,
trying to return to the state of warmth that I had originally been in.
It didn't work; the conventional methods were useless. I sat there
longer than I know almost recovering, before the reality struck again
and I was back to where I'd started, shivering, shaking.

I needed to do something to keep my mind off the thoughts that were
accumulating, to occupy myself with something productive. But there
was nothing that I could do, so I got out of bed, dragged my comforter
along with me to the kitchen, made some coffee and turned on my
computer. I only hoped that doing work, or checking emails, or
whatever, would help.

I sat down, the comforter wrapped around my shoulders, encompassing me
in a warm cocoon, and waited for the email program to load up. I had
numerous new emails, most work-related, and I scanned the names for
something to distract me.

Then I saw it, the name Donna Moss, subject Hey!

I opened it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
To: Sam Seaborn <Sam.Seaborn@whitehouse.gov>
From: Donna Moss <Donnatella_Moss@aol.com>
Date: 8-21-02 23:06
Subject: Hey!

Hey,
You said email, so I emailed. Just checking you got back okay and the
Government hasn't fallen apart in your absence... Anyway, think I'm
going to go to bed now, so write soon, won't you? Don't forget, or
else I'll be there in DC knocking on your door and never leaving you
alone until you do... And that's a promise.
Love, Donna
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I wondered what the hell I should say to Donna. Would Josh want me to
contact her? Would she want to hear about Josh?

I remembered her saying something about him before we fell asleep on
my bed that night, but what it was exactly, I didn't know. Did she say
something bad about him and I was supposed to know that mentioning his
name around her would lead me into a near death experience of my own?

I decided to email her, started off, then I couldn't decide what to
write, so I deleted the message and told her nothing. I thought that I
should leave it that way for a couple of days at least. Then I thought
would she want to know, would she want to be here? And so I opened up
the new message again and wrote her name before my mind went blank.
The writer in me fading away into the background with the news that I
had received, and I couldn't think of a way to write that Josh had
been in an accident without worrying her unnecessarily.

I spent the rest of that night trying to think about what I should do,
in regards to the email as well as many other topics. Should I go to
the hospital, should I tell Donna, should I get flowers, should I have
done something in order to stop this even occurring; the list was
endless. It went round and round my head into the early hours of the
morning and wouldn't allow me to catch even 10 minutes of sleep.
I decided in the end to visit him whether he was awake or asleep, and
to discuss with his mother if I should contact Donna.

I eventually did get to sleep, my dreams plagued with disturbing
images of Josh in the accident and even a few from the night of the
shooting, but in this case I was shot instead of Josh whilst I tried
to save him. Then I was in the accident, the car heading straight for
me whilst I was powerless to do anything to stop it. I remember waking
up at several intervals, breathing heavily and sweating. The dreams
were so vivid. I could almost imagine what it would be like to be
Josh, and the feelings didn't fill me with hope. I ended up phoning my
mother just to let her know that I was okay, because that was all I
could think of. If something had happened to me, would anyone care?
Would anyone know? And because it was the nighttime, everything seemed
so much worse than it did in the light of day.

My mother was actually awake when I called at 5:30, and I didn't share
my troubles with her, just relished in the sound of her voice. The
fact that she was there for me, that she knew I loved her, was all I
wanted her to know.

I got up a little after 6:30, having spent a good hour on the phone to
my mom, just talking about everything and nothing. I called Leo and
let him know that I would be late because I had to go to the hospital
to see how Josh was in person, and his answer machine was surprisingly
accepting of my decision.

It was about 8 o'clock when I got to the hospital. I walked to the
nurse's desk and asked which room Josh was in. I got as far as the
door and saw Josh's mom sitting beside him, Josh lying there,
motionless. I just couldn't face it, I couldn't go in, I couldn't let
Josh's mother see what I had become, what I bad friend I was. I ended
up going back to the waiting room and sitting there, head in hands,
sitting and reflecting over everything that had happened and blaming
myself. I ran through the conversations we'd had, the hours that we
had spent together, and I couldn't face myself anymore. I was a bad
friend; I hadn't been there for him when he needed me. I wasn't the
nice person that everyone thought I was.

Then CJ came by. She sat beside me and basically told me to get over
myself, told me that we could help now, not think about the past. The
future was important. I asked her if Josh would agree before I
gathered myself together and walked slowly to his room. I stood
outside, watching again, feeling as though I shouldn't be there before
knocking quietly on the door. Josh's mother looked to the door and saw
me and motioned for me to enter.

"How are you?" I stupidly asked her.

"I'm...." She struggled for an answer. "I'm as well as can be expected
under the circumstances, I suppose," she said, and I nodded, not
knowing what to say.

"How is he doing?" I asked for my second ridiculous question.

Josh's mother breathed deeply, and said nothing for a minute. Then she
moved her head round and looked me in the eye. "The doctors won't say
much either way." Another pause. "It's not good, it's not good," she
repeated, making me feel even worse than I had before. Now I would
never have the opportunity to apologise. But then I realised that this
wasn't about me. I wasn't a factor here.

"I noticed," his mother started. "I noticed that Donna wasn't here.
Does she know?" she asked me, and I looked away, not knowing what to
say.

"Donna's in Boston," I said eventually. "She left a few months back.
After a fight." His mother looked somewhat downhearted by this news.

"I just thought that maybe, maybe her being here might help," she said
with such hope that I felt awful for having told her.

"I saw her over the weekend. We met each other unexpectedly," I told
her, trying my best to give her as much good news as possible. "I
considered emailing her, but, what... what would Josh want?"

"He loved her, loves her," his mother replied. "Whether he knows it or
not. I wouldn't get her involved in all this, but..." she trailed off,
but her meaning was clear.

I nodded but had nothing to say. I spent the next few minutes in
silence watching as Josh breathed in and out, as his mother looked on
in hope and fear. There was nothing that I could have said or done
that would have helped. After about fifteen minutes of silence I
couldn't stand it any more and went out to the waiting room to CJ. I
couldn't help myself; as soon as I was free of the room, of the
tensions and feeling surrounding it, everything overwhelmed me. I
tried to hold it all back, but the tears fell freely the second that I
was out of the room. I didn't have to be strong for anyone when I was
on my own; no false sentiments of hope were going to help.

The tears were freely flowing when I entered the waiting room. CJ
looked up, and the moment her face saw me, it fell into complete
despair. And I wanted to reassure her, tell her that it was all going
to be okay, but I couldn't.

I couldn't tell her that Josh was fine, that I knew that he'd pull
through. She looked at me with hope shining through the tears that
were starting to form and I told her "It doesn't look good."

The tears cascaded with more force from my eyes, I'd let myself know
the secret that I was trying to deny - nothing was the same as it had
been. Nothing would ever be the same and no matter how much.

CJ and I cried together for a while to come, locked in each others
embrace, not a word passing between us, and I felt more so than ever
that I had let Josh down.

Later she visited Josh herself and I went to the White House in order
to start work. Leo caught me as I entered the West Wing but said
nothing. He didn't reprimand me for not turning up in time, instead
gave me a sympathetic smile, hiding his despair to himself. I entered
my office, but I couldn't bring myself to do any work. Every time I
started, I could see him in my head; a snap shot of Josh lying still
in the hospital bed, tubes and God only knows what else leading
everywhere, his mother looking at me, pleading with her eyes for me to
help in some way. What way, I didn't know, except that I had to tell
Donna.

It took me some time to try and construct the best way to tell her
that Josh was in hospital and might not recover fully, but there was
not one way of putting this tactfully, and in the end I decided to
write whatever came into my head.

I opened up a new message and typed in Donna's email address.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
To: Donna Moss <Donnatella_Moss@aol.com>
From: Sam Seaborn <Sam.Seaborn@whitehouse.gov>
Date: 8-22-02 10:11
Subject: Josh

Donna,
Thanks for your email. I don't know how to word this, but there is
something that I have to tell you.
It's about Josh; he's not well. I only found out this morning when Leo
phoned me. He was in a car accident on Friday. I spent the weekend in
Boston and no one told me.

I've spent the last hour trying to think of a way to ask you this, and
all I can say is please, please come back here, if only for a few
days. Josh needs you; I need you. It doesn't look good and I don't
know how I'm going to get through this without you.

If you feel that you don't want to come back, I understand, but we all
know that he loves you, and none of us can survive without you.

Love, Sam
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I sent it before reading through it, then read it and thought that I'd
written it all wrong. It didn't say what I wanted it to say, it
sounded as though I was trying to guilt her into returning, but I had
known that this way there was nothing that I could do about it but
worry.

I spent the rest of the day trying to get through meetings with
various people, trying to concentrate on writing speeches for various
reasons, but I couldn't. I couldn't do anything because the person
that I had let down so badly could be dying, could be dead at that
moment, and it was more than I could take.

I left at 6 o'clock having done nothing of the work that I had wanted
to, not being concerned enough with any of the congressmen and
businessmen that I had met with to make much of a difference. So much
so that Ginger had to schedule more meetings with the majority of the
people for a different time.

I saw Ainsley on my way out, and asked her if she would like to come
back to my house to watch a movie or something. Truth be told, all I
needed was human contact, someone to keep me sane, someone to help me
through the night.

I couldn't face going back to see Josh, to see the pleading that his
mother silently sent me to help him. I needed someone who wasn't going
to judge me, and Ainsley was there. I'm sure that she saw right
through my request, but she agreed to join me anyway. I was upset,
convinced that it was all my fault, but here was someone who would
still be friends with me despite all that. I had liked Ainsley almost
from the moment that she had come to the White House, despite Josh's
convictions that no Republican was worthy of talking to.

We walked to my car in complete silence, before she told me that she
was going to take her own car and follow me home if I still wanted her
company. I nodded.

I got into my car, and drove home, ensuring that Ainsley was behind me
at all times. We got to my apartment, and we entered, and I invited
Ainsley to sit on the couch before I burst into tears again, the sobs
convulsing through my body with heart-wrenching bursts of energy.
Ainsley got me to the couch and drew me into her arms and held me
tightly, stroking my back before eventually succumbing to the tears
herself. We remained in a similar position, clinging to one another
for many hours, not saying anything beyond Ainsley's half-hearted
reassurance that everything would be okay. And I wanted to believe
her, but I wasn't sure that I could.

Finally the tears subsided and we were still holding onto one another,
and she kissed my head, forehead, and cheek before we found ourselves
desperately kissing one another on the lips with force. And we both
knew that this had stemmed from a need for the contact of anyone, but
it didn't finish with that.

When we woke up in the morning, naked and in each other's arms, I knew
that I didn't want this to be a one-time occurrence, it wasn't just
about that need for me. And I don't think it was about that for her,
either. There was definite attraction there, but I didn't think that I
could actually act on it for some time to come. Ironic, when I thought
about it, but I couldn't do that because of Josh.

I smiled at Ainsley as she stirred and eventually woke. The alarm went
off shortly after and we had to get up. There was some awkwardness,
which I had anticipated.

"Thanks," I said in my screwed up way to get over the embarrassment
and reassure her that it wasn't just the one night. "For last night,
thank you," I rephrased hesitantly.

She smiled, it wasn't entirely sincere, but neither was it contrived.
"That's okay," she said. "I'd better be going." And that was it for
her. I couldn't leave it like that.

"You know," I started, and then I stopped. "Y'know... I do like you. And
if you wanted, maybe we could get together some time?" I asked
hopefully.

Ainsley looked at me, her smile brightening.

"Really?" she questioned. "You'd like to go out with me on some other
occasion?" I could tell that she wasn't convinced, and I wasn't sure
whether this was a slight on me, or on my skills at asking out women.
I decided to try again.

"Some other time, some better time, I'd love to have dinner with you,"
I told her. "Not yet, but I'd definitely like to repeat last night," I
said.

She blushed, and as she got out of bed she turned and kissed my head.
"I understand," she told me. "And I'd love to," she answered before
dressing and saying goodbye, exiting my apartment.

I showered and shaved, and returned to the hospital before my meeting began.

Nothing had changed, Josh was still lying still and pale against the
hospital sheets, his mother sitting there in a constant vigil,
interrupted only by a 5 minute break to get some coffee and food from
the restaurant. I took the opportunity to talk to him, to tell him for
five minutes what I was thinking.

"Josh... Josh, I don't know if you can hear me, and if you can I bet
you're laughing at me, but hear me out anyway," I started. "I want us
to be friends again, I want to forget the past, I want you to forgive
me for being such an awful friend to you. I saw Donna the other day,
while I was in Boston. We talked a lot. She's happy there but not as
happy as she was here. I've emailed her, asked her to come back to see
you. I'll tell you what she says. Everything at work is going okay
without you. Hate to tell you this, but you're not necessary for the
running of the country, we can actually survive without you. But don't
tell Leo I told you that, he's pissed because he's got to do all your
work as well as his own. And Marbury is annoyed that you're getting
all the attention at the moment. Apparently there was an increase in
numbers for your fan club ever since you've been in here. And can I
just say that it was one of the tabloids that reported that this
morning, and I didn't go and actually find out the information," I
started to say more, when I heard a muffled laugh behind me.

"You're actually going to try and boost that insatiable ego of his by
telling him that subscription to his fan club has increased?" the
voice said, and I turned round.

"Donna!" I exclaimed, hugging her with all my might, so that she told
me to let her go. "It's wonderful to see you," I said. "I only wish it
could have been under better circumstances." I looked towards Josh,
and Donna followed suit.

"How is he?" she asked in a quieter voice than she'd used before.

I said nothing in reply, but Donna apparently needed nothing other
than to see him to get her confirmation of the situation.

"Oh God," she said, grabbing onto my hand for support. I could see
tears begin to form in her eyes, and so gave her a less binding hug
than before.

"They're doing everything that they can," I told her unnecessarily.

"But it's not enough," she concluded. "It's not enough." The tears
were starting to fall lazily down her cheeks at this point, and I
could understand. She sat down beside his bed, something which I had
not allowed myself to do since it required being close to him, and
kept my hand in hers, forcing me to walk further forward from my
position near the door. She then took his hand in her free hand and
brought it up to her cheek, stroking it against the side of her face,
the tears being wiped to the side. I eventually let her hand go,
allowing her to use both of her hands to take his, and I stepped away
from this seemingly intimate display.

I exited the room, yet more tears falling that I hadn't noticed whilst
I was in the room, and stood outside for a minute, watching as Donna
brushed her hand through his hair in an attempt to tidy it as she
kissed his hand. I watched as she talked to him with far more ease
than I had, and wondered what had happened between them. I felt
someone join me and turned slightly to see Josh's mother watching the
same display.

Neither of us said a thing. We only watched for a few minutes before
my pager bleeped indicating that I needed to phone the office, only to
be told that I should be in for staff. I made my excuses and left.

The next month followed in a similar fashion, get up in the morning,
go to the hospital, to work, to home, try to sleep, get up, hospital,
work, home, sleep, up, hospital, work, home, sleep, up. And so on in
an almost endless cycle. And as much as my depression had got hold of
me before, my elation when we heard that Josh had a chance, would
survive, was awake, was talking, was up and about was just as great.

And still I stood away from the action, unsure as to whether Josh
really wanted my input, my help. As it turned out, he interpreted my
reluctance to come close as a question of whether I would help, would
forgive, or would be there for him. He announced his decision to go
back to his mother's to recuperate a week before he was due to leave
the hospital, and while I wondered why it was that he wouldn't be
staying in DC, why he didn't even ask for my help, I said nothing and
was supportive.

And I honestly meant to come to see him on the day that he was going
to Connecticut, but things built up, there was some minor emergency
situation and so it was after 5 when I got to the hospital.

I went to the nurse's desk and the receptionist informed me after a
brief consultation of her computer and some papers that he had left
early this morning with his mother.

I went straight home and after a few minutes decided to phone Ainsley.
Everything had changed, and I had to treat it as such. Josh was in
Connecticut and that was that. I was here, I wasn't getting any
younger, and I'd had my life on hold too long.

Ainsley agreed to my request to meet her for dinner and so I set about
trying to forget about Josh. Perhaps I'd phone him in a couple of
weeks or so, but for now I had a date to get ready for.

We spent the next month physically as though nothing was different.
Josh wasn't there, but we didn't mention it with any regularity, just
occasions when you'd stop and think that something wasn't right,
someone was missing. The moments when you walked to his office to ask
him if he wanted to go to lunch, or watch a game on TV, and you
remembered that he was in Connecticut. Or at least you'd assume that
he was there; no one had had any contact with him since he'd left
without saying goodbye.

And the days passed, and the weather got colder, and the congressmen
became more demanding and the Republican's tried to unearth yet more
reasons as to why we shouldn't be in office for the next term. And we
campaigned yet harder, tried to persuade the American public that we
were the right people for Governing their country and everything was
the same and everything was different.

I kept in contact with Donna, sending emails maybe a couple of times a
week, both of us studiously skirting round the issue we both knew we
wanted to discuss most. She told me about her new boyfriend, her job,
her family, what she'd done the other day, what she'd watched on TV,
how her now ex-boyfriend was a complete jerk unworthy of anyone's
time, about her friends in Boston. And I read, looking forward to the
next email she would send.

She wished us luck for the upcoming election, which was just over a
month away, and I offered my dating advice, told her to come visit
anytime. I reminded her that we'd have to go out sometime, and I told
her about my dates with Ainsley, our relationship, such that it was,
was progressing quite nicely considering work pressures. And thus the
pattern continued. Onwards and forwards, never looking back.

And then he returned. We'd not spoken in over a month, it passed so
quickly and yet so slowly, and I wasn't sure whether it seemed only
yesterday that he'd left, or if we were like strangers greeting each
other, old friends separated by years and distance. I wasn't sure how
to approach him. I'd let him down in ways, and I was angry in other
ways and I didn't know who Josh was going to be this time. My time
during that first week was spent working as hard as I could, due to
the reelection but also as some sort of inner barrier, a way of
keeping distance from Josh and from everyone else. It took me until
the end of the week to decide to ask him out for a drink, to reminisce
and to see if things could return to how they once had been.

It seemed that they could. Josh had regained his inner strength, it
seemed; his confidence was back to the levels of the Josh I remembered
from first having met him; the arrogance that he could achieve
anything he wanted was back in full force.

And he was still as much a lightweight as ever.

I smiled internally at this knowledge; some things would never change.

And a couple of drinks later the atmosphere was relaxed enough that
the silence that had pervaded the atmosphere was no longer awkward.


"Donna's in Boston," I informed him and I wondered why. "I found her
when I went to a birthday thing. She's working for my friend in a law
firm," I continued regardless, and it certainly got Josh's interest.

He looked at me, many unasked questions wanting to be addressed, and
he eventually asked how she was, whether she had asked about him. He
seemed so eager it was almost amusing, but I replied anyway without
laughing.

It had several weeks since I had remembered the strange conversation
between Donna and I. A conversation where she told me that she had
slept with Josh. And it was a conversation that I honestly couldn't
remember whether I had had whilst drunk, or whether it was something
that I had imagined. It had begun to fester in my thoughts and
frankly, it was bugging me enough to find out whether it was purely in
my head or not.

"She was fine, but she told me something. About you." I decided to go
for it, I could always blame my strange and often twisted dreams. I
have no idea what was causing me to be so forthright, to discuss this
with someone who was possibly no better than a stranger. Perhaps it
was the alcohol, perhaps seeing Josh almost as I remembered had filled
me with some sort of confidence, making me forget that we had barely
spoken in a number of months.

He asked what I'd been told, what Donna had said about him and I
almost didn't tell him, but I wanted to find out what had happened
between my friends, I couldn't allow it to remain unresolved if
possible.

"She told me... something about you sleeping together," I said as
vaguely as possible waiting to see if Josh would laugh in my face at
such a preposterous notion.

But instead Josh's face hinted at recognition, almost happy, even. And
I decided that this could perhaps not have been the imagination that I
had blamed, maybe it had really happened, and maybe it was the key to
gaining back some of the friendship with Josh that I had lost over the
last few months. Then I decided that I had been dreaming it and that
Josh was merely trying to contain his amusement. I waited for the
laughter that didn't come.

A few seconds too late he asked "Did she?" and I got the impression
that he was trying to not sound elated, not to sound as though he had
any recollection, but it fell short by about a mile.

"You would tell me, wouldn't you, if it was true?" I asked, not quite
knowing the truth from my hazy memory but wanting to see Josh's
reaction, to see if he could trust me again.

"We did," he told me after a moment, and I think I kind of over did
the reaction. Because I was almost sure that I had dreamt up the
conversation, and because I didn't expect Josh to admit to it if he
had. He laughed at my expression, and asked, "What, like you weren't
expecting it?"

I stuttered a few words incoherently. He laughed at me yet more as a
good friend would.

"I...of course...I... I..." There was nothing that I could think to say. I
wasn't sure what I had expected, but I don't think honesty was what I
had hoped for. His face changed, the laughter was still there, but a
different expression, one of perhaps nostalgia, came upon his
features, and it was mere seconds before he started with the tale.

"We were so drunk. It was the Illinois Primary, and I bet even you
don't remember what the hell you did that night. I woke up with her in
my arms and I thought that life couldn't get any better, and when I
woke again, well, she was gone. She obviously didn't share the
feeling." It was a bitter irony, a short laugh; a definitive knowledge
that life didn't turn out the way you wanted.

I was struck silent for a minute, I couldn't believe that such a small
misunderstanding had lead to the culmination of such misery for my
friends, maybe because naively I believed in love, in true happiness
and I didn't want this to have been the end. But I was certain that
Donna reciprocated the feelings, and that made it all the much more
depressing.

"I think she did," I said eventually. The truth was that she still
felt more than he would believe; she wouldn't have returned for
anything less.

"If she did then she wouldn't have left," he said, with a hint of
anger and even defeat.

I didn't know which time he was talking about, and I would have been
surprised had he known himself.

"She wouldn't have left," he repeated almost in a whisper, an echo.
And I couldn't believe that life could be so cruel that someone with
such self-confidence, such self-assurance could be lead to doubt
something that I knew to be true. But I didn't question it. I almost
wish that I had, that I had convinced him that he was wrong, that
Donna always had been there for him, had loved him, and always would.
But I didn't.

I changed the subject, tried to make him laugh, lift his spirits, and
I think I achieved it with tales of woe about certain republicans and
politics and everything and anything that I could think of. And he was
the friend that I remembered, but more grown up, more mature, but
laughed at my stories, particularly those about Ainsley, and it was
like the old times. Then I got stupid and asked about the tobacco
thing, and he quickly hid inside himself, diverted the questions, and
I stopped asking.

A brunette then came to our table, and they started flirting, and I
tuned out. Josh had to get on with his life. I wasn't certain that he
was past Donna yet, but that was none of my business.

For the next few hours I conversed with a congressman about the
upcoming election amongst more social topics while Josh entertained
his friend.

She left later and Josh rejoined me and told me that he was going to
meet up with her in a couple nights time and I foolishly asked about
Donna. He told me, unconvincingly, that he was glad that she had left,
and he told me that he was glad that she had got away, that she was
free of him.

I suddenly felt so sorry for him, a pity that I had not felt
throughout the whole scandal episode. He wasn't sorry that she had
left, but it seemed as if he wanted to get away from the topic, and
instead I pressed him. I wanted to know; I wanted to find out what
reason there was for those many months of misery, of hatred and
contempt. And he caved and told me. And I certainly wasn't sure what
to make of the whole thing.

He trusted me, and then he left. He left as he had left on far too
many occasions before, but I couldn't bring myself to move. I couldn't
think beyond what he had told me.

Josh wasn't a complete bastard; he wasn't working against us, he was
protecting us all, more precisely he was protecting Donna and I wasn't
sure what to make of it. My life was turned upside down as much as it
had been changed before and only this time I had no reason to yell at
Josh, no one to blame, and I couldn't get over that fact.

I went back to my apartment and sat down on my couch and poured a
large scotch. I downed it in one gulp, the liquid burning the back of
my mouth, but that didn't deter me from taking another large mouthful
from a second glass, then a third.

I sat still in shock, comforting myself with only the alcohol for
another hour or so. It was selfish and almost self-pitying without
reason, but I couldn't get past the whole idea. The last few months
had been a complete lie, there was no ulterior motive in which Josh
was working for some opposing side; there was no reason for Donna to
have been hurt, to have left.

And there was no reason as to why I should have felt so betrayed, so
left out, either now or back in the beginning. But I couldn't help it,
I couldn't prevent my self-pity, as much as I told myself to get over
it, I didn't understand why Josh hadn't told me in the first place. I
had once been his best friend. I had once been his partner in crime.
And now there was nothing but a tenuous relationship between us,
friendship hanging by threads.

I phoned Ainsley that night and cried on her, blaming the alcohol. I
contemplated emailing Donna, but I had nothing to tell her. Ainsley
came round later and held me in her arms as I cried some more
incoherently. And she held me later as we fell asleep after I had made
love to her with all the desperation that I had shown the night after
that I had found out that Josh had been in an accident. She didn't
question my motives, didn't ask what was wrong, and I was thankful for
that. There was nothing that I could have told her that night that she
could have understood.

Josh and I quickly became almost as close as we had been before. He
went to Boston on business and I said nothing about Donna or Maggie.
And I said nothing more when he stayed there several days longer than
was expected, nor when he finally arrived home happier than I thought
I'd ever seen him, more enthusiastic about work than before. I only
decided not to question him on the subject since it was obvious that
Maggie had exacted a change in him for the better.

As Election Day got nearer still we all forgot the past and
concentrated on the future, practically living in our offices as we
worked harder alongside the campaign staff.

Although we had surpassed all expectations already by the President
becoming the Democratic candidate after the whole MS and tobacco
issues, we were fighting an almost upward struggle as the Republican
candidate used this and more against us. The predicted polling numbers
were rising for us but they were still in the Republican's favour.

We wanted to win; we needed to win for the good of the country and
everything else was ignored or neglected. We talked little amongst
ourselves as the day grew nearer, and even less on the day. I was
extremely nervous, not even wanting to think about what would happen
if we didn't win, and hoping for some sort of miracle.

There were several surprises on that day, but one shocked me far more
than the rest, and it took a while for me to recover.


END OF PART FIVE



Ex Post Facto - Part Six
Not So Much A Fairytale


[donna pov]

I'd like to think that what happened between Josh and me have any
affect. I'd like to believe that I was independent enough to make it
on my own after I somewhat foolishly ran off. It would be nice to tell
a fairy story about how I managed to leave my old life behind and
become responsible, mature and successful overnight.

Alas, true fairy stories don't exist, at least, not that I know of.
And none at all that I have ever been told involved the heroine of our
tale running back to her parents house, where she remained for several
months until they told her to get off her ass and move on. In the
kindest possible way, of course.

In my defense, I must say that I did try and make my own way in life,
independent of my parents, but it was such a feeble attempt that it
was practically non-existent.

Here's the true story of what happened to me after I left the White
House, so sit back, enjoy, and then we can get onto the good parts.
Believe me, it happens.

It all went downhill from the moment that we slept together. I had
known at the time that it was a mistake, but I didn't realise quite
how bad a decision it had been.

The yelling started, we kept each other at a distance, and that, too,
was a mistake. We weren't made to be consummate professionals, we
weren't the kind of people who could work together and have a separate
personal life; our lives were intertwined, connected in far too many
complicated and confusing ways, and I didn't understand that until it
was too late.

I was na‹ve and I thought that if I pretended that nothing had
happened everything would be okay. Admittedly, I see where I went
wrong. I went too far with the whole 'just friends' concept without
actually discussing it, and Josh had his own 'just friends' agenda,
which I discovered later was nothing to do with me. Sort of. It's
complicated.

So the distance between us increased, I discovered that keeping
friendship, or any appearance of unprofessional conduct, was too much
stress, words were exchanged and I left.

That's the short, nice, non-abusive story, so I'd like to keep it to
that for now.

I realised when I got home that night that I'd made another mistake.
Well, if I'd been thinking anything at all, I would have realised it.
Instead I cried for hours, my misery at my failure in life
encompassing me and taking over.

The White House, Josh, had been my life, and all of a sudden it was no
longer and I had no idea what I was going to do with myself.

The waves of emotion that ruled my life for the next few days were
torturous. I considered doing some very silly things, I did some
ridiculous things, and I was too stubborn to ask for anyone's
assistance. It was a complete mess.

I went to bars, got drunk and slept with several strangers, just
looking for some sort of comfort, some way of getting over the
loneliness, and, well, I'd rather not dwell on those days too much.
Let's just summarise by saying that I made some incredibly dumb
decisions that were focusing far too much on my heart than my head.

The days after I'd got over the initial shock were not much better.

I finally decided that I wasn't going to find any comfort from picking
up guys in bars, and alcohol had no affect other than the terrible
hangovers. It was then that I realised that I needed to make some
money somehow. Bearing in mind that I was still messed up over the
whole quitting/Josh/life in tatters episode, I went to interviews and
was pretty much laughed out of them. I had little or no education that
was relevant.

My work experience was confined to working in the White House for the
Deputy Chief of Staff. Which was impressive, but when you add the
"could you please not contact him because I don't want him to know
where I am, thank you", well, lets just say it does little for your
credibility. I didn't want to work for anyone in politics for fear
that they might tell Josh where I was and things just got worse and I
got myself into a complete state.

That was when my mother chose to call me to tell me that she was
planning on visiting me some time, and (in a humorous kind of way)
could I possibly arrange for a White House tour, and perhaps a meeting
with the President? I spent the next three hours on the phone with her
whilst she tried to understand from my incoherent sobs what had
happened.

I went back to Wisconsin the next day, taking with me nearly all my
clothes, and anything else that I could pack and carry onto the plane.

My mother, father and one of my sisters welcomed me to Wisconsin at
the airport, and I greeted them in turn by collapsing into tears, not
understanding myself quite why. My sister gave me a big hug, and tried
her best to cheer me up, telling me about the latest episode with her
friend, who had apparently been cheating on her fiance with a guy
named Weasel who liked to watch 1930's horror movies and give make up
tips. I tried my best to find the humor in it, but all I could do was
give a weak smile as my father collected my many bags from the luggage
carousel and my mother told me about some upcoming book meeting that
she was going to go to. I had little more reaction as they got me into
the car and took me home.

My sister, Lucybella, took me inside whilst my parents unpacked the
car. She sat me in the kitchen and gave tips on how to cheer up. The
majority of which seemed to involve chocolate, ice cream, and girly
movies. I couldn't find it in me to do anything other than to give a
rather pathetic and unconvincing smile, but she said nothing of it.
After that I went to my old bedroom and held my stuffed teddy bear
that I had had since I was a little girl and cried myself to sleep,
thinking of my old life, of how wonderful it had been in the West
Wing, of Josh.

The next few days were little better, and I alternated between yelling
at my parents and Lucy, not wanting to be alone, and crying. I could
tell that it was getting beyond them, they had no idea what to do when
they saw me, should they give me space, or should they sit me down
with a cup of coffee and talk to me. It was irritating me as well,
when had I become so pathetic and clingy? When was it that I had
turned into this version of me that people felt that they had to tread
so carefully around?

And it was only when my mother came to my room one night, talking to
me, and telling me that she wanted me to go see a doctor that I
decided that I wasn't going to give in to self-pity.

It was an uphill struggle, but I had to put the past behind me and
concentrate on the future. My father managed to get me a temporary job
in his office, and I felt like a 16-year-old again, but I didn't
refuse it. It was part of my new strategy to get myself back on my
feet, to become independent of my family like the rest of my sisters
and my brother had managed. I might have been the youngest, but this
didn't mean that I couldn't achieve what they had.

I made a conscious decision to not think about the White House, to
make myself independent of Josh. I tried not to think about him, to
make myself hate him for what he had done, how he had pushed me away.
I tried so very hard, but I didn't succeed. I simply couldn't. I never
forgot my life at the White House, my pseudo-family there.

And life went on like this for a couple of months, I lived at home,
worked with my dad, went to the gym with my mom and felt that I hadn't
accomplished a damn thing towards my strategy. My mother told me that
she agreed with this sentiment, and although it was wonderful having
her youngest daughter back home, I was 28 and perhaps needed to
rethink the idea of living with my parents for the rest of my life.

So when my eldest sister, Nicolina, invited me to go to Boston with
her to visit an old friend of hers who had just had a baby, I didn't
say no. I'd never visited Boston before, but Josh had declared, in one
of his college reminiscing moments, that it was one of the nicest
places in the world. Although, to tell the truth, I think he was
quoting an exchange student he had met, but I decided to take his (or
her) recommendation.

Nikki and I stayed in a hotel outside of Boston and so while she was
visiting her friend, I caught a train into the center and did some
sight seeing. I did the tourist bit and took a trolley tour, went to
the Cheers bar and to Harvard, then MIT. Then I went to Starbucks,
bought a coffee and then took it to the park opposite. I found a bench
and sat and read the book that I had bought in the sunshine for about
an hour.

I agreed with Josh, or the foreign exchange student's opinion. And in
a moment of spontaneous irrationality I decided that I was going to
live in Boston. When I told Nikki later that evening, being careful
not to mention either the fact that it had been Josh who had
recommended Boston to me she just smiled and said nothing, but I could
tell that she didn't believe me.

I was being impractical Donna again, the one who drove to New
Hampshire after splitting up with my boyfriend, and returned mere
weeks later because he'd apologised and told me that he was a reformed
character. The Donna who then drove back to New Hampshire as soon as
said ex-boyfriend turned out to be completely unchanged and
inconsiderate bastard. And then a few years later left the White House
for unknown reasons to do with her boss.

Well, quite frankly I was going to show her, and everyone else, that I
was being entirely practical and sensible and I was going to move to
Boston, damnit.

I think my parents were equally dubious about the whole idea, but
chose to be supportive. My mom asked me what I planned to do when I
got to Boston, and really I hadn't given it a thought, but I came up
with some answer which was apparently satisfactory.

I arranged to have all my things from DC, where I was adamant that I
was never going to return, shipped up to Boston, to an apartment that
I had rented a few days after my arrival there. My parents nodded and
told me that I knew where they were if I needed anything, and
returned, somewhat reluctantly, to Wisconsin.

The apartment was small and cramped and I began to feel homesick and
claustrophobic mere days after moving in. But I persevered, and was
determined not to return home for at least a few months. I told myself
that I certainly had to get myself a job. After being all but laughed
out of yet more interviews, and feeling confidence in myself
degenerate to almost microscopic levels, I decided that I would have
to get a reference if I didn't want to have to return to college. I
still remembered all the phone extensions for each person in the West
Wing, but it was a matter of deciding whom to call, whom I could
trust.

In the end I came up with Leo. He was loyal and reliable, and when I
phoned through to Margaret, shivering and breathing awkwardly from the
adrenaline, she didn't recognise my voice and put me straight through.
I was incomprehensibly nervous, my voice wavering as I said hello to
Leo's barking, his voice softened immediately at the recognition of
whom it was.

He asked how I was, told me, in not so many words, that he had been
worried about me. I told him that I had been staying with my parents
but that I was now in Boston. I asked him if it would be possible to
cite him as a reference, and he told me not to worry.

The next day I received a phone call from a law firm informing me that
they had been told that I was looking for a job, came with excellent
references, and would I be available for an interview? Naturally I
told them yes without trying to sound too desperate or grateful, and
made a mental note to send Leo some flowers.

They offered me the job at the end of the interview, and I hugged each
of the partners in turn and thanked them sincerely, most probably
having them question the sanity of their new employee. I was now the
new assistant to Mr. James Banks, esquire, and I couldn't be happier.

This happiness remained for about a week before I picked up the
newspaper one morning and discovered Josh's picture splashed across
the front, the story being that he had accepted money to try and throw
the tobacco case out. The details were hazy, mostly a reiteration of
Josh's life history, which I knew by heart already. The main evidence
was some missing files (information, they claimed, from a White House
insider) which were important in the case against the big tobacco
firms.

I wasn't sure what to think. I wanted to phone Josh, to ask him
whether I should believe what they were telling me about him; was this
something to do with me? Did he fall apart after I left?

In some ways I wanted to believe it, to believe that I had some amount
of importance to him, if only as an employee, but in my heart I didn't
believe that Josh was in any way related to these allegations. I sat
down in my kitchen chair, the coffee that I had poured myself long
forgotten, the toast getting cold on my plate, and I wanted to call in
sick, but I knew that it would make a bad impression since I hadn't
been with the firm that long.

The more cynical part of me praised my good fortune for having got out
before any of this came to light, that it wasn't my career that would
be ruined. But I wanted to call Sam and make sure that Josh was going
to make it out of this whole mess okay, that his life, his career,
would be safe. But I couldn't do any of this without alerting people
to my whereabouts, which I still didn't want to disclose.

I wanted a new life, and in order to do that, I felt that I had to
completely cut myself off from the old one. And so when I went into
work, and the assistants and other staff discussed it over lunch, I
made out that although I had worked in the White House, a fact that
they all knew somehow, I had only once spoken to Mr. Lyman, and he
seemed quite polite. Which, if they knew Josh at all, was an outright
lie, but they were accepting of this, and decided that perhaps the
press was over-sensationalising the whole affair.

It was July before any truth came to light, a few months where I had
debated the logic of calling my old friends, and I was relieved to
learn that Josh was not guilty. The files had been uncovered, and
there was talk that it might even have been some sort of tobacco
conspiracy to tarnish Josh's name. I told myself that I had never even
suspected that he could do anything so against his beliefs. But the
thought nagged me, kept reminding me that in the moments that I had
declared that I hated him, I had told myself repeatedly that he was a
lying, manipulative bastard who didn't deserve any kind of pity. That
he had brought it all upon himself and he deserved everything that he
got.

Deep down, there was the knowledge that I knew that he could never
have done it, that it wasn't in him to do it. That I had known all
along that Josh wasn't the person that they had made him out to be.
But the exoneration gave me hope again, made life better almost. And
though I tried to rationalise it in terms of the government, it was
really the fact that my friend, my one time lover, wasn't the evil
bastard that he had been accused of being.

Boston was now my life. I had many friends, I had a social life of
sorts; I had even been out on dates without worrying about what Josh
might think. Or at least, I tried hard not to dwell on it.

And then my boss turned 40, and he invited me, along with the rest of
the firm, to the celebrations. All I thought I had achieved over the
past months was forgotten as I spotted Sam Seaborn across the dance
floor, laughing with my boss and some of his college friends. I was
completely shocked and speechless at the same time; I hadn't expected
him to be here.

I thought that I was never going to see him, or any of them, again. My
attention was repeatedly drawn to him from my table as I tried to
ascertain whether he had seen me or not. It also didn't help that
several of my friends kept pointing to him, having recognised him from
some of his TV interviews, and the fact that he was as attractive as I
had ever seen him. He seemed not to see me, and so I went to the bar
and got myself another drink, hoping in some ways to avoid him.
Unfortunately, this was the exact place that he found me as I ordered
myself a screwdriver and he asked for a beer.

"Sam! Wh...what are you doing here?" I asked as convincingly as I could.
Apparently he bought it, the drama that I had learned from college
finally paying off.

"I could ask the same thing of you, but would I be correct in assuming
that you are the new assistant whom James Banks has been telling me
about who used to work in the White House?" he asked, more honestly
shocked.

I tried to work my way around his sentence, being thankful that, as a
speechwriter, his grammar was more comprehensible on paper. I
eventually nodded, having understood what he was asking exactly.

"How are you? How are...things?" I asked as we walked from the bar,
fully aware of the envious looks my friends were shooting me from
their side of the room.

"I'm fine," he said. And we sat in silence a minute. I was somewhat
reluctant to throw my arms around him and tell him how much I had
missed him and everyone else at the White House. He took this silence
as a cue to start up some sort of conversation. "I knew James from law
school. I'm sure if you tell him you know me he'll tell you about a
thousand embarrassing stories about what I got up to at college," he
said with some amount of humor, and I felt obliged to laugh, nervously
almost.

I could tell that he had noticed my frequent glances and psychic
messages that I was trying to send to my friends. I was trying my best
to convince them I wasn't interested in Sam, that we were only
friends, but their distracting hand movements telling me to go for it
informed me they weren't getting the message.

"Listen, you probably want to get back to your friends," he said
uneasily after a moment where I was glaring at some of the girls.
"Maybe we'll see each other later." He started to stand, and I
realised that I was being quite rude, the least I could do was to give
him my full attention. Besides, I actually wanted to talk to him.

"No, Sam! You don't need to go," I assured him. "Gosh, I'm sorry, just
standing here and not talking. I just... I just didn't expect to see you
here, is all." And wasn't that the truth. I grabbed his hand and got
him sitting down. "My friends can ask me all about you when I'm done,"
I told him, gulping at my drink in order to try and calm my nerves. At
first it didn't work, and when he asked me a question I was as
apprehensive as before. The rest of my drink consumed, I started to
relax. "God, I've not seen you in months. I've missed you. CJ, Toby,
Leo, the President - everyone." Josh, I added silently, but as far as
Sam was concerned, I hadn't thought about him at all.

He drank some beer, and I tried hard not to be amused when the foam
surrounded his mouth. It was even harder not to when he said, "Well,
what's not to miss?" and I couldn't help but burst into semi-alcoholic
giggles. He looked at me strangely; somewhat disconcerted that he
wasn't being all that funny.

"I'm sorry, but when you say that with a beer mustache, it really is
amusing," I said between laughter.

He wiped at his mouth self-consciously, but the proverbial ice had now
been broken, allowing us to talk more freely and comfortably for a
while to come. He asked me to dance, and grabbed my hand and dragged
me to the dance floor. We danced our way through a couple of songs I
only vaguely recognised before a slow song came on. I knew that I had
heard it before somewhere, and I wracked my brains trying to recall,
and I suddenly remembered.

"What's wrong?" Sam asked as we danced slowly and silently around the
other couples.

"Illinois primary," I said quietly. "We were dancing and you wanted to
get a reaction out of Josh and we danced closer," I rambled on. "It
was this song."

"Oh," he said. And that was all he said, but I had to know, and I was
aware that it was the first time that night, in a long time that I had
mentioned Josh out loud, I had to find out about him. Despite my
telling myself that I hated him I knew the opposite was true. I'd
known for a long time, perhaps since I had first met him that my
feelings were anything but hate.

"How is he?" I asked, and Sam seemed to come out of his own reverie.
"When I heard about the tobacco thing, all I could think was that I
was so glad that I left when I did. Then I heard that he'd been
cleared of it all. I knew anyway. He wouldn't accept money for
something like that. He'd rather fight." My trail of thought ended as
abruptly as it began; prompting Sam to ask for the first time
questions that I suspected he'd never ask Josh.

"What happened between you two?" he asked hesitantly.

"What do you mean?" I pretended to misunderstand.

"Nothing was the same after the Illinois Primary. Did something
happen?" he asked, his suspicions obvious.

I decided to neither confirm nor deny, rather telling him
enigmatically "Something did happen." Before the song ended and we
went our separate ways and I drank myself into oblivion.

My friends questioned me about him almost relentlessly, and I found it
somewhat amusing, and reassured them all that we were just friends,
expanding on what I had told them about my job at the White House to
give a reason for my having known him so well. My friend, Ainsley, in
the White House Counsel department where I worked as an assistant had
gone out with him for a while, and we had all gone out a few times.

They were all too drunk to see any holes in my explanation, and they
accepted it unquestioningly, reverting all their stares to him, more
so as they drank more. And in turn I drank more, enjoying myself for
the most part, until I thought about Josh. He was haunting my thoughts
as much as ever, Sam's appearance hadn't done anything to help in that
respect, and it scared me that someone could have such a hold over my
life without being near.

More drinks than I had sense later and I decided to go back to my
apartment. However I had underestimated how drunk, and overestimated
how awake I was so the moment I saw the chair outside the room, it was
too uninviting an invitation to pass up. I slumped into it with a lack
of grace, and would have fallen asleep if Sam hadn't almost tripped
and fell on to me. He offered me a place in his king-sized bed and I
couldn't say no. We stumbled upstairs, relying on each other to get
into the elevator and walk the 20 steps or so to his room. Exhausted,
I took off my shoes and left everything else on as I climbed into the
bed. Sam crawled in minutes later, drunkenly sprawling across his side
of the bed.

I decided to tell him at last what it was that I was going to tell him
earlier, but didn't. What I suspected Josh hadn't told him. He
deserved to know; he'd been a good friend to me. And I was drunk and
confessing to pretty much everything that I had ever done, including
earlier in the night telling all my friends of the crush that I had
had briefly on Sam when I had first met him.

"Sam?" I murmured after a while, semi-conscious, and most certainly
devoid of any sense.

He grunted in acknowledgment of hearing me.

"Thing at Illinois Primary?" I mumbled trying to form sentences but
not managing.

Some sort of sound from Sam, I took it as encouragement to continue.

"Slept with Josh," I said, and it was out there like that. I fell
asleep shortly afterwards, and dreamt of fairies and evil stepmother's
and ball dresses and falling in love with a prince. Before some pink
aliens in blue lycra outfits came along and promptly overtook the
world.


"My friends will all be very jealous," I laughed, clutching the piece
of paper that had Sam's email address on it. Sam looked suitably
embarrassed. He was about to leave, leaning on his car as we stood
outside the hotel. There was no awkwardness as he quickly stepped
forward and brought me into a friendly hug, kissing me on the lips
briefly.

"And you will email, won't you?" he asked again.

I smiled. "Yes, of course I will, now shouldn't you go back to DC and
like, govern the country or something?"

He stood back from the hug and got into his car, saying goodbye. He
promised that he would write to me and convince me to visit. I had
little intention of visiting, and I knew that as I waved goodbye. I
couldn't face going back to DC yet, if ever.

I'd arranged to meet up with some of the girls from work for Sunday
brunch, mostly to compare our hangovers, and I had little time to
change when I got back to my apartment.

We met at a small restaurant in the middle of town and almost
immediately they demanded to know where I'd been last night.
Apparently I'd made the decision to leave without actually telling
anyone and hadn't answered my phone when they called to make sure that
I was back all right. I hadn't had time to check my messages, and
apologised for making them worry and that I looked forward to the
drunken rendition of 'It's Raining Men' when I returned home.

This lead to questioning of where I had got to last night if I wasn't
at my apartment. I calmly explained that I had spent the night in
Sam's room "As a friend, it was entirely platonic, I kept all my
clothes on," while they shrieked delightedly and ignored my protests,
telling me that it was time that I found myself a man. I continued to
deny everything, but none of them were buying it. "I wouldn't do that!
We're friends! I love Josh, not Sam!" I declared, realising far too
late what I'd said. I don't think that I had ever admitted that out
loud, let alone in front of all my friends.

I was somewhat shocked. All those months of telling myself that I
hated the very existence, any mention of the man, I knew that I was
lying to myself, but I don't think that I'd ever understood how much
of a lie it was. I think my reaction had silenced my friends, they
stared at me as though something was wrong.

I couldn't stay there; I had to go back to my apartment, so I made
some excuse about my raging hangover, apologised and left.

I got back to my apartment and more nervous than I had ever been
before, I dialed his number. I let it ring until his answer machine
came on, and then I hung up. I don't know what I was going to tell him
anyway, what I was even ringing for.

I tried again several times that afternoon and evening, but there was
no reply, and I got scared before I could leave a message. I checked
my emails later, nothing of interest, so I dug out Sam's email address
and wrote him a short message.

I sat and watched the TV for a few hours to come, knowing that I'd not
be able to sleep. There was too much going round my head.

Next day I went into work as usual, apologising again for running off
so suddenly the day before and my friends said that it was no big
deal.

I went home that evening, and it was eight o'clock before I thought to
check my emails to see if Sam had replied. He had, the subject being
Josh, and I immediately panicked, thinking that Sam knew, then
realised that he was probably just teasing me about what I had told
him the other night. I vaguely remembered saying something to him
about the Illinois Primary incident with Josh, and he probably was
going to laugh at me about it.

Nothing in the world could have prepared me for what I read though.

I sat back in my chair, reading the email over and over. Josh had been
in an accident. We were having fun, I'd openly acknowledged I was in
love with him all this time, and he had been in the hospital.

I couldn't think straight, I just knew that I needed to be there.

I trembled as I phoned the airline to get a flight. On auto-pilot, I
heard myself asking things and writing down answers, but I wasn't
thinking, my head wasn't with my body, it couldn't concentrate.

The next flight to Washington wasn't until the morning, I'd have to
wait to get to him. I didn't know how I was going to cope. And if I
stood too long and thought about it, I knew that I wouldn't cope.

And so I remained busy the whole night, doing work, packing, informing
people that I was going to have to take a few days off at least, that
there was a family emergency. James told me that I could take as long
as I needed. I packed my bags, ran round organising everything that
I'd need for the next few days, or weeks or however long I was needed.
I was running solely on coffee and adrenaline, having had little sleep
for three nights in a row, and it wasn't until that I got onto the
plane that my body finally gave out and I slept for the short while
that we were in the air.

We landed at Dulles and I practically ran off the plane, not caring if
I was impolite, hit people with my bags or pushed them out of the way.
I lined up for an excruciatingly long amount of time for a cab, only
to get stuck in the rush hour traffic. I willed the cars, buses, vans,
trucks and everything else to move out of the way. Couldn't they see
that I was in a hurry? That I needed to get to the hospital?

It took seemingly hours to get to the hospital, and when we got there
I jumped out. I grabbed my bags, gave the cab driver some amount of
money without counting it and ran. It wasn't until I got nearer that I
wondered what the hell I was doing. Would Josh want me there, would
anyone else want me around?

I hadn't seen them in months, I was sure that they'd forgotten about
me, moved on, and here I was, barging my way back in. But I didn't
doubt for long, I couldn't do it. I needed to see Josh.

I found the room and looked in the window briefly before I entered.

Sam was there, sitting as far away from Josh as he could, talking to
him awkwardly. I quietly opened the door. Sam said something about the
number of Josh's fans increasing and I was overcome by the absurdity
of it all. I laughed to myself, trying not to disturb Sam, but he had
heard me and turned round.

"You're actually going to try and boost that insatiable ego of his by
telling him that subscription to his fan club has increased?" I asked,
trying my best not to look at Josh, because I knew that I wouldn't be
able to keep in control if I did.

"Donna!" Sam hugged me tight, too tight, and I wriggled away, trying
to be able to breathe. "It's wonderful to see you. I only wish it
could have been under better circumstances." He looked over at Josh,
and I knew that I couldn't avert my eyes any longer. I bit my lip when
I saw him, tried not to cry.

"How is he?" I asked, not wanting Sam to see how affected I was by it
all. But I couldn't do this for long, my eyes trailed towards the bed
and the motionless being on it and I was overcome with many emotions.
"Oh God!" I said, grabbing Sam's hand. I felt the tears begin to form
in my eyes. He hugged me again, less tightly and said something about
the doctors doing all they could.

"But it's not enough," I countered. "It's not enough," I repeated.
Josh couldn't die, he couldn't, he couldn't. He was Josh.

The tears fell, streaming down my face and I didn't care how I looked,
or what Sam thought. All I could think was that I needed to be there
for Josh. I moved closer to him, took his hand and sat beside him. I
fussed over him a while, not knowing what else to do, or how else to
help him. I kissed his forehead, his hand; I tried to have as much
contact with his warm skin as I possibly could, in hopes that it might
do something to help. Desperately, I told him what I'd been up to
since I last saw him, told him that I didn't hate him, that I thought
I loved him. That he couldn't leave me now.

And he didn't.

It was over a month later when he was finally well enough to go home
and I didn't know what to do. I knew that I had to let him go to his
mother's, and that I had to go back to Boston and face the fact that I
might not see him again.

It saddened me beyond belief, but I knew there was nothing I could do
about it. He had no idea about my feelings and, from what he had said
before I left the White House, it seemed highly unlikely that he
returned them. He had put up with me for the past month because he
couldn't tell me to go away, because any company was better than
sitting there alone. Maybe he felt bad about telling me he couldn't
stand me. Now that he was going to live, that he was going to only get
better, things had to go back to how they should be. Me in Boston, him
in Connecticut until he was well enough to return to DC.

I tried to leave on the morning I knew he was going, tried to get away
without saying goodbye, but I knew I couldn't. I went to see him, and
he was almost finished packing. I knew that he'd be alone, his mother
had told me that she had errands to run and so would be away for a
while.

I stood, he sat, and we stared at each other for a while.

"When are you going to Connecticut?" I asked pointlessly, since his
mother had told me earlier the exact schedule of the day.

"This afternoon. In fact, any minute now," he replied. I had somehow
found myself sitting beside him, my hand in his, and I had no
conscious recollection of how.

"Thank you for being here," he said quietly, and I couldn't think of
anything to say in reply. "I wish... I wish things were different," he
said, and I silently agreed, but I wasn't sure what he was trying to
say. I wish you were still my assistant so I could continue yelling at
you and telling you what to do? I wish we'd never been so stupid as to
sleep together? I wish you were still here because I love you and I
need you? Unlikely.

"Don't we all," I said noncommittally.

"I'm sorry for how things turned out," he said, and he sounded so sad.
I believed him, that he truly meant it, he just didn't want things the
same way that I did. And I didn't want to hear him say it.

"Josh, don't," I said, my finger on his lips silencing him. "It's in
the past. You can't do anything to change it now, you just have to
live with it." I tried not to cry. I never wanted to let him see me
cry.

"If things were different," he said hopefully, and I knew that he
didn't mean it, he was happy with his life the way it was. He had to
be. He was better off without me.

The tears threatened to escape and I knew that I had to leave. But I
couldn't leave without saying goodbye. Even though I knew that he
didn't feel the same way, I brought myself to face him, voices in my
head screaming at me. Don't let him get to you, don't let him affect
you, say goodbye and walk away, they chanted. I ignored them. For the
first time in my life I ignored the voices, and I bent in to kiss him,
his lips warm and inviting. And I wanted to stay like that forever,
but I couldn't. He didn't want that, and I moved away.

Still holding back tears, I said, "Maybe I'll see you again." I ran
off, hid in the ladies bathroom and let myself cry, sobs echoing
loudly off the walls, reverberating, adding to the noise. I sat there
for over half an hour, trying to come to terms with the fact that I
would never see him again. Maybe I could go back and tell him that
everything could be different. As I walked by on my way out the room
was vacant. He had left forever.

The late summer months passed into autumn and Boston got increasingly
cold. I continued to keep in contact with Sam, and he told me all
about his life. I reciprocated with woeful tales of bad dates, office
gossip, my nephews and nieces who had come to visit with my sister
Natalia, how Nikki was pregnant, about my friends. I told him when I
had met this nice guy, Matt, and gave details about all the dates we
went on, how he took me to the opera, to fancy restaurants, the
theater, until he finally decided that he wasn't interested in a long
term relationship.

I didn't cry at all that night, I invited all my friends from work to
my apartment and we all drank wine by the bottle, and watched action
movies. I knew that I hadn't loved him at all, my heart would be
forever with someone else, but I had wished to at least feel something
other than loneliness. Sam told me in return of his progressing
relationship with Ainsley, and I was happy that he had finally found
someone to spend some time out of work with, someone to care about.

Not once in the emails or phone calls we shared did we mention him by
name. I tried to blank him out of my life again, but it was painfully
obvious that I couldn't achieve this.

Life went on as ever before, but it got better. I had new friends, who
knew little of my history, who still only knew of Josh as the
government guy who'd been shot and more recently managed to get
himself out of a scandal.

And so it happened one night that we all went out to a restaurant for
Maria's birthday. We were all having a good time, and I finally felt
that I fitted in. Then I saw him come in with this woman, a
dark-haired, attractive, older woman. I wasn't sure whether I was more
shocked that he was in Boston or that he was with someone who
obviously wasn't a professional acquaintance. They were laughing, and
he looked so much better than he had. God, he looked good. Twelve
pairs of eyes drifted in the direction I was looking, and they
recognised him immediately. He hadn't noticed me, though.

"That's Joshua Lyman, isn't it?" Maria asked. I nodded, my eyes
trailing him across the room as they were seated in a far corner.

He was the subject of conversation for a while to come, my friends
getting sneaking glances at him as discretely as they could. He was a
minor celebrity and they all wondered who the woman was, and they
discussed the scandal in as much depth as they could remember, even
the shooting came up, and I was forced to sit there and pretend that I
barely knew him. I could have told the truth, but I didn't want to.

Eventually I went for a bathroom break and Maria joined me. She
continued to talk about Josh and I listened in amusement as she told
me what she'd like to do with him if she got the chance. I could only
hope that Josh never got to find out, I didn't believe that he had
enough energy for some of the things that she described. Someone
entered the bathroom, but I was now in the stall, and so we ignored
her and continued talking. I invented my own little scenario's of what
I would do, for Maria's amusement, although, obviously were based on
some of the more unusual fantasies that I had gone over in my mind in
the past few years.

I walked out and washed my hands, before starting to reapply my make
up, continuing to talk as Maria stood next to me, reapplying her own
make up.

"Didn't you use to know him?" she asked almost dreamily, like one of
those college girls that used to follow him around.

I replied yes, and continued with another rehash of yet more
completely ludicrous situations in which I would meet him and he'd
take me back home with him immediately. Maria and I were in fits of
tears due to the laughter, and the woman in the stall sounded as
though she was getting some amusement out of it as well.

"My God, Donnatella!" Maria cried. The lady in the stall came out, and
I don't know whether I was more amused or embarrassed when I
discovered that it was the woman who had been sitting with Josh.

She looked at me questioningly. "You're not Donnatella Moss, are you?"
she asked. I stopped laughing.
"I am, and you are?" I asked her slowly, hoping that this was some
kind of weird set up.

"You know Josh Lyman? You were his assistant, right?" I didn't want to
get into this, and I could see Maria wondering what was going on.

"Who are you?" I asked again, hoping to avoid the question.

"My name is Maggie Ford. I'm here with Josh. You were his assistant,
right?" she repeated, and I couldn't see a way of avoiding it this
time. I nodded slowly. Maria stood and watched with amazement. I
exited the bathroom.

"You were Josh Lyman's assistant?" Maria asked me in a whisper once
we'd got out. "Why didn't you tell me?"

I tried to think of a convincing answer that wasn't the actual truth.
I couldn't. "It was complicated," I said. "I... He... We... It wasn't
something that I wanted people to know. It didn't exactly turn out
well," I said, and she nodded in some sort of understanding.

When I got back to the table I looked over at Josh's table and saw
Maggie talking to him, and they were looking back over at me. I
decided to say goodnight to my friends, go home, and get away. I
explained that I had a headache, and wanted to go home to sleep. I
wished Maria a happy birthday, and hugged her and everyone else,
before saying goodnight and leaving the restaurant. I stood outside
and waited for a cab, but there were none, so I started to walk home.

"Donnatella! Wait!" I heard a voice yell from behind me. I turned round.

"Go back to the restaurant, Josh," I told him tiredly.

"Donna!" he called again. "Donnatella!" I tried to ignore him.

"What about Maggie?" I asked eventually.

"What about her?" he asked impatiently. I continued to walk, and he followed me.

I turned round. "You can't follow me, Josh. You've got no right. We
don't even know each other. I've got my cell phone. I'll call the
police," I threatened. I never would, I knew I never would.

"I want to talk," he said.

"And you're only a few months too late!" I replied sarcastically. I
continued walking backwards.

"I need to tell you something," he tried again. But I was in no mood
for confessions. It was too late. We were past this.

"Go back to your girlfriend," I said, "I haven't the energy to do this
again, Joshua."

He looked at me, and I immediately felt bad. But I wasn't going to do
this, not now. I turned back around and started walking off.

"I want to tell you something," he repeated. "I'm going to follow you
until you talk to me."

I thought this over. "Then will you leave me alone?" I asked.

"If I have to," he admitted.

I turned back around and looked at my watch. "I'll give you 2 minutes.
After that, we'll see," I told him. I didn't want him to leave again,
but I wanted more from him than he was willing to.

God, I had come so far without him, I thought that I was past all
this; that I was finally over him.

"Can we at least go for a coffee? It's freezing out here," he asked,
rubbing his hands together and blowing hot air onto them. I considered
this for a minute. It was cold, and maybe I could get a free coffee
out of it.

"Okay," I consented. We walked in silence to the nearest coffee shop
that I knew of. Several times he tried to strike up a conversation but
I said nothing and he gave up. I wasn't going to let him ruin my life
again, I wasn't.

We found a Starbucks, and he bought me a coffee and we sat down on the
couch, as far away as possible from each other.

"Say what you have to say," I told him in my most detached manner. I
couldn't let him think that he had any effect on me at all.

He struggled with his words for a minute, and I thought of Maggie. I
felt sorry for her left in the restaurant, but any sympathy I had
dissolved the second he began to speak.

"I'm sorry," he said, and I wondered if he had merely dragged me here
to say that. "I'm sorry for everything." I had always known that he
had had problems with apologies, but I hoped he might elaborate, tell
me what it was exactly he was sorry for.

"I've lost you. Already. Which I think is a miracle even for us," I
said with some amount of humour.

He smiled. It wasn't a big smile, but it was a start. Nothing, no
speech yet again, and yet I found myself wanting more, regardless of
the time schedule that I suggested. "I just wanted you to know... I
don't regret what happened."

I must have been looking at him strangely as he elaborated. "The
Illinois Primary. Us," he said awkwardly. "But things... it made things
difficult." He was really having a hard time trying to say what it was
that he wanted to communicate, and I didn't think that I had seen this
in him before. "I'd had some offer, from the tobacco people, they
wanted me to help them. They offered me money. I refused. They
threatened me; I wanted you out of the way... I didn't want you
involved." I said nothing; I didn't know what to say. So I sat still.

"I wanted to protect you. I cared about you, and then after we... after
the Illinois thing, I knew that I couldn't let you get hurt," he
rambled on, trying to vocalise his point of view. I was still unsure
as to what to think of it, what to believe.

"You tried to protect me?" I asked, confused. "You tried to stop me
from being hurt by being hurtful?" I wanted to know if this was his
idea of protecting me, to ruin my whole life.

"I didn't know what else to do," he admitted, and I thought it was a
lousy excuse.

"You're lying," I concluded, not wanting to consider the truth. "You
only wanted to help yourself. I was just a complication." I rose. "If
you wanted to help me, you would have told me. You only wanted to help
yourself," I repeated, trying to convince myself. I started to walk
off.

"I didn't know what to do," he cried out as I neared the exit. "Us
sleeping together confused everything, and at the same time it brought
it all into focus." He was starting to yell and I stopped. "I loved
you! I knew that I loved you and I had no idea what the hell I could
do about it. And there was no way on earth that I was going to let
anyone get to you, even if it meant that I couldn't have you." He
paused, then quieter, "I loved you, and I could never tell you that,"
he finished.

I left, unable to hear any more.

It took me a long time to reach my apartment; I was walking in
circles, my eyes clouded by tears. He was lying; he couldn't be
telling me the truth. He masterminded the whole tobacco fiasco, and it
all went wrong, and he was blamed for it because it was his problem.
He slept with me because he was drunk, he never had feelings beyond
friendship for me; I was just a convenient lay, a warm bed on a cold
night. I meant nothing to him.

But all the while, I knew that I was lying to myself. There had always
been something more than friendship between us, despite the fact that
I had denied its existence for fear of being hurt. Josh, it seemed,
has also tried to ignore it, and was equally unsuccessful.

I arrived home, still in floods of tears of self-pity for my life, for
what could have been, even for Josh. I cried throughout the night, and
despite telling myself that I had to pull myself together, nothing
stemmed the flow. I was glad that the next day was a Saturday, I could
lie in and get some sleep, and I could brood as much as I damn well
wanted without other people bothering me.

Maria phoned at ten o'clock. I ignored the phone, but listened as the
answer machine picked up the call.

Hi, sorry I can't come to the phone right now, but if you leave your
name, number and a short message, I'll get back to you as soon as I
can. Thank you. ... Beep...

"Donna? You there? I hope you're okay. I've got a damn hangover, so if
you know any cures, call me, please. Thanks for coming last night. I
didn't get home until after 2 o'clock. I think... Got talking to that
woman who knew your boss, Maggie. She's really nice, actually. And she
told me where Josh Lyman is staying if you wanted to talk to him at
all. Anyway, hope you got back okay. Call me, I'll be in all day.
Speak to you later."

I didn't want to know where he was staying, I didn't think. Although I
was beginning to come to the conclusion that I should at least
apologise for my behavior the night before.

And find out if he was telling the truth. Or apologise. I should
apologise. I wanted to speak to him again. Let him know that I didn't
hate him. I could never hate him. He had loved me. He said so. Didn't
he?

I called up Maria later, and she told me where Josh was staying
without me even asking. I told her that I knew of no hangover cures
and that she should drink lots of water, although it never seemed to
help me all that much.

I looked up the number of the hotel in the phone book, and stood
staring at it for about half an hour, picking up the receiver, putting
it down, starting to dial the numbers, stopping. This sequence
repeated itself for a while, then the phone rang. I assumed that it
would be Maria, calling to find out if I had phoned Josh; or someone
else from work, checking that I got back to my apartment all right.
It was neither.

"Hello?" I answered. No reply. "Hello?" I asked again. Still no reply.
"Listen, if you're doing prank phone calls again, I have caller ID and
I'll get the police on you," I said, irate. I'd had so many recently.

"No, no!" the voice protested. And it was a voice that I knew that I
recognised at one time in my life as well I as I knew my own. "It's
me, it's Josh," he said almost nervously. I didn't think that I'd ever
heard him nervous before.

"Josh!" I said surprised. "Actually..."

"Listen..." we said at the same time.

"You first," we both offered.

"No you!" Again, in synchrony. We laughed, and even that was at the same time.

"Go on," I urged him.

Pause. "I was just phoning to apologise about last night. I'm sorry. I
shouldn't drink. We came to that conclusion years ago." I smiled. "I
didn't exactly come across as I was hoping. Can you forgive me?"

I think I was beyond shocked. The Josh that I knew had never cared for
other people's opinions nor for forgiveness.

"Maybe we could try again," I said.

"I'd like that," he said.

We spent the next half-hour on the phone, discussing arrangements,
talking almost like the old friends we were.


We met the next day in a bar nearby. He was a little late and I
worried that he wasn't going to turn up. When he finally got there he
explained Maggie had been to see him. They weren't going to see each
other again, he told me.

I shrugged, but internally I was irrationally happy.

We sat in almost silence for a while after he bought me a drink. I
became fascinated with the napkin on the table.

"So," he started. I nodded, politely, not knowing what to say.

"So," I repeated. He nodded back. And I continued to nod. I was sure
that we looked like those nodding dogs in the backs of cars. Which
started me laughing. And nodding more.

"What?" he asked, smiling, "What?" He suddenly realised what we were
doing, and stopped nodding. "Oh," he said, breaking into a grin. Then
started to laugh. And soon we were laughing almost hysterically,
probably because of nervousness.

"Listen," he said after bringing himself under control. "I just wanted
to" cough "apologise about last night. Again. Sorry. I didn't mean to
scare you off, it's just a habit I've acquired. Useful for irrational
Republicans, not so much for friends." I considered this, not sure
which part to pick up on.

"I'm sorry that I walked out on you," I said finally, deciding to
ignore both the 'friends' phrase and the redundancy of irrational
Republicans. "It was out of order, it was rude, I should have at least
listened to what you had to say."

"No, really, I was wrong, it was my fault."

"I don't think it was," I interjected.

"I was more in the wrong." He seemed determined to be more apologetic,
so I conceded.

"Okay, I agree, you were far worse than I was," I said with a smile.
He didn't seem to know whether he should be happy at his defeat or
insulted because I'd not pandered to his ego.

"Thank you. I think."

The figurative ice seemed to have been broken and we spent the next
few hours talking as we had on the phone, sidestepping certain topics,
becoming more relaxed as the evening went on and as we drank more.

"So what happened between you and Maggie?" I asked a couple of hours
and a couple of drinks later.
He grinned ruefully. "She said I was more interested in you than I was
in her. Apparently I talked too much about politics. And your name
came up more than once."

I wasn't sure whether or not to be flattered. So I said nothing. And
the conversation continued, and we ignored all issues that could cause
a potential problem. Until I was too drunk to care less.

"What you said last night..." I began.

"I thought we were ignoring everything I said last night because I was
an idiot?" he countered.

"Well, yes... but no... Yes... whatever." I stumbled trying to think of the
correct answer. "But what you said about the tobacco thing, and
Illinois. Did you mean it?" To hell with decorum, I wanted to know if
he had ever loved me, if I wasn't just imagining things.

He went serious suddenly. "That they played me and I wasn't actually a
complete jerk, of course," he grinned, knowing that wasn't what I was
asking.

"I mean the other thing. The... the other thing." I didn't want to
actually say it.

He nodded. "Yeah." He didn't elaborate.

"So all the things you said, you just wanted to make me quit so I
wouldn't get involved? You didn't actually mean those things?" I asked
quietly. I brought my head up from its original place of looking into
my hands, and stopped at his eyes. He looked directly back.

"I never, never wanted to hurt you. And I don't know what to say or do
to make you believe that, or to take it all back. If I could..." His
eyes diverted to the floor. I gently took his chin in my hand and
brought his head back up.

"Don't do this Josh, don't blame yourself. I hated you at first, but
knowing that you didn't mean it, that you were trying to protect me... I
can't hate you forever. I don't hate you." I didn't think that I could
ever hate him but I kept that to myself.

He didn't seem entirely satisfied with my answer, and I didn't think
he would ever forgive himself for it, but there was only so much that
I could say. We continued to talk for a while to come after that until
I glanced at my watch and saw that it was almost half past one.

"It's late," I announced. "I've got to be at work in the morning." He
looked somewhat dejected at this idea. "Unless you want to come back
to mine for some coffee?" I suggested, purely as an offer of
friendship.

"I'd like that," he replied.

We walked back, hand in hand, to my apartment and I knew that I was
probably a little too drunk to invite people to my apartment, but this
was Josh, it was different. I knew that he wouldn't take advantage of
me.

"I've got to get back to DC today," he told me as I handed him the mug
of coffee. The gesture wasn't entirely lost on me.

We sat on my couch after, watching TV. I didn't want him to go; I
wanted it to be like it always used to be. So we sat in silence and I
said nothing about how tired I was for fear that he would go back to
DC and never speak to me again.

Sometime after two thirty I must have drifted off, for when I next
awoke I was asleep on the couch, leaning on Josh, himself fast asleep.
It was after 7 o'clock. I didn't have to be at work until nine. I
remained where I was, somewhere between sleep and consciousness for
the next half-hour, until we both awoke with the alarm ringing from my
bedroom.

He was confused for a while, not knowing where he was, not knowing why
the hell he had woken up next to me. It was almost amusing to see
watch his face as he began to comprehend. Then he quickly stood up.

"I'm sorry!" he exclaimed, looking around nervously almost, trying to
see if he'd left anything lying around. He hadn't and so he headed
towards the door.

"You don't want to stay for a coffee, some breakfast, a shower?" I
asked. Damn if he was going to run away so fast.

"I'd love to, but I'm catching a plane back at half nine, and I've not
even started packing yet," he explained hastily. "Thanks for coming
out last night, I really enjoyed myself. And thanks for coffee. I'll
call you. Do I have your number? I phoned you; of course I have your
number. I'd better be off." He started to open the door, thought
better of it, came back over to me, kissed me on the lips before
departing. "I'll call you!" he shouted as he closed the door behind
him. Leaving me to wonder what the hell had just happened.

He did call me, several times in fact. I didn't tell Sam, I wasn't
sure what he would say. It seemed as though Josh wasn't telling Sam
either, as he never mentioned it in his regular emails to me.

The election came closer, and Josh sounded ever more stressed on the
phone, he told me that he hardly even had time to go home for a shower
these days. Even though it was no longer my job, I worried about him.
He had recovered from the accident well, but I didn't want him to have
to be readmitted to hospital because he had exhausted himself, or
worse.

The day of the election came and Josh didn't call me. Not that I had
expected that he would, but I was hoping. He and Sam were both too
busy to have time to do anything. But suddenly, I decided that I had
to see them all again, that I wanted to be part of the atmosphere, I
wanted to be with my friends, with Josh when the announcement was
made. I even wanted to tell Josh how I felt, I was suddenly overcome
with such ridiculous ideas, so I phoned Maria to make sure that I was
just being crazy.

"Go," she told me. "Find out. You'll only blame yourself if you don't.
And if you get there and decide not to go in, do some sightseeing.
Take a few days off. No one will mind."

I thought about it for about half an hour after I called her before
picking up the phone and calling the airline.

It was late by the time I arrived in DC. I stood outside the campaign
headquarters and tried to decide whether I should go in. Whether they
would actually accept my old White House ID as genuine and let me in.

CJ decided for me.

She was on her way back, holding a stack of take out menus in her arms
in addition to whatever else it was she was carrying.

"Donna?" she asked before I even seen her. "Donna, what are you doing
here?" She tried to give me a hug, but she was carrying too much, and
it all fell to the ground.

"I thought I'd come for a visit," I said nonchalantly. "Do you need a
hand?" I asked, seeing that she was struggling, and I bent down and
picked up the menus and some other pieces of paper.

"It's a mad house in there," she warned me with a smile. "Are you sure
you want to come in?"

I thought about it only for a second before nodding.

She guided me in, letting security know that I wasn't a threat. I
entered and was overcome with a sense of d‚j… vu. Seemingly thousands
of people, all running round, calling people up, watching TV screens,
computers, trying to figure out if they were going to win a certain
state or not. There was a cacophony of noise that accompanied the
scene and it was almost overwhelming.

I followed her through the crowds of people. She seemed to know where
she was going, and it was almost too loud to ask. We ended up at the
other side of the building, in a small space where Sam and Toby were
arguing over the speech and Leo was telling them to be quiet. Their
assistants, Bonnie, Ginger, Carol and Margaret, were buzzing round,
keeping them up to date on numbers, informing them that the President
was due to come shortly and other relevant information.

"I've got someone here who wants to see you all," CJ said, motioning
towards me. Toby and Sam stopped arguing and looked over, Leo took his
gaze away from the TV screens, and all their assistants stood still.

"Donna!" It was almost in unison. I was grabbed and hugged by Sam,
Margaret, Carol, Bonnie, Ginger, even Leo. Toby smiled and said hello.
There was a jumble of voices as they asked me how I was, what I had
been up to, where I had been.

"I've also got take out menus!" CJ declared, and some of the focus was
taken off me as they all grabbed the said menus. "Where's Josh?" CJ
asked.

"Right here." I heard a voice behind me. Everyone in our area became
quiet as they waited to see what reaction I would have. I turned round
to see Josh standing with the President and the First Lady.

"Donna!" the President greeted. "Come to cheer me on? You have voted
for me, haven't you?" he asked, smiling. The First Lady also said
hello and asked me how I was. And I replied politely. But I was more
interested in Josh's reaction.

He grinned widely, pulling me into a hug. "Donnatella, I missed you,"
he said into my ear so no one could hear.

But we had to leave it at that. There was a sudden almost eerie hush
over the room. The numbers for the deciding state were coming in. This
would be it, the next four years, or the next few months would be
determined in this minute. And I felt a part of it for a minute, felt
almost as passionate about it all as everyone else in the room did.

Josh grabbed my hand and held on tight.

The results were announced.


END OF PART SIX



Ex Post Facto - Part Seven
Of Disastrous Dates and More Favourable Fates


[josh pov]

After Sam and I had been out to drinks, life got progressively better.
Sam no longer looked at me with that questioning glance, the mistrust.
Instead, it seemed to me that he was constantly unsure of everything,
but came to trust me again, and that was all that I really wanted. Our
friendship grew with this and while I doubted it could ever be what it
once was, it was different in a way, better, and just as strong.

I knew that Sam told the others my big, dark secret. I caught CJ
looking over at me guiltily, and she approached me several times one
day before thinking the better of it, or asking about some work
related issue that I could tell was only a cover.

Later that night I invited her out for a meal, and over the main
course she told me that Sam had related what he knew of the story to
her.

It was one of the only times that I have seen CJ look upset, and she
apologised repeatedly for not being a better friend, for not trusting
me, for giving up on me when I needed friends the most.

I smiled at her and told her that she had been a good friend. She
couldn't have known about the situation, it was better with her not
trusting me. As long as she could forgive me for not telling her, I
could forgive her.

She looked up at me, amazed by something that I did not understand and
told me that she loved me. In a purely platonic way, she hastened to
add.

I tried to look dejected, and told her that I thought her acceptance
of my dinner invitation meant that she felt the same way about me.
However I ruined whatever effect this would have by smirking and I
started laughing.

She laughed too, and told me that whilst she held me in high esteem,
unfortunately she felt that wasn't the right girl for me - she was too
tall.

I pretended to sulk and declared that it was far easier having a
secret love affair with Sam - he didn't have such high demands.

There was work to do in our relationship, certainly, but things were
looking to be on the mend.

Toby came by soon later, with some work excuse, and although never
apologised in words, made it very clear that he respected me, and felt
guilty about how he had reacted during the previous months.

That was all that was said on the matter, and we dropped it soon
after, falling easily back into the routine of yelling at each other
affectionately as we had always done.

Leo was not so direct in his apology, left it unsaid that he thought
of me as family, as I did of him, and only commented that he was glad
that I was recovering well.

I did not ask for an apology from any of my friends; I felt it was
unnecessary. I had done nothing to deserve it, and thought that I had
wronged them as much, if not more, than they had wronged me. Given the
information that they had at the time, it was only to be expected that
they would be suspicious of me, doubt me, try and keep their distance.
But things were slowly getting back to normal, whatever normal was,
and I wasn't going to prevent that progression any way.

It was only a few weeks later that Leo asked me to go to Boston, to
try and convince a Congressman to vote for the new health care bill.
Apparently, the Congressman felt it above himself to talk about it
over the phone, and this one man's vote was, unfortunately, worth four
more, and we desperately needed them.

I told Sam of the plan.

"You could go and see..." He tailed off, pausing either to remember a
name, or to see what would be appropriate. "Maggie," he said, finally.

It only occurred to me later what he was trying to tell me.

I didn't have an address or a workplace, though, since it was only on
the plane that the thought came. I pushed it, and all other connected
thoughts, out of my head, and concentrated on the role that I had to
play in order to try and convince the stubborn old Congressman to vote
for the bill.

It turned out that what the Congressman was looking for mostly was
attention; the fact that they had flown out the Deputy Chief of Staff
for the job was seemingly enough; he had been noticed. I wondered if
he couldn't possibly get his attention some other way, but the job was
done quickly and with minimal fuss, and I had the rest of the day in
Boston.

I decided that I should give Maggie a call, see if she would like to
join me for lunch. It turned out that she was working until seven that
evening, but would be free later in the evening for dinner.

I agreed, and then called Leo to inform him that the Congressman would
be voting for the bill, and that I had some personal business to
attend to, and would he mind if I stayed in Boston a couple of extra
days?

Leo didn't object too strongly, which I thought was an encouraging sign.

I met Maggie at eight and she told me of a nice Italian restaurant in
the city center.

We got there soon after, and the party that seemed to be occurring in
the middle of the restaurant, a group of women all laughing and
talking loudly immediately put me off.

They seemed to be quiet later as Maggie and I were shown to our table,
and so I decided not to let it annoy me. I was here for a nice evening
out with a very nice, attractive woman, and no one was going to ruin
that for me.

Or so I thought. Retrospectively, I realised that perhaps my
conversation was slightly inappropriate, that for some reason, as had
happened more so since the accident, Donna seemed to creep into almost
everything I said.

It started almost imperceptibly, Maggie was talking about her day at
work, and somehow we got onto the conversation of my recent stay in
hospital. And how terrifying it could be on the other side, from a
patient's point of view.

"But it wasn't too bad," I said, "since Donna was there all the time
after I woke up."

"Donna?" Maggie asked, which was only understandable. Somehow I had
managed to refrain myself from talking about her on our previous
dates.

"My ex-assistant," I replied, then felt the need to explain further.
"We're friends, sort of, she lives in Boston actually. Moved here a
few months ago, I think she works for a law firm here." And thus the
rambling and 'Donna-name-dropping' began. Which isn't particularly
recommendable for a date that you're trying to impress.

Soon we were talking about something else entirely unrelated - how the
campaign was going. I said that it was going as well as could be
expected considering the circumstances, the President's MS.

"How is he?" Maggie asked.

I smiled. "That was the first question Donnatella asked as well. The
rest of us were worried about our jobs, she was just worried about how
the President was." I finally brought myself back to the present.
"He's fine as far as I know. The First Lady is taking good care of
him," I said.

Quite frankly I didn't know much about his condition, Donna was the
one who did all the research on the topic. And, understandably, the
President wasn't overly keen on us asking how he was every five
minutes.

And so the evening progressed like this, and I knew exactly what I was
doing. I cringed when I heard myself say Donnatella Moss for what
seemed like the fifty third time, but there was nothing I could do to
stop myself. I wondered what Maggie thought of the situation, a forty
year old guy seemingly obsessed with his old assistant who was a good
few years younger than him. I can't imagine that she was getting much
joy out of it, there was obviously going to be no future between us
whilst I was so hung up on Donna.

We ordered coffees, and Maggie went to the bathroom after I had
mentioned, off-hand, something about how much more organised I was
when Donna was running my life. I apologised at this point, this
hadn't quite been the romantic evening out that either of us had been
hoping for, although it seemed now that I had been hoping for a
romantic evening out with quite a different person.

Maggie returned a few minutes later, with an unidentifiable expression
on her face. It almost looked as though she had been laughing too
hard, and then had been shocked by something, and hadn't had time to
recover.

"What's wrong?" I asked, concerned.

"What? Nothing, nothing. Why do you ask?" she questioned, almost
caught off guard.

"You just looked worried is all. Are you sure everything's alright?" I
was impressed at how caring and concerned I was being.

"Your assistant, she was called Donnatella Moss, right?" she asked me.

I tried to think of the reasoning behind this question. Perhaps she
was about to tell me everything that she had learned about the
infamous Ms. Moss in the last couple of hours in order to torture me
before she dumped me. "Yeah," I replied, almost warily.

"I think, I think that I just met her in the bathroom." She pointed
across the room to where I distinctly saw Donna looking quite
distressed, gathering her bag and coat and making an exit from the
restaurant. "Is that her?" Maggie asked.

I thought about denying it, but I didn't think there was much use,
she'd obviously already spoken to her. "Yeah," I said. It seemed as
though I had been reduced to one-word sentences.

"Well?" she asked.

"Well, what?" I asked back.

"You've been talking about her all night, it only seems right that you
actually go and talk to her," Maggie told me.

"What about..." I started.

"Don't worry about me, I'll be alright," she said, smiling, and I knew
that she wasn't lying just to be nice.

"I'll call you tomorrow," I told her, grabbing my coat. I dropped some
money on the table, "here," I said, "use this to pay for dinner." I
kissed her on the cheek and promptly ran after Donna.

I knew that it was quite rude, but I had to speak to Donna.

She was walking quickly along the road, her hair blowing in the night
breeze, coat and scarf wrapped tightly around her, and she looked
amazing. Better than she ever had in the hospital, when she constantly
looked tired, or distressed.

"Donnatella, wait!" I called. She turned round and looked at me.

"Go back to the restaurant, Josh," she said, but I wasn't going to
listen to her. I had gone far too long without seeing her. I wasn't
giving up so easily.

"Donna," I tried again, "Donnatella!"

"What about Maggie?" she asked a few seconds later, almost shouting
down the road, a warning to me.

I didn't think to ask about how she knew of Maggie, I assumed that it
was something to do with them meeting in the bathroom.

"What about her?" I questioned; I didn't see the relevance. She was in
the restaurant, she had told me to go after Donna; I didn't see the
point.

"You can't follow me, Josh. You've got no right. We don't even know
each other anymore. I've got my cell phone. I'll call the police," she
said. I didn't understand what she was trying to do, I only wanted to
talk to her, and I told her so.

"And you're only a few months too late!" she said, and I ignored her.
I wasn't going to let her go this time.

"I need to tell you something," I told her, almost desperately.

"Go back to your girlfriend," she said. "I haven't the energy to do
this again, Joshua."

I wondered what she was trying to do to me; I wanted, needed her to
listen to me. I wanted to shout, to scream at her, tell her things
that I knew that she never wanted to know, and she was just pushing me
away.

She turned around and I couldn't let her go. Perhaps I was being
selfish, but I didn't want to lose yet another opportunity to be her
friend. To tell her about the real reason that I pushed her away after
we got too close for comfort.

"I want to tell you something," I tried again. "I'm going to follow
you until you talk to me."

"Then will you leave me alone?" she asked, and I nodded reluctantly.

"If I have to," I told her. But I didn't want that; I never wanted that.

"I'll give you 2 minutes. After that, we'll see," she stopped as I
walked towards her this time, and I knew that I had to make these two
minutes count for more than I ever had before.

"Can we at least go for a coffee?" I asked. "It's freezing out here."

She agreed.

We walked in silence to a nearby Starbucks. In between trying to start
a conversation I tried to rehearse what I was going to tell her, how I
was going to convince her in two minutes to talk to me forever, to
forgive me, to stay in my life in one way or another. I had no idea
what she was thinking. I wasn't sure that I wanted to know.

We got coffee, and found a couch at the back of the shop. I noticed
that she sat as far away as humanly possibly from me, and this hurt
almost more than anything she could say.

"Say what you have to say," she instructed me, and I was almost lost
for words. I couldn't think straight, couldn't remember what I was
going to tell her, how I was going to tell her.

"I'm sorry," I said eventually. "I'm sorry for everything."

I didn't know what else to say; should I tell her exactly what hundred
thousand things I was sorry for?

Should I tell her that I was sorry that I had ever let her go, that I
had lied to her; that I had let us fall so far apart? Should I say
sorry for all the times that I had hurt her; for not telling her about
the tobacco thing; for being a coward and never telling her how I
felt; for letting her slide so easily out of bed that morning and
never talking to her about it?

"I've lost you. Already. Which I think is a miracle even for us," she
said with a wry smile, and I felt a glimmer of hope.

I smiled almost imperceptibly. My mind was running a mile a minute,
trying to tell me what to say, trying to connect thoughts with speech.

What came out instead was "I just wanted you to know... I don't regret
what happened." It was a strange one to start with. But I had to go
where I had started. "The Illinois Primary. Us," I said, her perplexed
look informing me that she had no idea what the hell I was talking
about.

Perhaps she didn't remember at all. God, I hoped that wasn't the case,
I wasn't sure if I could cope with that. But her face showed a spark
of recognition and I tried to regather my thoughts. "But things... it
made things difficult."

I wasn't sure what I was trying to say, my mouth was speaking without
consulting my brain, which is usually where I began to get into
trouble. "I'd had some offer, from the tobacco people, they wanted me
to help them. They offered me money. I refused. They threatened me; I
wanted you out of the way... I didn't want you involved." I wasn't sure
whether I'd got the information across I wanted to, that I'd got
through to Donna.

This wasn't what I had come to say, I wanted to tell Donna how I felt,
how I wanted us to be friends, at the very least. I wasn't sure if she
believed me, or if she would believe anything I said any more. But I
desperately wanted her friendship and I wasn't sure what I had to do
to regain her trust.

"I wanted to protect you. I cared about you, and then after we... after
the Illinois thing, I knew that I couldn't let you get hurt." I
rambled, trying to find something that would make her react in a
positive way, but she remained almost like stone, saying nothing.

"You tried to protect me?" she asked eventually. "You tried to stop me
from being hurt by being hurtful?"

It wasn't working, she was going to walk out on me, she had given me a
chance and I had blown it. "I didn't know what else to do," I said. I
knew there was little I could say to make her trust me now.

"You're lying," she said, and I wanted to tell her that I wasn't, but
I didn't know how. "You only wanted to help yourself. I was just a
complication. If you wanted to help me, you would have told me. You
only wanted to help yourself." She had stood up in the middle of this,
and I didn't know how to tell her how wrong she was. She was going to
leave me again, and although I knew I deserved it, I couldn't let her
leave me again.

"I didn't know what to do," I tried for a final time, more desperate
than ever, my selfish self unable to let her go without knowing some
of the truth, hoping that she might hear and decide not to go. "Us
sleeping together confused everything, and at the same time it brought
it all into focus." My voice rose along with my emotions. "I loved
you! I knew that I loved you and I had no idea what the hell I could
do about it. And there was no way on earth that I was going to let
anyone get to you, even if it meant that I couldn't have you."

There was no going back; half of the truth was out. I couldn't let her
leave me. I brought my voice down from the almost shout that it had
reached, paralleling my desperation, my emotion. "I loved you, and I
could never tell you that," I practically whispered.

She turned and left and my heart was ripped apart. I didn't follow
her, she had heard all she needed, and it was clear what she intended.
She wanted nothing more to do with me.

I went back to my hotel room, and discovered that I couldn't even cry
over it. She deserved better, I knew that, but I didn't want that.

The phone rang shortly after, and I leaped to get to it, hoping that
it was Donna, hoping that she had come to the conclusion that being
friends would be nice, and just to forget what I had said earlier.
However, since Donna had no idea where I was staying, it was highly
unlikely that it was her, and so I don't know why I was surprised to
hear Maggie on the other end. After I had left to chase Donna, she had
apparently joined Donna's table and had managed to get her number.

She gave it to me, and I wrote it down, despite my protestations that
I had no use for it. She asked how things had gone, and I was as
nonchalant as I could possibly be when I said that we had decided not
to see each other again. She asked why, and I told her some bullshit
nonsense about having nothing in common, and that we had decided that
there was no point in attempting to resurrect our friendship.

She didn't believe me, and I didn't blame her. I lied and told her
that I would call her soon, and she said goodbye and we hung up.

I don't know what was different, but looking at Donna's number,
holding it in my hand, I felt lower than I had all evening. I hadn't
cried much in the last few years, but no one was around to see me, and
all of a sudden I felt lonelier than I had ever been, and I broke
down.

I woke up the next morning feeling slightly more optimistic. I knew
that I had messed things up with Donna, and I felt bad about it. I
questioned the sense in phoning Donna to explain, to apologise, but it
was seven in the morning and was too early to be making calls on a
Saturday morning after a night out.

And besides Leo phoned twenty minutes later to inform me that
Congressman Dixon, who had been so accommodating the day before and
had agreed to vote for the health care bill, was now having second
thoughts and considering attaching a rider to the bill. A rider that
would ensure the bill wouldn't pass.

Leo had apparently tried to no avail to get Dixon to change his mind,
and the bill was to go before Congress in only a couple of days. Since
I was in Boston anyway, Leo had asked me to try and persuade the
Congressman, once again, to change his mind.

I assumed that, yet again, it was an issue with attention, and he
definitely had mine. I phoned him up and set up a meeting with him for
the morning.

Three hours and a disagreeable lunch later, I was exhausted and
irritated, but finally an arrangement had been agreed upon. I had a
more distinct dislike for Congressmen than usual and I wondered
briefly what the hell they were there for. They seemed to be more
trouble than use the majority of the time, and I toyed with the idea
of asking the President to get rid of Congress.

It was while I was thinking this over, smiling at the idea that we
would be able to pass bills without having to worry about who was on
our side for it and who wasn't, that I had picked up the phone and
dialled Donna's number. She answered, and I realising what I had done
I considered putting the phone down. But I needed to do this, so I
remained on the line, but didn't know what to say. The idea of saying
hello didn't occur to me until Donna threatened to report me to the
police for the second time in two days.

"No, no!" I said quickly, finally remembering my manners, or what
there was of them. "It's me, it's Josh," I said, anticipating the
slamming down of the receiver.

"Josh!" she replied, almost surprised, as was I that she was actually
talking to me and not threatening to report me to the cops.
"Actually..." she started, but I had already started to speak in fear
that if I didn't say what I wanted to quickly, she would, indeed, hang
up on me.

"You first," I said after a second, as she said exactly the same
thing. "No, you!" Again, at the same time. Cue laughter - at the same
time.

There was another pause while we both decided who would actually
speak. She started first. "Go on."

So I began to ramble. "I was just phoning to apologise about last
night. I'm sorry. I shouldn't drink. We came to that conclusion years
ago. I didn't exactly come across as I was hoping. Can you forgive
me?" I formed answers in anticipation of her "no" answer, but it
didn't come. There was a silence for a couple of seconds before she
responded.

"Maybe we could try again." I let out a sigh of relief.

"I'd like that," I said, thinking that my fortune had at last changed.
And from then on the awkwardness dissolved and we were able to talk to
each other easily.

I was getting ready to go out the next night when I heard a knock on
my door. I had no idea who it could be, and when I opened it I saw
Maggie standing there. I invited her in.

"Josh," she began. And then nothing was said for a few moments.

I wondered if I was supposed to be saying something, then decided that
I should, but didn't know what to say. When she started to talk again
I realised that my moment had passed. Whatever it was that I should
have said was unsaid and Maggie came to a decision.

"It's not going to work out between us, is it?" she asked, and I
thought about telling her that of course it would, and then just not
phoning her, but that wasn't fair to her.

"I don't think it helps that we live in different states," I admitted.

She laughed. "I don't think that's the reason. Long distance
relationships require interest from both sides, and there's more
coming from me than from you."

I started to protest. "I do like you, Maggie, really I do."

"I wasn't asking that," she said. "I know it, but not enough. And I'm
not blaming you for that, there's nothing either of us can do about
it." There was a pause. "I'm not going to chase someone who is chasing
someone else, there's no point, and besides life is too short for such
complications. I like you Josh, I'm not going to deny that, and I'm
not going to lie and say that I'm entirely happy about the way this
has turned out, but I can't change it. I honestly believe that if
there was no one else in the picture we could have had a good time."

"There is no one else," I told her, but I realised that considering
what I had been doing for the past few days, few weeks, months, years
even, it was pretty much a lie.

She laughed again. "Josh, I think we both know the truth. I'm not
Donna, and I'm not going to try to compete with her. Maybe one day we
can meet up as friends, but we both know that there's not going to be
more there." She looked at me. "Feel free to pipe up here with
declarations of your undying love for me," she said.

I got flustered and started garbling.

She laughed at me. "I wasn't being serious. I would have liked it, but
it's not going to happen." She turned round towards the door, and I
followed her and opened it up for her. She gave me a kiss on the lips,
and for a moment I wanted to tell her not to give up on me, but it
would be pointless.

"Bye, Josh," she said. "I really wish we could have met some other
time," she continued regretfully.

"I'm sorry, really I am," I told her.

"Don't be, it's not your fault. Whom we fall in love with is,
unfortunately, nothing we can choose," she said, and I knew that was
all we could say. She turned and left, and I watched her walk down the
corridor and disappear into the elevator. I wanted to call out to her,
to bring her back, to stop her, but I didn't.

I was a little late meeting Donna, and she looked worried until she
saw me. "Sorry for being late," I said.

"Your watch still sucks?" she asked.

"Umm, no, I had a visitor. Maggie came round to see me," I briefly
explained. "She wanted to say goodbye and good luck for the future."

"You split up?" Donna asked, and I couldn't tell whether she was
interested or just being polite.

I nodded. Donna didn't reply.

I bought us some drinks, and we sat in silence for a while as Donna
played with her napkin. I tapped my fingers on the table, trying to
think of some earth shattering opening line. The best I could come up
with on such short notice was "so." Not the greatest opener ever.

She smiled, and nodded.

"So," she replied. And I smiled and nodded. And we continued nodding.
Until she started to laugh. I realised that we looked ridiculous, and
promptly halted the nodding.

"Oh," I said intellectually, before I started laughing as well. I
eventually saw that nothing was going to be said unless I started some
sort of conversation. That is, of course, if we didn't want to be
sitting nodding and laughing all night and not actually saying
something.

"Listen. I just wanted to apologise about last night. Again. Sorry. I
didn't mean to scare you off, it's just a habit I've acquired. Useful
for irrational Republicans, not so much for friends." I seemed to be
apologising an inordinate number of times in the past few days. I
wondered what had come over me.

"I'm sorry that I walked out on you," she countered. "It was out of
order, it was rude, I should have at least listened to what you had to
say."

We argued for a minute or two over who was more at fault, finally
agreeing that since pretty much half the world's problems were my
fault, it was only fair that I take responsibility for this one as
well. After this, it was like on the phone, old friends, covering
almost every topic that we could think of. It was nice, I had to
admit; it was really nice. We drank a fair amount, becoming more
relaxed and less careful about what we were saying as we drank more.
Eventually we reached the stage where we decided that it was safe to
talk about what I had said the night before.

"I thought we were ignoring everything I said last night because I was
an idiot?" I said when Donna brought up the subject, hoping to avoid a
rehash of the previous night's occurrences, where one of us would say
the wrong thing and offend the other. Most likely me offending Donna.

"Well, yes... but no... Yes... whatever," she said without me understanding
what she said. "But what you said about the tobacco thing, and
Illinois. Did you mean it?"

I knew what she was asking, she wanted to know if I had ever loved
her, and whilst I knew the answer, I thought I'd try and avoid it for
a minute. "That they played me and I wasn't actually a complete jerk,
of course." The avoidance tactic didn't quite work.

"I mean the other thing. The... the other thing."

"Yeah," I said, almost nonchalant.

"So all the things you said, you just wanted to make me quit so I
wouldn't get involved? You didn't actually mean those things?" I
almost wished that we had never started the conversation. I wasn't
sure how to say the right thing, or at least to say what I wanted to
say. And the alcohol was not helping in any sense of the word.

"I never, never wanted to hurt you. And I don't know what to say or do
to make you believe that, or to take it all back. If I could..." I took
my eyes away from hers, but she brought my head back up, and I knew
that she believed me.

"Don't do this Josh, don't blame yourself. I hated you at first, but
knowing that you didn't mean it, that you were trying to protect me... I
can't hate you forever. I don't hate you." I wondered why she didn't
hate me. I deserved to be hated, but for some reason she didn't think
so any more.

"It's late," she said seconds later after looking at her watch. "I've
got to be at work in the morning

I didn't want the evening to end. And when she offered me coffee, as
what I knew to be an offer of friendship, I willingly accepted.

We entered her apartment a little before two in the morning. She got
me a coffee, perhaps her second in about triple the number of years.

I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be going back to DC in
the morning, and the fact saddened me. I realised that I really ought
to go back to my hotel room and get at least a few hours of sleep
beforehand.

However, I never got round to moving, and woke up with Donna's alarm
at about half seven, lying on her couch, her asleep next to me. I
couldn't remember ever having gone back to my hotel, but in my sleep
confused haze, it took me a good few minutes to figure out where I had
in fact ended up. I quickly realised the inappropriateness of where I
was as soon as I had figured it out, and jumped up and apologised yet
again for myself.

"You don't want to stay for a coffee, some breakfast, a shower?" Donna
asked her eyes still half closed. I didn't want to leave, but I also
knew I had to be back in DC for a lunchtime meeting.

"I'd love to, but I'm catching a plane back at half nine, and I've not
even started packing yet," I said, trying not to offend her at the
fact that I was running off so quickly. I wasn't sure if it had
worked, so I continued talking. "Thanks for coming out last night, I
really enjoyed myself. And thanks for the coffee. I'll call you," my
mouth was, once again, speaking without my brain engaging it. "Do I
have your number? I phoned you; of course I have your number. I'd
better be off," I managed to close my mouth eventually, not an easy
feat.

I went to open the door, then some sleep deprived part of my brain
decided otherwise, and I found myself walking back over to Donna and
kissing her, before I walked back towards the door and out of it,
shouting behind me "I'll call you!"

I needed some sleep, seriously.

It was one promise I intended to keep, and I did in fact phone her.
She didn't hang up on me, but neither did we talk about my impromptu
goodbye, which was good in some respects, but not so good in others.

I didn't tell Sam. I knew what he'd say, or at least I knew that he'd
either get smug and go for some rendition of 'I told you so', despite
his never having told me so, or he'd get worried about the both of us.
I couldn't be bothered with either, and so I neglected to tell him.

I think he thought I was having secret phone call sessions with
Maggie, rather than Donna, since he asked how she was after walking
into my office and finding me on the phone with Donna. I said she was
okay, which as far as I was aware was true.

The next couple of weeks got so hectic after that, and he didn't ask
again. The election was coming up, and whilst we weren't involved in
it directly, we often spoke with Bruno and the others about it,
keeping up to date, running round trying to get numbers, worrying
generally about what we would do if things didn't turn out how we
hoped. We tried not to think about it, and no one said anything, but
it was hanging over our heads constantly. It was at times like this I
wished Donna was back, reassuring us, making me work so hard I didn't
have time to consider it. But she wasn't and that wasn't changing any
time soon.

Then Election Day came. I don't remember it being half as frantic and
stressful and busy the last time. Perhaps four years had diluted the
memory, or perhaps it was because last time it felt as though we had
less to lose. I tried to phone Donna a couple of times, telling her to
get all her friends out and vote for us, to see if she had any
theories about what would happen, but each time I started to dial I
would be interrupted. Someone would run to up me with a problem of
sorts, or wanting to talk to me, or wanted me to talk to someone else,
and I found that it was easier to not try.

When I finally made it down to the campaign headquarters it was a mad
house. In fact, it was worse. There were more people there than I had
ever realised were working in the White House or on the campaign, and
it took a while for me to locate people I knew.

When I reached Sam and CJ, they were making predictions on how it was
all going to go. Personally, I was avoiding predictions as much as
possible in preference to actual polling data, of which there was
little solid evidence of anything. But I quickly tired of all the
waiting. I wasn't a patient guy it wasn't my style.

It was late before any results came in at all. We got most of New
England and the northern states, but lost the majority of the south
and southwest, as we thought would happen.

By this time we were all exhausted and starving, and so CJ offered to
go get some take out menu's for us. She arrived shortly after I left
to go to the bathroom and I saw her before I actually arrived back at
the group.

"Where's Josh?" I heard CJ ask, and I replied, making her jump slightly.

I waited until the President and the First Lady had said their hellos,
and then I grabbed Donna and gave her a big hug.

"Donnatella, I missed you," I whispered to her as everyone looked at
us, almost in shock.

But the numbers we had been waiting for, on California, came in at
that point, and everyone went quiet. I don't recall ever having been
quite so nervous in my life, and I grabbed Donna's hand for support.

I didn't hear the results over the huge roar that exploded, but I
knew. We had won! We had done the almost impossible again, perhaps
with a little less style, but we had achieved what we wanted.

I brought Donna into a hug again, this time holding her longer, before
everyone else surrounded us, and I hugged everyone.

The champagne was brought out, and the President thanked everyone for
their hard work and perseverance and for a wonderful outcome before he
opened the first bottle. There was more cheering, more bottles opened,
and we all started on the celebrations, watching as the President
later went on TV and thanked the nation using the words that Toby and
Sam had written for him.

Donna stayed near me all night, going occasionally to talk to some of
her old friends, getting more drinks for us, hugging Sam again as his
joy at having won got the better of him.

Later we went outside to get some air. We stood out there very early
in the morning, her hair blowing in the cold wind, her cheeks red
partly from the cold and partly from the alcohol. I was overcome with
the need to kiss Donna while no one was watching, no one was judging.

Instead I brought her into a hug, to keep her warm, to reaffirm the
friendship between us. I didn't know if she thought of me as anything
more than a friend. Despite my revelation in Boston of my once having
loved her and the brief kiss in her apartment, while she had not hit
me or warned me never to do such a thing again, she had said nothing
in reply, either.

She hugged me back, and I felt a shiver down my back, something to do
with close proximity, and she asked if I was cold. I decided that a
declaration of my love wasn't the thing to do at that moment, and
replied to the affirmative, and so she took my hand and guided me back
inside.

The party had thinned out somewhat by this point, but Sam was still,
in a drunken manner reminiscent of what I could remember of the
Illinois Primary, urging people to dance.

I didn't feel the need. Last time had only caused me more trouble than
it was worth and so laughing at him and everyone else was enough for
me.

He took Donna away from me, and started to dance with her, and I
laughed as I watched her face set into a mock panicked look. Five
minutes later I found myself rescuing her from Sam's over enthusiastic
dancing, and we danced a while at some distance.

Sam then changed the CD, and a familiar song came on. It was the song
that Donna and I had danced to at the Illinois Primary, and I was
almost certain that Sam had mischievously switched it on purpose. I
looked at Donna, to see whether she remembered, and I got that she
did. She seemed uncertain as we stood there until I decided to not let
it affect me and pulled her closer.

"I think we should kill Sam for this," I whispered to her, giving evil
glances occasionally at Sam who looked quite pleased with himself.

"You remember?" Donna asked quietly.

"Of course I remember, I remembered everything," I said, before
deciding that it wasn't quite accurate. "Okay, so I remember some of
it. There's only so much I can do after two glasses of champagne,
after all."

She smiled.

"I'd be more than happy to assist you in killing Sam," she whispered
back after a short silence.

We planned Sam's demise in detail, although ended up agreeing that
perhaps we ought to let him live just torture him for a prolonged
period. Sam was still grinning inanely at the two of us, talking to CJ
and pointing at us, blissfully unaware of our plans.

The song finished and we remained standing together and dancing for
the next song, and the one after that, until we decided that it really
was quite late and we should go home.

I asked her where she was staying, and she looked uncertain for a
minute, finally admitting that she had no where to stay and was going
to go to a motel and find out if there were any rooms.

I told her that that would be dangerous and unacceptable, and that she
was going to come back with me and sleep in my bed whilst I took the
couch. She didn't argue.

We arrived back at my house in Georgetown in the early hours of the
morning, too elated and too tired to actually speak, but it wasn't
uncomfortable.

I offered her a drink, but she turned it down, saying that she just
wanted to go to bed. I showed her to my room unnecessarily, since she
had visited my apartment many times over the years and knew it about
as well as I did. I gave her a tee shirt and some shorts to change
into and left her to it.

I waited a few minutes then knocked before asking if she was decent,
she replied to the affirmative, and so I entered, got some clothes for
myself to wear to bed and started to take a blanket out of the
cupboard so that I wouldn't be cold on the couch. She lay in my bed
watching me as I went around the room, but she stopped me once I had
grabbed the blanket. She told me in a sleepy voice not to bother, that
we were adults and there was enough room to share the bed.

I stopped for a minute and tried to protest, but even half-asleep she
was stubborn, and my heart really wasn't in the argument. I was too
tired to really start thinking about the consequences. I went to the
bathroom and changed into my makeshift pajamas and cleaned my teeth
before re-entering my bedroom.

I paused before I got into the bed, briefly thinking that I shouldn't
go ahead with this idea, but too exhausted to remember why. "I'm not
going to even attempt to seduce you," Donna said, sensing my
hesitation. I smiled, it hadn't even occurred to me, but now that she
mentioned it...

"Some other time, perhaps," I lamely joked. Not that I'd say no if she
offered... I finally got into the bed, and tried to stay as far away
from her as possible.

I quickly fell asleep.

I woke up to my alarm clock, discovering that somehow we'd managed in
our sleep to tangle ourselves up in a mass of limbs, facing each
other, my arm around her.

I thought that this was how it should have been the first time round,
how it should have remained. She greeted me good morning, and then we
were awake enough for the embarrassment of the position to begin, and
promptly began to extricate ourselves.

I got out of bed first, and went into the bathroom and had a shower,
suddenly smiling to myself at unexpected times when I recalled the
evening.

It suddenly occurred to me that this was what loving Donna Moss was
about. And I couldn't think of a better feeling in the world.

I loved Donna Moss and I was ready to tell the world.

I just didn't know if or how I was going to tell her.


END OF PART SEVEN



Ex Post Facto - Part Six
Not So Much A Fairytale


[donna pov]

I'd like to think that what happened between Josh and me have any
affect. I'd like to believe that I was independent enough to make it
on my own after I somewhat foolishly ran off. It would be nice to tell
a fairy story about how I managed to leave my old life behind and
become responsible, mature and successful overnight.

Alas, true fairy stories don't exist, at least, not that I know of.
And none at all that I have ever been told involved the heroine of our
tale running back to her parents house, where she remained for several
months until they told her to get off her ass and move on. In the
kindest possible way, of course.

In my defense, I must say that I did try and make my own way in life,
independent of my parents, but it was such a feeble attempt that it
was practically non-existent.

Here's the true story of what happened to me after I left the White
House, so sit back, enjoy, and then we can get onto the good parts.
Believe me, it happens.

It all went downhill from the moment that we slept together. I had
known at the time that it was a mistake, but I didn't realise quite
how bad a decision it had been.

The yelling started, we kept each other at a distance, and that, too,
was a mistake. We weren't made to be consummate professionals, we
weren't the kind of people who could work together and have a separate
personal life; our lives were intertwined, connected in far too many
complicated and confusing ways, and I didn't understand that until it
was too late.

I was na‹ve and I thought that if I pretended that nothing had
happened everything would be okay. Admittedly, I see where I went
wrong. I went too far with the whole 'just friends' concept without
actually discussing it, and Josh had his own 'just friends' agenda,
which I discovered later was nothing to do with me. Sort of. It's
complicated.

So the distance between us increased, I discovered that keeping
friendship, or any appearance of unprofessional conduct, was too much
stress, words were exchanged and I left.

That's the short, nice, non-abusive story, so I'd like to keep it to
that for now.

I realised when I got home that night that I'd made another mistake.
Well, if I'd been thinking anything at all, I would have realised it.
Instead I cried for hours, my misery at my failure in life
encompassing me and taking over.

The White House, Josh, had been my life, and all of a sudden it was no
longer and I had no idea what I was going to do with myself.

The waves of emotion that ruled my life for the next few days were
torturous. I considered doing some very silly things, I did some
ridiculous things, and I was too stubborn to ask for anyone's
assistance. It was a complete mess.

I went to bars, got drunk and slept with several strangers, just
looking for some sort of comfort, some way of getting over the
loneliness, and, well, I'd rather not dwell on those days too much.
Let's just summarise by saying that I made some incredibly dumb
decisions that were focusing far too much on my heart than my head.

The days after I'd got over the initial shock were not much better.

I finally decided that I wasn't going to find any comfort from picking
up guys in bars, and alcohol had no affect other than the terrible
hangovers. It was then that I realised that I needed to make some
money somehow. Bearing in mind that I was still messed up over the
whole quitting/Josh/life in tatters episode, I went to interviews and
was pretty much laughed out of them. I had little or no education that
was relevant.

My work experience was confined to working in the White House for the
Deputy Chief of Staff. Which was impressive, but when you add the
"could you please not contact him because I don't want him to know
where I am, thank you", well, lets just say it does little for your
credibility. I didn't want to work for anyone in politics for fear
that they might tell Josh where I was and things just got worse and I
got myself into a complete state.

That was when my mother chose to call me to tell me that she was
planning on visiting me some time, and (in a humorous kind of way)
could I possibly arrange for a White House tour, and perhaps a meeting
with the President? I spent the next three hours on the phone with her
whilst she tried to understand from my incoherent sobs what had
happened.

I went back to Wisconsin the next day, taking with me nearly all my
clothes, and anything else that I could pack and carry onto the plane.

My mother, father and one of my sisters welcomed me to Wisconsin at
the airport, and I greeted them in turn by collapsing into tears, not
understanding myself quite why. My sister gave me a big hug, and tried
her best to cheer me up, telling me about the latest episode with her
friend, who had apparently been cheating on her fiance with a guy
named Weasel who liked to watch 1930's horror movies and give make up
tips. I tried my best to find the humor in it, but all I could do was
give a weak smile as my father collected my many bags from the luggage
carousel and my mother told me about some upcoming book meeting that
she was going to go to. I had little more reaction as they got me into
the car and took me home.

My sister, Lucybella, took me inside whilst my parents unpacked the
car. She sat me in the kitchen and gave tips on how to cheer up. The
majority of which seemed to involve chocolate, ice cream, and girly
movies. I couldn't find it in me to do anything other than to give a
rather pathetic and unconvincing smile, but she said nothing of it.
After that I went to my old bedroom and held my stuffed teddy bear
that I had had since I was a little girl and cried myself to sleep,
thinking of my old life, of how wonderful it had been in the West
Wing, of Josh.

The next few days were little better, and I alternated between yelling
at my parents and Lucy, not wanting to be alone, and crying. I could
tell that it was getting beyond them, they had no idea what to do when
they saw me, should they give me space, or should they sit me down
with a cup of coffee and talk to me. It was irritating me as well,
when had I become so pathetic and clingy? When was it that I had
turned into this version of me that people felt that they had to tread
so carefully around?

And it was only when my mother came to my room one night, talking to
me, and telling me that she wanted me to go see a doctor that I
decided that I wasn't going to give in to self-pity.

It was an uphill struggle, but I had to put the past behind me and
concentrate on the future. My father managed to get me a temporary job
in his office, and I felt like a 16-year-old again, but I didn't
refuse it. It was part of my new strategy to get myself back on my
feet, to become independent of my family like the rest of my sisters
and my brother had managed. I might have been the youngest, but this
didn't mean that I couldn't achieve what they had.

I made a conscious decision to not think about the White House, to
make myself independent of Josh. I tried not to think about him, to
make myself hate him for what he had done, how he had pushed me away.
I tried so very hard, but I didn't succeed. I simply couldn't. I never
forgot my life at the White House, my pseudo-family there.

And life went on like this for a couple of months, I lived at home,
worked with my dad, went to the gym with my mom and felt that I hadn't
accomplished a damn thing towards my strategy. My mother told me that
she agreed with this sentiment, and although it was wonderful having
her youngest daughter back home, I was 28 and perhaps needed to
rethink the idea of living with my parents for the rest of my life.

So when my eldest sister, Nicolina, invited me to go to Boston with
her to visit an old friend of hers who had just had a baby, I didn't
say no. I'd never visited Boston before, but Josh had declared, in one
of his college reminiscing moments, that it was one of the nicest
places in the world. Although, to tell the truth, I think he was
quoting an exchange student he had met, but I decided to take his (or
her) recommendation.

Nikki and I stayed in a hotel outside of Boston and so while she was
visiting her friend, I caught a train into the center and did some
sight seeing. I did the tourist bit and took a trolley tour, went to
the Cheers bar and to Harvard, then MIT. Then I went to Starbucks,
bought a coffee and then took it to the park opposite. I found a bench
and sat and read the book that I had bought in the sunshine for about
an hour.

I agreed with Josh, or the foreign exchange student's opinion. And in
a moment of spontaneous irrationality I decided that I was going to
live in Boston. When I told Nikki later that evening, being careful
not to mention either the fact that it had been Josh who had
recommended Boston to me she just smiled and said nothing, but I could
tell that she didn't believe me.

I was being impractical Donna again, the one who drove to New
Hampshire after splitting up with my boyfriend, and returned mere
weeks later because he'd apologised and told me that he was a reformed
character. The Donna who then drove back to New Hampshire as soon as
said ex-boyfriend turned out to be completely unchanged and
inconsiderate bastard. And then a few years later left the White House
for unknown reasons to do with her boss.

Well, quite frankly I was going to show her, and everyone else, that I
was being entirely practical and sensible and I was going to move to
Boston, damnit.

I think my parents were equally dubious about the whole idea, but
chose to be supportive. My mom asked me what I planned to do when I
got to Boston, and really I hadn't given it a thought, but I came up
with some answer which was apparently satisfactory.

I arranged to have all my things from DC, where I was adamant that I
was never going to return, shipped up to Boston, to an apartment that
I had rented a few days after my arrival there. My parents nodded and
told me that I knew where they were if I needed anything, and
returned, somewhat reluctantly, to Wisconsin.

The apartment was small and cramped and I began to feel homesick and
claustrophobic mere days after moving in. But I persevered, and was
determined not to return home for at least a few months. I told myself
that I certainly had to get myself a job. After being all but laughed
out of yet more interviews, and feeling confidence in myself
degenerate to almost microscopic levels, I decided that I would have
to get a reference if I didn't want to have to return to college. I
still remembered all the phone extensions for each person in the West
Wing, but it was a matter of deciding whom to call, whom I could
trust.

In the end I came up with Leo. He was loyal and reliable, and when I
phoned through to Margaret, shivering and breathing awkwardly from the
adrenaline, she didn't recognise my voice and put me straight through.
I was incomprehensibly nervous, my voice wavering as I said hello to
Leo's barking, his voice softened immediately at the recognition of
whom it was.

He asked how I was, told me, in not so many words, that he had been
worried about me. I told him that I had been staying with my parents
but that I was now in Boston. I asked him if it would be possible to
cite him as a reference, and he told me not to worry.

The next day I received a phone call from a law firm informing me that
they had been told that I was looking for a job, came with excellent
references, and would I be available for an interview? Naturally I
told them yes without trying to sound too desperate or grateful, and
made a mental note to send Leo some flowers.

They offered me the job at the end of the interview, and I hugged each
of the partners in turn and thanked them sincerely, most probably
having them question the sanity of their new employee. I was now the
new assistant to Mr. James Banks, esquire, and I couldn't be happier.

This happiness remained for about a week before I picked up the
newspaper one morning and discovered Josh's picture splashed across
the front, the story being that he had accepted money to try and throw
the tobacco case out. The details were hazy, mostly a reiteration of
Josh's life history, which I knew by heart already. The main evidence
was some missing files (information, they claimed, from a White House
insider) which were important in the case against the big tobacco
firms.

I wasn't sure what to think. I wanted to phone Josh, to ask him
whether I should believe what they were telling me about him; was this
something to do with me? Did he fall apart after I left?

In some ways I wanted to believe it, to believe that I had some amount
of importance to him, if only as an employee, but in my heart I didn't
believe that Josh was in any way related to these allegations. I sat
down in my kitchen chair, the coffee that I had poured myself long
forgotten, the toast getting cold on my plate, and I wanted to call in
sick, but I knew that it would make a bad impression since I hadn't
been with the firm that long.

The more cynical part of me praised my good fortune for having got out
before any of this came to light, that it wasn't my career that would
be ruined. But I wanted to call Sam and make sure that Josh was going
to make it out of this whole mess okay, that his life, his career,
would be safe. But I couldn't do any of this without alerting people
to my whereabouts, which I still didn't want to disclose.

I wanted a new life, and in order to do that, I felt that I had to
completely cut myself off from the old one. And so when I went into
work, and the assistants and other staff discussed it over lunch, I
made out that although I had worked in the White House, a fact that
they all knew somehow, I had only once spoken to Mr. Lyman, and he
seemed quite polite. Which, if they knew Josh at all, was an outright
lie, but they were accepting of this, and decided that perhaps the
press was over-sensationalising the whole affair.

It was July before any truth came to light, a few months where I had
debated the logic of calling my old friends, and I was relieved to
learn that Josh was not guilty. The files had been uncovered, and
there was talk that it might even have been some sort of tobacco
conspiracy to tarnish Josh's name. I told myself that I had never even
suspected that he could do anything so against his beliefs. But the
thought nagged me, kept reminding me that in the moments that I had
declared that I hated him, I had told myself repeatedly that he was a
lying, manipulative bastard who didn't deserve any kind of pity. That
he had brought it all upon himself and he deserved everything that he
got.

Deep down, there was the knowledge that I knew that he could never
have done it, that it wasn't in him to do it. That I had known all
along that Josh wasn't the person that they had made him out to be.
But the exoneration gave me hope again, made life better almost. And
though I tried to rationalise it in terms of the government, it was
really the fact that my friend, my one time lover, wasn't the evil
bastard that he had been accused of being.

Boston was now my life. I had many friends, I had a social life of
sorts; I had even been out on dates without worrying about what Josh
might think. Or at least, I tried hard not to dwell on it.

And then my boss turned 40, and he invited me, along with the rest of
the firm, to the celebrations. All I thought I had achieved over the
past months was forgotten as I spotted Sam Seaborn across the dance
floor, laughing with my boss and some of his college friends. I was
completely shocked and speechless at the same time; I hadn't expected
him to be here.

I thought that I was never going to see him, or any of them, again. My
attention was repeatedly drawn to him from my table as I tried to
ascertain whether he had seen me or not. It also didn't help that
several of my friends kept pointing to him, having recognised him from
some of his TV interviews, and the fact that he was as attractive as I
had ever seen him. He seemed not to see me, and so I went to the bar
and got myself another drink, hoping in some ways to avoid him.
Unfortunately, this was the exact place that he found me as I ordered
myself a screwdriver and he asked for a beer.

"Sam! Wh...what are you doing here?" I asked as convincingly as I could.
Apparently he bought it, the drama that I had learned from college
finally paying off.

"I could ask the same thing of you, but would I be correct in assuming
that you are the new assistant whom James Banks has been telling me
about who used to work in the White House?" he asked, more honestly
shocked.

I tried to work my way around his sentence, being thankful that, as a
speechwriter, his grammar was more comprehensible on paper. I
eventually nodded, having understood what he was asking exactly.

"How are you? How are...things?" I asked as we walked from the bar,
fully aware of the envious looks my friends were shooting me from
their side of the room.

"I'm fine," he said. And we sat in silence a minute. I was somewhat
reluctant to throw my arms around him and tell him how much I had
missed him and everyone else at the White House. He took this silence
as a cue to start up some sort of conversation. "I knew James from law
school. I'm sure if you tell him you know me he'll tell you about a
thousand embarrassing stories about what I got up to at college," he
said with some amount of humor, and I felt obliged to laugh, nervously
almost.

I could tell that he had noticed my frequent glances and psychic
messages that I was trying to send to my friends. I was trying my best
to convince them I wasn't interested in Sam, that we were only
friends, but their distracting hand movements telling me to go for it
informed me they weren't getting the message.

"Listen, you probably want to get back to your friends," he said
uneasily after a moment where I was glaring at some of the girls.
"Maybe we'll see each other later." He started to stand, and I
realised that I was being quite rude, the least I could do was to give
him my full attention. Besides, I actually wanted to talk to him.

"No, Sam! You don't need to go," I assured him. "Gosh, I'm sorry, just
standing here and not talking. I just... I just didn't expect to see you
here, is all." And wasn't that the truth. I grabbed his hand and got
him sitting down. "My friends can ask me all about you when I'm done,"
I told him, gulping at my drink in order to try and calm my nerves. At
first it didn't work, and when he asked me a question I was as
apprehensive as before. The rest of my drink consumed, I started to
relax. "God, I've not seen you in months. I've missed you. CJ, Toby,
Leo, the President - everyone." Josh, I added silently, but as far as
Sam was concerned, I hadn't thought about him at all.

He drank some beer, and I tried hard not to be amused when the foam
surrounded his mouth. It was even harder not to when he said, "Well,
what's not to miss?" and I couldn't help but burst into semi-alcoholic
giggles. He looked at me strangely; somewhat disconcerted that he
wasn't being all that funny.

"I'm sorry, but when you say that with a beer mustache, it really is
amusing," I said between laughter.

He wiped at his mouth self-consciously, but the proverbial ice had now
been broken, allowing us to talk more freely and comfortably for a
while to come. He asked me to dance, and grabbed my hand and dragged
me to the dance floor. We danced our way through a couple of songs I
only vaguely recognised before a slow song came on. I knew that I had
heard it before somewhere, and I wracked my brains trying to recall,
and I suddenly remembered.

"What's wrong?" Sam asked as we danced slowly and silently around the
other couples.

"Illinois primary," I said quietly. "We were dancing and you wanted to
get a reaction out of Josh and we danced closer," I rambled on. "It
was this song."

"Oh," he said. And that was all he said, but I had to know, and I was
aware that it was the first time that night, in a long time that I had
mentioned Josh out loud, I had to find out about him. Despite my
telling myself that I hated him I knew the opposite was true. I'd
known for a long time, perhaps since I had first met him that my
feelings were anything but hate.

"How is he?" I asked, and Sam seemed to come out of his own reverie.
"When I heard about the tobacco thing, all I could think was that I
was so glad that I left when I did. Then I heard that he'd been
cleared of it all. I knew anyway. He wouldn't accept money for
something like that. He'd rather fight." My trail of thought ended as
abruptly as it began; prompting Sam to ask for the first time
questions that I suspected he'd never ask Josh.

"What happened between you two?" he asked hesitantly.

"What do you mean?" I pretended to misunderstand.

"Nothing was the same after the Illinois Primary. Did something
happen?" he asked, his suspicions obvious.

I decided to neither confirm nor deny, rather telling him
enigmatically "Something did happen." Before the song ended and we
went our separate ways and I drank myself into oblivion.

My friends questioned me about him almost relentlessly, and I found it
somewhat amusing, and reassured them all that we were just friends,
expanding on what I had told them about my job at the White House to
give a reason for my having known him so well. My friend, Ainsley, in
the White House Counsel department where I worked as an assistant had
gone out with him for a while, and we had all gone out a few times.

They were all too drunk to see any holes in my explanation, and they
accepted it unquestioningly, reverting all their stares to him, more
so as they drank more. And in turn I drank more, enjoying myself for
the most part, until I thought about Josh. He was haunting my thoughts
as much as ever, Sam's appearance hadn't done anything to help in that
respect, and it scared me that someone could have such a hold over my
life without being near.

More drinks than I had sense later and I decided to go back to my
apartment. However I had underestimated how drunk, and overestimated
how awake I was so the moment I saw the chair outside the room, it was
too uninviting an invitation to pass up. I slumped into it with a lack
of grace, and would have fallen asleep if Sam hadn't almost tripped
and fell on to me. He offered me a place in his king-sized bed and I
couldn't say no. We stumbled upstairs, relying on each other to get
into the elevator and walk the 20 steps or so to his room. Exhausted,
I took off my shoes and left everything else on as I climbed into the
bed. Sam crawled in minutes later, drunkenly sprawling across his side
of the bed.

I decided to tell him at last what it was that I was going to tell him
earlier, but didn't. What I suspected Josh hadn't told him. He
deserved to know; he'd been a good friend to me. And I was drunk and
confessing to pretty much everything that I had ever done, including
earlier in the night telling all my friends of the crush that I had
had briefly on Sam when I had first met him.

"Sam?" I murmured after a while, semi-conscious, and most certainly
devoid of any sense.

He grunted in acknowledgment of hearing me.

"Thing at Illinois Primary?" I mumbled trying to form sentences but
not managing.

Some sort of sound from Sam, I took it as encouragement to continue.

"Slept with Josh," I said, and it was out there like that. I fell
asleep shortly afterwards, and dreamt of fairies and evil stepmother's
and ball dresses and falling in love with a prince. Before some pink
aliens in blue lycra outfits came along and promptly overtook the
world.


"My friends will all be very jealous," I laughed, clutching the piece
of paper that had Sam's email address on it. Sam looked suitably
embarrassed. He was about to leave, leaning on his car as we stood
outside the hotel. There was no awkwardness as he quickly stepped
forward and brought me into a friendly hug, kissing me on the lips
briefly.

"And you will email, won't you?" he asked again.

I smiled. "Yes, of course I will, now shouldn't you go back to DC and
like, govern the country or something?"

He stood back from the hug and got into his car, saying goodbye. He
promised that he would write to me and convince me to visit. I had
little intention of visiting, and I knew that as I waved goodbye. I
couldn't face going back to DC yet, if ever.

I'd arranged to meet up with some of the girls from work for Sunday
brunch, mostly to compare our hangovers, and I had little time to
change when I got back to my apartment.

We met at a small restaurant in the middle of town and almost
immediately they demanded to know where I'd been last night.
Apparently I'd made the decision to leave without actually telling
anyone and hadn't answered my phone when they called to make sure that
I was back all right. I hadn't had time to check my messages, and
apologised for making them worry and that I looked forward to the
drunken rendition of 'It's Raining Men' when I returned home.

This lead to questioning of where I had got to last night if I wasn't
at my apartment. I calmly explained that I had spent the night in
Sam's room "As a friend, it was entirely platonic, I kept all my
clothes on," while they shrieked delightedly and ignored my protests,
telling me that it was time that I found myself a man. I continued to
deny everything, but none of them were buying it. "I wouldn't do that!
We're friends! I love Josh, not Sam!" I declared, realising far too
late what I'd said. I don't think that I had ever admitted that out
loud, let alone in front of all my friends.

I was somewhat shocked. All those months of telling myself that I
hated the very existence, any mention of the man, I knew that I was
lying to myself, but I don't think that I'd ever understood how much
of a lie it was. I think my reaction had silenced my friends, they
stared at me as though something was wrong.

I couldn't stay there; I had to go back to my apartment, so I made
some excuse about my raging hangover, apologised and left.

I got back to my apartment and more nervous than I had ever been
before, I dialed his number. I let it ring until his answer machine
came on, and then I hung up. I don't know what I was going to tell him
anyway, what I was even ringing for.

I tried again several times that afternoon and evening, but there was
no reply, and I got scared before I could leave a message. I checked
my emails later, nothing of interest, so I dug out Sam's email address
and wrote him a short message.

I sat and watched the TV for a few hours to come, knowing that I'd not
be able to sleep. There was too much going round my head.

Next day I went into work as usual, apologising again for running off
so suddenly the day before and my friends said that it was no big
deal.

I went home that evening, and it was eight o'clock before I thought to
check my emails to see if Sam had replied. He had, the subject being
Josh, and I immediately panicked, thinking that Sam knew, then
realised that he was probably just teasing me about what I had told
him the other night. I vaguely remembered saying something to him
about the Illinois Primary incident with Josh, and he probably was
going to laugh at me about it.

Nothing in the world could have prepared me for what I read though.

I sat back in my chair, reading the email over and over. Josh had been
in an accident. We were having fun, I'd openly acknowledged I was in
love with him all this time, and he had been in the hospital.

I couldn't think straight, I just knew that I needed to be there.

I trembled as I phoned the airline to get a flight. On auto-pilot, I
heard myself asking things and writing down answers, but I wasn't
thinking, my head wasn't with my body, it couldn't concentrate.

The next flight to Washington wasn't until the morning, I'd have to
wait to get to him. I didn't know how I was going to cope. And if I
stood too long and thought about it, I knew that I wouldn't cope.

And so I remained busy the whole night, doing work, packing, informing
people that I was going to have to take a few days off at least, that
there was a family emergency. James told me that I could take as long
as I needed. I packed my bags, ran round organising everything that
I'd need for the next few days, or weeks or however long I was needed.
I was running solely on coffee and adrenaline, having had little sleep
for three nights in a row, and it wasn't until that I got onto the
plane that my body finally gave out and I slept for the short while
that we were in the air.

We landed at Dulles and I practically ran off the plane, not caring if
I was impolite, hit people with my bags or pushed them out of the way.
I lined up for an excruciatingly long amount of time for a cab, only
to get stuck in the rush hour traffic. I willed the cars, buses, vans,
trucks and everything else to move out of the way. Couldn't they see
that I was in a hurry? That I needed to get to the hospital?

It took seemingly hours to get to the hospital, and when we got there
I jumped out. I grabbed my bags, gave the cab driver some amount of
money without counting it and ran. It wasn't until I got nearer that I
wondered what the hell I was doing. Would Josh want me there, would
anyone else want me around?

I hadn't seen them in months, I was sure that they'd forgotten about
me, moved on, and here I was, barging my way back in. But I didn't
doubt for long, I couldn't do it. I needed to see Josh.

I found the room and looked in the window briefly before I entered.

Sam was there, sitting as far away from Josh as he could, talking to
him awkwardly. I quietly opened the door. Sam said something about the
number of Josh's fans increasing and I was overcome by the absurdity
of it all. I laughed to myself, trying not to disturb Sam, but he had
heard me and turned round.

"You're actually going to try and boost that insatiable ego of his by
telling him that subscription to his fan club has increased?" I asked,
trying my best not to look at Josh, because I knew that I wouldn't be
able to keep in control if I did.

"Donna!" Sam hugged me tight, too tight, and I wriggled away, trying
to be able to breathe. "It's wonderful to see you. I only wish it
could have been under better circumstances." He looked over at Josh,
and I knew that I couldn't avert my eyes any longer. I bit my lip when
I saw him, tried not to cry.

"How is he?" I asked, not wanting Sam to see how affected I was by it
all. But I couldn't do this for long, my eyes trailed towards the bed
and the motionless being on it and I was overcome with many emotions.
"Oh God!" I said, grabbing Sam's hand. I felt the tears begin to form
in my eyes. He hugged me again, less tightly and said something about
the doctors doing all they could.

"But it's not enough," I countered. "It's not enough," I repeated.
Josh couldn't die, he couldn't, he couldn't. He was Josh.

The tears fell, streaming down my face and I didn't care how I looked,
or what Sam thought. All I could think was that I needed to be there
for Josh. I moved closer to him, took his hand and sat beside him. I
fussed over him a while, not knowing what else to do, or how else to
help him. I kissed his forehead, his hand; I tried to have as much
contact with his warm skin as I possibly could, in hopes that it might
do something to help. Desperately, I told him what I'd been up to
since I last saw him, told him that I didn't hate him, that I thought
I loved him. That he couldn't leave me now.

And he didn't.

It was over a month later when he was finally well enough to go home
and I didn't know what to do. I knew that I had to let him go to his
mother's, and that I had to go back to Boston and face the fact that I
might not see him again.

It saddened me beyond belief, but I knew there was nothing I could do
about it. He had no idea about my feelings and, from what he had said
before I left the White House, it seemed highly unlikely that he
returned them. He had put up with me for the past month because he
couldn't tell me to go away, because any company was better than
sitting there alone. Maybe he felt bad about telling me he couldn't
stand me. Now that he was going to live, that he was going to only get
better, things had to go back to how they should be. Me in Boston, him
in Connecticut until he was well enough to return to DC.

I tried to leave on the morning I knew he was going, tried to get away
without saying goodbye, but I knew I couldn't. I went to see him, and
he was almost finished packing. I knew that he'd be alone, his mother
had told me that she had errands to run and so would be away for a
while.

I stood, he sat, and we stared at each other for a while.

"When are you going to Connecticut?" I asked pointlessly, since his
mother had told me earlier the exact schedule of the day.

"This afternoon. In fact, any minute now," he replied. I had somehow
found myself sitting beside him, my hand in his, and I had no
conscious recollection of how.

"Thank you for being here," he said quietly, and I couldn't think of
anything to say in reply. "I wish... I wish things were different," he
said, and I silently agreed, but I wasn't sure what he was trying to
say. I wish you were still my assistant so I could continue yelling at
you and telling you what to do? I wish we'd never been so stupid as to
sleep together? I wish you were still here because I love you and I
need you? Unlikely.

"Don't we all," I said noncommittally.

"I'm sorry for how things turned out," he said, and he sounded so sad.
I believed him, that he truly meant it, he just didn't want things the
same way that I did. And I didn't want to hear him say it.

"Josh, don't," I said, my finger on his lips silencing him. "It's in
the past. You can't do anything to change it now, you just have to
live with it." I tried not to cry. I never wanted to let him see me
cry.

"If things were different," he said hopefully, and I knew that he
didn't mean it, he was happy with his life the way it was. He had to
be. He was better off without me.

The tears threatened to escape and I knew that I had to leave. But I
couldn't leave without saying goodbye. Even though I knew that he
didn't feel the same way, I brought myself to face him, voices in my
head screaming at me. Don't let him get to you, don't let him affect
you, say goodbye and walk away, they chanted. I ignored them. For the
first time in my life I ignored the voices, and I bent in to kiss him,
his lips warm and inviting. And I wanted to stay like that forever,
but I couldn't. He didn't want that, and I moved away.

Still holding back tears, I said, "Maybe I'll see you again." I ran
off, hid in the ladies bathroom and let myself cry, sobs echoing
loudly off the walls, reverberating, adding to the noise. I sat there
for over half an hour, trying to come to terms with the fact that I
would never see him again. Maybe I could go back and tell him that
everything could be different. As I walked by on my way out the room
was vacant. He had left forever.

The late summer months passed into autumn and Boston got increasingly
cold. I continued to keep in contact with Sam, and he told me all
about his life. I reciprocated with woeful tales of bad dates, office
gossip, my nephews and nieces who had come to visit with my sister
Natalia, how Nikki was pregnant, about my friends. I told him when I
had met this nice guy, Matt, and gave details about all the dates we
went on, how he took me to the opera, to fancy restaurants, the
theater, until he finally decided that he wasn't interested in a long
term relationship.

I didn't cry at all that night, I invited all my friends from work to
my apartment and we all drank wine by the bottle, and watched action
movies. I knew that I hadn't loved him at all, my heart would be
forever with someone else, but I had wished to at least feel something
other than loneliness. Sam told me in return of his progressing
relationship with Ainsley, and I was happy that he had finally found
someone to spend some time out of work with, someone to care about.

Not once in the emails or phone calls we shared did we mention him by
name. I tried to blank him out of my life again, but it was painfully
obvious that I couldn't achieve this.

Life went on as ever before, but it got better. I had new friends, who
knew little of my history, who still only knew of Josh as the
government guy who'd been shot and more recently managed to get
himself out of a scandal.

And so it happened one night that we all went out to a restaurant for
Maria's birthday. We were all having a good time, and I finally felt
that I fitted in. Then I saw him come in with this woman, a
dark-haired, attractive, older woman. I wasn't sure whether I was more
shocked that he was in Boston or that he was with someone who
obviously wasn't a professional acquaintance. They were laughing, and
he looked so much better than he had. God, he looked good. Twelve
pairs of eyes drifted in the direction I was looking, and they
recognised him immediately. He hadn't noticed me, though.

"That's Joshua Lyman, isn't it?" Maria asked. I nodded, my eyes
trailing him across the room as they were seated in a far corner.

He was the subject of conversation for a while to come, my friends
getting sneaking glances at him as discretely as they could. He was a
minor celebrity and they all wondered who the woman was, and they
discussed the scandal in as much depth as they could remember, even
the shooting came up, and I was forced to sit there and pretend that I
barely knew him. I could have told the truth, but I didn't want to.

Eventually I went for a bathroom break and Maria joined me. She
continued to talk about Josh and I listened in amusement as she told
me what she'd like to do with him if she got the chance. I could only
hope that Josh never got to find out, I didn't believe that he had
enough energy for some of the things that she described. Someone
entered the bathroom, but I was now in the stall, and so we ignored
her and continued talking. I invented my own little scenario's of what
I would do, for Maria's amusement, although, obviously were based on
some of the more unusual fantasies that I had gone over in my mind in
the past few years.

I walked out and washed my hands, before starting to reapply my make
up, continuing to talk as Maria stood next to me, reapplying her own
make up.

"Didn't you use to know him?" she asked almost dreamily, like one of
those college girls that used to follow him around.

I replied yes, and continued with another rehash of yet more
completely ludicrous situations in which I would meet him and he'd
take me back home with him immediately. Maria and I were in fits of
tears due to the laughter, and the woman in the stall sounded as
though she was getting some amusement out of it as well.

"My God, Donnatella!" Maria cried. The lady in the stall came out, and
I don't know whether I was more amused or embarrassed when I
discovered that it was the woman who had been sitting with Josh.

She looked at me questioningly. "You're not Donnatella Moss, are you?"
she asked. I stopped laughing.
"I am, and you are?" I asked her slowly, hoping that this was some
kind of weird set up.

"You know Josh Lyman? You were his assistant, right?" I didn't want to
get into this, and I could see Maria wondering what was going on.

"Who are you?" I asked again, hoping to avoid the question.

"My name is Maggie Ford. I'm here with Josh. You were his assistant,
right?" she repeated, and I couldn't see a way of avoiding it this
time. I nodded slowly. Maria stood and watched with amazement. I
exited the bathroom.

"You were Josh Lyman's assistant?" Maria asked me in a whisper once
we'd got out. "Why didn't you tell me?"

I tried to think of a convincing answer that wasn't the actual truth.
I couldn't. "It was complicated," I said. "I... He... We... It wasn't
something that I wanted people to know. It didn't exactly turn out
well," I said, and she nodded in some sort of understanding.

When I got back to the table I looked over at Josh's table and saw
Maggie talking to him, and they were looking back over at me. I
decided to say goodnight to my friends, go home, and get away. I
explained that I had a headache, and wanted to go home to sleep. I
wished Maria a happy birthday, and hugged her and everyone else,
before saying goodnight and leaving the restaurant. I stood outside
and waited for a cab, but there were none, so I started to walk home.

"Donnatella! Wait!" I heard a voice yell from behind me. I turned round.

"Go back to the restaurant, Josh," I told him tiredly.

"Donna!" he called again. "Donnatella!" I tried to ignore him.

"What about Maggie?" I asked eventually.

"What about her?" he asked impatiently. I continued to walk, and he followed me.

I turned round. "You can't follow me, Josh. You've got no right. We
don't even know each other. I've got my cell phone. I'll call the
police," I threatened. I never would, I knew I never would.

"I want to talk," he said.

"And you're only a few months too late!" I replied sarcastically. I
continued walking backwards.

"I need to tell you something," he tried again. But I was in no mood
for confessions. It was too late. We were past this.

"Go back to your girlfriend," I said, "I haven't the energy to do this
again, Joshua."

He looked at me, and I immediately felt bad. But I wasn't going to do
this, not now. I turned back around and started walking off.

"I want to tell you something," he repeated. "I'm going to follow you
until you talk to me."

I thought this over. "Then will you leave me alone?" I asked.

"If I have to," he admitted.

I turned back around and looked at my watch. "I'll give you 2 minutes.
After that, we'll see," I told him. I didn't want him to leave again,
but I wanted more from him than he was willing to.

God, I had come so far without him, I thought that I was past all
this; that I was finally over him.

"Can we at least go for a coffee? It's freezing out here," he asked,
rubbing his hands together and blowing hot air onto them. I considered
this for a minute. It was cold, and maybe I could get a free coffee
out of it.

"Okay," I consented. We walked in silence to the nearest coffee shop
that I knew of. Several times he tried to strike up a conversation but
I said nothing and he gave up. I wasn't going to let him ruin my life
again, I wasn't.

We found a Starbucks, and he bought me a coffee and we sat down on the
couch, as far away as possible from each other.

"Say what you have to say," I told him in my most detached manner. I
couldn't let him think that he had any effect on me at all.

He struggled with his words for a minute, and I thought of Maggie. I
felt sorry for her left in the restaurant, but any sympathy I had
dissolved the second he began to speak.

"I'm sorry," he said, and I wondered if he had merely dragged me here
to say that. "I'm sorry for everything." I had always known that he
had had problems with apologies, but I hoped he might elaborate, tell
me what it was exactly he was sorry for.

"I've lost you. Already. Which I think is a miracle even for us," I
said with some amount of humour.

He smiled. It wasn't a big smile, but it was a start. Nothing, no
speech yet again, and yet I found myself wanting more, regardless of
the time schedule that I suggested. "I just wanted you to know... I
don't regret what happened."

I must have been looking at him strangely as he elaborated. "The
Illinois Primary. Us," he said awkwardly. "But things... it made things
difficult." He was really having a hard time trying to say what it was
that he wanted to communicate, and I didn't think that I had seen this
in him before. "I'd had some offer, from the tobacco people, they
wanted me to help them. They offered me money. I refused. They
threatened me; I wanted you out of the way... I didn't want you
involved." I said nothing; I didn't know what to say. So I sat still.

"I wanted to protect you. I cared about you, and then after we... after
the Illinois thing, I knew that I couldn't let you get hurt," he
rambled on, trying to vocalise his point of view. I was still unsure
as to what to think of it, what to believe.

"You tried to protect me?" I asked, confused. "You tried to stop me
from being hurt by being hurtful?" I wanted to know if this was his
idea of protecting me, to ruin my whole life.

"I didn't know what else to do," he admitted, and I thought it was a
lousy excuse.

"You're lying," I concluded, not wanting to consider the truth. "You
only wanted to help yourself. I was just a complication." I rose. "If
you wanted to help me, you would have told me. You only wanted to help
yourself," I repeated, trying to convince myself. I started to walk
off.

"I didn't know what to do," he cried out as I neared the exit. "Us
sleeping together confused everything, and at the same time it brought
it all into focus." He was starting to yell and I stopped. "I loved
you! I knew that I loved you and I had no idea what the hell I could
do about it. And there was no way on earth that I was going to let
anyone get to you, even if it meant that I couldn't have you." He
paused, then quieter, "I loved you, and I could never tell you that,"
he finished.

I left, unable to hear any more.

It took me a long time to reach my apartment; I was walking in
circles, my eyes clouded by tears. He was lying; he couldn't be
telling me the truth. He masterminded the whole tobacco fiasco, and it
all went wrong, and he was blamed for it because it was his problem.
He slept with me because he was drunk, he never had feelings beyond
friendship for me; I was just a convenient lay, a warm bed on a cold
night. I meant nothing to him.

But all the while, I knew that I was lying to myself. There had always
been something more than friendship between us, despite the fact that
I had denied its existence for fear of being hurt. Josh, it seemed,
has also tried to ignore it, and was equally unsuccessful.

I arrived home, still in floods of tears of self-pity for my life, for
what could have been, even for Josh. I cried throughout the night, and
despite telling myself that I had to pull myself together, nothing
stemmed the flow. I was glad that the next day was a Saturday, I could
lie in and get some sleep, and I could brood as much as I damn well
wanted without other people bothering me.

Maria phoned at ten o'clock. I ignored the phone, but listened as the
answer machine picked up the call.

Hi, sorry I can't come to the phone right now, but if you leave your
name, number and a short message, I'll get back to you as soon as I
can. Thank you. ... Beep...

"Donna? You there? I hope you're okay. I've got a damn hangover, so if
you know any cures, call me, please. Thanks for coming last night. I
didn't get home until after 2 o'clock. I think... Got talking to that
woman who knew your boss, Maggie. She's really nice, actually. And she
told me where Josh Lyman is staying if you wanted to talk to him at
all. Anyway, hope you got back okay. Call me, I'll be in all day.
Speak to you later."

I didn't want to know where he was staying, I didn't think. Although I
was beginning to come to the conclusion that I should at least
apologise for my behavior the night before.

And find out if he was telling the truth. Or apologise. I should
apologise. I wanted to speak to him again. Let him know that I didn't
hate him. I could never hate him. He had loved me. He said so. Didn't
he?

I called up Maria later, and she told me where Josh was staying
without me even asking. I told her that I knew of no hangover cures
and that she should drink lots of water, although it never seemed to
help me all that much.

I looked up the number of the hotel in the phone book, and stood
staring at it for about half an hour, picking up the receiver, putting
it down, starting to dial the numbers, stopping. This sequence
repeated itself for a while, then the phone rang. I assumed that it
would be Maria, calling to find out if I had phoned Josh; or someone
else from work, checking that I got back to my apartment all right.
It was neither.

"Hello?" I answered. No reply. "Hello?" I asked again. Still no reply.
"Listen, if you're doing prank phone calls again, I have caller ID and
I'll get the police on you," I said, irate. I'd had so many recently.

"No, no!" the voice protested. And it was a voice that I knew that I
recognised at one time in my life as well I as I knew my own. "It's
me, it's Josh," he said almost nervously. I didn't think that I'd ever
heard him nervous before.

"Josh!" I said surprised. "Actually..."

"Listen..." we said at the same time.

"You first," we both offered.

"No you!" Again, in synchrony. We laughed, and even that was at the same time.

"Go on," I urged him.

Pause. "I was just phoning to apologise about last night. I'm sorry. I
shouldn't drink. We came to that conclusion years ago." I smiled. "I
didn't exactly come across as I was hoping. Can you forgive me?"

I think I was beyond shocked. The Josh that I knew had never cared for
other people's opinions nor for forgiveness.

"Maybe we could try again," I said.

"I'd like that," he said.

We spent the next half-hour on the phone, discussing arrangements,
talking almost like the old friends we were.


We met the next day in a bar nearby. He was a little late and I
worried that he wasn't going to turn up. When he finally got there he
explained Maggie had been to see him. They weren't going to see each
other again, he told me.

I shrugged, but internally I was irrationally happy.

We sat in almost silence for a while after he bought me a drink. I
became fascinated with the napkin on the table.

"So," he started. I nodded, politely, not knowing what to say.

"So," I repeated. He nodded back. And I continued to nod. I was sure
that we looked like those nodding dogs in the backs of cars. Which
started me laughing. And nodding more.

"What?" he asked, smiling, "What?" He suddenly realised what we were
doing, and stopped nodding. "Oh," he said, breaking into a grin. Then
started to laugh. And soon we were laughing almost hysterically,
probably because of nervousness.

"Listen," he said after bringing himself under control. "I just wanted
to" cough "apologise about last night. Again. Sorry. I didn't mean to
scare you off, it's just a habit I've acquired. Useful for irrational
Republicans, not so much for friends." I considered this, not sure
which part to pick up on.

"I'm sorry that I walked out on you," I said finally, deciding to
ignore both the 'friends' phrase and the redundancy of irrational
Republicans. "It was out of order, it was rude, I should have at least
listened to what you had to say."

"No, really, I was wrong, it was my fault."

"I don't think it was," I interjected.

"I was more in the wrong." He seemed determined to be more apologetic,
so I conceded.

"Okay, I agree, you were far worse than I was," I said with a smile.
He didn't seem to know whether he should be happy at his defeat or
insulted because I'd not pandered to his ego.

"Thank you. I think."

The figurative ice seemed to have been broken and we spent the next
few hours talking as we had on the phone, sidestepping certain topics,
becoming more relaxed as the evening went on and as we drank more.

"So what happened between you and Maggie?" I asked a couple of hours
and a couple of drinks later.
He grinned ruefully. "She said I was more interested in you than I was
in her. Apparently I talked too much about politics. And your name
came up more than once."

I wasn't sure whether or not to be flattered. So I said nothing. And
the conversation continued, and we ignored all issues that could cause
a potential problem. Until I was too drunk to care less.

"What you said last night..." I began.

"I thought we were ignoring everything I said last night because I was
an idiot?" he countered.

"Well, yes... but no... Yes... whatever." I stumbled trying to think of the
correct answer. "But what you said about the tobacco thing, and
Illinois. Did you mean it?" To hell with decorum, I wanted to know if
he had ever loved me, if I wasn't just imagining things.

He went serious suddenly. "That they played me and I wasn't actually a
complete jerk, of course," he grinned, knowing that wasn't what I was
asking.

"I mean the other thing. The... the other thing." I didn't want to
actually say it.

He nodded. "Yeah." He didn't elaborate.

"So all the things you said, you just wanted to make me quit so I
wouldn't get involved? You didn't actually mean those things?" I asked
quietly. I brought my head up from its original place of looking into
my hands, and stopped at his eyes. He looked directly back.

"I never, never wanted to hurt you. And I don't know what to say or do
to make you believe that, or to take it all back. If I could..." His
eyes diverted to the floor. I gently took his chin in my hand and
brought his head back up.

"Don't do this Josh, don't blame yourself. I hated you at first, but
knowing that you didn't mean it, that you were trying to protect me... I
can't hate you forever. I don't hate you." I didn't think that I could
ever hate him but I kept that to myself.

He didn't seem entirely satisfied with my answer, and I didn't think
he would ever forgive himself for it, but there was only so much that
I could say. We continued to talk for a while to come after that until
I glanced at my watch and saw that it was almost half past one.

"It's late," I announced. "I've got to be at work in the morning." He
looked somewhat dejected at this idea. "Unless you want to come back
to mine for some coffee?" I suggested, purely as an offer of
friendship.

"I'd like that," he replied.

We walked back, hand in hand, to my apartment and I knew that I was
probably a little too drunk to invite people to my apartment, but this
was Josh, it was different. I knew that he wouldn't take advantage of
me.

"I've got to get back to DC today," he told me as I handed him the mug
of coffee. The gesture wasn't entirely lost on me.

We sat on my couch after, watching TV. I didn't want him to go; I
wanted it to be like it always used to be. So we sat in silence and I
said nothing about how tired I was for fear that he would go back to
DC and never speak to me again.

Sometime after two thirty I must have drifted off, for when I next
awoke I was asleep on the couch, leaning on Josh, himself fast asleep.
It was after 7 o'clock. I didn't have to be at work until nine. I
remained where I was, somewhere between sleep and consciousness for
the next half-hour, until we both awoke with the alarm ringing from my
bedroom.

He was confused for a while, not knowing where he was, not knowing why
the hell he had woken up next to me. It was almost amusing to see
watch his face as he began to comprehend. Then he quickly stood up.

"I'm sorry!" he exclaimed, looking around nervously almost, trying to
see if he'd left anything lying around. He hadn't and so he headed
towards the door.

"You don't want to stay for a coffee, some breakfast, a shower?" I
asked. Damn if he was going to run away so fast.

"I'd love to, but I'm catching a plane back at half nine, and I've not
even started packing yet," he explained hastily. "Thanks for coming
out last night, I really enjoyed myself. And thanks for coffee. I'll
call you. Do I have your number? I phoned you; of course I have your
number. I'd better be off." He started to open the door, thought
better of it, came back over to me, kissed me on the lips before
departing. "I'll call you!" he shouted as he closed the door behind
him. Leaving me to wonder what the hell had just happened.

He did call me, several times in fact. I didn't tell Sam, I wasn't
sure what he would say. It seemed as though Josh wasn't telling Sam
either, as he never mentioned it in his regular emails to me.

The election came closer, and Josh sounded ever more stressed on the
phone, he told me that he hardly even had time to go home for a shower
these days. Even though it was no longer my job, I worried about him.
He had recovered from the accident well, but I didn't want him to have
to be readmitted to hospital because he had exhausted himself, or
worse.

The day of the election came and Josh didn't call me. Not that I had
expected that he would, but I was hoping. He and Sam were both too
busy to have time to do anything. But suddenly, I decided that I had
to see them all again, that I wanted to be part of the atmosphere, I
wanted to be with my friends, with Josh when the announcement was
made. I even wanted to tell Josh how I felt, I was suddenly overcome
with such ridiculous ideas, so I phoned Maria to make sure that I was
just being crazy.

"Go," she told me. "Find out. You'll only blame yourself if you don't.
And if you get there and decide not to go in, do some sightseeing.
Take a few days off. No one will mind."

I thought about it for about half an hour after I called her before
picking up the phone and calling the airline.

It was late by the time I arrived in DC. I stood outside the campaign
headquarters and tried to decide whether I should go in. Whether they
would actually accept my old White House ID as genuine and let me in.

CJ decided for me.

She was on her way back, holding a stack of take out menus in her arms
in addition to whatever else it was she was carrying.

"Donna?" she asked before I even seen her. "Donna, what are you doing
here?" She tried to give me a hug, but she was carrying too much, and
it all fell to the ground.

"I thought I'd come for a visit," I said nonchalantly. "Do you need a
hand?" I asked, seeing that she was struggling, and I bent down and
picked up the menus and some other pieces of paper.

"It's a mad house in there," she warned me with a smile. "Are you sure
you want to come in?"

I thought about it only for a second before nodding.

She guided me in, letting security know that I wasn't a threat. I
entered and was overcome with a sense of d‚j… vu. Seemingly thousands
of people, all running round, calling people up, watching TV screens,
computers, trying to figure out if they were going to win a certain
state or not. There was a cacophony of noise that accompanied the
scene and it was almost overwhelming.

I followed her through the crowds of people. She seemed to know where
she was going, and it was almost too loud to ask. We ended up at the
other side of the building, in a small space where Sam and Toby were
arguing over the speech and Leo was telling them to be quiet. Their
assistants, Bonnie, Ginger, Carol and Margaret, were buzzing round,
keeping them up to date on numbers, informing them that the President
was due to come shortly and other relevant information.

"I've got someone here who wants to see you all," CJ said, motioning
towards me. Toby and Sam stopped arguing and looked over, Leo took his
gaze away from the TV screens, and all their assistants stood still.

"Donna!" It was almost in unison. I was grabbed and hugged by Sam,
Margaret, Carol, Bonnie, Ginger, even Leo. Toby smiled and said hello.
There was a jumble of voices as they asked me how I was, what I had
been up to, where I had been.

"I've also got take out menus!" CJ declared, and some of the focus was
taken off me as they all grabbed the said menus. "Where's Josh?" CJ
asked.

"Right here." I heard a voice behind me. Everyone in our area became
quiet as they waited to see what reaction I would have. I turned round
to see Josh standing with the President and the First Lady.

"Donna!" the President greeted. "Come to cheer me on? You have voted
for me, haven't you?" he asked, smiling. The First Lady also said
hello and asked me how I was. And I replied politely. But I was more
interested in Josh's reaction.

He grinned widely, pulling me into a hug. "Donnatella, I missed you,"
he said into my ear so no one could hear.

But we had to leave it at that. There was a sudden almost eerie hush
over the room. The numbers for the deciding state were coming in. This
would be it, the next four years, or the next few months would be
determined in this minute. And I felt a part of it for a minute, felt
almost as passionate about it all as everyone else in the room did.

Josh grabbed my hand and held on tight.

The results were announced.


END OF PART SIX




Ex Post Facto - Part Seven
Of Disastrous Dates and More Favourable Fates


[josh pov]

After Sam and I had been out to drinks, life got progressively better.
Sam no longer looked at me with that questioning glance, the mistrust.
Instead, it seemed to me that he was constantly unsure of everything,
but came to trust me again, and that was all that I really wanted. Our
friendship grew with this and while I doubted it could ever be what it
once was, it was different in a way, better, and just as strong.

I knew that Sam told the others my big, dark secret. I caught CJ
looking over at me guiltily, and she approached me several times one
day before thinking the better of it, or asking about some work
related issue that I could tell was only a cover.

Later that night I invited her out for a meal, and over the main
course she told me that Sam had related what he knew of the story to
her.

It was one of the only times that I have seen CJ look upset, and she
apologised repeatedly for not being a better friend, for not trusting
me, for giving up on me when I needed friends the most.

I smiled at her and told her that she had been a good friend. She
couldn't have known about the situation, it was better with her not
trusting me. As long as she could forgive me for not telling her, I
could forgive her.

She looked up at me, amazed by something that I did not understand and
told me that she loved me. In a purely platonic way, she hastened to
add.

I tried to look dejected, and told her that I thought her acceptance
of my dinner invitation meant that she felt the same way about me.
However I ruined whatever effect this would have by smirking and I
started laughing.

She laughed too, and told me that whilst she held me in high esteem,
unfortunately she felt that wasn't the right girl for me - she was too
tall.

I pretended to sulk and declared that it was far easier having a
secret love affair with Sam - he didn't have such high demands.

There was work to do in our relationship, certainly, but things were
looking to be on the mend.

Toby came by soon later, with some work excuse, and although never
apologised in words, made it very clear that he respected me, and felt
guilty about how he had reacted during the previous months.

That was all that was said on the matter, and we dropped it soon
after, falling easily back into the routine of yelling at each other
affectionately as we had always done.

Leo was not so direct in his apology, left it unsaid that he thought
of me as family, as I did of him, and only commented that he was glad
that I was recovering well.

I did not ask for an apology from any of my friends; I felt it was
unnecessary. I had done nothing to deserve it, and thought that I had
wronged them as much, if not more, than they had wronged me. Given the
information that they had at the time, it was only to be expected that
they would be suspicious of me, doubt me, try and keep their distance.
But things were slowly getting back to normal, whatever normal was,
and I wasn't going to prevent that progression any way.

It was only a few weeks later that Leo asked me to go to Boston, to
try and convince a Congressman to vote for the new health care bill.
Apparently, the Congressman felt it above himself to talk about it
over the phone, and this one man's vote was, unfortunately, worth four
more, and we desperately needed them.

I told Sam of the plan.

"You could go and see..." He tailed off, pausing either to remember a
name, or to see what would be appropriate. "Maggie," he said, finally.

It only occurred to me later what he was trying to tell me.

I didn't have an address or a workplace, though, since it was only on
the plane that the thought came. I pushed it, and all other connected
thoughts, out of my head, and concentrated on the role that I had to
play in order to try and convince the stubborn old Congressman to vote
for the bill.

It turned out that what the Congressman was looking for mostly was
attention; the fact that they had flown out the Deputy Chief of Staff
for the job was seemingly enough; he had been noticed. I wondered if
he couldn't possibly get his attention some other way, but the job was
done quickly and with minimal fuss, and I had the rest of the day in
Boston.

I decided that I should give Maggie a call, see if she would like to
join me for lunch. It turned out that she was working until seven that
evening, but would be free later in the evening for dinner.

I agreed, and then called Leo to inform him that the Congressman would
be voting for the bill, and that I had some personal business to
attend to, and would he mind if I stayed in Boston a couple of extra
days?

Leo didn't object too strongly, which I thought was an encouraging sign.

I met Maggie at eight and she told me of a nice Italian restaurant in
the city center.

We got there soon after, and the party that seemed to be occurring in
the middle of the restaurant, a group of women all laughing and
talking loudly immediately put me off.

They seemed to be quiet later as Maggie and I were shown to our table,
and so I decided not to let it annoy me. I was here for a nice evening
out with a very nice, attractive woman, and no one was going to ruin
that for me.

Or so I thought. Retrospectively, I realised that perhaps my
conversation was slightly inappropriate, that for some reason, as had
happened more so since the accident, Donna seemed to creep into almost
everything I said.

It started almost imperceptibly, Maggie was talking about her day at
work, and somehow we got onto the conversation of my recent stay in
hospital. And how terrifying it could be on the other side, from a
patient's point of view.

"But it wasn't too bad," I said, "since Donna was there all the time
after I woke up."

"Donna?" Maggie asked, which was only understandable. Somehow I had
managed to refrain myself from talking about her on our previous
dates.

"My ex-assistant," I replied, then felt the need to explain further.
"We're friends, sort of, she lives in Boston actually. Moved here a
few months ago, I think she works for a law firm here." And thus the
rambling and 'Donna-name-dropping' began. Which isn't particularly
recommendable for a date that you're trying to impress.

Soon we were talking about something else entirely unrelated - how the
campaign was going. I said that it was going as well as could be
expected considering the circumstances, the President's MS.

"How is he?" Maggie asked.

I smiled. "That was the first question Donnatella asked as well. The
rest of us were worried about our jobs, she was just worried about how
the President was." I finally brought myself back to the present.
"He's fine as far as I know. The First Lady is taking good care of
him," I said.

Quite frankly I didn't know much about his condition, Donna was the
one who did all the research on the topic. And, understandably, the
President wasn't overly keen on us asking how he was every five
minutes.

And so the evening progressed like this, and I knew exactly what I was
doing. I cringed when I heard myself say Donnatella Moss for what
seemed like the fifty third time, but there was nothing I could do to
stop myself. I wondered what Maggie thought of the situation, a forty
year old guy seemingly obsessed with his old assistant who was a good
few years younger than him. I can't imagine that she was getting much
joy out of it, there was obviously going to be no future between us
whilst I was so hung up on Donna.

We ordered coffees, and Maggie went to the bathroom after I had
mentioned, off-hand, something about how much more organised I was
when Donna was running my life. I apologised at this point, this
hadn't quite been the romantic evening out that either of us had been
hoping for, although it seemed now that I had been hoping for a
romantic evening out with quite a different person.

Maggie returned a few minutes later, with an unidentifiable expression
on her face. It almost looked as though she had been laughing too
hard, and then had been shocked by something, and hadn't had time to
recover.

"What's wrong?" I asked, concerned.

"What? Nothing, nothing. Why do you ask?" she questioned, almost
caught off guard.

"You just looked worried is all. Are you sure everything's alright?" I
was impressed at how caring and concerned I was being.

"Your assistant, she was called Donnatella Moss, right?" she asked me.

I tried to think of the reasoning behind this question. Perhaps she
was about to tell me everything that she had learned about the
infamous Ms. Moss in the last couple of hours in order to torture me
before she dumped me. "Yeah," I replied, almost warily.

"I think, I think that I just met her in the bathroom." She pointed
across the room to where I distinctly saw Donna looking quite
distressed, gathering her bag and coat and making an exit from the
restaurant. "Is that her?" Maggie asked.

I thought about denying it, but I didn't think there was much use,
she'd obviously already spoken to her. "Yeah," I said. It seemed as
though I had been reduced to one-word sentences.

"Well?" she asked.

"Well, what?" I asked back.

"You've been talking about her all night, it only seems right that you
actually go and talk to her," Maggie told me.

"What about..." I started.

"Don't worry about me, I'll be alright," she said, smiling, and I knew
that she wasn't lying just to be nice.

"I'll call you tomorrow," I told her, grabbing my coat. I dropped some
money on the table, "here," I said, "use this to pay for dinner." I
kissed her on the cheek and promptly ran after Donna.

I knew that it was quite rude, but I had to speak to Donna.

She was walking quickly along the road, her hair blowing in the night
breeze, coat and scarf wrapped tightly around her, and she looked
amazing. Better than she ever had in the hospital, when she constantly
looked tired, or distressed.

"Donnatella, wait!" I called. She turned round and looked at me.

"Go back to the restaurant, Josh," she said, but I wasn't going to
listen to her. I had gone far too long without seeing her. I wasn't
giving up so easily.

"Donna," I tried again, "Donnatella!"

"What about Maggie?" she asked a few seconds later, almost shouting
down the road, a warning to me.

I didn't think to ask about how she knew of Maggie, I assumed that it
was something to do with them meeting in the bathroom.

"What about her?" I questioned; I didn't see the relevance. She was in
the restaurant, she had told me to go after Donna; I didn't see the
point.

"You can't follow me, Josh. You've got no right. We don't even know
each other anymore. I've got my cell phone. I'll call the police," she
said. I didn't understand what she was trying to do, I only wanted to
talk to her, and I told her so.

"And you're only a few months too late!" she said, and I ignored her.
I wasn't going to let her go this time.

"I need to tell you something," I told her, almost desperately.

"Go back to your girlfriend," she said. "I haven't the energy to do
this again, Joshua."

I wondered what she was trying to do to me; I wanted, needed her to
listen to me. I wanted to shout, to scream at her, tell her things
that I knew that she never wanted to know, and she was just pushing me
away.

She turned around and I couldn't let her go. Perhaps I was being
selfish, but I didn't want to lose yet another opportunity to be her
friend. To tell her about the real reason that I pushed her away after
we got too close for comfort.

"I want to tell you something," I tried again. "I'm going to follow
you until you talk to me."

"Then will you leave me alone?" she asked, and I nodded reluctantly.

"If I have to," I told her. But I didn't want that; I never wanted that.

"I'll give you 2 minutes. After that, we'll see," she stopped as I
walked towards her this time, and I knew that I had to make these two
minutes count for more than I ever had before.

"Can we at least go for a coffee?" I asked. "It's freezing out here."

She agreed.

We walked in silence to a nearby Starbucks. In between trying to start
a conversation I tried to rehearse what I was going to tell her, how I
was going to convince her in two minutes to talk to me forever, to
forgive me, to stay in my life in one way or another. I had no idea
what she was thinking. I wasn't sure that I wanted to know.

We got coffee, and found a couch at the back of the shop. I noticed
that she sat as far away as humanly possibly from me, and this hurt
almost more than anything she could say.

"Say what you have to say," she instructed me, and I was almost lost
for words. I couldn't think straight, couldn't remember what I was
going to tell her, how I was going to tell her.

"I'm sorry," I said eventually. "I'm sorry for everything."

I didn't know what else to say; should I tell her exactly what hundred
thousand things I was sorry for?

Should I tell her that I was sorry that I had ever let her go, that I
had lied to her; that I had let us fall so far apart? Should I say
sorry for all the times that I had hurt her; for not telling her about
the tobacco thing; for being a coward and never telling her how I
felt; for letting her slide so easily out of bed that morning and
never talking to her about it?

"I've lost you. Already. Which I think is a miracle even for us," she
said with a wry smile, and I felt a glimmer of hope.

I smiled almost imperceptibly. My mind was running a mile a minute,
trying to tell me what to say, trying to connect thoughts with speech.

What came out instead was "I just wanted you to know... I don't regret
what happened." It was a strange one to start with. But I had to go
where I had started. "The Illinois Primary. Us," I said, her perplexed
look informing me that she had no idea what the hell I was talking
about.

Perhaps she didn't remember at all. God, I hoped that wasn't the case,
I wasn't sure if I could cope with that. But her face showed a spark
of recognition and I tried to regather my thoughts. "But things... it
made things difficult."

I wasn't sure what I was trying to say, my mouth was speaking without
consulting my brain, which is usually where I began to get into
trouble. "I'd had some offer, from the tobacco people, they wanted me
to help them. They offered me money. I refused. They threatened me; I
wanted you out of the way... I didn't want you involved." I wasn't sure
whether I'd got the information across I wanted to, that I'd got
through to Donna.

This wasn't what I had come to say, I wanted to tell Donna how I felt,
how I wanted us to be friends, at the very least. I wasn't sure if she
believed me, or if she would believe anything I said any more. But I
desperately wanted her friendship and I wasn't sure what I had to do
to regain her trust.

"I wanted to protect you. I cared about you, and then after we... after
the Illinois thing, I knew that I couldn't let you get hurt." I
rambled, trying to find something that would make her react in a
positive way, but she remained almost like stone, saying nothing.

"You tried to protect me?" she asked eventually. "You tried to stop me
from being hurt by being hurtful?"

It wasn't working, she was going to walk out on me, she had given me a
chance and I had blown it. "I didn't know what else to do," I said. I
knew there was little I could say to make her trust me now.

"You're lying," she said, and I wanted to tell her that I wasn't, but
I didn't know how. "You only wanted to help yourself. I was just a
complication. If you wanted to help me, you would have told me. You
only wanted to help yourself." She had stood up in the middle of this,
and I didn't know how to tell her how wrong she was. She was going to
leave me again, and although I knew I deserved it, I couldn't let her
leave me again.

"I didn't know what to do," I tried for a final time, more desperate
than ever, my selfish self unable to let her go without knowing some
of the truth, hoping that she might hear and decide not to go. "Us
sleeping together confused everything, and at the same time it brought
it all into focus." My voice rose along with my emotions. "I loved
you! I knew that I loved you and I had no idea what the hell I could
do about it. And there was no way on earth that I was going to let
anyone get to you, even if it meant that I couldn't have you."

There was no going back; half of the truth was out. I couldn't let her
leave me. I brought my voice down from the almost shout that it had
reached, paralleling my desperation, my emotion. "I loved you, and I
could never tell you that," I practically whispered.

She turned and left and my heart was ripped apart. I didn't follow
her, she had heard all she needed, and it was clear what she intended.
She wanted nothing more to do with me.

I went back to my hotel room, and discovered that I couldn't even cry
over it. She deserved better, I knew that, but I didn't want that.

The phone rang shortly after, and I leaped to get to it, hoping that
it was Donna, hoping that she had come to the conclusion that being
friends would be nice, and just to forget what I had said earlier.
However, since Donna had no idea where I was staying, it was highly
unlikely that it was her, and so I don't know why I was surprised to
hear Maggie on the other end. After I had left to chase Donna, she had
apparently joined Donna's table and had managed to get her number.

She gave it to me, and I wrote it down, despite my protestations that
I had no use for it. She asked how things had gone, and I was as
nonchalant as I could possibly be when I said that we had decided not
to see each other again. She asked why, and I told her some bullshit
nonsense about having nothing in common, and that we had decided that
there was no point in attempting to resurrect our friendship.

She didn't believe me, and I didn't blame her. I lied and told her
that I would call her soon, and she said goodbye and we hung up.

I don't know what was different, but looking at Donna's number,
holding it in my hand, I felt lower than I had all evening. I hadn't
cried much in the last few years, but no one was around to see me, and
all of a sudden I felt lonelier than I had ever been, and I broke
down.

I woke up the next morning feeling slightly more optimistic. I knew
that I had messed things up with Donna, and I felt bad about it. I
questioned the sense in phoning Donna to explain, to apologise, but it
was seven in the morning and was too early to be making calls on a
Saturday morning after a night out.

And besides Leo phoned twenty minutes later to inform me that
Congressman Dixon, who had been so accommodating the day before and
had agreed to vote for the health care bill, was now having second
thoughts and considering attaching a rider to the bill. A rider that
would ensure the bill wouldn't pass.

Leo had apparently tried to no avail to get Dixon to change his mind,
and the bill was to go before Congress in only a couple of days. Since
I was in Boston anyway, Leo had asked me to try and persuade the
Congressman, once again, to change his mind.

I assumed that, yet again, it was an issue with attention, and he
definitely had mine. I phoned him up and set up a meeting with him for
the morning.

Three hours and a disagreeable lunch later, I was exhausted and
irritated, but finally an arrangement had been agreed upon. I had a
more distinct dislike for Congressmen than usual and I wondered
briefly what the hell they were there for. They seemed to be more
trouble than use the majority of the time, and I toyed with the idea
of asking the President to get rid of Congress.

It was while I was thinking this over, smiling at the idea that we
would be able to pass bills without having to worry about who was on
our side for it and who wasn't, that I had picked up the phone and
dialled Donna's number. She answered, and I realising what I had done
I considered putting the phone down. But I needed to do this, so I
remained on the line, but didn't know what to say. The idea of saying
hello didn't occur to me until Donna threatened to report me to the
police for the second time in two days.

"No, no!" I said quickly, finally remembering my manners, or what
there was of them. "It's me, it's Josh," I said, anticipating the
slamming down of the receiver.

"Josh!" she replied, almost surprised, as was I that she was actually
talking to me and not threatening to report me to the cops.
"Actually..." she started, but I had already started to speak in fear
that if I didn't say what I wanted to quickly, she would, indeed, hang
up on me.

"You first," I said after a second, as she said exactly the same
thing. "No, you!" Again, at the same time. Cue laughter - at the same
time.

There was another pause while we both decided who would actually
speak. She started first. "Go on."

So I began to ramble. "I was just phoning to apologise about last
night. I'm sorry. I shouldn't drink. We came to that conclusion years
ago. I didn't exactly come across as I was hoping. Can you forgive
me?" I formed answers in anticipation of her "no" answer, but it
didn't come. There was a silence for a couple of seconds before she
responded.

"Maybe we could try again." I let out a sigh of relief.

"I'd like that," I said, thinking that my fortune had at last changed.
And from then on the awkwardness dissolved and we were able to talk to
each other easily.

I was getting ready to go out the next night when I heard a knock on
my door. I had no idea who it could be, and when I opened it I saw
Maggie standing there. I invited her in.

"Josh," she began. And then nothing was said for a few moments.

I wondered if I was supposed to be saying something, then decided that
I should, but didn't know what to say. When she started to talk again
I realised that my moment had passed. Whatever it was that I should
have said was unsaid and Maggie came to a decision.

"It's not going to work out between us, is it?" she asked, and I
thought about telling her that of course it would, and then just not
phoning her, but that wasn't fair to her.

"I don't think it helps that we live in different states," I admitted.

She laughed. "I don't think that's the reason. Long distance
relationships require interest from both sides, and there's more
coming from me than from you."

I started to protest. "I do like you, Maggie, really I do."

"I wasn't asking that," she said. "I know it, but not enough. And I'm
not blaming you for that, there's nothing either of us can do about
it." There was a pause. "I'm not going to chase someone who is chasing
someone else, there's no point, and besides life is too short for such
complications. I like you Josh, I'm not going to deny that, and I'm
not going to lie and say that I'm entirely happy about the way this
has turned out, but I can't change it. I honestly believe that if
there was no one else in the picture we could have had a good time."

"There is no one else," I told her, but I realised that considering
what I had been doing for the past few days, few weeks, months, years
even, it was pretty much a lie.

She laughed again. "Josh, I think we both know the truth. I'm not
Donna, and I'm not going to try to compete with her. Maybe one day we
can meet up as friends, but we both know that there's not going to be
more there." She looked at me. "Feel free to pipe up here with
declarations of your undying love for me," she said.

I got flustered and started garbling.

She laughed at me. "I wasn't being serious. I would have liked it, but
it's not going to happen." She turned round towards the door, and I
followed her and opened it up for her. She gave me a kiss on the lips,
and for a moment I wanted to tell her not to give up on me, but it
would be pointless.

"Bye, Josh," she said. "I really wish we could have met some other
time," she continued regretfully.

"I'm sorry, really I am," I told her.

"Don't be, it's not your fault. Whom we fall in love with is,
unfortunately, nothing we can choose," she said, and I knew that was
all we could say. She turned and left, and I watched her walk down the
corridor and disappear into the elevator. I wanted to call out to her,
to bring her back, to stop her, but I didn't.

I was a little late meeting Donna, and she looked worried until she
saw me. "Sorry for being late," I said.

"Your watch still sucks?" she asked.

"Umm, no, I had a visitor. Maggie came round to see me," I briefly
explained. "She wanted to say goodbye and good luck for the future."

"You split up?" Donna asked, and I couldn't tell whether she was
interested or just being polite.

I nodded. Donna didn't reply.

I bought us some drinks, and we sat in silence for a while as Donna
played with her napkin. I tapped my fingers on the table, trying to
think of some earth shattering opening line. The best I could come up
with on such short notice was "so." Not the greatest opener ever.

She smiled, and nodded.

"So," she replied. And I smiled and nodded. And we continued nodding.
Until she started to laugh. I realised that we looked ridiculous, and
promptly halted the nodding.

"Oh," I said intellectually, before I started laughing as well. I
eventually saw that nothing was going to be said unless I started some
sort of conversation. That is, of course, if we didn't want to be
sitting nodding and laughing all night and not actually saying
something.

"Listen. I just wanted to apologise about last night. Again. Sorry. I
didn't mean to scare you off, it's just a habit I've acquired. Useful
for irrational Republicans, not so much for friends." I seemed to be
apologising an inordinate number of times in the past few days. I
wondered what had come over me.

"I'm sorry that I walked out on you," she countered. "It was out of
order, it was rude, I should have at least listened to what you had to
say."

We argued for a minute or two over who was more at fault, finally
agreeing that since pretty much half the world's problems were my
fault, it was only fair that I take responsibility for this one as
well. After this, it was like on the phone, old friends, covering
almost every topic that we could think of. It was nice, I had to
admit; it was really nice. We drank a fair amount, becoming more
relaxed and less careful about what we were saying as we drank more.
Eventually we reached the stage where we decided that it was safe to
talk about what I had said the night before.

"I thought we were ignoring everything I said last night because I was
an idiot?" I said when Donna brought up the subject, hoping to avoid a
rehash of the previous night's occurrences, where one of us would say
the wrong thing and offend the other. Most likely me offending Donna.

"Well, yes... but no... Yes... whatever," she said without me understanding
what she said. "But what you said about the tobacco thing, and
Illinois. Did you mean it?"

I knew what she was asking, she wanted to know if I had ever loved
her, and whilst I knew the answer, I thought I'd try and avoid it for
a minute. "That they played me and I wasn't actually a complete jerk,
of course." The avoidance tactic didn't quite work.

"I mean the other thing. The... the other thing."

"Yeah," I said, almost nonchalant.

"So all the things you said, you just wanted to make me quit so I
wouldn't get involved? You didn't actually mean those things?" I
almost wished that we had never started the conversation. I wasn't
sure how to say the right thing, or at least to say what I wanted to
say. And the alcohol was not helping in any sense of the word.

"I never, never wanted to hurt you. And I don't know what to say or do
to make you believe that, or to take it all back. If I could..." I took
my eyes away from hers, but she brought my head back up, and I knew
that she believed me.

"Don't do this Josh, don't blame yourself. I hated you at first, but
knowing that you didn't mean it, that you were trying to protect me... I
can't hate you forever. I don't hate you." I wondered why she didn't
hate me. I deserved to be hated, but for some reason she didn't think
so any more.

"It's late," she said seconds later after looking at her watch. "I've
got to be at work in the morning

I didn't want the evening to end. And when she offered me coffee, as
what I knew to be an offer of friendship, I willingly accepted.

We entered her apartment a little before two in the morning. She got
me a coffee, perhaps her second in about triple the number of years.

I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be going back to DC in
the morning, and the fact saddened me. I realised that I really ought
to go back to my hotel room and get at least a few hours of sleep
beforehand.

However, I never got round to moving, and woke up with Donna's alarm
at about half seven, lying on her couch, her asleep next to me. I
couldn't remember ever having gone back to my hotel, but in my sleep
confused haze, it took me a good few minutes to figure out where I had
in fact ended up. I quickly realised the inappropriateness of where I
was as soon as I had figured it out, and jumped up and apologised yet
again for myself.

"You don't want to stay for a coffee, some breakfast, a shower?" Donna
asked her eyes still half closed. I didn't want to leave, but I also
knew I had to be back in DC for a lunchtime meeting.

"I'd love to, but I'm catching a plane back at half nine, and I've not
even started packing yet," I said, trying not to offend her at the
fact that I was running off so quickly. I wasn't sure if it had
worked, so I continued talking. "Thanks for coming out last night, I
really enjoyed myself. And thanks for the coffee. I'll call you," my
mouth was, once again, speaking without my brain engaging it. "Do I
have your number? I phoned you; of course I have your number. I'd
better be off," I managed to close my mouth eventually, not an easy
feat.

I went to open the door, then some sleep deprived part of my brain
decided otherwise, and I found myself walking back over to Donna and
kissing her, before I walked back towards the door and out of it,
shouting behind me "I'll call you!"

I needed some sleep, seriously.

It was one promise I intended to keep, and I did in fact phone her.
She didn't hang up on me, but neither did we talk about my impromptu
goodbye, which was good in some respects, but not so good in others.

I didn't tell Sam. I knew what he'd say, or at least I knew that he'd
either get smug and go for some rendition of 'I told you so', despite
his never having told me so, or he'd get worried about the both of us.
I couldn't be bothered with either, and so I neglected to tell him.

I think he thought I was having secret phone call sessions with
Maggie, rather than Donna, since he asked how she was after walking
into my office and finding me on the phone with Donna. I said she was
okay, which as far as I was aware was true.

The next couple of weeks got so hectic after that, and he didn't ask
again. The election was coming up, and whilst we weren't involved in
it directly, we often spoke with Bruno and the others about it,
keeping up to date, running round trying to get numbers, worrying
generally about what we would do if things didn't turn out how we
hoped. We tried not to think about it, and no one said anything, but
it was hanging over our heads constantly. It was at times like this I
wished Donna was back, reassuring us, making me work so hard I didn't
have time to consider it. But she wasn't and that wasn't changing any
time soon.

Then Election Day came. I don't remember it being half as frantic and
stressful and busy the last time. Perhaps four years had diluted the
memory, or perhaps it was because last time it felt as though we had
less to lose. I tried to phone Donna a couple of times, telling her to
get all her friends out and vote for us, to see if she had any
theories about what would happen, but each time I started to dial I
would be interrupted. Someone would run to up me with a problem of
sorts, or wanting to talk to me, or wanted me to talk to someone else,
and I found that it was easier to not try.

When I finally made it down to the campaign headquarters it was a mad
house. In fact, it was worse. There were more people there than I had
ever realised were working in the White House or on the campaign, and
it took a while for me to locate people I knew.

When I reached Sam and CJ, they were making predictions on how it was
all going to go. Personally, I was avoiding predictions as much as
possible in preference to actual polling data, of which there was
little solid evidence of anything. But I quickly tired of all the
waiting. I wasn't a patient guy it wasn't my style.

It was late before any results came in at all. We got most of New
England and the northern states, but lost the majority of the south
and southwest, as we thought would happen.

By this time we were all exhausted and starving, and so CJ offered to
go get some take out menu's for us. She arrived shortly after I left
to go to the bathroom and I saw her before I actually arrived back at
the group.

"Where's Josh?" I heard CJ ask, and I replied, making her jump slightly.

I waited until the President and the First Lady had said their hellos,
and then I grabbed Donna and gave her a big hug.

"Donnatella, I missed you," I whispered to her as everyone looked at
us, almost in shock.

But the numbers we had been waiting for, on California, came in at
that point, and everyone went quiet. I don't recall ever having been
quite so nervous in my life, and I grabbed Donna's hand for support.

I didn't hear the results over the huge roar that exploded, but I
knew. We had won! We had done the almost impossible again, perhaps
with a little less style, but we had achieved what we wanted.

I brought Donna into a hug again, this time holding her longer, before
everyone else surrounded us, and I hugged everyone.

The champagne was brought out, and the President thanked everyone for
their hard work and perseverance and for a wonderful outcome before he
opened the first bottle. There was more cheering, more bottles opened,
and we all started on the celebrations, watching as the President
later went on TV and thanked the nation using the words that Toby and
Sam had written for him.

Donna stayed near me all night, going occasionally to talk to some of
her old friends, getting more drinks for us, hugging Sam again as his
joy at having won got the better of him.

Later we went outside to get some air. We stood out there very early
in the morning, her hair blowing in the cold wind, her cheeks red
partly from the cold and partly from the alcohol. I was overcome with
the need to kiss Donna while no one was watching, no one was judging.

Instead I brought her into a hug, to keep her warm, to reaffirm the
friendship between us. I didn't know if she thought of me as anything
more than a friend. Despite my revelation in Boston of my once having
loved her and the brief kiss in her apartment, while she had not hit
me or warned me never to do such a thing again, she had said nothing
in reply, either.

She hugged me back, and I felt a shiver down my back, something to do
with close proximity, and she asked if I was cold. I decided that a
declaration of my love wasn't the thing to do at that moment, and
replied to the affirmative, and so she took my hand and guided me back
inside.

The party had thinned out somewhat by this point, but Sam was still,
in a drunken manner reminiscent of what I could remember of the
Illinois Primary, urging people to dance.

I didn't feel the need. Last time had only caused me more trouble than
it was worth and so laughing at him and everyone else was enough for
me.

He took Donna away from me, and started to dance with her, and I
laughed as I watched her face set into a mock panicked look. Five
minutes later I found myself rescuing her from Sam's over enthusiastic
dancing, and we danced a while at some distance.

Sam then changed the CD, and a familiar song came on. It was the song
that Donna and I had danced to at the Illinois Primary, and I was
almost certain that Sam had mischievously switched it on purpose. I
looked at Donna, to see whether she remembered, and I got that she
did. She seemed uncertain as we stood there until I decided to not let
it affect me and pulled her closer.

"I think we should kill Sam for this," I whispered to her, giving evil
glances occasionally at Sam who looked quite pleased with himself.

"You remember?" Donna asked quietly.

"Of course I remember, I remembered everything," I said, before
deciding that it wasn't quite accurate. "Okay, so I remember some of
it. There's only so much I can do after two glasses of champagne,
after all."

She smiled.

"I'd be more than happy to assist you in killing Sam," she whispered
back after a short silence.

We planned Sam's demise in detail, although ended up agreeing that
perhaps we ought to let him live just torture him for a prolonged
period. Sam was still grinning inanely at the two of us, talking to CJ
and pointing at us, blissfully unaware of our plans.

The song finished and we remained standing together and dancing for
the next song, and the one after that, until we decided that it really
was quite late and we should go home.

I asked her where she was staying, and she looked uncertain for a
minute, finally admitting that she had no where to stay and was going
to go to a motel and find out if there were any rooms.

I told her that that would be dangerous and unacceptable, and that she
was going to come back with me and sleep in my bed whilst I took the
couch. She didn't argue.

We arrived back at my house in Georgetown in the early hours of the
morning, too elated and too tired to actually speak, but it wasn't
uncomfortable.

I offered her a drink, but she turned it down, saying that she just
wanted to go to bed. I showed her to my room unnecessarily, since she
had visited my apartment many times over the years and knew it about
as well as I did. I gave her a tee shirt and some shorts to change
into and left her to it.

I waited a few minutes then knocked before asking if she was decent,
she replied to the affirmative, and so I entered, got some clothes for
myself to wear to bed and started to take a blanket out of the
cupboard so that I wouldn't be cold on the couch. She lay in my bed
watching me as I went around the room, but she stopped me once I had
grabbed the blanket. She told me in a sleepy voice not to bother, that
we were adults and there was enough room to share the bed.

I stopped for a minute and tried to protest, but even half-asleep she
was stubborn, and my heart really wasn't in the argument. I was too
tired to really start thinking about the consequences. I went to the
bathroom and changed into my makeshift pajamas and cleaned my teeth
before re-entering my bedroom.

I paused before I got into the bed, briefly thinking that I shouldn't
go ahead with this idea, but too exhausted to remember why. "I'm not
going to even attempt to seduce you," Donna said, sensing my
hesitation. I smiled, it hadn't even occurred to me, but now that she
mentioned it...

"Some other time, perhaps," I lamely joked. Not that I'd say no if she
offered... I finally got into the bed, and tried to stay as far away
from her as possible.

I quickly fell asleep.

I woke up to my alarm clock, discovering that somehow we'd managed in
our sleep to tangle ourselves up in a mass of limbs, facing each
other, my arm around her.

I thought that this was how it should have been the first time round,
how it should have remained. She greeted me good morning, and then we
were awake enough for the embarrassment of the position to begin, and
promptly began to extricate ourselves.

I got out of bed first, and went into the bathroom and had a shower,
suddenly smiling to myself at unexpected times when I recalled the
evening.

It suddenly occurred to me that this was what loving Donna Moss was
about. And I couldn't think of a better feeling in the world.

I loved Donna Moss and I was ready to tell the world.

I just didn't know if or how I was going to tell her.


END OF PART SEVEN




Ex Post Facto - Part Eight
If Only To Understand



[sam pov]

People have puzzled me for many years. In fact, if I were to really
think about it, I don't think I've ever understood some people.

Women especially. I got engaged, and yet I never understood my
fianc‚e. Which, you might want to say, was most likely the problem and
the reason that I didn't stick around. That whole... episode... saddens
me. But enough of that.

Sometimes I don't think I understand my friends, either. They do
something you would never expect them to do, and you don't know what
to say or do. And this type of behavior, if you will, increased at one
point. I'm not sure when, perhaps around the time I heard about Josh
and the tobacco thing. Or perhaps it had happened all the time
previously, and I only started to become aware of it around then.

Maggie, or so I thought at the time, changed Josh's life for the better.

He hadn't had any interest in women, so far as I was aware, since
Donna had left, since the thing in Illinois, since before any of the
mess that occurred afterwards. Personally, I thought his seeing Maggie
was a good thing. Someone not in the political arena, someone detached
from it all. I wasn't necessarily sure that Josh would be able to
converse with someone who had no knowledge of politics, but it was
working out.

I never really got to know Maggie all that well, but from what Josh
said she sounded nice. She sounded normal. And God knows he needed
normality. We all did.

As far as I knew, they went out a couple of times in DC, to a fancy
restaurant, and I think she even managed to convince him to go to the
theater. Not an easy feat, one that had only been attempted
successfully by one person previously, the one person that we weren't
allowed to mention.

I kept in contact with Donna throughout the next few months and after
Josh went to Boston, I could date it almost to that exact weekend, she
seemed to be holding something back. I thought that maybe she'd
spotted him in Boston, but later dismissed the idea. The second
thought that went through my head was that she had found a boyfriend,
and didn't want to tell me. Which was counterproductive in that it got
me thinking more about who it could be. Perhaps someone I would
disapprove of, or maybe she just wasn't telling anyone.

I felt somewhat left out, especially since I couldn't really ask her,
but I knew there was nothing I could do about it, and most probably it
was only my imagination, anyway. I could get carried away with my
imagination often.

Josh returned from Boston a changed person. Or perhaps not changed,
but reformed - the way that I remembered him from our early
acquaintance. Arrogant, sure of himself, the 'swagger' and the dimples
returned more frequently. I could almost imagine him doing victory
laps around the office again having won someone over to his side, or
'kicking Republican ass'. And the West Wing was a great place to work
in again.

Everyone knew about the tobacco thing by now. Admittedly, it was me
who brought it up, who explained to CJ and to Toby, and even to Leo,
about the situation.

CJ's reaction was probably the most unforgettable.

We'd been out for lunch, and I couldn't help myself, I had to tell
someone what I knew. And then she came out with some comment,
something about Josh not being trustworthy. Only more subtle.

I had to set her straight, and the way she stared blankly at me
afterwards, not comprehending; I wasn't sure what to say. I repeated
what I had told her, and she told me that she had heard the first
time, irritated.

"It wasn't Josh's fault," I repeated. "He was trying to help us. God,
he was trying to protect us, to protect Donna. It wasn't his fault." I
found myself repeating this over and over, as it sunk in with me more
than Josh explaining the situation to me.

"I heard," CJ reminded me, but no longer irritated. "I heard," she
said again, disbelief lacing her words. "My God," was all she could
say.

She quickly stood up. "I've got to apologize, do something," she
explained. She sat down again. "I can't. It's been too long. God," she
said. She stood again. "I'm going to go," she told me.

I nodded. I understood.

She left, and I paid the bill.

Toby's reaction was what I'd have expected of him: a quick nod of the
head to show that he understood, then a reprimand. "Haven't you got
work to do?" he asked. Maybe he wanted time alone. Maybe he understood
and didn't need the time that I thought I needed to get to grips with
it all.

I wasn't sure what to make of Leo. I wasn't sure that he necessarily
understood; the dismissal came before any visible reaction. But then
no one was allowed to approach his office for the rest of the
afternoon, so I guessed he was thinking about it then.


Something in Boston, Maggie, had definitely been good for Josh.
Sometimes I worried that he was going to start skipping into the
office and claiming how nice the scent of the flowers was. Now that
would have scared me more than pretty much anything else in this life.
But Maggie might have been enough to make this happen. I didn't
understand it, but maybe there was something more between them than
any of us knew.

Then I witnessed him speaking to her on the phone.

I was supposed to talk to him about something, I forget what, and I
started to enter his office. I then noticed that the door was almost
shut, and so I stopped for a minute. Then I heard him speak. He
laughed.

"You wouldn't dare!" he was saying, and so I understood immediately
that it wasn't a business call. I considered waltzing in and
reprimanding him for using office hours for social calls, but there
was something in his tone that made me understand how private his
conversation was.

I knew right that minute that all I had wanted all my life was a
relationship with someone like the one he had with Maggie.

It wasn't the words - mostly he said one or two sentence words in a
sarcastic manner - it was in the way that he was totally engrossed in
what she had to say. I peered in his office through the crack, and
could see it in his relaxed position, the smile on his face. I could
hear it in the way that he seemingly pretended to ridicule her, but I
just knew that in no way did he mean it. I ached for such a
connection.

My relationship with Ainsley was progressing, but we still barely knew
each other. And although I could see myself falling slowly in love
with her I couldn't see us having the same bonding over such a short
period of time.

I don't know how long I stood there, but I only moved away when CJ
wandered over to me asking what I was doing.

I walked quickly back to my office.

He came over to my place after work one night to watch a football
game, and his cell phone rang in the middle of it.

"I'm watching a game, can you call me back later," he greeted the
person, not looking at the screen on his cell phone to see who it was.
Then his expression, the one of annoyance, changed into something
else, and he smiled. "Well, I'll talk, but only because it's you," he
said.

I considered walking out the room, allowing him to talk to Maggie. I
decided to go get some more beers from the fridge. He had no idea that
I had even spoken to him until Maggie told him that someone was
talking to him.

I asked for the fourth time if he wanted another beer and he replied
that he would.

"And don't even think about giving me that lecture," he said to Maggie
as I walked away. I smiled, and tried to think of who it was that used
to lecture him about his drinking habits and inability to consume
alcohol. I reasoned I was either imagining it, or CJ had once made a
comment on it. It continued to bug me, however.

I stayed a while in the kitchen, trying to find some more potato
chips, before I returned to the lounge with the food and drink. Josh
was just saying goodbye to Maggie.

"How is Maggie?" I asked after he'd hung up and I'd handed him his beer.

Confusion masked his face briefly and I started to wonder what was going on.

"Fine," he said eventually. I wasn't sure if I believed him, but the
more I thought about it, the more I decided that it was my imagination
working overtime yet again.

I decided to drop the subject and watch the game.

I didn't think much about what had happened for the next few days; the
election was approaching and we were all extremely busy.

Election Day came quicker than expected and I didn't think I was
really prepared. But there was nothing that I could do about that.

I ran round frantically trying to talk to people, to arrange last
minute details and finishing touches on the President's speeches, and
I really wanted to talk to Josh about something probably more
important than anything I had ever spoken to him about before. Okay,
possibly not more important.

It took me several hours, or so it seemed, to locate him. And when I
found him in his office he was annoyed with me but put down the phone
and proceeded to give me all the information that I required.

Later we all gathered at the campaign headquarters and waited not so
patiently for the results to come in. CJ and I made predictions on how
it was going to go, changing our minds ten minutes or an hour later as
yet another precinct called in. In amongst this were our complaints
that we were starving since we mostly had forgone lunch in favor of
working and were beginning to regret the decision.

CJ quickly got bored of us and went to get take out menus.

She returned half an hour later, but not alone.

I spotted the blonde head before anyone else had a chance to and, as
she neared us, I tapped her on the shoulder. She turned in my
direction and I hugged her.

"What are you doing here?" I asked as everyone else simultaneously
spoke and took her attention away from me. She looked almost scared by
the flock of people surrounding her and asking for information.

"Where's Josh?" CJ asked after announcing that she had menus.

I saw him after I heard him, and I wondered if I should not warn him
that Donna was there, or warn Donna that Josh was there, or intervene
in some way, but it was too late.

As it was, my assistance was not required.

The President quickly came between them, either by plan or by good
fortune, and there was a quick conversation before Donna looked over
at Josh. I wasn't sure what was going to happen, and held my breath
before Josh pulled Donna into a hug in a gesture that didn't speak to
me of their problems. I wondered what was going on, as Donna hugged
him back affectionately, and I didn't think that it was the first time
they had met since the hospital. There was no awkwardness, no tension;
they smiled widely at one another.

But before I could think more on the subject the whole room went quiet
and I didn't think it was a reaction to seeing Josh and Donna's
reunion.

The next few years were being decided for us once again by the
American population, and I held my breath for the second time in
several minutes.

"And with those final results, the election is being called for
President Bartlet," we were informed, and the noise that proceeded was
deafening. Everyone was cheering, some crying, some even dancing, and
champagne was brought out. The President, for once, made a short
speech before opening it. And I felt proud to know him, to know
everyone there.

Later, after numerous celebratory drinks, I let them all know this.
Fortunately, they were generally drunk enough to return the sentiment
without teasing me, at least not until later.

More drink was had, and then it seems that I decided that people should dance.

It also seems that I had some more ridiculous notions, none of which
I'd like to remember.

Like dragging Donna over to the dance floor and away from Josh and
doing some highly creative, although apparently near lethal, dancing.
Josh quickly came over and so I decided, or the alcohol decided, that
I was going to play the song that I had danced to with Donna at the
40th party. The song that she remembered dancing to with Josh in
Illinois. Apparently I then grinned inanely, perhaps even insanely, at
them for some while.

Soon after people decided that they wanted to go home.

I decided that I wanted to phone up Ainsley and congratulate her on
her loss but having her job for a further 4 years. I then decided that
I wanted to go over to her apartment to congratulate her, and never
quite got as far as the congratulations. I did, however, make it to
her apartment, and even into her bed. Where I promptly, quite
adorably, I might quote, passed out.

The hangover the next day, and the realization that I wasn't in my own
bed, was slightly improved by the discovery that I was in bed with
Ainsley, and, later, that everyone else at work was as bad off as I
was.

Josh, however, looked in quite high spirits. In fact, I was worrying
again that he might start announcing how wonderful the world was and
various other sentiments. CJ and I glared at him for being cheerful
and for being able to concentrate as we attempted to put the country
to rights before 10 o'clock in the morning.
If I was able to think straight, I might have wondered what, if
anything, went on between him and Donna that night.

By midday the hangover was receding and I could finally start caring
somewhat about work as opposed to trying to decide whether the
headache would ever stop. I quickly got bored, so wandered over to
Josh's office. However, when I got there, someone was already with
him.

But before I could find out who it was and whether I could interrupt,
CJ whispered my name from Carol's office.

"Sam!" she called.

"What?" I whispered back.

"Come in here!" she whispered, dragging me into her office, Carol
looking at us oddly.

"Why are we whispering?" I asked.

She pointed in the direction of Josh's office door, and put her finger
on her lips.

"What?" I asked, no longer whispering. There was hand movement,
motioning me to keep quite. I wondered what CJ was on. And whether I
could have any.

So I just listened to Josh's conversation, feeling very guilty for
having done so.

"So have you been to the White House before, or would you like a
tour?" he asked someone.

"Funny. No, really, you've been working on your sense of humor since I
last spoke to you," the person, someone female, replied.

"Hey!" I exclaimed, "I know that voice!"

"And they'll know yours too if you don't keep quiet!" CJ whispered back.

"Sorry," I whispered, "I know that voice!" I exclaimed, quieter.

More motioning to be quiet followed for my efforts.

"...going back?" Josh asked.

"Tomorrow, I think," Donna replied.

"Good, because I want to talk to you about something," Josh said.

CJ and I leaned closer to the door, trying to hear what was going on.
The response was too quiet for us to hear, and so we leaned closer, my
ear now practically on the door.

"Which way does this door open?" I asked, envisioning CJ and I falling
through into Josh's office in our reconnaissance efforts.

I was rewarded with a "shush".

"That is... I was... I, uh... I think..." Josh stumbled over the words as CJ
and I implored him to continue. "Why don't we go for something to eat
now?" he finally finished. I wondered what it was that he was going to
say.

"Okay," Donna replied.

We heard a few seconds of silence before we heard the door open, and
we stayed standing as we were for a few seconds longer, pretty much
unable to move, before we heard a cough behind us. I jumped, and
turned.

And tried to look innocent.

"Don't let me stop you," Josh said, and I tried to look more innocent,
but pretty much failed, it seemed. "Just wanted to say that I was
going to be out of the office for about an hour, but it seems you
already knew." He looked as though he was trying not to laugh.

"Well, we were, umm..." I started.

"I thought I had woodworm in the door and wanted Sam's opinion," CJ told him.

"Well, good luck with that," Josh commented as he exited, and we heard
his and Donna's laughter mere seconds later.

"Woodworm!" I exclaimed to CJ.

"Oh, as if you had anything better to say," she said. "Anyway, I'm
going to do some actual work now." She walked to her desk and looked
at me. I took it as my cue to leave.

Later Josh came into my office. "Donna and I are going for drinks
later, want to join us?" he asked. I paused, remembering the many
alcoholic beverages of the previous night. "Just for a couple of
hours, and you don't have to drink alcohol," he said as if being able
to read my thoughts.

I gave in, I'd not spoken to either Donna or Josh in a while, and
besides, I didn't have to stay all night.

"Sure, that sounds like fun," I replied.

"Great," he said, "bring Ainsley too." A quick pause, "You are still
going out and I didn't just make a fool of myself, did I?"

I grinned, "I'll ask her if she wants to join us."


Ainsley agreed as did CJ, Charlie and Zoey. Toby, however, decided
that he had better things to be doing with his evening. And as much as
the President wanted to join us, neither Zoey nor the Secret Service
was too keen on the idea.

It wasn't too late by the time we got to the bar, Leo had told us all
that we were pretty much useless to him, and had allowed us to leave
early. I wasn't going to complain. We managed to find somewhere to
sit, and Josh and I went and bought the first round of drinks.

"So, what happened to Maggie?" I asked as we waited for the drinks to
be served. "Are you still seeing her or..."

"We split up a while ago, it wasn't working out," Josh said.

"Oh. Sorry," I replied, unable to think of anything else to say.

"Don't worry about it. We... we decided that it was best not to stay
together, too much distance," he said.

I wasn't sure whether I believed him from his hesitancy. I said
nothing more on the subject, though. Not even to ask if it had been
Donna that he had been talking to on the phone all those times that I
thought it had been Maggie. I suspected that it was. Which lead to an
interesting trail of thought concerning the relationship between Josh
and Donna. I knew that they had slept together but that was many
months ago. I also knew that Josh had at one time had feelings for
Donna, it was never any big conclusion to jump to. But what was his
point of view on the subject now?

I didn't know what to think, but I was suspicious that it was more
than friendship that was at stake this time.

Despite a previous declaration to never again touch alcohol, I ended
up drinking a couple of beers over the several hours that we were in
the bar. No one else seemed to be avoiding alcohol, either, although I
couldn't be certain that they had been quite as hung over as I had
earlier in the day.

Later Charlie and Zoey decided to go dance under the ever-watchful eye
of the secret service, and Ainsley, CJ and Donna decided to go get
some more drinks. Josh and I sat in silence for a couple of minutes as
the girls attempted to get served in the busy bar. They finally got
served.

"I don't think I want her to leave," Josh told me as we watched Donna,
Ainsley and CJ laughing over something as they bought the drinks. I
said nothing. I couldn't think of anything to say in return. "But
she's got that whole other life in Boston and I can't keep her from
that."

"What would she do here?" I finally asked.

"Nothing," he replied. "She probably doesn't even want to stay here."
Pause. "It's not even an issue."

I didn't say anything, but I could see that it was an issue. As Josh
continued to obviously watch Donna, her eyes wandered over to look at
his even as she continued to talk to the others. She smiled. He smiled
back. And I knew that this was an issue for the both of them, but
there was nothing I could do to resolve it for them.

But that didn't stop me from trying. "Tell her then. Tell her that you
want her to stay," I foolishly suggested.

Josh laughed at me, which reinforced how foolish the suggestion was.
"And say what, exactly? I don't want you to leave because I think I
might love you?"

"Do you?"

"I... It was an example. It didn't mean anything. Just... something to
show you how unlikely it was that I would say anything." He didn't
answer the question, and I thought that more telling than what he did
say.

"Because you might want to tell her if you do think that," I commented.

"To see how much she might laugh at me? No thank you. Besides, it's
not true, we're just friends," he denied.

"Are you sure about that?" I asked, but there was no reply since CJ,
Ainsley and Donna rejoined us with some more drinks and there was
nothing that could be said.

Ainsley and I returned to my apartment shortly afterwards and I never
did get an answer.


Donna went home the next day. The emails between us continued and I
ended up inviting her down for Thanksgiving. Ainsley had agreed to
cook thanksgiving dinner for some of our friends and me in return for
many unspeakable favors.

Since Donna had left, much of her emails spoke of Josh, or questioned
about his well being, as Josh's conversation did of Donna as if I knew
more about the other than they did.

I knew almost for certain that there was more than simple attraction
going on from both sides, and to be honest, it was annoying me. Why
they couldn't sort things out was beyond my understanding.

Thanksgiving quickly approached and everyone gathered at my apartment
for the meal and to watch football. Donna had apparently stayed at
Josh's apartment over night and I knew better than to question this
arrangement.

Ainsley refused all help in the kitchen so we all sat down in the
living room to watch football. I wasn't much of a fan of either team,
and so while I watched with some amount of interest, I was more
interested in the interaction between Josh and Donna.

They were sat close together on the couch and for being just friends
they acted more like a couple than most 'friends' I knew did. They
talked to one another in quiet tones not meant for the rest of us to
hear, and at several times during the game one or the other would
laugh out loud, only for us to realize that it was not something for
us to understand.

I glanced over a CJ several times during the game, only to find her
watching them discretely as well and her eye caught mine once or twice
as if to question what I knew. What I knew was nothing. Or, to be more
precise, what I had been told was, on the face of it, nothing. But I
was only oblivious to so much.

Later CJ asked me what was going on. I lifted an eyebrow and said
nothing. And when we went into the kitchen to find out how the cooking
was going and to get some more beer, I was the one designated to ask
Josh what was going on.

It was much later before I had the opportunity to interrogate him.

The food was delicious and we spent the majority of the afternoon and
evening eating and talking as we recovered from stuffing ourselves.
But the day was quickly over. And as everyone was exiting, CJ gave me
a look, and told me to ask him.

Since Donna was leaving with him, it was difficult to get him alone,
but fortunately Ainsley came to my rescue and took Donna to see a
painting that my downstairs neighbor had done and placed outside his
apartment. She looked somewhat hesitant to leave with Ainsley, but
didn't protest.

Josh and I stood silent for a couple of minutes. "Okay, what's going
on?" Josh finally asked me.
"That's what I'm supposed to be asking you," I replied.

"What?" he asked, bewildered. "Nothing's going on. Wha... who... why?"

"You and Donna. What's going on?" I asked, since Josh didn't seem to
understand the question.

"I repeat - there's nothing going on." A pause. "Why might there be
something going on between us?" Another pause. "And who told you to
ask me?"

"There is something going on. Even I can see it. You've not been like
this in years, if ever."

"And other people have been noticing this as well?" he asked, still bewildered.

"Yes. CJ, Toby, Ainsley, hell, even Leo," I informed him. "So what's
going on? I'm your best friend, you can tell me," I urged.

"There's nothing going on!" he denied.

"So you're not in love with her?" I asked.

"What's not going on?" I heard a voice from behind me. I turned round.
Sure enough, Donna was standing there with Ainsley, who was giving me
an interesting look. "Not in love with who, Josh?" Donna asked.

I groaned.

END OF PART EIGHT




Ex Post Facto - Part Nine
Something Changed


[cj pov]


Why did you touch my hand and softly say, "stop asking questions that
don't matter anyway. Just give us a kiss to celebrate here today -
something changed." - Something Changed - Pulp

Josh recovered slowly and as he did I visited less. I was never quite
sure that he wanted to speak to me, to anyone but Donna and his
mother, and so I didn't try to make the effort.

The times I did visit, I ended up sitting there, wondering what the
hell to talk about, trying to make chitchat about the weather, how
things were progressing in the White House while he was in hospital. I
even tried to discuss that damn astrophysics, or whatever the hell it
was, that he was so intent on sharing with me the last time he was in
hospital.

I was never good at chitchat. The truth was even the word irritated
me, which I don't think helped.

I received little response from Josh. I ended up giving little in
return, making excuses to Donna about why I couldn't visit. She must
have thought I had some sort of recurring dental problem from the
amount of times I had to apologize using the urgent dental
appointment. Or there was just far too much to do at the White House,
sorry, but maybe some other time.

I later thought that he was just trying to avoid us all, and lying in
a hospital bed wasn't the easiest way to do that.

Later I didn't even bother with the excuses. There was no point.

It occurred to me that we all needed space. I don't think any of us
could trust Josh yet, not as we once had done. I don't think we could
trust ourselves, either. Sooner or later someone was going to have to
broach the subject and it was easier if we didn't talk.

I was almost thankful when Sam told me that Josh was going to spend a
month or so with his mom. It was one less thing for me to worry about
and I had plenty else on my mind.

I almost forgot about Josh in that month, apart from those times late
at night when I couldn't hear the voices in the office next to me. As
annoying as I frequently found him, as many headaches that he might
give me, I missed him, missed his voice, and missed knowing that he
was going to do something ridiculously stupid in order to embarrass
himself. Because most of the time I found it amusing as hell when he
did that; unless, of course, it caused me any amount of grief for my
job.

The time moved quickly, reelection was just around the corner, and we
all had to focus on our work more so than usual.

I heard of Josh's return to DC before I saw him. Sam was talking to
someone about it and I accidentally overheard the conversation.
"Josh's back?" I interrupted.

"Yeah," Sam said, half-smiling. "He's not coming back to work for
another couple of weeks though."

"Oh," I said.

"I was thinking, maybe we should go over and see him?" Sam suggested,
almost hesitantly.

"Maybe," I said, but I knew I wouldn't. We no longer shared that sort
of friendship. The mi amor was long gone; a professional respect had
taken its place.

Sam said no more, and I went to back to my office and tried not to
think about it.

A couple of weeks later I was surprised to see Josh at the door of my
office, 8 o'clock Monday morning.

"Hello stranger," I greeted him, a smile pasted on my face.

"Hey," he replied. "I was just wondering - you wouldn't know anything
about the NEA thing, would you?"

I shook my head. "Try Toby," I suggested.

"Damn assistant has already lost the file," he explained with a wry
grin. "Can we fire assistants for having issues with the NEA?"

I smiled, but I was surprised again, this wasn't how I remembered him.
It was entirely possible my recollection of him as the almost quiet,
unsure Josh of the previous months had been almost completely
imagined, but I didn't think so. It was unlikely that my imagination
would have changed him so drastically from reality, but this Josh in
front of me was nearly the guy I remembered from months ago, from when
Donna was still around.

"Anyway, no doubt I'll see you around," he said before he went in
search of the elusive file. I thought no more of it, and submerged
myself in data and reports that I needed for the morning's briefing.

It was midweek when Sam came into my office, looking as though he was
up to something. I wouldn't have put it past him. He sat down on my
couch. I looked at him over my glasses.

"So I was thinking," he started. This could never lead to anything good.

"What?" I asked suspiciously.

"Maybe we should ask Josh if he would like to come out on Friday
night," he said, grinning. I was still wondering what he was up to.

"And?" I asked, still suspicious.

"And nothing. Just I think it would be a nice thing to do. Why do you ask?"

"You've got that look on your face like you're going to tell me
something that I don't want to hear," I told him. He tried to look
neutral, but was successful.

"What look?" he asked.

"The one you're wearing now. Sam, what have you done? It's not another
call girl or 'a thing' like that is it? You've not been caught doing
something with Ainsley in public and you want to break it to me
gently, have you?" I asked, warning in my voice.

"Ainsley? What have you heard?" he asked, panicking.

I grinned wickedly. "Nothing. Just tell me you've done nothing idiotic."

"I haven't!" he protested. "Well, nothing I can think of."

"Good," I replied, turning back toward my computer screen, wordlessly
dismissing him.

He stood up and started to leave. "What about Friday? Can you come?" he asked.

"I'll think about it," I replied, my eyes still on the screen, my
fingers not ceasing to type.

As it turned out, I was buried under a mountain of work when Sam and
Josh left the White House for the evening on Friday and asked if I was
going to join them.

I briefly apologized and warned them not to do anything stupid that
might result in any hospital visits or media publicity. They gave me
their solemn promises that they would keep out of trouble.

I saw nothing in the newspapers the next morning, so I was sure that
they had behaved themselves, but there was something different. I
wasn't sure what it was, but Sam and Josh were no longer so distant,
there was an understanding of sorts that I didn't comprehend since I
was so used to seeing them avoid talking to each other too much. I
almost felt left out. But it wasn't as if I could say anything.

It was only later that I heard about Maggie.

Apparently she was some sort of doctor in Boston. And she was fairly
attractive and quite nice, although Sam did admit that he hadn't
spoken to her. I wasn't sure what to think. Not that it really was any
of my business. Josh and I weren't really talking; I couldn't ask him.

Then Sam told us about the thing. We'd gone out for lunch, something
that we'd started doing more since Donna had left and everything else
had happened.

I ordered a chicken salad and Sam got to talking about education. And
he was ranting on and on, and it was quite irritating since I was in
total agreement with him. He started saying about how we should really
do something about it now, in case we didn't win the election. We
certainly couldn't trust the Republican's to do anything about it.

"And we can trust Josh?" I asked, since education had been something
that he had been working on recently. I immediately regretted what I'd
said, it was immature and unprofessional, and Josh was our friend,
damnit, he was on our side.

Sam went quiet, and I wondered what he was going to say. I almost
hoped that he'd call me on what I'd said, but he didn't. Not exactly.
It was worse in a way.

"CJ, he was set up," Sam told me, and I didn't really understand what
he was telling me as he elaborated.

"It wasn't Josh's fault," he concluded. "He was trying to help us.
God, he was trying to protect us, to protect Donna. It wasn't his
fault. It wasn't his fault."

Well, if I didn't feel terrible about how I'd acted already, this
certainly did the trick.

"I heard," I said, the words sinking in, "I heard." This was not good
news, and I didn't know what to do about it. I wanted to go to Josh
immediately and tell him how sorry I was for being a complete bitch to
him. But I needed time to think about what to say; would he even want
to speak to me after the way I'd acted?

I had to leave the restaurant soon after.

As it turns out, apologizing wasn't quite as difficult as I had
imagined it to be.

The next day I went up to him several times, ready to tell him, and
then chickening out at the last minute. I think he saw through it
every time and later asked me out for dinner.

I got through to the main course before I could take it no longer and
felt the need to apologize repeatedly about the way I'd been towards
him, for not trusting him, for not being there when he most needed me.

His reaction was certainly not what I expected. He told me that I had
been a good friend.

I stared at him for a moment or two, trying to comprehend what he was
telling me. He told me that I couldn't have known about the situation,
that all things considered it was better the way it turned out.

That if I could ever forgive him for not telling me, he could forgive me.

And that was it. I looked at him, amazed by this transformation. By
the person that he was now, how he had changed so much.

"I love you," I said. Then thought for a second. "In a purely platonic
way, though," I amended quickly.

Josh smirked, but tried to look innocent. And failed miserably. "You
mean, all this time? You lead me on, you accept my dinner invitations,
and yet you love me only platonically?"

I nodded. He laughed.

I took his hand, and tried to concentrate through my laughter. "Whilst
I certainly hold you in high esteem, I'm just not the right girl for
you," I told him, regretfully. Or as regretfully as I could whilst
laughing. "I'm too tall. That's the problem."

He tried to pout. Again, failing. "Well, I must say it's far easier
being involved with Sam. He doesn't have such high demands," he
sulked.

And I laughed at him. He smiled. And that was that.

Then Josh went to Boston, and as different as I thought things were
before, they changed again.

Josh became more relaxed, happier with the world, so to speak, and the
atmosphere in the West Wing altered and it was like when we all first
moved in. We were enjoying working again, something I'd missed in the
last few months. The only problem was that Donna was no longer there,
my comrade, my fellow woman against the boys club.

Sam claimed that this change was due to Maggie's influence. Honestly,
I had my doubts.

I mean, as far as I was aware, Maggie was this really nice woman. But
Josh barely knew her. And this was not the reaction of a person who
barely knew someone. There was more to it than this. Maybe it was
because I wasn't a believer in love at first sight, perhaps if I did I
would have been convinced that Maggie had caused this transformation.

But I'd walked in on a conversation that he had with her, this strange
woman. It was after I'd seen Sam loitering about outside Josh's
office, looking as if he was up to something. Which admittedly, wasn't
exactly unusual, but I'd watched him for a couple of minutes, and I
could see him watching Josh through the door. And naturally, I
wondered what was up.

When I asked Sam, he denied knowledge, and wandered off again, so I
walked into Josh's office. He was laughing about something the other
person had said and didn't pay attention to me at all. I wasn't even
sure if he knew I was in the room. He continued to talk on the phone,
listening, entirely captivated by the person.

I was more convinced that it wasn't Maggie.

As to who else it could be, I had a few ideas. Someone that he knew
from where his mom lived, maybe. An old friend? Or someone who he knew
very well that we all thought he wasn't even speaking to. Someone that
I had suspicions had been in love with him at one time, and was almost
certain that those feelings were reciprocated.

I think that's why I was less shocked than the others appeared to be
when I saw her standing outside the campaign headquarters, looking
unsure as to what on earth she was doing there. I asked her why she
was there, but I think I already knew.

I tried to hug her, but I was carrying far too much, since no one else
was going to go and get takeout menu's despite complaining for hours
about how hungry they were.

I dropped all that I was carrying, and she offered to help me.

"It's a mad house in there," I told her, smiling. "Are you sure you
want to come in?" She still looked unsure, and more than just a little
scared, but nodded none the less.

We entered to a scene worse than when I had left it.

Hectic was not the phrase. Mad house was, surprisingly, a little
closer. Frenzied and chaotic were probably a bit more realistic.

It took us a good ten minutes to make our way across the room to the
small area in the corner where I had left everyone.

"I've got someone here who wants to see you all," I announced and
moved away quickly in anticipation of the crowd.

Unsurprisingly, as soon as they saw her, Donna was hugged and
questioned by practically everyone she had ever met working in the
White House.

"Donna!" Scarily, it was practically in unison.

I could see it was almost too much for her, so I announced "I've also
got take-out menus!" Donna looked at me gratefully. "Where's Josh?" I
asked, knowing that he'd want something to eat.

It was only after that, as he said "Right here" I wondered if my
theory was true or not. And as I saw the look they shared, there was
no animosity, no uncertainty, and I knew that there was more going on
than either of them had admitted to. I watched as they hugged, the
obvious friendship between them cascading possibly into more. I was
almost positive that they had been in contact since Josh was last in
the hospital. I could only assume that they had met up in Boston.

Everyone else, on the other hand, looked shocked, as though they
didn't suspect a thing, which perhaps they didn't. They had obviously
been expecting them to stay as far away from each other as possible.

But all these thoughts were pushed out of my head as a silence came
over everyone in the room.

It took me seconds to process what had been announced. We had won. And
I couldn't believe it.

Despite the fact that this was what we had been working towards for so
long, that the numbers had been just in our favor, I couldn't believe
that we had another four years. I was glad, though, since I had no
idea what I would do if we had lost.

I remember not knowing what to do next. I stood there, still in
disbelief, people around me hugging and cheering, and I was struck
with how much I wouldn't want to change things for the world. Of
course, four years later, we would have to leave, and everything would
change. But right then, it just seemed right. Everything was back in
place as it should be.

Then I joined in the celebration. Drinks were had; god, so many
drinks. Dancing, hugging, some quite awful singing, and a lot of
people wondering what the hell was going on with Josh and Donna.

Really, they could have done with getting lives of their own, but I
couldn't criticize since I was watching equally intrigued.

I later grabbed Toby and told him to dance with me. Sam played some
music and grinned insanely at Josh and Donna who were also on the
dance floor. Obviously, I was ignoring them. Really.

Okay, so it could be said that I had some interest in what they were
up to. From a professional point of view, naturally. All right, so it
was pretty much all from a personal perspective; I had no life of my
own, I felt somewhat invested in their relationship.

The night ended soon after, with myself trying to convince people that
in no way would I have a hangover or be late for work the following
day.

Half of it turned out to be true. Unfortunately, it was due to the
hangover which woke me ridiculously early with threats to evacuate the
contents of my stomach that I managed to get into work on time.
However, I knew that the other members of the senior staff, Sam most
particularly, would be far worse, and so I felt better with that
knowledge.

This was before Josh entered the room for staff looking as though he'd
slept better than he had in the last few years. This was the man who
could be drunk under the table by a five year old. If it was legal for
five year olds to be drinking, that is. I was not impressed, and I was
more than suspicious about what he had been up to the previous night,
but knew not to bring it up. Instead I concentrated as much as I could
on listening to whatever the hell Leo was talking about.

Later, after my head had cleared, I thought I heard voices in Josh's
room. I was entirely sure by this point it wasn't in my head, and I
didn't know Josh had arranged a meeting with someone. At least not
anyone I knew of who he would be laughing and joking with.

After about ten minutes my curiosity got the better of me and I
abandoned my very important work that I had been working so very hard
on. Okay, so I'd been sitting and staring at it for about half an
hour. I approached the connecting door and, careful not to lean on it
so that it might open, I unashamedly listened in.

At this point I decided to invite Sam to join me. I went out into
Carol's office and from there could see Sam wandering around Josh's
office.

"Sam!" I whispered, trying to keep my covert operation... covert.

He looked at me and I was not appreciative of the look of questioning
sanity he gave me.

"What?" he whispered back.

"Come in here!" I demanded, still whispering, quite aware that my
assistant was now also questioning my sanity. I wondered if I should
have sent her on an errand before I tried to get Sam. I grabbed him as
he drew closer and dragged him into my office.

"Why are we whispering?" he asked. I gestured towards Josh's office
then put my finger on my lips, willing him to be quiet and also to be
psychic. Neither of which he understood poor Sam.

"What?" he asked, loudly. I frantically gestured again, and dragged
him over to the door where we listened in.

I waited patiently for Sam to come to the same conclusion as I had.
And while he was at it, perhaps he could tell me what had been going
on between them.

"Hey! I know that voice!" Sam announced in what seemed to me his
loudest possible tone.

"And they'll know yours too if you don't keep quiet!" I whispered, irritated.

"Sorry! I know that voice!" he repeated in a whisper as though I
hadn't heard the first time.

We got back to listening, for Sam to interrupt at a crucial moment in
the conversation. It struck me that I ought to feel guilty about
eavesdropping.

"Which way does this door open?" he asked seemingly out of nowhere.
Unimpressed, I shushed him.

"That is... I was... I, uh... I think..." we heard Josh stutter, and I
silently begged him to pull himself together or else he'd never get
anywhere. "Why don't we go for something to eat now?" he finished much
to my disappointment.

There was silence for a few moments after Donna's response, and I
wondered if I shouldn't move away from the door and get back to work.
I could almost sense what was going to happen next before it occurred.

Josh walked in. I knew this before I heard the cough. "Don't let me
stop you," he told us, smirking. "Just wanted to say that I was going
to be out of the office for about an hour, but it seems you already
knew."

I said nothing, but unfortunately Sam decided to try and make up an
excuse. And failed.

"Well, we were, umm..." he stumbled, and I felt the need to interrupt
for fear that he'd start rambling.

"I thought I had woodworm in the door and wanted Sam's opinion," I
said. Josh looked at me, perplexed, seeing through it.

"Well, good luck with that," he offered.

"Thanks!" I replied, about to kill Sam for even attempting to offer an excuse.

Josh left, his laughter echoing through the halls behind him.

I turned to Sam, about to yell at him.

"Woodworm?" he asked.

"Oh, as if you had anything better to say," I retorted, irritated. I
should have done the reconnaissance alone. I knew it.


Since Donna was going back to Boston the next day we went out again
that evening, although we'd all sworn that we were going to avoid
alcohol at all costs. Sam and Josh went to get drinks and so the rest
of us sat and waited at a table.

As well as steering clear of the alcohol, I was also going to avoid
getting into a discussion about Josh and Donna. I now find it quite
amusing that I even thought that I might be able to avoid either.

Although in my defense, it was Zoey who brought the subject up.

"So, what was going on between you and Josh last night?" she asked
almost as soon as Josh and Sam had left us. I inwardly groaned.

I wasn't getting involved. It was my mantra.

"Nothing! Why?" Donna asked.

"Come on, I saw you two outside. And then with the dancing. What's
going on?" she asked again.

I wasn't getting involved.

"We're friends! Really, that's all that's going on!" Donna explained.

I wasn't getting involved. But I didn't believe Donna, either. There
was a lot more going on than just friends, but if she was totally
oblivious to this, I wasn't going to tell her otherwise.

I wasn't getting involved.

"CJ, there was totally something going on, admit it, you saw it," Zoey
tried to bring me into it. I really wasn't getting involved.

"Hey, don't ask me, I'm keeping out of this. Call me the Switzerland
of this conversation, if you will," I replied.

"Chicken! You agree with me, admit it!"

I wanted to know why Ainsley and Charlie weren't being involved in this.

Fortunately Josh and Sam then chose to come back with the drinks. Mine
was alcoholic, despite the fact that I'd only asked for a diet coke.

Well, there went one promise. It was only a few hours before I
dismissed the other as well.

It was as we went to the bar to get drinks later and I noticed Donna
staring not so subtly at Josh. I decided to question her.

"Okay, so what's the deal between you two?" I asked outright.

"Huh?" she asked as she turned back towards me. I could see Ainsley
attempting to hide a smile.

"Tell us. What's the deal?" She looked oblivious. "You. Josh. I was
going to stay out of it, but I've decided that for my own sanity as
well as yours that you're going to have to tell me, or do something
about it."

She smiled. "There really is nothing going on, CJ!" she protested.

"Then there's something that you want to go on," I commented, then
paused. "Going on."

"What?" Donna asked. "Did that sentence actually make any sense?"

"Yes!" I told her emphatically. Although I wasn't sure that it did,
but that wasn't the point.

"Even I did want something to happen, not that I do, I don't think
there's much chance of it," she admitted. She glanced over at Josh,
who looked back at her.

"Yeah, right," I commented sarcastically. "Tell that to him."

She didn't reply but gave me a bemused look that I laughed at. I told
myself I really was going to keep out of it, for the preservation of
my sanity and to decrease the number of headaches.


Thanksgiving was just a few short weeks later, and Ainsley had decided
to cook us all dinner. Since I hadn't the time or the inclination to
cook myself a Thanksgiving dinner, I agreed to join them, learning
later 'them' included Sam, Josh and Donna.

We met at Sam's just before midday, Donna and Josh arriving before me.
After half-heartedly offering to help in the kitchen, we all sat down
in the lounge to watch the football. God only knows who was playing.
It was two teams, and very few good-looking guys. That's all I knew.

Of course, this was probably less to do with my disinterest in
football, and more to do with my interest in Josh and Donna. Despite
my previous vow that I was going to remain unaware of the whole
situation I found myself... intrigued. As was, so it appeared, Sam. They
seemed entirely oblivious to our stares.

They spoke in hushed voices to one another, whispering and laughing,
moving unconsciously closer together with every minute that passed.

After a while, I felt as though I was watching something not for me to
see, and I wasn't comfortable with the idea. So I asked if anyone
wanted anything to drink. Sam was apparently feeling the same way and
offered to help me.

We got to the kitchen before I asked. "You saw that, right? It wasn't
just me? I'm not hallucinating?"

"You mean..." he trailed off.

"Yes. Is there anything going on between them, or is it just me?" I questioned.

Sam threw up his hands. "I don't know. They've not said anything to
me. But at least they're talking." he finished optimistically.

I didn't dignify that with a response. "You're going to ask Josh," I
informed him.

"Why me?" Sam asked.

"Because it's your lucky day," I said, giving him a patronizing pat on
the cheek.

"CJ!" he protested, but he knew that he'd never win against me,
especially when Ainsley backed me up.


We didn't get chance to discuss it before I left, although on exiting
I looked at him and told him to ask. I went home, having had an
enjoyable evening, and waited a while before calling Sam and asking
what happened.

"Sam Seaborn," he announced as he answered the phone.

"So?" I asked, far too interested in the outcome for my own good.

"Oh, hey CJ, I'm fine, how are you?" he asked sarcastically.

"Yeah, so, what did he say?" I asked again.

"Right. So, I asked him what was going on, and he said nothing. He
asked who had told me to ask, and I told him you did."

"Gee, thanks Sam," I said insincerely.

"That's fine. So I asked him if he was in love with her, and then she
comes in and asks in 'love with who?'" He paused. Whether it was for
effect or not, I didn't find out. "And he says 'you!' And she laughs."
He paused again. "She laughed, CJ! She laughed and said 'oh!'" He
stopped, obviously waiting for my analysis of the situation.

I had my suspicions, but said nothing.

I just smiled.

END OF PART NINE




Ex Post Facto - Part Ten
To Be Back Where I Belong


[donna pov]


Feels like home to me. Feels like I'm all the way back where I belong.
- 'Feels Like Home' Chantal Kreviazuk

There were times when I missed the White House. When I went back to DC
and went out with all my friends, they'd start talking about something
that was going on at work, or something that someone had done whilst I
wasn't there. I'd sit there and listen, unable to join in.

Eventually, someone would notice my puzzled look and would fill me in
on what had happened. And I'd understand, but I knew that it wasn't
the same as experiencing it for myself.

I missed that.

But there was nothing that I could do. I'd had my chance and I'd
decided to move away and start again.

Don't get me wrong, I loved this new life. My friends in Boston were
great and, for the most part, I was really enjoying myself again.

But it was on those occasions when I missed DC that I *really* missed
DC and all that went with it.

Standing in the Campaign headquarters minutes before the results of
the election were called was one of these times. In a way, it was a
reminder of what I'd given up, but at the same time I almost felt that
I belonged. I felt myself caught up in the anxiety, the excitement and
the atmosphere. It was almost as if I hadn't left, except for the
knowledge that in two days I had to go back to the place I now called
home. I tried to let myself forget for a few minutes.

Josh grabbed my hand perhaps a little too tight, but I didn't care. I
just smiled at him, glad to be there at that moment.

Then the results were announced and I felt myself get caught up in the
emotion. They'd won; we'd won. Everyone started cheering and hugging
and kissing and Josh pulled me into an embrace, before letting me go
and hugging everyone around us.

Later, I stood looking at all my old colleagues and, while I was happy
for them, I couldn't help but feel left out of it. Then Sam grabbed me
again and told me how glad he was that I'd come, so I pushed the
feelings aside and joined in the celebration.

After a while it got too hot so I stepped outside for a brief respite.
It was a freezing night in November, but it's quite possible that I
was slightly too drunk to actually feel it. Josh followed me out and
we stood there a few minutes saying nothing, just looking at each
other. I remember thinking that he was going to kiss me, that I wanted
him to, but instead he leaned in and hugged me, kissing my cheek. I
was slightly disappointed, but more so with myself because I hadn't
done anything about it.

I could see where we were headed, where we could end up, but I felt
helpless to change it. And despite our history I wasn't sure that he
felt the same way. I wasn't about to embarrass myself completely by
declaring my undying love just to hear him say that he thought we
should just be friends.

I wasn't even sure we should be anything more than friends.

We went back inside as the party was beginning to wind down. Sam,
however, didn't want it to end, deciding instead that we should all
start dancing. I just laughed at him and grabbed another glass of the
champagne. I'd barely begun to drink it when Sam came up to me and
insisted that I join him. I was unprepared for his... enthusiasm, for
want of a better description, and was glad when Josh came over to
rescue me.

We could have stopped dancing, just watched from a distance. And when
the CD was changed to a very familiar song, I considered making an
excuse to sit out. I looked over at Sam and I knew he'd done it on
purpose. I could see that Josh remembered the song, but I wasn't sure
if he could place it. And for a few seconds I stood there awkwardly,
unsure of what to do. I thought he was going to suggest that we leave
the dance floor, and I would have agreed, but instead he pulled me
closer to him and whispered, "I think we should kill Sam for this."

"You remember?" I asked, pretty much stating the obvious.

"Of course I remember, I remembered everything," he said. There was a
pause before amending this statement. "Okay, so I remember some of it.
There's only so much I can do after two glasses of champagne, after
all."

I smiled involuntarily, perhaps a little too glad.

"I'd be more than happy to assist you in killing Sam," I eventually
whispered, after regaining control of my emotions. He grinned, dimples
and all.

We danced for a while longer until it was obvious that the party
really was breaking up. Only the really drunk remained, the slightly
more sober trying to coax them into finally going home.

It was only when Josh asked me where I was staying that I realized how
badly I had planned this trip. Having, y'know, pretty much jumped on a
plane without much thought for the details that I'd usually pay so
much attention to. I admitted that I hadn't really planned that far
ahead and so was quite appreciative when he offered his own apartment
to me. He'd be sleeping on the couch, of course.

We got to his apartment and I was too tired to do anything but sleep.
Somehow, I managed to change and get into his bed without thinking
that, as a guest, I really should insist on taking the couch.

As I watched him wandering round the room, looking as tired as I felt,
my sense eluded me and I told him that he might as well share the bed.
If I'd have been slightly more awake, I would have laughed at his
expression.

"We're both adults," I told him sleepily, "there's plenty of room." I
would have continued, although doubtless the arguments that would have
followed would feature the words 'it's not as if we've never done it
before', which most probably would have made him decide to take the
couch once and for all. I was really too tired to argue.

He stopped, hesitating before he climbed in the other side.

"I'm not even going to attempt to seduce you," I told him, too tired
to even consider it. I neglected to mention that if we found ourselves
in the same situation some other time, well, who knew what might
happen?

"Some other time, perhaps," he commented. I wasn't about to torture
myself with how truthful this comment was. Instead, I fell asleep.


I woke up as the alarm went off and wondered for a few seconds where
on earth I was. I said good morning to Josh before realizing that I
was, in fact, in bed with him and that we were rather too closely
situated for platonic friends. He practically jumped out of bed and
hurried to the bathroom and I lay there for a while, listening to the
sound of the shower.

I wondered how on earth I'd got there. Not in the literal sense, I
could remember that I'd taken a cab back to Josh's place.

Mostly, I wondered how we'd managed to get so close after being so far
apart. The question of why I'd come back to his apartment and shared
his bed was something I pondered for a while as I lay there, until I
made a conscious decision to get over it and stop obsessing. That
decision was helped along, of course, when Josh came out of the
bathroom with only a towel wrapped round him. He stood there holding
out another for me to use, and I got somewhat distracted.

Eventually I managed to work through the distraction in order to get
myself out of bed, into the bathroom and into the shower.

I emerged about half an hour - okay, so it was probably nearer an hour
- later, fully dressed and ready for the unplanned day ahead. I walked
into the kitchen to find Josh had left me some coffee, unfortunately
now cold, some toast, also cold, and a note inviting me to lunch.

I had a quick breakfast, then sat down on the couch, TV on, wondering
what on earth I could do with a morning to myself. I could do what I
had always planned to do when I lived in DC and wander round some of
the historic monuments and other places of interest. Or I could go
shopping.

In the end, shopping won out, since I reasoned it was far too cold to
be wandering around outside for any length of time. I bought nothing;
the same shops existed in Boston, where I would actually have time to
try things on first.

I got to the White House shortly after eleven thirty and the memories
of the last time I had been there came flooding back. I stood in the
lobby for a while, looking at the history contained within it,
wondering how I'd managed not to see half of it in all the years that
I'd worked there.

Eventually, I wandered through to Josh's office. It was strange how
little things had changed. People were still running around, papers in
hand, although looking slightly worse for wear than usual. The sounds
were the same; the TVs with the volume on low adding little to the
cacophony of phones ringing, people talking, fingers clicking on
keyboards, and the shouts of 'Hey Donna!' Even that wasn't unusual.

The only thing entirely different was that my desk was no longer mine.
There was someone else sitting there. Admittedly, I'd have been more
surprised if I was sitting there. Although I once did read about how
theoretically every one of us had an exact double somewhere in the
world. But, anyway...

"Is he in there with anyone?" I asked the woman.

"You're Donna, right?" she questioned. I wondered what Josh, and
everyone else for that matter, had been telling her. Then remembered
that Sam had been drunkenly wandering round with me the previous night
declaring to anyone who would listen, "This is Donnatella Moss. She
used to work with us. But she doesn't anymore. And I can't remember
why," which had been mildly embarrassing.

I nodded in the affirmative. She smiled. "He's expecting you, been
looking forward to it all morning."
I smiled in response and walked into Josh's office without knocking.

"Donna!" he exclaimed, far too cheerful for someone who should still
be hung over at this point in the day.

"Your new assistant gets you coffee, doesn't she?" I asked
suspiciously, sitting down in the guest chair without being invited to
do so.

"No! Well, yes, but I haven't had any today," he explained.

"Josh?" I questioned, not sure that I was going to believe this story.

"Okay, so it was one mug, but only one!" he admitted.

"It's a slippery slope, Josh! It starts with one, then all of a sudden
it's two, three, four, and soon she's so busy getting you coffee that
you have to get another assistant to do the actual work!"

He smiled. Dimples and all, and it was just for me. I smiled back.

"So, have you been to the White House before, or would you like a
tour?" he asked breaking the silence.

"Funny," I replied, rolling my eyes. "No, really, you've been working
on your sense of humor since last time."

"You've just got to know how to deliver the lines, is all I'm saying,"
he informed me.

"You've gotta have lines worth delivering, is all I'm saying," I
replied. I heard a noise from next door, but ignored it, not quite
hearing what was going on over the sound of my own voice. Josh smiled
at me again, almost conspiratorially. I found this all quite
disconcerting - I had been expecting sarcasm. Then he changed the
conversation entirely.

"So, when are you going back?" he asked. He started to grin, and I
wasn't sure why. There was something going on, of that I was certain.

"Tomorrow, I think," I replied, going along with whatever it was he
was doing, but giving him a questioning look.

"Good, because I want to talk to you about something," he said loudly,
and the grin got wider. I heard some shuffling and slight banging
against the door which connected CJ's room, followed by some shushing.

"Okay," I replied, finally understanding what he was trying to do. "Do
tell me, Josh," I said, perhaps just a little too dramatically.

"That is... I was... I, uh... I think..." I tried not to laugh, but he was
doing such a fine job acting. "Why don't we go for something to eat
now?" he said quickly, grinning and motioning for me to stop laughing.

"Okay." I grinned widely back at him.

We quietly left his office, him still trying to shush me, and we
silently walked into CJ's office where we found CJ and Sam, ears
against the door, trying desperately to hear what was going on. I only
hoped they'd enjoyed the show.

Josh coughed. Sam jumped. CJ turned round slowly.

"Don't let me stop you," Josh commented. "Just wanted to say that I
was going to be out of the office for about an hour, but it seems you
already knew." I tried to keep a straight face and could see that Josh
too was finding it hard not to laugh.

"Well, we were, umm..." Sam mumbled. CJ gave him a withering look.

"I thought I had woodworm in the door and wanted Sam's opinion," was
her admittedly weak excuse.

"Well, good luck with that," Josh replied, somehow managing not to laugh.

"Thanks!" CJ responded mock-enthusiastically.

We exited the room, faces as straight as we could manage. I thought I
was going to be able to keep control of myself, but I caught Josh's
eye and we both burst into laughter.

Over lunch Josh and I made plans for the evening. We decided to go to
a bar, since we couldn't think of anything original to do. We were all
too old for clubs, you couldn't talk at movies and we were at a meal
already - and I refused to let Josh eat unhealthy food for two meals
in one day.

Other than that, we mostly talked about politics, and what we'd both
been up to recently, in between we were both trying not to yawn. I
suggested that maybe we should have a sleepover party, which was met
with both disdain and a comment that we were no longer twelve-year-old
girls. I wondered aloud when Josh had ever been a twelve-year-old
girl. No comment followed but a mock evil look was thrown in my
direction.

It wasn't until later that I realized I really should have pushed for
the movies or the sleepover. Preferably something where alcohol wasn't
involved.

However, the awkward and unexpected conversations came long before any
of us had had the opportunity to drink anything, so I don't know if
the abstaining would have actually helped any. Later, I was reliably
informed that I could blame the evening on alcohol. Or Zoey.

She waited until Sam and Josh had left to get drinks before starting
on the questioning. "So, what was going on between you and Josh last
night?" she asked, much to my surprise. Since, as far as I was aware,
nothing had happened. I said as much.

"Come on, I saw you two outside. And then with the dancing. What's
going on?" she asked again, a smile on her face.

"We're friends! Really, that's all that's going on!" I replied,
protesting perhaps a little too much. Although what I said was true,
much to my disappointment and, in some ways, relief.

"CJ, there was totally something going on, admit it, you saw it," Zoey
continued, trying to get CJ involved. CJ, fortunately, refused to be
cajoled into commenting on something that had never happened. Either
that or she totally didn't believe me and was too smart to get
involved.

"Hey, don't ask me, I'm keeping out of this. Call me the Switzerland
of this conversation, if you will," she stated instead.

"Chicken! You agree with me, admit it!"

I was about to protest again, which really would have been overkill
and made her all that much more suspicious, when Sam and Josh returned
with the drinks. Thankfully, I thought at the time, they were
alcoholic. I should have known better.


Later I offered to go for drinks because Zoey was watching Josh and I
a little to closely. We happened to be sitting together due to the
seating arrangements made by everyone else - possibly Zoey's
suggestion - and I was worried that she might say something in front
of him. CJ and Ainsley came with me, and must have misinterpreted my
watchful gaze over towards the table to make sure Zoey wasn't talking
to Josh. And perhaps I was looking at Josh more than at Zoey, but that
was entirely coincidental. Really.

Zoey and Charlie went to dance but for some reason my gaze remained on
Josh and Sam, who were now talking. I wanted to know what they were
saying.

"Okay, so what's the deal between you two?" CJ, my now former friend
and alleged neutral party in this whole affair, asked me. Admittedly,
I pretty much missed what she'd said due to aforementioned watching of
the table.

"Huh?" I asked, turning round to face her.

"Tell us. What's the deal?" she repeated, and I had no idea at the
time what on earth she was talking about. "You. Josh. I was going to
stay out of it, but I've decided for my own sanity, as well as yours,
that you're going to have to tell me, or do something about it," she
all but threatened.

"There really is nothing going on, CJ!"

"Then there's something that you want to go on," she paused, "going on."

"What?" I asked, refusing to acknowledge the truth, if there was any,
in what she'd said. "Did that sentence actually make any sense?"

"Yes!" she protested. Her look told me that she was not going to be
taken in by the misdirection.

"Even if I did want something to happen, not that I do, I don't think
there's much chance of it," I said, opting for a half-truth. I looked
over at Josh again and returned the smile that he gave me.

"Yeah, right. Tell that to him," CJ commented. She laughed. I turned
back towards her, puzzled by her sarcasm. After all, I should know
that there was nothing to this hypothetical relationship - I was the
one hoping for something but finding no sign of it.

Josh and I left the bar together and headed back to his apartment. The
cab ride was fairly quiet and I didn't know why, but took the
opportunity to gaze out at the DC scenery.

"Donna..." Josh started and then stopped.

"What?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Nothing," he said.

I looked at him, puzzled, but didn't pursue it. I turned my head to
look out at the passing buildings and cars.

We arrived at his apartment block and Josh paid the cab fare as I
waited at the bottom of the steps. He walked up to me and, as I
started up the stairs, he placed his hand at my back as he'd done so
often in the past, guiding me.

It was another in the seemingly endless list of reasons that made me
wonder why I'd ever left DC. Of course, I knew the reason; I'd left
because all of these little things that we did unconsciously, that we
lived for, had ceased to be once we'd slept together. Having deciding
that it was a mistake, we'd worked far too hard to push apart,
convince ourselves that it didn't matter. Different reasons, all
leading to the same unfortunate conclusion: our current geographical
distance.

"Would you like something to drink?" he asked as I sat down on the
couch in his apartment, not quite ready for the day to end. The sooner
it ended, the sooner tomorrow came and then I'd have to leave. I
wasn't sure I wanted to leave.

"Coffee?" I asked.

"So you won't get it for me, but I have to get it for you?" he
questioned with a smirk.

I nodded and smiled sweetly, deciding that I wouldn't argue my case.

He returned a couple of minutes later with two mugs of coffee. "Here,"
he said, handing me one.

"Thanks," I replied.

"What time are you leaving tomorrow?" he asked after a few minutes of silence.

"About ten thirty, there's a plane at eleven thirty."

More silence.

"Want a lift?"

"You don't have to be at work?"

"Ahh, I forgot about that. I've got a meeting with..." he paused,
obviously forgetting a name, "someone at ten." He grinned again.
"Sorry."

I finished my coffee. "That's fine, I was going to get a cab anyway. I
don't trust your driving."

"There's nothing wrong with my driving!" he protested.

"That's what all bad drivers say!" I grinned. There seemed to be a lot
of this going on. "I'm going to get to bed. Unless you want me to take
the couch?" I stood up, glancing down, not savoring the idea of
actually sleeping on it.

"No, you take the bed," he patted the couch. "I'm happy to sleep
here," he said, although his face betrayed his true thoughts on the
subject.

"You'll get a bad back," I reasoned. "I'll take the couch. I'm young,
I can cope."

"You're having the bed," he replied.

"And I say you take the bed." I paused. "Listen, why don't we both
take the bed, it's not as if we've not shared before," I stated
reasonably, seeing that neither one of us would win this argument.
Internally, I groaned at my suggestion. The night before had been a
one time thing - we were both too drunk to care. Previous times hadn't
always worked out well for us. I wasn't sure whether being reasonably
sober was a positive thing or not.

"Okay," he said, obviously not thinking through the consequences. Or
not actually, y'know, wanting me enough for it to be a problem for
him. Well, if he didn't have an issue with the idea, it certainly
wasn't going to bother me. Outwardly, anyway.

I smiled again and left for the bathroom. I brushed my teeth before
going to the bedroom and climbing into the bed. Josh knocked on the
door a couple of minutes later. "Are you decent?" he asked.

'Why don't you come in and find out?' I wanted to say, but thought
that it might give off the wrong impression and blow my nonchalant,
just friends ideas to hell. I settled for a "yes". He entered and
seemed to be contemplating something.

"Everything okay?" I asked.

"Close your eyes," he replied.

"Why?"

"Because I said so!" he smirked. I wasn't entirely convinced by this
reasoning and he could tell. "I'm going to get changed," he admitted.

I made a big show of shutting my eyes, screwing them up, and then
placing my hands in front just to make doubly sure that I wouldn't see
anything.

"No peeking, okay?" I wondered why he didn't go into the bathroom to
change if he was going to make such a thing about it.

He started to change, taking off his shirt. I opened my eyes and
watched through a gap in between my fingers like I used to do when I
was a kid. I watched him as he watched me - a slow, burning gaze that
didn't leave me as he dressed. I don't think that it had anything to
do with making sure that I wasn't peeking.

"There, you can look again," he said as he finished the buttons on his
pajama shirt. He hesitantly climbed in the other side of the bed. We
lay in silence a short while and I was suddenly too wide-awake to go
to sleep, despite the late hour and the previous night's events. I
moved restlessly, trying to get warm.

"You okay?" Josh asked after a few minutes of this.

"I'm cold," I admitted.

There was a brief moment of silence and I thought that he was just
going to ignore me, so I continued moving my feet and legs along each
other. Then I felt Josh move in closer to me, right up next to me, his
front to my back. He rubbed his hands along my arms, waist and thighs
in an attempt to get me warm.

"You're going to drive me crazy with all that fidgeting," he said. I
hoped he was just making an excuse. I stopped moving my legs and arms
and shifted closer to him instead. Josh stilled his hands, but I
didn't mind since I was now warm enough to sleep.

We awoke the next morning to the sound of his alarm, our limbs
entangled as they had been the morning before. He turned off the
alarm, this time not jumping out of bed as fast as possible. We were
facing each other, I'd turned over in my sleep, and he was practically
hugging me against him.

I wondered briefly if we were still trying to do the whole platonic
friends thing. I reminded myself not to read too much into the whole
situation

I was lying slightly further down the bed than Josh and so had to tilt
my head upward to see his face. His eyes were wide open, looking much
too awake for someone who had theoretically just woken up. I tried to
convince myself, yet again, that I was overreacting.

I didn't take my eyes off his, though, and he continued to gaze
steadily at me. I could feel the tension between us. We hadn't moved
from our reasonably intimate position and I was wondering whether I
should drop the 'just friends' scenario and kiss him. After all, I
reasoned, I was leaving the state soon. It wasn't as though I had to
worry about future awkwardness if he rejected me

As it was, I had just decided to climb out of bed and get ready for my
flight when he pulled me closer to him. I was still wondering what on
earth was going on when I suddenly found my lips on his. Although I
had no idea who had initiated it, I reciprocating eagerly.

I discarded any pretense of remaining just friends and began undoing
the buttons on his shirt. Unfortunately, just as things were starting
to get interesting, my conscience took over and decided to put a stop
to it all.

"You'll miss your meeting," was the excuse that my mouth, unconnected
to my brain, decided to blurt out.

He looked at me and tensed up, uncertain as I started to move away.
Thoughts of where this had all ended last time bombarded me, and I had
to make a conscious effort to push them aside. This was not the same,
we were different people then and other circumstances had come between
us. I put my hand on his chest where the buttons were undone, trying
to say with body language what I couldn't with words.

I smiled at him, trying to rearrange my thoughts so I could say what I
was thinking.

"I want this," I started.

"You're sure?" he asked. I nodded slightly too enthusiastically. He
laughed, relaxing a little bit.

"But..." I began, "you have a meeting in forty five minutes and I have a
plane to catch. Our timing sucks." That pretty much summarized my
thoughts. I kissed him again to reassure him - and myself, too. I had
to think of a way to resolve this, to continue what we'd started.

"We'd better get up," he said, not moving.

"Uh huh," I murmured. Eventually I threw back the comforter and
climbed reluctantly out of bed.

I let him shower first, since he had to leave sooner.

When he was ready, I walked him to the door and we stood there,
wondering how to say goodbye.

"I'll call you," I told him.

"You'd better," he said with a grin. "And if you're not sure about
this," he made a hand gesture between us, "tell me, okay?" He looked
worried again, which was hardly a surprise.

"I'm sure," I told him. "It's just going to take some organization."

We stood there, the silence returning, just staring at each other.

He pulled me into a hug, kissing me again. "Thank you for coming," he
whispered into my ear.

"It was my pleasure," I whispered back, kissing him one last time on
the cheek before releasing him. He left, and I stood at the window
watching as he went by. I'm sure he didn't know I was looking, because
he was grinning widely as he walked.


I was back in Boston early that afternoon. The memories of the morning
came back to me periodically throughout the day, causing me to smile.

Things were the same as I returned to work. There was little to smile
about there, because of a disagreement between the partners. It had
started sometime ago, and seemed to be escalating rapidly.

Maria and I went out for lunch, wanting to get away from the tense
atmosphere. We talked about work for a short while, speculating as to
what was going on and what was going to happen to our jobs. It looked
increasingly likely that James would be leaving the firm soon.

The main course was served and Maria waited until the waiter had
returned to ask us if we were enjoying our food before questioning me
about my trip.

"What happened?" she asked with a curious smile.

"Well, they won the election, obviously, and then..."

"Not that!" She grinned. "Something happened. Between you and that guy
you talk about all the time, Josh."

"I don't talk about him all the time! And nothing happened!" I
protested, but my face betrayed the truth.

"Tell! Tell!" Maria chanted enthusiastically, causing several people
in the restaurant to look over at us. She gave a sheepish look before
repeating the line at a lower volume.

"It wasn't much," I admitted. She looked at me in disbelief.

"Am I going to have to drag this out of you?" she asked. "We can do
the twenty questions thing if you want." Something occurred to her and
she looked at me, eyes wide. "You slept with him, didn't you! I knew
it! I knew something was going to happen!"

"You knew no such thing," I replied, "You were the one saying that I
shouldn't get my hopes up. Besides, I didn't actually sleep with him.
Well, I did in that there was only sleeping involved."

She looked disappointed. I didn't believe that she was; a smile kept
threatening to appear. "Well, I suppose it's better than nothing."

I thought about not telling her, before deciding that she was
practically my best friend and I needed her advice. "There was also
the kissing," I admitted.

She smiled genuinely this time. "Kissing, as in more than one kiss?"

"As in a couple of times. What do I do now?" I asked, hoping for some
good advice.

"Well, you talked right?" I nodded hesitantly. "And you didn't start
giving him some feeble, untrue 'it was an accident, it means nothing'
excuse, right?" I shook my head no. "Call him," she told me.

"Now?" I questioned, looking at my watch.

"No, not right now! Later, when he's finished for the day, or when
everyone else has finished for the day."

"And say what?"

"Whatever you want," she told me.

I decided that I'd take her advice. We spent the rest of the meal
talking about other non-work related stuff, then trudged back to the
office.

It was quite late when I got home and I almost decided not to bother
calling. Then I remembered that it wasn't as if Josh would be asleep
yet anyway, so I might as well disturb him.

He answered his phone after eight rings, just as I was about to hang up.

"Josh Lyman," he announced.

"Hello Josh Lyman, it's Donna Moss here. I'm calling about the thing."

"The thing. Right." There was a pause. "You mean the thing thing right?"

"You have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Of course I do. You said you'd call."

"I waited a whole two days as well. Are you impressed?"

"Very."

"Good, I'm glad. I tried my best."

"You're not making any sense, you know that, right? Not that it's much
of a change from usual, I just thought I'd point it out in case."

"I know," I said cheerfully.

The conversation carried on from there in our own unique language. We
talked for almost an hour about nothing in particular; I just wanted
to hear his voice, to interact. It was worthwhile. We ended the
conversation by having a mock debate over who was going to miss whom
more. I let him win.


Over the next couple of weeks, I emailed or called Josh practically
every day. I also talked to Sam via email or phone, though not as
frequently. I wasn't sure what was going on between Josh and I, so I
decided not to tell Sam any of it, just in case. In case of what, I
didn't know, but Josh didn't seem to be giving Sam any clues either.

Sam later invited me to Thanksgiving with him and Ainsley, CJ and
Josh. I accepted, not yet having any plans and knowing that Ainsley
was a better cook than I was.


The week before Thanksgiving, James, my boss, called me into his
office. I sat down in the visitor's chair and waited for what he had
to say.

I was correct in my assumption that he was leaving the firm. There had
been yet more disagreements between him and a couple of the partners
which hadn't been resolved. The tension had continued to build up.

"A number of firms have contacted me, inviting me to join them. I'm
considering accepting a firm in Seattle." I nodded, wondering why he
was telling me. Then it occurred to me that he was setting the
expectation that I would soon be out of a job. I speculated about what
I would do when the time came.

I was too distracted to hear what he said next and so I looked at him,
confused, when he asked me what I thought.

"Sorry? About what?" I asked.

"I find you a very valuable member of the team; I was wondering if you
might continue to work with me in Seattle."

"You'd like me to come with you?" I asked in astonishment, not
expecting this, nor such praise. "And the firm, they would be okay
with this?"

He nodded.

"Can I... would you... Is it okay if I think about it for a while?"
Seattle was so far away.

He nodded again. "I'll be leaving Boston by the end of the year, but
if you could tell me by December first either way, I'd be grateful."

I nodded and left his office, completely shocked. What was I going to
do? I loved my job, but I also loved Boston: all my friends were here,
and it was nearer to DC than Seattle. I'd never even been to Seattle.

Then there was Josh. We still hadn't really talked about our
relationship or lack thereof, and if I were to move to Seattle,
there'd be little chance of anything happening.

There was a lot to think about, so I decided to talk to Maria about it
before I consulted Josh or anyone else.

"I can't believe it," Maria said as she met me outside the bar. "James
is leaving for Seattle. Although I heard that he was waiting for an
offer from DC."

We entered the bar. It was fairly quiet, allowing us to have a
conversation. Maria found us a table and it didn't take me long to get
our drinks from the bar.

Maria leaned in close, sipping on her drink. "He offered me a job,
said he made the same offer to you. I think I'm going to take it. Do
you know what you're going to do?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I'd love to, but... I just don't know."

Maria thought this over. "What if he was offered the job in DC?"

"I'd take it. There's just not the same distance involved. And I know
DC." I paused. "I'm just not sure whether I'm uncertain about
accepting this because of the distance or because of the people. I
know everyone here, and in DC for that matter. But is that enough
reason to stay? I think I should take this opportunity - more money,
more responsibility than if I stayed... I'm just not sure whether I want
to go."

"I suppose it's different for me. I mean, I've got friends here, but
all my family is out West and it's not as though I've got to consider
what my boyfriend thinks of the idea." I started to protest, saying
that he wasn't my boyfriend, but she stopped me.

She smiled, "even if he's not, you have to sort out whether or not you
think you have a future with him. And I know there's something there,
even if you will try and deny it."

I said nothing, but stared down at my drink. "You're my best friend, I
don't want you to leave without me."

"I can't make that decision for you. I'd love for you to come with me,
but I don't think you can." She looked at me. "We can stay in touch.
And who knows, maybe this DC job will come through. Then we can both
go. But I need a change, and if I've got to go to Seattle to get it,
that's where I'll go."

"I'm going to think about it. I'm going to DC for Thanksgiving, and
I'm going to have to make a decision then."

She smiled at me, but said no more. I think she knew even then what I
could not see: that going to DC would influence my decision for
reasons other than fear of the unknown or leaving my friends behind


I arrived in DC the night before Thanksgiving, having arranged to stay
over at Josh's apartment that night. Josh had told me that he wasn't
going to be able to meet me, so I was surprised when he tapped me on
the shoulder while I was waiting in the ridiculously long line for a
cab.

"Joshua!" I exclaimed, hugging him enthusiastically.

"Donnatella!" he answered, just as eager as I was.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I was just passing and thought the airport would be a cool place to
hang out. And then as I was about to go in, I saw you standing
outside. Complete coincidence," he replied sarcastically.

"Very funny," I retorted, passing him my heavy bag much to his
amusement. Surprisingly though, he didn't object.


We entered his apartment and Josh got me a drink before we both
flopped down, practically asleep, on the couch. I was kept awake by
the knowledge that we needed to talk about what was going on between
us before we either forgot or attempted to completely ignore the
subject. I needed to know before I went back to Boston so that I could
make a decision about my future.

"Josh," I started, trying to ascertain whether he was actually asleep
or just faking.

"Yeah?" he asked sleepily.

"Wake up," I demanded.

"I'm awake." I raised my eyebrow in response, although Josh didn't see
this because he still had his eyes closed.

"We need to talk," I said, unable to think of anything more original.

"That's not good," Josh replied, opening his eyes and turning to look
at me. For someone who was only just this side of conscious, he looked
quite delectable. I tried not to let it distract me.

"No, no, it can be good," I reassured him.

"How?" he asked.

"How, what?"

"Tell me how it can be good."

"Well..." I began, trying not to look at him. That strategy didn't work.
"After we talk, we can do this," I said, placing a kiss on his cheek.
"Or this," I said, kissing his other cheek.

"Or this?" he asked, kissing me full on the lips. I took this as a
positive sign that he might want something out of this
quasi-relationship.

"You learn quickly," I praised. He tried to kiss me again and it took
all of my willpower to move away from him.

"Talk," he said. "But do it quick. I'd like to get back to those
after-talk activities."

I smiled. I tried to be brief but in my nervousness became quite
longwinded. "The thing is..." I started rambling on about liking him and
wanting to go out on a proper date with him, and asking whether he
liked me. I took a breath, and started to say something more as Josh
remained quiet throughout this little speech.

Smiling, he put his finger to my lips. "You're making very little
sense again, you know?"

"I know," I replied, hoping that he might actually answer the question
that I was sure I'd asked somewhere in the midst of my rambling.

"You want to know how I feel about you?" he asked. I nodded. "And the
kissing wasn't a good enough indication?" He smiled, and there was a
moment's pause before he spoke again. "The thing is, I think I might
like you too, and I just don't know how to control the urge to do
this..." he kissed me softly, "when I'm around you. That answer your
question?" I nodded. "And as for the possibility of going on a date,
just tell me time and place and I'll be there." He smiled. "Now can we
resume the after-talk activities?"

I shook my head, knowing there was one last thing that I wanted to
tell him. "The other thing is, my boss is leaving Boston for Seattle
and wants me to go with him to be part of his team. I have to make a
decision by the end of this month, but I think I'm going to say no."
Josh looked relieved, but I could see he tried to hide it. "I can get
a new job anywhere, but friends, not so much."

"So you'll be staying in Boston?" he asked. I nodded. We both sat
there for a while, not knowing what else to say, but knowing that more
had to be said. Then I decided that we'd said enough for now.

"Okay, talk's now over," I informed him. It wasn't long before he got
the message.


We slept together that night, but only in the literal sense. I still
wasn't entirely sure where we were, and I didn't want to rush
anything. Besides, we were both far too tired.

We went to Sam's just before midday and found Ainsley cooking and Sam
attempting to help but actually hindering the process. I offered to
assist, but Ainsley assured us that she was okay and we were all
relegated to the lounge to watch football. Not that I was really
watching, football didn't interest me that much, and besides, Josh sat
up close to me was distracting.

Instead we talked about a number of other topics, trying to keep quiet
so we wouldn't annoy Sam or CJ, who were both quite interested in the
game. Josh told me about what he and his family used to do for
Thanksgiving as well as some amusing stories about his own attempts at
cooking. And then there was the Thanksgiving in college that he
couldn't remember because he'd drank so much. His parents were only
too happy to inform him of his antics the next day and many times
since, apparently attempting to embarrass Josh in front of as many
people as possible.

I told him about my own Thanksgivings, when the whole family,
including endless numbers of distant relations, would get together.
They'd tell me how much I'd grown, and didn't I look like my mother,
and other such familiar but hideous phrases. I recalled happily how
the Thanksgiving when my sister, then a rebellious teenager refusing
to conform to social expectations, had declared that she was never
going to have a boyfriend. She'd then spent the whole day trying to
pick up the guy who lived next door and ignoring us as we teased her.

Our reminiscing was cut short by Ainsley announcing that dinner was
ready. The food was wonderful and we ate until we thought we could eat
no more. We sat round the table, talking for a while, then ate again.

It was late when we decided to leave. CJ came with us to the door but
left us to stand talking with Ainsley and Sam. Ainsley and Sam
exchanged a look, and then Ainsley took me out the door, telling me
that I just had to look at some painting or other. It turned out that
the guy downstairs had painted an abstract and had hung it up in the
hallway. It was okay, but I wondered what ulterior motive she had for
having me come and look at it.

I understood as soon as we returned to Sam's apartment.

"So you're not in love with her?" I heard Sam ask as I entered.

"What's going on?" I asked, as Sam turned around and saw me. "Not in
love with who, Josh?" I questioned innocently, although I had a pretty
good idea.

Silence fell, and Sam and Ainsley looked somewhat apprehensive. Josh
started grinning. "You!" he said.

"Oh!" Unsure of whether I should ask him to answer Sam's question, I laughed.

"Anyway, we'd better be going," Josh said, grabbing my coat and trying
to escort me out of Sam's apartment as quickly as possible.

"Thanks so much for the dinner, it was lovely," I said, amused by the
astonished look on Sam's face.

"No problem," Ainsley replied, "It was great to see you again."

I gave her a quick hug and managed to say thanks again before Josh
hustled me out of the apartment.


On arriving back at Josh's place, I got ready for bed. I'd put my
pajamas on and had climbed into the relative warmth under the
comforter before I noticed Josh standing in the doorway, watching me.

"I do, you know," he told me.

I was confused. "Do what?"

"Love you. I thought I'd tell you that. Since, y'know, it's true."

I smiled self-consciously and could feel myself tearing up.

"Donna..." Josh started.

I didn't reply with words, instead got out of bed and wrapped my arms
around his neck, pulling him into an embrace and kissing him. "Thank
you," I told him, pulling back. "Y'know, I love you too," I whispered
in his ear.

His response to this was another round of kissing, interrupted by the
phone. I sighed.

"Josh Lyman," he answered. After a second's pause, he held out the
receiver. "Donna, it's for you." I looked at him, confused. "It's your
friend," he told me.

I took the receiver from Josh. "Hello?" I asked.


END OF PART TEN




Ex Post Facto - Part Eleven
Omnia Mutantur, Nos Et Mutantur In Illis


[josh pov]

In the past, I've often failed to realise how lucky I am. I guess I
sometimes take life - and people - for granted just a little too much.

Take Donna, for instance. When she left me, left the West Wing, well,
we know how well that turned out. Although I knew that she was a big
part of my life before, it was only after she'd gone that I realised
quite how necessary she was. And then, when she came back after the
accident, I truly understood what I'd been missing. Of course, I was
also on some pretty heavy medication at the time, which might be why I
never realised that I should actually tell her, but the intention was
there.

So after the election night party, knowing that she was in my
apartment, in my bed, I couldn't let her out of my sight again. Ever.
Despite how unrealistic this idea was considering the fact that she
had a life and friends and a job to return to. I ignored that. It was
also perhaps a mite possessive. I ignored that, too.

I finished in the shower and got out with the intent of telling her -
that I'd finally understood how necessary and important she was to me.
However, in replaying this plan of action in my mind I decided that A:
I probably needed to get out of the towel and into some clothes before
this declaration, and B: she probably didn't want to hear my about my
undying love.

Yes, I was afraid of rejection, the whole 'oh, I thought we'd just be
friends' speech, and my subsequent embarrassment. Not to mention the
fear of having to hear it dressed in only a towel.

So instead I gave her a towel (not the one I was using, obviously),
waited for her to get out of the daze that she appeared to be in, and
got ready for work. I quickly threw together some breakfast for the
both of us but realised that she wouldn't be finished in the bathroom
anytime soon. So I wrote a note inviting her out to lunch, deciding
that it wouldn't be necessary to explain my hasty departure - she knew
as well as I did how scary Leo could be if you were very late to
staff.

As it turned out, I was actually early. I was also by far the most
alert person there. Both of these facts would have worried me if I
were prone to caring about such things.

Staff was uneventful. The most enjoyable part was trying to work out
why CJ kept glaring at me. I figured that it was probably related to
her hangover, as I didn't think I'd had time to do anything
monumentally wrong.

It was a few hours filled with catching up on paperwork and reading
memos before I heard a knock at my office door. Okay, so I was fooling
myself if I thought I'd heard any such knock. The truth was that
Donna, in her inimitable Donna way, came bursting into my office
unannounced.

"Donna!" I exclaimed, and she gave me a glare in return.

"Your new assistant gets you coffee, doesn't she?" she questioned me,
sitting down in the visitor's chair in front of my desk.

The truth was that my assistant did indeed bring me coffee. As many
times as I asked for it. But she'd only done it once that morning and
it was unrelated to my good mood. Donna being in my office, having
stayed over at my apartment the night before, and of course, winning
the election, were the reasons for my exuberance.

"No!" I lied, of course, but she could see through me. And of course,
when I tried to amend my statement, she took me to task. Thank god no
one else knows me like she does. We moved on to small talk, and during
a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt at getting her to laugh, I heard
whispered voices near the door.

Sam's and CJ's, in particular. I was immediately suspicious and
decided to play with them to see if I was indeed correct in my
assumption that they were trying to listen into our conversation.

"So, when are you going back?" I asked, grinning at Donna and trying
to convey with winks and psychic connections to play along and tease
Sam and CJ.

"Tomorrow, I think," she replied, obviously not getting any of my messages.

"Good, because I want to talk to you about something," I said loudly
so that CJ and Sam must be able to hear. I was now almost certain that
they were trying to eavesdrop because there was some shuffling and
banging against CJ's door, then a 'shush'.

Donna seemed to get the idea. "Do tell me, Josh," she asked, obviously
in some dramatic technique that she'd learnt from one of her majors or
minors in college.

"That is... I was... I, uh... I think..." I coughed, trying to keep my
laughter under control as I saw Donna nearly lose it. "Why don't we go
for something to eat now?" I asked hurriedly, trying to continue using
my wondrous acting skills and at the same time trying to get Donna to
stop laughing.

She followed me to CJ's office, where CJ and Sam were pressed against
the door in a vain attempt to hear anything that was being said on the
other side. We watched them for a couple of seconds, trying to see if
they'd finally realise that there were other people in the room and no
one in my office.

They didn't, so I coughed. Sam jumped in surprised, but Donna and I
managed not to laugh outright at the two of them until after we'd
heard their lame excuses and left the room. Though to give CJ credit,
the wormwood excuse nearly had us.

As soon as we were out the room, Donna and I both succumbed, and we
laughed our way out of the White House, almost oblivious to
questioning looks from my colleagues.

Although we hadn't booked a table, the restaurant was empty enough
that we sat down straight away and I ordered my usual burnt hamburger
while Donna had chicken. Since she was leaving the next day, we tried
to think of something to do that evening.

It wasn't easy. We were too old for clubbing, couldn't talk at the
movies, and Donna refused to let us eat out twice in one day. Plus I
was tired...really tired.

"We could have a sleepover party!" Donna suggested.

I raised an eyebrow. "No, we can't because we aren't twelve year old girls."

"Were you ever a twelve year old girl?" Donna deadpanned. I glared,
unable to think of a witty retort because I really was that tired.

We spent the rest of lunch talking about many different subjects.
Donna was interested in current legislation that we were trying to
pass and I happily explained it to her. Not that she necessarily
needed it explained, but this was us, the way we used to be, and I
found the familiarity comforting.

She left me after lunch with the intention of 'doing touristy things'
and I had to return to the West Wing where I had to do something that
was probably important.

It was a good few hours later when she came to meet me back at the
White House. As it turned out, she had found Zoey on her way in and
told her of our plans. Zoey, now being more than old enough to drink,
had decided to join us, recruiting Charlie on her way. Of course, this
meant that the President got to hear about it, and threatened to come
along, but both Zoey and the Secret Service were vehemently against
the idea.

We arrived at the bar before it became too crowded and found a table
with relative ease. Sam and I were elected in true democratic manner
to get the first round of drinks, so with some token grumbling we went
to the bar. As we waited for our drinks, I could tell something was
obviously on Sam's mind. Eventually he asked me about Maggie.

"We split up a while ago," I told him. "It wasn't working out."

"Oh. Sorry," he replied awkwardly.

"Don't worry about it," I said, truthfully. It was in the past and I
wasn't bothered by it. "We... we decided that it was best not to stay
together, too much distance," which was not the truth. I wasn't sure
whether Sam believed me, but he accepted it.

The drinks arrived, and when we took them back to the table everyone
shuffled around, changing places. I conveniently ended up sitting next
to Donna, not that I was going to complain about it.

The rest of the evening went about as well as could be expected. I
knew Zoey was making trouble by the way that she kept looking
mischievously at Donna and me, and so I made plans of my own. I took
Charlie aside when he was returning from the men's room and convinced
him of the wisdom of asking Zoey to dance. He looked at me oddly, but
didn't need to be told a second time and took her to the floor as soon
as he arrived back at the table.

Donna left for the bar with CJ and Ainsley, while Sam and I watched
them. Well, more to the point, Sam watched Ainsley while I watched
Donna.

"I don't think I want her to leave," I told Sam. He gave a half smile,
but didn't reply. "But she's got that whole other life in Boston and I
can't keep her from that."

"What would she do here?" Sam asked after a pause.

"Nothing. She probably doesn't even want to stay here," I said, not
sure whether I believed myself or not. Especially since Donna took
that moment to look over at the table and return the smile that I gave
her. I was concerned, though, that I might be reading more into her
smile than was actually there. "It's not even an issue."

Sam grinned again, and I wasn't sure why. I tried not to think about
it, and continued watching the 'girls' at the bar.

"Tell her then," Sam said suddenly, to my surprise. "Tell her that you
want her to stay."

I laughed, not so much at the suggestion as at the idea that Sam
believed that it was so simple. "And say what, exactly? I don't want
you to leave because I think I might love you?" Hmm. Interesting
choice of words, I thought after I blurted them out.

"Do you?"

Umm, no Sam. Of course not. Whatever would have lead you to believe
such a thing? "I... It was an example," I forced myself to laugh. "Just...
something to show you how unlikely it was that I would say anything."
God, for a politician, I really was a terrible liar.

"Because you might want to tell her if you do think that," he suggested.

"To see how much she might laugh at me? No, thank you. Besides, it's
not true. We're just friends," I claimed. It was kind of the truth.
The fact that I thought there was more between us than just friendship
didn't necessarily mean that there was, right?

"Are you sure about that?" he asked. Fortunately Donna, CJ and Ainsley
decided to rejoin us at that point, allowing me to avoid his question.


Donna and I took a cab back to my apartment almost in complete
silence. I watched her, but she was oblivious to my gaze as she stared
out the window. I so desperately wanted to tell her how I felt, and
that I wanted her to stay in DC forever or at least as long as I lived
there, but a cab wasn't the ideal place to have this conversation.
Nevertheless, I worked up the courage and started to call out her
name, only to decide against having the conversation two seconds
later. Perhaps it was for the best.

We arrived back at my apartment and I offered her a drink as she sat
on the couch. She asked for a coffee.

"So you won't get it for me, but I have to get it for you?" I tried
with the banter, just to get a conversation going. It didn't work; she
merely smiled serenely and nodded.

A few minutes later I returned with a mug for her and one for myself.
I wanted to talk to her, but I couldn't think of anything to say.
Well, that wasn't quite the truth, I was still attempting not to throw
myself at her feet and declare that she couldn't ever leave me. I
didn't think I was quite ready for that, so I ended up asking her what
time she was planning on leaving.

"About ten thirty. There's a plane at eleven thirty," she replied, and
I tried to think of something else to say.

"Want a lift?" I asked after a short silence.

"You don't have to be at work?" she asked with a slight smile.

"Ahh, I forgot about that. I've got a meeting with..." I tried in vain
to remember who it was, but all I could think of was the way that she
had smiled at me earlier in the bar. "Someone at ten." I grinned.
"Sorry."

"That's fine, I was going to get a cab anyway. I don't trust your driving."

"There's nothing wrong with my driving!" I exclaimed.

"That's what all bad drivers say!" she smiled. I smiled back. It was
like being back at school when I really liked Mary Ann Jameson. Only I
never got up the courage to actually talk to her. "I'm going to get to
bed," she said finally. "Unless you want me to take the couch?" She
stood up and gave the couch an unfavourable glance.

"No, you take the bed," I insisted, patting the couch and trying to
work up some enthusiasm about the prospect of sleeping on it. "I'm
happy to sleep here."

"You'll get a bad back. I'll take the couch. I'm young, I can cope."

I raised an eyebrow at the suggestion that I wasn't, and insisted once
again that she take the bed.

"And I say you take the bed," she argued. Then paused. "Listen, why
don't we both take the bed, it's not as if we've not shared before."

I was overcome with tiredness, so much so that I couldn't be bothered
to think about how bad an idea this was. "Okay."

She went to the bedroom and I paced round the living room, trying not
to think too much about her changing in there. After a few minutes, I
knocked on the door and asked if she was decent. I placed my hand on
the doorknob, hoping that she'd say yes but that on entering she'd be
sitting up in my bed, naked or in some specially purchased lingerie,
and try to seduce me. Okay, so it was a pretty unrealistic fantasy,
but I enjoyed it anyway.

I entered the room to find her beneath the covers in what appeared to
be fairly standard pyjamas. I wondered if, as 'friends' if I should
change into my pyjamas in the same room as her, or whether I should be
a wuss and go into the bathroom or lounge.

"Everything okay?" she asked.

I decided that I was going to be brave. Friends could undress in front
of each other. We'd done it before. Besides, if I got her to close her
eyes then it wouldn't be an issue at all. Problem solved.

"Close your eyes," I told her.

"Why?"

"Because I said so!" I replied. She looked at me dubiously. "I'm going
to get changed," I said.

She shut her eyes, screwing them up tightly, then covered them with
her hands. I wondered if she was trying to tell me she didn't want to
see me naked, but then a gap between her fingers appeared, and I knew
that she was cheating.

"No peeking, okay," I said, hoping that she wouldn't listen.

I began to change, slowly removing my clothes, knowing that she could
see exactly what was going on, and I watched her watching. I think it
would have been damn near impossible to want her more than I did at
that moment.

"There, you can look again," I informed her as I finished buttoning up
my pyjama shirt. With some hesitation I got into bed, turning the
bedside light off as I drew the covers over me. I lay there a while,
unable to sleep, and I could feel her move restlessly beside me. She
shifted her legs back and forth, wriggling about.

"You okay?" I asked eventually.

"I'm cold."

I thought of an obvious answer, but dismissed it quickly. We were
friends, after all. However, I wanted to help her warm up, and I
wanted to feel her next to me, so I moved closer to her, practically
embracing her from behind as I rubbed my arms along her body in an
attempt to get her warm.

"You're going to drive me crazy with all that fidgeting," I said,
using it as an excuse to keep her near to me. She didn't object; in
fact, instead of moving away she nestled closer to me. I drew her even
closer and eventually my hands stilled

We fell asleep quickly and soundly in this position, only to be woken
by the alarm the next morning. I turned it off and just lay there,
revelling in the feeling of lying in bed with Donnatella.

She looked up at me and I didn't move, keeping my eyes on hers. I
don't know how long we lay like that, but I had an unbelievable desire
to kiss her. She started to get out of bed, but on impulse I brought
her closer and our mouths met.

We kissed with enthusiasm and energy. She was beginning to unbutton my
shirt when suddenly she stopped.

"You'll miss your meeting," she said, as if I actually cared about the
damn meeting. However, she obviously didn't want to continue, so I
slowly started to move away from her, hoping that things wouldn't get
completely awkward between us.

She put her hand to my chest - not to push me away, but to connect
with me, to reassure me.

"I want this," she said.

"You're sure?" I asked, and her eyes opened widely and she nodded
emphatically. I laughed, and although it was still a little strange, I
relaxed a bit.

"But... you have a meeting in forty five minutes and I have a plane to
catch." She laughed nervously. "Our timing sucks." I had to agree, but
didn't object when she started kissing me again. How could I?

"We'd better get up," I said between kisses.

"Uh huh," she murmured, apparently not interested in stopping our
current activity. After a while, though, she pulled back the covers,
leaving me cold, so I actually got out of the bed.

I got ready for work quickly, and when I was ready I waited for her to
finish in the shower so that we could say goodbye. As she walked with
me to the door, I tried to convince myself that letting her go back to
Boston was the right decision. I knew that we were supposed to be
together, but I wasn't so sure how that would work out long distance.
But I didn't want her to give up her life in Boston. It was all too
complicated.

"I'll call you," she said after we'd stood at the door looking at each
other for a while.

"You'd better." I grinned. "And if you're not sure about this, tell
me, okay?" I hoped that would never be the case, but I had to ask.

"I'm sure," she said, smiling. "It's just going to take some organization."

I pulled her towards me and hugged her before giving her one last,
lingering kiss. "Thank you for coming," I told her.

"It was my pleasure," she replied, giving me a kiss on the cheek and
letting me go. It took some effort to leave the apartment and make my
way outside, but then the reality of the situation struck me. I
grinned widely. Life was good.


I spent the rest of the day walking round the West Wing with a smile
on my face, much to the amusement and confusion of my colleagues. I
debated numerous times the wisdom of calling her, but decided
eventually that I should wait for her to call, since she had promised
that she would.

I waited two whole days, and on the second night I had just decided to
call her when the phone rang.

"Josh Lyman," I answered.

"Hello Josh Lyman, it's Donna Moss here." I sensed that she was
mocking me. "I'm calling about the thing."

"The thing. Right." I wondered whether she was calling about the thing
that I thought she said she'd phone about. I decided to clarify. "You
mean the thing thing right?"

"You have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Of course I do. You said you'd call."

"I waited a whole two days as well. Are you impressed?" she asked.

"Very," I lied. Two days was a very long time to wait for a phone call
from Ms. Moss.

"Good, I'm glad. I tried my very best."

I could tell she was nervous, and couldn't help letting her know she
wasn't making much sense. I pointed this out to her.

"I know," she replied. I grinned.

"You've lost your mind in my absence, haven't you?" I asked.

"Always, Joshua, always."

We hung up an hour later, after I'd managed to convince her that I'd
missed her more than she'd missed me. It took me a while to get to
sleep.


We kept in almost constant communication over the next couple of
weeks. She emailed me random trivia, and I replied with witty
anecdotes about the demise of sense among the American
people/Congress/the Senate/the world in general. She'd phone me and
tell me about her day, and I would reply with witty anecdotes about
the demise of sense among the American people/Congress/the Senate/the
world in general.


She agreed to come to Sam's thanksgiving gathering and was due to fly
in the day before, but because of my schedule, I wasn't able to meet
her.

However, on the day she arrived, about thirty minutes before the start
of my meeting, the Congressman called and said that he wouldn't be
able to make it. Usually, this would have annoyed me, but instead I
saw it as an opportunity to surprise Donna at the airport.

I got there about forty minutes after her flight had been due to land
and spotted her looking rather harried, standing in the cab queue. I
tapped her on the shoulder and she jumped, then spun round and hugged
me.

"Joshua!"

"Donnatella!" I replied with enthusiasm.

"What are you doing here?"

"I was just passing and thought the airport would be a cool place to
hang out. And then as I was about to go in, I saw you standing
outside. Complete coincidence."

She let go of me, and passed me her bag, which felt like it weighed
about 200 pounds. I was too happy to see her to make any sarcastic
remark.


It had been a long day and so as soon as we got into my apartment I
collapsed on the couch beside Donna and decided that a long nap would
be nice. I was almost asleep when she called out my name.

"Yeah?"

"Wake up," she said.

I attempted to, but my eyes wouldn't open. "I'm awake," I told her.

"We need to talk," she said and I started to panic.

"That's not good," I commented, finally opening my eyes. I tried to
breathe deeply and slowly and not hyperventilate at the sudden idea
that Donna was about to give me an ultimatum. Or decide to call it
quits.

"No, no, it can be good," she said.

I wasn't convinced. Not once in my long history of failed
relationships had that phrase ever been uttered in a positive way.
"How?"

"How, what?" she asked.

"Tell me how it can be good." I figured that she was going to start
saying how being friends could still be good when she leaned close to
me.

"Well, after we talk, we can do this." She kissed me on the cheek, and
I was starting to get convinced that talking wasn't necessarily a bad
thing. "Or this," she said, kissing the other cheek.

"Or this?" I questioned, bringing her closer and kissing her deeply on
the lips. She didn't pull away, and I took that to be a very
encouraging sign.

"You learn quickly," she told me, but moved away from me.

"Talk. But do it quick. I'd like to get back to those after-talk
activities." I wasn't sure why we had to wait until after the talking,
but I went along with the plan.

She rambled on about something, although I was too distracted by
watching her get all flustered to pay too much attention to her words.
She paused, and I took the opportunity to get her to stop talking by
placing a finger on her lips. "You're making very little sense again,
you know?"

"I know." She looked at me, and it finally processed that she had,
essentially, been asking me a question. Thankfully, I remembered what
it was.

"You want to know how I feel about you?" She nodded. "And the kissing
wasn't a good enough indication?" I asked, grinning. "The thing is, I
think I might like you too, and I just don't know how to control the
urge to do this..." I moved in closer, giving in to my desire to kiss
her, "when I'm around you. That answer your question?" I hoped it did
since I didn't really want to repeat myself. Except for the kissing
part. I had no objections to the kissing. "And as for the possibility
of going on a date, just tell me time and place and I'll be there. Now
can we resume the after-talk activities?" I leaned in again, but she
shook her head.

"The other thing is, my boss is leaving Boston for Seattle and wants
me to go with him to be part of his team. I have to make a decision by
the end of this month, but I think I'm going to say no. I can get a
new job anywhere, but friends, not so much."

I was relieved to find out that this was the reason she wanted to
talk, and immensely relieved to hear she didn't want to move further
away.

"So you'll be staying in Boston?" I confirmed. She nodded. I wasn't
sure what else to say, although I knew that it was unlikely that this
would be the end of the conversation.

"Okay, talk's now over," she said. For now, I interpreted, but didn't
hesitate in resuming my favourite part of the conversation.


It was difficult for me not to take that conversation any further, but
I could tell that Donna was still unsure about the situation and I
didn't want to push her. Besides, if I had my way, we'd have plenty of
time to explore the possibilities.

By the time we got to Sam's the next day the food was almost ready and
the football game had started. I watched a little, but then Donna came
and sat next to me and I stopped paying attention to the TV. We talked
quietly until dinner was ready, discussing past Thanksgivings with our
families and sharing amusing stories.

It took several hours for us to eat our way through all the food, but
we paced ourselves: talking, resting and drinking at intervals. When
we finally finished we were all exhausted and CJ announced that she
was going to leave. We took this as our cue to do the same, although
we stood at the door and talked with Sam and Ainsley for a few minutes
after CJ had gone.

Ainsley had a sudden need to show Donna a painting, and so they left,
Donna giving me curious looks over her shoulder. I was suspicious of a
set up, and I asked Sam what was going on.

"That's what I'm supposed to be asking you," he said.

"What?" I asked, puzzled. "Nothing's going on. Wha... who... why?" I was
immediately.

"You and Donna," he said, confirming my fears. "What's going on?"

I played it dumb, hoping Sam had just been making assumptions. "I
repeat - there's nothing going on." I thought for a minute, and
decided to ask him where he'd got this information. "Why might there
be something going on between us? And who told you to ask me?"

"There is something going on. Even I can see it. You've not been like
this in years, if ever."

While I was kind of relieved that he didn't actually appear to know
anything, I didn't believe I'd been that obvious about my feelings.
"And other people have been noticing this as well?"

"Yes. CJ, Toby, Ainsley, hell, even Leo!" He looked amused at my
bewilderment. "So, what's going on? I'm your best friend, you can tell
me."

"There's nothing going on!" I protested. Okay, so perhaps it was a
little bit of a lie.

"So you're not in love with her?" he asked, obviously unconvinced by my denials.

"What's going on?" Donna asked as she re-entered the apartment with
Ainsley. "Not in love with who, Josh?" she asked, and I was almost
certain that she knew exactly what was happening.

I grinned, trying to make things as awkward as possible for both Sam
and Ainsley because I found that amusing. "You!" I announced.

"Oh!" she replied, laughing. I wasn't quite sure what that meant and
it made me slightly nervous.

"Anyway, we'd better be going," I said, deciding that we should leave
Sam and Ainsley alone with their suspicions.

Donna said her thanks and goodbyes as well, and then we left.


We got back to my apartment and decided to go straight to bed since we
were quite tired from all the eating. Donna got ready and I watched
from the doorway as she crawled into bed.

I felt the sudden need to clarify things, to tell her the truth about
how I felt, but I didn't know how.

"I do, you know," I said, hoping that she'd understand.

She didn't. "Do what?"

"Love you. I thought I'd tell you that. Since, y'know, it's true."

She smiled and blushed, and I could tell that she was about to cry.

"Donna..."

She got out of bed and walked towards me, stopping in front of me and
wrapping her arms around my neck. She kissed me. "Thank you," she
said. "Y'know, I love you too," she whispered. I decided that the best
way to show her how I felt would be to kiss her again, and was quite
annoyed when the phone interrupted us.

"Josh Lyman," I answered, hoping whoever it was wouldn't stop our
kissing for too long.

"Hi, umm, I was wondering if I could speak to Donna. It's her friend, Maria."

I passed the receiver over to Donna.

"Hello?" she asked. There was a long pause, and suddenly she started
smiling. "You're serious?" The smile grew wider. "Really! Oh, thank
God!" Another pause, "I'll tell you when I get back. I'll see you next
week, then?" She paused again and I wondered what they were talking
about. "Okay, I'll meet you there. Bye!"

Donna replaced the receiver and practically started bouncing around
the room. I looked at her questioningly.

"That was Maria. She's just had a phone call to say that James is
taking a job in DC, starting in January!" She jumped up and down, and
I started grinning at her enthusiasm.

"And you're going to join him?" I asked, wondering if this was all too
good to be true.

She nodded.

A thought struck me. "So, you'll be needing a place to stay," I said.

She nodded again. "Yeah..." She looked at me, questioning.

I brought her towards me, embraced her, and kissed her passionately,
leaving no confusion as to my intentions.

I broke away from her for a second to say "I know this great place..."

"Really?" she asked playfully.

"Don't leave me," I blurted out. I couldn't stop myself this time.

She wound her arms around my neck and pulled me closer. "I won't."

"I mean it." I think my desperation might have been showing on my face.

She pulled away from me, her hands trailing down to my arms.

"Josh," she said emphatically. "I will *never* leave you."

I pulled her back towards me and kissed her forehead. "Thank you," I said.


Later, after a long talk, we went to bed together. We explored each
other's bodies in a way that we had not done in the drunkenness of
Illinois. It was a slow, passionate union; not the frantic and rapid
coupling I could recall.

Afterwards I held her close to me and watched her for a while as she
slept peacefully in my arms. Thoughts and memories plagued my mind,
and it was difficult to push them out.

It took me a long time to get to sleep.

When I did, I dreamed of the future - our future.


I woke up late the next morning and she was still in my arms. She was
awake and watching me.

"You stayed," I said, relieved.

"I promised I would," she replied. "Although I'm really hungry. Any
chance you've got any food in your kitchen?" she asked with a smile.

"Probably not," I admitted.

"When I live here I'm going to make sure that there's always food in,"
she commented. She paused. "Healthy food."

I made a face, then grinned and kissed her. "I'm looking forward to it."

"You're looking forward to the healthy food?" she asked. "Cause I'm
going to make you eat vegetables."

"I'm looking forward to you moving in," I clarified. "The vegetables?
Not so much."

"Right," she said. She smiled and I kissed her again.

"Donna?" I asked after a few minutes of kissing.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you," I said.

"What for?" she asked, confused.

"Everything."


END OF PART ELEVEN




Ex Post Facto - Epilogue The First
What's Next?


[3rd person pov]

"Guys?" CJ yelled up to the open window at Josh and Sam. "I know
you're having fun up there alone, but could you come help us out?"

Donna snickered.

A few seconds later, Josh poked his head out the window. "What was
that, CJ? I didn't quite hear you," he said, smirking.

"I said..." CJ started even louder.

Josh covered his ears. "Yeah, I think I did get that the first time.
We'll be down in a minute."

"What the hell are they doing up there?" Maria asked, struggling with
a heavy box.

"I'm not sure you want to know," CJ commented, smirking.

It was move-in day for Donna. Almost everyone she knew in DC--far more
than necessary--were at Josh's apartment to help. She was going to
need the help though, at least for moral support, because it looked as
though there was more stuff than room in Josh's apartment.

"We're hungry," Josh moaned as he finally made his way out to the
front of the building.

"You ate an hour ago," Donna pointed out, wearily.

"Ainsley's hungry, too," Josh told her. "Aren't you Ainsley?"

Ainsley looked at Josh, then back at Donna. "I can wait," she said.

He glared at her, then tried a different tactic. He came up to Donna
from behind, hugged her, and gave her a kiss. "Please?" he asked.

"When all of this," she said pointing to her car-load of boxes and
bags, "is inside, then we'll eat." She smiled sweetly, unwilling to be
moved.

He looked at her, trying to decide whether she'd compromise, and
coming to the conclusion that it wasn't going to happen.

"All right, people, move, move, move!" he directed. Donna grinned.

It was another hour before everything had been moved in and the food
had been ordered. Everyone sat round Josh and Donna's cluttered living
room, talking and eating pizza. Looking around at her friends, Donna
couldn't remember being happier.

Maria had moved out to DC the week before, and having attended
Princeton, was already talking to Sam as if they were old friends.
While chatting, Sam kept looking over at Ainsley, catching her eye and
exchanging smiles with her. Ainsley was laughing with Josh about Sam's
misfortunes when he'd met her parents the weekend before. CJ's
attention was split: she was trying to hear something she could use to
tease Sam about while trying to talk to Donna at the same time. She
was only moderately successful, getting halfway through a sentence
before stopping and eavesdropping on the other conversation.

Donna wasn't too bothered. She was so distracted by her own thoughts
that she didn't pay attention to CJ's lack of interest.

Suddenly, Sam interrupted her reverie, asking for everyone's
attention. "Is everyone free on July 12?" he asked, a grin on his
face.

"Sam!" Ainsley objected, embarrassed but smiling anyway.

"Why?" CJ asked.

"Because you're coming to a wedding." He looked around at everyone.
"Ainsley's and mine."

"Really?" Donna's eyes went wide, looking at Ainsley for confirmation.

Ainsley nodded, grinning widely.

"Congratulations!" she squealed, practically throwing herself across
the room to hug her.

Josh made a point of rolling his eyes, but the huge grin expressed his
real feelings.

"Josh, stop smirking," Donna admonished, even though her back was to him.

CJ and Sam looked at each other and grinned. "Congratulations," she
told him. "I always knew you two were perfect for one another,
Spanky."

Josh went to the kitchen and got some beers from the refrigerator.
Handing one to each person, he proposed a toast.

"To Sam and Ainsley! Congratulations for finally getting a clue," he said.

Sam, CJ and Ainsley looked at each other in amusement.

Sam held up his own beer. "To Josh and Donna. Congratulations," he started.

"For finally getting a clue," CJ joined in, grinning.

"To all of us," Donna suggested.

"To all of us," they repeated, touching their beer cans before drinking.

~

July 12

"So, I've just finished telling Donna that we aren't going to use any
kind of flammable liquids when Sam comes in with the kerosene..."

"Secret plan to fight inflation!" Sam called out. Half the room laughed.

"Yeah, yeah," Josh replied, grinning. "You're just trying to avoid
responsibility for almost burning down the building!"

"You keep telling yourself that," Sam responded with a laugh.

"Anyway, enough of that. Sam, you've been a great friend to me over
the years, and I'm glad that you've found someone as wonderful as
Ainsley to share your life with. I wish you both all the luck in the
world," Josh said, no longer looking at the index cards. He lifted his
champagne glass. "To Sam and Ainsley!"

"To Sam and Ainsley," everyone chorused.

When the speeches finished and the dancing began, Josh and Donna found
a deserted table and sipped wine together.

Josh watched Sam and Ainsley as they stood in the middle of the dance
floor, talking, laughing, occasionally kissing, and swaying gently to
the music.

He looked over at Donna, who was also gazing at the dance floor, and
wondered, not for the first time, what it might be like to be up
there, celebrating their own marriage.

Standing up, he said to Donna, "Dance with me." He held out his hand
and she took it, grinning.

"I've been waiting all night for you to offer."

He put his arms round her waist and brought her close to him. She
looked over at Sam and Ainsley again and sighed. "They look so happy."

"Yeah," he replied, wistfully. "So, Donnatella," he said, "Have you
thought about what you want to do tomorrow? I've got a *whole* day
off, you know."

"Yup. I was thinking it would be nice to sleep in."

"Sleep in? That's the exciting plan you've come up with?" he asked, in
disbelief.

"Not just sleeping in," she said, looking at him with a sly grin. She
paused dramatically. "You get to bring me breakfast in bed as well."

"And what do I get?"

"What do you want?" she asked, raising an eyebrow suggestively.

She laughed as he whispered in her ear.

"Maybe," she grinned, then kissed him, "If you're really lucky."

"I already am really lucky," he replied. He looked at her seriously.
"I know I don't say it much, but I love you, y'know."

"I know," she smiled shyly. "I love you, too."

He leaned in and kissed her again.

~

Although he was tired from the day, and from the party that had run
late into the night, Josh lay next to Donna for a long while, unable
to sleep.

"Today was good, don't you think?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said, barely awake. "It was good."

"Sam and Ainsley really did look happy," he commented thoughtfully.

"Uh huh," she murmured.

"I was wondering," he began.

"Yeah?"

"One day, do you think you'd want to marry me?"

"You asking?" She opened her eyes, suddenly wide awake, and looked at him.

He thought for a second, then smiled. "Yeah," he said.

"Okay." She smiled back.

"Yeah?" he asked.

She kissed him lightly. "Yeah."

~

END OF EPILOGUE ONE




Ex Post Facto - Epilogue The Second
Happily Ever After


[3rd person pov]

What the critics said: "it's so, so totally [...] insane." "Prepare
yourselves." "They don't know what they're in for."

"You owe me $20, Leo!" Toby exclaimed.

"What? Why?" Leo asked suspiciously. It didn't help that Toby was
practically bouncing up and down in excitement.

"I won the pool!" Toby exclaimed happily. Today was a day for
rejoicing. A day of jubilee, if you will. He jumped up and down some
more.

"What pool? Since when do we have pools?" Leo asked, still suspicious.
Toby's behaviour was scaring the crap out of him, to be honest. He
told him so.

"I don't care!" Toby exclaimed. "I won the pool!"

"You won the pool?" Sam asked, approaching them. "Damn, and I was so
close, too. I had February."

"What damn pool?" Leo demanded.

Sam pointed to the door where, most conveniently, Josh and Donna had
just appeared, holding hands. Toby started chuckling. Leo was
unnerved. Then he saw what it was that Sam was pointing at.

He sighed.

"Ahh, young love," he said, almost reminiscently. "It's taken them
long enough! Only, what four years?"

"Five," CJ said, coming up behind him.

The group sighed collectively as Josh and Donna smiled at each other
and kissed. Because that was what professionals did in the West Wing.
Really.

"I won the pool!" Toby announced again loudly. "Josh and Donna finally
got together so everyone has to pay me!"

Donna and Josh turned round and saw them all for the first time.
Obviously, they were shocked.

"But how did you find out?" Josh asked, well, shocked.

Toby gave them a sly look, but didn't reply.

The President entered the room. Well, the hallway to Leo's office,
really. "What's going on here?" he asked sternly.

Everyone gasped and tried to look professional, but considering all
they were doing was gossiping in the halls, it was quite difficult.

"Nothing, sir," Sam said, saluting the President. The President
saluted back. There was no reason for this.

"Why ever not?" asked the President. He looked speculatively at Josh
and Donna and their joined hands. "What's this? Did my nefarious and
cunning plan finally work?"

Everyone looked quickly over to the President. They were, of course,
shocked. "You had a nefarious and cunning plan?" Toby asked.

"Well, how else were Josh and Donna ever going to get together? Don't
you think that I planned the whole thing?" the President asked,
amused.

"Umm, sorry sir, but what *exactly* did you do?" CJ asked him.

"Why don't we all go into Leo's office and sit down, and I'll tell you
exactly what I did," the President suggested.

The First Lady came up behind them. "Jed, are you taking credit for my
nefarious and cunning plan to get Josh and Donna together?" she asked.

"Umm, no?"

"I don't believe you. But let's tell everyone anyway." She invited
everyone to join them in Leo's office so that they could spend a few
hours ignoring the fact that they were supposed to be doing... stuff,
and instead discussing Josh and Donna. (Hell, since they don't seem to
be doing anything much, it's going to be JoshnDonna from now on. It's
easier.)

"Actually, if I might say something, I also had a nefarious and
cunning plan to get JoshnDonna together," Leo admitted.

"You did?" CJ asked. "But so did Sam and I!"

"And so did I!" Toby said, uncharacteristically happy and jumping
about. But we've already established that Toby's going to be generally
behaving uncharacteristically.

"And us!" the assistants chorused from behind JoshnDonna.

JoshnDonna stood there shocked. But they joined the rest of the staff
in Leo's office anyway. They weren't *that* shocked.

"So, let me start," the President began. "I got the tobacco people to
cause a huge scandal involving Josh!" he admitted.

"But why?" CJ asked. "That drove JoshnDonna apart!"

"Well, to be honest, I don't know why. It seemed like a good idea at
the time. It was all part of my nefarious and cunning plan. But it
went awry. I think it was supposed to bring them together, and if Josh
had shared with Donna, then they'd have helped each other through it."

"That's where I came in," the First Lady announced. "I had to fix his
mess, but I wasn't sure how. So I managed to get the whole scandal
covered up and for Josh to look like the hero. But it still wasn't
right, especially with JoshnDonna in different cities and no longer
talking."

"So I arranged for Donna to be placed with a friend of mine in
Boston," Leo admitted.

"That was you?!" Sam asked. "I wondered how Donna had managed to get
work there considering James already had a very good assistant. I
wondered why his assistant all of a sudden had to immediately go and
work in Duluth!"

"Actually, I got her a job in the White House," Leo admitted. "Donna
needed the Boston job."

"So you knew already that James was going to invite me to his 40th
birthday party?"

"Well, to be honest, I asked him to invite you. Didn't you think it
was strange that you'd not spoken to him in fifteen years and all of a
sudden he's your best friend? And didn't you think that it was odd
that you managed to get a weekend off so quickly with no argument?"
Leo asked.

Sam nodded. "Well, now that you mention it, I suppose so. But it
helped me start my nefarious and cunning plan. After seeing Donna at
the party, I knew that she and Josh had to be together, and so I
planned to get her back here. Then Josh was in the car crash..."

"That was me again, I'm afraid," the President admitted. "I wasn't
happy knowing that JoshnDonna were apart, but I knew that she'd want
to come and look after him if he was hurt. Unfortunately, I got a
little carried away..."

"And that's where I had to help out again. I spoke to Josh's mother
and asked her to talk some sense into Josh," the First Lady
interjected. Because this scenario wasn't realistic enough before that
bit.

"And then Sam and I formed our own nefarious and cunning plan," CJ
said. "Sam had to get Josh to go out and talk with him, and he had to
let Josh know that Donna was in Boston, so that Josh could go there
and get her back."

"But for that to happen, we had to involve Maggie, who just happened
to live in Boston," Sam explained with a smile.

"And then I managed to convince Congressman Reisman to be stubborn
about the health care bill so that Josh would have an excuse to go to
Boston!" Leo said with excitement.

"I thought that sounded a bit of a flimsy excuse for Josh to be in
Boston," Toby said with a smile, "But fortunately it helped with my
own nefarious and cunning plan. I knew Maria, and got her to celebrate
her birthday at the restaurant I had recommended for Josh to take
Maggie."

Sam started bouncing up and down. "I knew it was more than just
complete coincidence! But Maggie knew what to do. She helped
JoshnDonna get talking again!"

"I couldn't just let JoshnDonna be apart anymore. It was killing me,
so after Maggie had broken up with Josh and convinced him to go talk
to Donna, I orchestrated the meeting at the campaign headquarters on
Election night!" CJ also started bouncing up and down with excitement.

"You did?" Toby, Sam, Leo, the President and the First Lady asked in
unison. Yeah, this isn't completely contrived, or anything. "But that
was me!" they all said in unison again. Just accept that they're all
psychic or whatever, okay? We can move faster if you're willing to
suspend disbelief a little longer.

"I got them dancing again!" Sam piped up excitedly. Because there's a
whole lot of excitement in this epilogue.

"And I got them together at the bar the next night!" Zoey said as she
entered the room with Charlie in tow.

"And I helped with Thanksgiving!" Ainsley said with a smile, as she
showed up in the office looking slightly out of breath. "Sorry I'm a
bit late - it's a long way from my office."

"And I got James to transfer to DC!" Leo exclaimed, happy as a bunny.
There's really no need for this phrase, I just think it's an
interesting visual.

"And I got Maria to have a talk with Donna so that she would have to
come back to DC!" Toby exclaimed.

"And they finally got together!" everyone said at once. Disbelief,
people, suspend it already.

Toby wiped a tear from his eye as JoshnDonna beamed at each other.

"Thank you so much, everyone!" Josh said. He took this moment to get
down on one knee. He produced a box from his pocket and held it out
for Donna. She opened it, nearly in tears.

"Ha ha!" Josh said evilly. "I had you fooled! It's a spider that I
found in the bathroom this morning!" Okay, so it wasn't. But you've
got to admit that it would have been quite amusing. Well, juvenile.
Whatever.

"Donnatella," he actually said. He started crying and couldn't
continue. It was a very emotional moment for him, after all. "I've
loved you from the very moment I first laid eyes on you," he finally
choked out. "In fact, I think I loved you before I met you," (huh,
isn't that some song lyrics? Oh well, I'm stealing characters, where's
the shame in stealing songs as well?) "And I love you *so* *damn*
*much* that life without you is not worth living, and the flowers
smell sweeter when you're around, and the sun shines brighter when
you're here, and even Congress delights me so much that I could dance
around all afternoon with the fairies. And I was hoping that you might
do me the honour of becoming my wife." Tears ran freely down his face,
and he realised that he'd never before felt such true happiness.

"No!" Donna replied, cackling like a witch. Okay, so I lied again. Damnit.

"Of course!" she actually replied, crying like a baby.

Everyone broke out in cheers and started hugging each other, and
Charlie opened several bottles of champagne that were conveniently in
the room in case this *very* situation occurred. We'll just ignore the
fact that Leo is a recovering alcoholic and wouldn't have alcohol in
his office, okay?

"You can use the Rose Garden for the wedding!" the President offered.

"Thank you!" JoshnDonna continued beaming.

And the West Wing ignored the fact that this was a place of work and
had a huge party in celebration.

But oh no, this is not the end. Far from it (yeah, it's okay, you can
stop reading now if you want to).

Because JoshnDonna wrote their own wedding vows for their Rose Garden
Wedding, and they just knew that they had to share them with everyone.

Of course, Josh had four best men - the President, Sam, Charlie and
Toby, all of whom could barely keep from weeping with joy, especially
Toby who was about as happy as he'd ever been. When he saw CJ (Donna's
maid of honour, of course) he knew that he could only be complete if
he married her and had lots of babies with her - but we'll get to that
later.

Leo replaced Donna's father (who unfortunately was unable to attend
the wedding. I don't know why. Ask him yourself, damnit, if you're
that bothered) and gave her away. Margaret, Carol and, umm, Ginger
were the other bridesmaids, and were adorned in lovely dresses of
bright pink satin.

The wedding music started to play, and they all made their way down
the aisle. Josh cried so hard with emotion because Donna was finally
going to be his wife. It was the most perfect, sunny, fabulous day
that DC had ever seen.

The priest and rabbi married them and nothing went wrong *at all* and
the vows were lovely and everyone cried lots.

CJ looked over at Toby, just because.

Sam looked at Ainsley.

The President looked at the First Lady.

Leo looked at Margaret.

Larry looked at Ed.

(This is all *looking* in case you hadn't realised - the whole deep
and meaningful gaze.)

Umm, we need more looking.

JoshnDonna were too busy kissing to look at each other. Nope, think
we've accounted for all the main staff.

The reception was as wonderful as a reception has ever been, and
everyone got drunk. Because, apparently that's what people do at
receptions. Then they all went home with a partner and had lots of
sex.

JoshnDonna then went on honeymoon to Hawaii, where they had a
wonderful time, didn't argue once, and just basically had lots of sex.

And we go forward a few months.

"Josh?" Donna entered his office, where fortunately the rest of the
staff was already gathered. They didn't mind the intrusion,
thankfully, since they were so invested in JoshnDonna's relationship.

"What's wrong?" Josh asked, a look of concern crossing his face.

"Nothing! We're pregnant!" she announced. "It's sextuplets!"

Everyone cheered and hugged, and the champagne was brought out again.
But not for Donna, since she was responsible and wasn't going to drink
whilst pregnant.

Forward another few months. About... six.

"Josh?" Donna asked as she entered Josh's office again. The rest of
the staff were, again, already there. They were psychic, if you
remember.

"What's wrong?" Josh asked, a look of concern crossing his face.

"It's the sextuplets!" Donna started crying. "Something's wrong!"

"Oh no!" everyone chorused.

She was immediately rushed to the hospital, where the doctors
determined her life was in danger. They delivered the babies by
caesarean section, but Donna lapsed into a coma.

Josh was distraught. Not only was Donna's life in danger, but the
sextuplets (Little CJ, Little Sam, Little Toby, Little Leo, Little Jed
and Little Abbey respectively) might not make it either.

He camped out beside Donna's bed for hours as she lay there
unconscious, telling her how much he loved her and that she *had* to
make it because he wasn't sure how he'd survive without her.

He dissolved into tears of despair, wondering what was going to
happen, then deciding it was useless. "Donna, I love you! Please wake
up!" he pleaded in desperation.

"Josh?" Donna whispered as she came to.

"Donna!" Josh exclaimed, about as happy as he could ever be. "You're
okay! Thank God!" He dissolved into tears of happiness.

"Josh, the babies? How are the babies?"

"They're fine," everyone chorused from behind them, each person
holding their namesake.

Everyone dissolved into tears of happiness, including the babies. God,
I think *I'm* going to cry, it was all so beautiful.

And they all lived happily ever after.

The end.

Damnit, I forgot about the rest of them. There was a reason for the
meaningful looks. Ah well, Sam and Ainsley got together, CJ and Toby
got together, and Leo and Margaret got together, all on the same day.
(Unfortunately, the thing with Larry and Ed was one-sided, so they
didn't get together, but they resolved all their problems and remained
the best of friends.)

They all had Rose Garden weddings (on the same day) and all got
pregnant (on the same day) and they all lived happily ever after.
Okay? Satisfied now?



The actual end.