I chose him over a normal life. I chose him over privacy. I chose him over insecurity about whether or not I would ever be enough, as a wife, as a mother, as a first lady. I chose him over fear. I chose him over everything . . .
Love can be passionate, wild, consuming, mesmerizing. It catches you in the wake of what seems to be an ordinary life and it turns it upside down until you are fully living with every cell, every pore, every atom in your body. It makes you live life to its fullest potential. Love heightens all your emotions, until your past life looks like you were living on mute, like you were living with senses that were partly numbed.
This awakening to experiencing everything to its fullest potential is what makes life the most joyful and blissful experience, and also the most painful one. Looking down at the clouds beneath me and the blue sky stretching out before me, I simply let myself embrace it all, whatever comes.
I see myself with Matt. I see myself having kids with him. I see myself stretched out between his legs, reclining on him, while holding hot cocoa in my hands, hearing the crackling of a fireplace.
I see myself holding his face to my chest, quietly soothing him after a hard day. After having to make some tough decisions.
I see him climbing into bed beside me and nuzzling my neck, telling me how much he loves me, how I am his angel.
I see him holding our daughter’s hand (yes, it’s a girl—we got confirmation just last week!), her red hair in two little pigtails as she skips besides her father, looking up at him with all the love and awe in the world, and him looking down at her as if she were the greatest treasure.
I see myself thirty years from now, sitting next to an old and still ruggedly handsome Matt, talking about how we met, how he won the presidency, how he proposed, the life we’ve had.
Because even if he wins, four more years as president is not much compared to the years he will be an ex-president, and I his wife. The term is not the only thing that counts. What really lasts is what you did, your legacy for all time.
It’s a simple choice, really. I choose him. Always.
And despite his own fears and concerns, disappointments and ideas about his ability to be both president and husband, president and father, president and man . . . he chose me.
Whatever happens, we chose each other.
It’s cold outside, but that’s where Matt and I spend the November evening of Election Day. I bring out a small speaker and I play some music, settling for a song Hozier played on our wedding, “Better Love.” And we dance, like we sometimes do. I sway in his arms while our team watches television in one of the White House rooms, and Matt Jr. sleeps, and the country waits with bated breath, and I just dance with Matt.
And that’s how Carlisle finds us, when he steps outside.
“Well, Mr. President,” he says, smiling wryly as he spots us. “Looks like you’re up for a second term.”
I gasp, my hand flying to my mouth. Matt’s hands tighten on me, his jaw clenching, his eyes flashing with happiness—with gratefulness.
He frames my face and plants a firm, fierce kiss on my forehead, then he steps up to shake Carlisle’s hand. “I couldn’t have wanted to hear anything else.”
They shake hands, and Carlisle slaps his back. “You do me proud, Matt.”
“Where’s Matt Junior?” he immediately asks me.
“In bed. Matt, you cannot seriously wake him—”
“Oh yes I can,” he says, already striding inside. I follow him to the bedroom, where he slowly opens the door and steps into the room to find our son’s sleeping form.
Matt sits on the edge of the bed and leans down to whisper, “Hey, bedbug,” waiting for Matty to stir awake.
“Dad,” he just says, grinning a toothy grin.
Matt strokes one hand over his head. “We’re staying.”
Matty’s eyes widen. He’d been worried. No matter how much I assured him that we’d find another home, that his dad has a lot of homes we could move into, he’d argued that none of the staffers he’d come to love would be there, nor the swans in the fountain.
“Jack too?” He blinks, and Matt laughs and grabs his face, kissing the top of his head.
“Jack too.”
“Okay,” he says happily. “Jack, we’re staying!” he says, and we tuck him back into bed and just watch him for a minute in the shadows as he falls back to sleep. Our boy, the apple of our eye. Jack is wagging his tail from the corner of his room when Matt embraces me from behind, cupping my stomach with both hands, his chin propped on the top of my head, his thumbs moving back and forth. He doesn’t need to trace the letters “I love you”; the way he holds me says he loves us, all of us, all the same.
45
THE END
Charlotte
He won. By both the popular vote and the Electoral College again. The White House staffers breathe a sigh of relief. Matt and I wander the West Colonnade, Matt Jr. asleep upstairs. The noises of the White House are so familiar to us, every creak and shuffle, the hum and the bustle. There will be no transfer of power until four years—four more years of Hamilton change are under way, of slow steps forward, continued increase in economy and security.