“Ah, Bowen, hi.”

They each respectively tilted toward the other, kissing each other’s cheek. Bowen Babson, the anchor of Good Afternoon, USA, pulled back from their hellos and grinned. He, like Cleo, had been a young hotshot, on a rocket through the network, landing his own show two years ago, at thirty. Cleo had always admired this drive and naturally admired his confidence (like attracts like), which occasionally allowed for Cleo to daydream about their potential. He also had a reputation for sleeping around Washington (no judgment) and dating women under twenty-five. (Which again reminded Cleo of Matty and how even her relatively geeky high school boyfriend was dating up these days, and no wonder he hadn’t kissed her!) But Bowen was TV-anchor handsome, wavy dark hair, penetrating green eyes, whip smart, and even, Cleo begrudgingly admitted, fairly funny. He was easy to talk to between segments, he asked fair questions, and he was always, always prepared. It wasn’t difficult to see why he cleaned up on the singles scene. It also wasn’t difficult to see why he should have come with a warning label and why he’d never so much as made a single suggestive remark to her. Cleo wouldn’t have expected him to.

Cleo peered over Bowen’s shoulder, trying to track Jonathan. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

Bowen’s gaze followed hers, his head swiveling toward the back of the room.

“Admiring someone?”

“I’m a senator, Bowen; what makes you think that I’m here in pursuit of romance?”

Jonathan had his back to them now, and Cleo was intent on keeping her focus.

“Sorry,” Bowen said. “You’re right. That was shitty. Though, just for the record, I’d have said the same thing to a man.” He held up his hands. “I’m the furthest thing from a misogynist. I was raised with three sisters. They’d literally pummel me if I had a sexist bone in my body.”

Cleo broke her gaze, met his eyes. And she was surprised to see that they were sincere.

“I’m sorry,” she replied, then thought of Arianna, who apologized too much, and then she thought of MaryAnne, who refused to accept Cleo’s (somewhat sincere) apology. Words were words were words. Intent mattered. “You really weren’t being that shitty. I’m just . . . I’m busy.”

Jonathan had cupped his hand around the woman’s waist now; they were headed toward the exit.

“Oh my God,” Cleo muttered. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”

“Um, can I help?”

“What? No.” Cleo stood on her tiptoes, her calves genuinely cramping in protest, to watch them through the crowd.

“Some investigative reporting, perhaps?”

They were gone, out the exit door, on to God knew where. Probably a room upstairs at the hotel, while Emily waited at home lassoing the children. Cleo hated Jonathan in that moment, hated that he’d forced her friend to become a cliché. She’d given up her job for their family, and he repaid her with this. For Cleo, there was no greater injustice.

“Fuck,” Cleo said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Can I put that on the record?” Bowen leaned in closer. Though his typical fling was indeed at least a decade younger than Cleo, she wondered if she were misreading things: Bowen Babson appeared to be flirting with her, and she found this both intriguing and suspicious.

“You may not.” Cleo frowned and returned to her table, grabbing her purse and blazer.

“Hey, can I text you?” Bowen called after her.

“What?” Cleo spun around, genuinely shocked that she was not misreading him at all. Or maybe he wanted to text her about something else; maybe Senator Jackman had run into Bowen and mentioned the renewed free housing bill? She found herself extremely unnerved.

“Can, like, can I get in touch. Maybe a drink?”

“I’m thirty-seven, Bowen.” She paused. “And I have a fourteen-year-old.”

“Why are you telling me your biography and assuming I don’t already know this? Besides, I like kids,” he said.

“But do you like teens?”

Bowen looked confused, like he didn’t know the difference between a preciously adorable five-year-old and a surly fourteen-year-old who had to be reminded to both wear deodorant and brush his teeth.

Cleo waved her hands. “Look, call me, don’t, whatever. I have to go.”

“Something’s happening here, between us, clearly.”

Cleo didn’t bother answering. Emily Godwin was her friend. Her friend, for God’s sake, and she didn’t have many of them. She needed to tell her. She needed to tell her immediately. This wasn’t going to be another regret.

“You absolutely, unequivocally are not telling her,” Gaby shouted, so loudly that Cleo turned down the volume on her car speaker.

Cleo hadn’t exactly thought through the plan. She’d just peeled out of the valet stand, intent on landing on Emily’s doorstep and confessing. She had never been a girl’s girl—one only needed to look at the debacle with MaryAnne to intuit this—and for once, she understood both lucidly and emphatically that she could have Emily’s back. Obviously she was going to drive over there right now and tell her.

“You do not get into her business,” Gaby said, still shouting.

“But she should know!” Cleo clicked her blinker too hard, made a turn out of DC toward Alexandria.

“Maybe she already does. Or maybe she doesn’t and doesn’t want to. Or maybe she does but doesn’t want to. Or maybe they have an agreement. Who fucking knows? This isn’t yours to get in the middle of.” Gaby had wound down a bit, her voice now hovering just above a low menace. “I’m sorry, Cleo.” (Was she really sorry? Cleo wondered. When are we going to stop using that phrase when we are so rarely truly and genuinely sorry?) “But you can’t just ring her doorbell and blow up her life. Affairs happen. We’re adults.”

Cleo rolled to a stop at the light. She knew as well as anyone that affairs happened. And yet even after MaryAnne’s op-ed, she hadn’t told Gaby about Nobells, about that second year in law school. She’d never told anyone, actually. Shame, embarrassment, regret—that’s probably what kept her quiet. Culpability too. She’d gotten out of it with little fallout, which should have relieved her. She hadn’t destroyed his family; she hadn’t destroyed her reputation entirely, which even in law school was as a superstar.

She hiccupped, wondering how much she should share now, with her best friend, who wouldn’t judge her. The light changed, and Cleo pressed the gas too quickly, her tires squealing below, as if she could outrace her past, as if it weren’t right on her tail, breathing down her neck.

ELEVEN

If Cleo had just chosen from her list at random as Gaby had suggested, this regret never would have seen the light of day. There was MaryAnne shameful, all done in the name of ambition, and then there was this sort of shameful, which, even thirteen years later, still made her sick with disgust. If she hadn’t seen Jonathan at the Human Rights Campaign dinner, she would have kept it stuffed down, where she preferred it to be. But there it was, a blight smack in the middle of the pages of her yellow pad, folded in between NEVER talk back to Owens (a formidable torts professor who annihilated Cleo in an open argument on product liability) and lay off bourbon, which, all these years later, Cleo had little memory of the why behind it but also couldn’t ever remember drinking bourbon as of late, so it must have been something. She had a vague recollection of an evening out with Gaby in law school and of . . . dancing? She shook her head. It couldn’t be dancing. Cleo McDougal did not dance in public, which she realized, now, might soon change.

There it was, one word, on page four of the yellow pad, and she understood its meaning: NOBELLS. Thirteen years ago, she had double underlined it, as if not just a regret but a warning too.