“Nothing.” She actually had a thousand things to do for the campaign. They needed to keep the momentum going with the dating profile. But she shoved those thoughts to the back of her mind, determined to focus on Danny instead of work for at least another hour.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” he said, and then he raised his eyebrows at her. “Unless there was something you wanted to do.”
“Hmmmm. Let me think.”
“I think that you should stop thinking so much.” He set his mug down on his nightstand and gently took hers and put it next to his.
“You’re probably right,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re right.”
“Oh, I heard you,” Danny said. “I just wanted to hear you say it again.”
That made her laugh, and they laughed as they greeted the day with their unexpected plans.
A couple of hours later, Dot started to make a move to head home. She picked up her phone.
“Wait. You can’t go before the second cup,” he said, grabbing her hand.
“Why?”
“The second cup is when all the good stuff happens. Where you learn all the secrets. At least, that’s what my mom always said.”
“Well then, let’s have a second cup.” She set her phone down. This was the longest she’d gone without looking at her phone in ages.
She realized that she really didn’t miss it.
Chapter 58
The next couple of weeks flashed by. Ever since their night together, Dot found she was crushing big-time on Danny. She thought about him constantly and found it hard to concentrate at work or to sleep when she wasn’t with him. She couldn’t even read the books Harper passed on to her. Every page, every paragraph became a blur.
At the same time, the campaign was in full force and the race was back to being tied in Wisconsin 48–48, with four percent undecided.
“Who, at this point, hasn’t decided?” she asked Fletcher and Rose, exasperated.
“No idea. Just about everyone I know is voting early,” Rose said. “They’re sick of the ads and the arguing. They just want to vote and be done with it.”
“I hear that. It’s relentless. But I can tell from the data, she’s got more rizz than the president,” Fletcher said. “Polling shows people are ready for someone new.”
“What’s ‘rizz’?” Rose asked.
“Charisma! You know, that special something every candidate needs.”
“Then why don’t you just say ‘charisma’?”
“Too many syllables.” Fletcher loved to tease Rose.
“Can rizz get us what we need in a month’s time?” Dot asked Fletcher.
“We have just about eight weeks to get those four percent, or at least more than half of that four percent. I hope the DNC is paying attention to what’s happening here,” he said, obsessing over his get-out-the-vote spreadsheets. Wisconsin allowed early voting for fourteen days before the election, so every scrap of information they could capture about who was likely to cast a ballot mattered. That way, they could target every possible voter—even the reluctant ones.
“We really need that Lopez visit,” Rose said.
“We’re pressing. I almost want to drive to D.C. and confront those campaign pros in person,” Fletcher said.