He stared down at the floor, his hands in his pockets. He appeared small but not tender, and pensive, but maybe only in the DC way. That is to say, I couldn’t tell if he was truly reflecting or just wearing a mask. “Do you think I’m a bad guy?” he eventually asked.

At this, I was able to exhale. I waited until he met my eyes, and then I rolled them. “That question is a waste of time. You can’t possibly care what I think of you.”

“I don’t care? I do.” His accent had gotten thicker; I wondered if this was the unintended result of being in South Carolina more, or if it was an affect aimed at wooing his electorate.

“Men only ask questions like that for one reason—absolution. I’m not your priest. I’m not your girlfriend or wife. You have no business asking me that, because you don’t want my honesty.” I spoke quickly. After so long, I was saying what I needed. “You want me to feel bad for you, and to lie, and to collapse on your shoulder and cry about how the world has misunderstood you.”

“I’m not—” he stuttered. “I’m not asking the right question. I’m dancing around it because I’m so fucking nervous I’m not thinking straight.”

As he stood before me, shifting, agitated, I saw him for who he was: a guy who was clearly confused and in pain. But no matter what he said, I couldn’t forget that his own choices were responsible for getting him in this position in the first place. “After everything that has happened these past months, why are you tracking me down now?”

“The way I left things,” he said. “Wallis must hate me.”

“Of all the things Wallis feels,” I said honestly, “hate is not one.”

“Listen,” he said, and the command irked me. “I think if I explained things from my perspective—”

“God,” I said, shaking my head, “please, don’t.”

“At first,” he continued anyway, “I didn’t think Wallis and I were headed anywhere serious. It was fun. I loved how excited she was when I was around. Can you understand?”

“How you toyed with her?”

“No,” he said, the ache in his voice becoming more pronounced. “It wasn’t a game. You can’t be astonished by cards, by cornhole. She was—is—astonishing. And as the days went on. Then weeks. That was the closest I’ve ever come to falling in love.”

“The closest you came?” I asked.

“To avoid falling out with my family, I gave up the only thing that could’ve made the estrangement easier. My mother, she was perhaps willing to overlook Wallis and me when things were quiet. But then the pictures of us started to surface.”