I scooted up to the edge of my seat, willing Miles to amplify his performance: “This bill is especially important for LGBTQ youth,” he continued, “who are disproportionately affected by our country’s uneven distribution of mental health services. Yet the distinguished senator from South Carolina, Chairwoman Melinda Darley, has chosen to continually block this bill in Committee.”

“I should have told Wallis,” I said, mostly to myself, “that we’re punching up at her future mother-in-law today.”

From Bo, an abrupt turn of the head. “What? Wallis is engaged?”

During Miles’s campaign, Wallis had still been in college, but she’d pitched in on breaks. She and Bo had been buddies. There had been talk of them starting a politics podcast—he, the play-by-play, she, the color commentary. There had been picnics on conference room floors. With her humor and love of impromptu dance parties, she’d lessened the tension of those brutal summer months before the election. She was a little sister to us both, is what I mean.

“No,” I said, my eyes still on Miles. “No, it was just a joke. Wallis is—God, I can’t believe I’m about to say this—dating Blake Darley.”

It was hard to shock Bo. He’d held weapons, he’d gone without nights of sleep, he’d take state secrets to his grave. But I’d managed it. “Not Darley Darley.”

“The same.”

Bo was quiet for a moment. “I know Blake Darley. From around Charleston.”

I poked his shoulder and badgered him for details. At the Wharf, I’d come to accept Blake and Wallis’s relationship, but here was Bo, reminding me that there was still so much to learn about the man who’d managed, in only a few short weeks, to steal into our lives. What? How? When? Did he still know him? Instead of answering my questions, Bo asked one of me. “He and Wallis, they’re serious?”

“Here’s what I know for sure—Wallis likes him,” I said, checking my phone and starting to scroll through the latest barrage of emails. “She might think she loves him. Is it enough to survive all the flak? I don’t know.”

Bo remained very still. “She loves him. Okay.”

“I know,” I said. Miles. The delicacy—impossibility?—of dating across the aisle. “I’m going to have to tell him. But I’m waiting to see how the next month goes. Wallis insists that Blake isn’t concerned with his mother’s politics. And I’ve made it clear that I won’t be pulling any punches for her sake—or his. Now, tell me what you know of Blake.”

But Bo didn’t have much. “I’ve met him a time or two,” he said. “All that matters is that Wallis is happy and he’s treating her well.”

“He is,” I admitted.

“Then why does it look like you’re about to throw your phone off this balcony?”