Red, White, And Royal TWO

Chapter 12

Time goes on, bills get voted on, and the stock market goes up and down. Eventually, before Alex realizes, Valentine's Day is upon him. More specifically, the first Valentine's Day since Alex and Henry have been publicly dating is upon them. But, Alex and Henry haven't been talking much. Or at all. Snow has been falling on Washington everyday for weeks, giving the press a plausible explanation for the lack of visits from Henry. But, even more unusually, there has been no texting or calling or anything between them. At all. Henry is just finding reasons to be mad at me, Alex thinks. To what would be Henry's dismay if he knew, though, would be the fact that Secretary Ringer has been reaching out to Alex since the end of January. She even cornered him in a hallway on her way from the January Cabinet meeting and apologized. Quite nicely, too. She really, truly, honestly, felt bad for what she had done.

Alex believed her, too. And forgave her.

"Hey, what are you thinking about?" Nora asks Alex as she walks over to him in the Roosevelt Garden. Snow is lightly falling on the ground.

"Just... life in the White House," Alex drifts off.

"Yeah I don't actually care about what you're thinking about. It's Valentine's Day; how are you going to make Henry forgive you?"

"I don't know."

A pause.

"Call him, obviously." Nora jabs.

Another pause.

"Ok, fine." Alex walks away from Nora and up to his room. He goes to his desk and plugs his phone in, because it's only at 36%. He turns on the phone, unlocks, opens the phone app, and presses Henry's contact. Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

No answer. The phone goes to voicemail.

As soon as Alex puts the phone down and gets ready to go back out to Nora, his phone rings. He looks at the screen. Why the fuck is Karla calling me?