“Wait, the hot one?” I asked.
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, the hot one.”
“The one who, like, banged an undergrad?”
“I was an undergrad when all that went down at UNC. It was blown way out of proportion. He’s a great guy.” I eagerly looked at him for details, and he just shook his head. “Anyway, we worked with so many small races where the margin of victory was literally less than a hundred votes. So few people were voting that just asking your friends to come with you could have changed the tide of the election.”
“Right! I mean, it’s not exactly the same for the mayoral race here. But I think voting is the least you can do. Calling your representatives, going to a phone bank, knocking on a few doors—it all doesn’t take that long.”
“Or you can be like your parents and just give money.”
I snorted. “Or that.”
“We need the money,” he said with a shrug.
“Yeah. Have to pay everyone.”
“Buy the fancy ad spots.”
I wrinkled my nose at him and smacked him with my clipboard. “It’s the people that make the campaign.”
“The people and the community.”
“Again, preaching to the choir,” I said as we finally came up on the ground. “You or me?”
He shrugged. “I got the last one.”
“All right.”
I took a deep breath and approached the group with my biggest, most genuine smile. “Hi there! We’re out today, doing voter registration and celebrating the Fourth with a little civic duty of our own. Are all of you registered?”
One woman smiled and nodded. “Yep, we are.”
“Great!” I said enthusiastically. “I hope that you’ll all be out to the primary on August 6th to vote in the mayoral race.”
“Wait, Mom, I don’t think I’m registered,” a college-aged girl said.
“We can do it later.”
“Actually, the deadline is next weekend. And it’s super easy. Only takes about five minutes of your time. We send it for you and everything.”
The girl nodded. “I’ll do it.”
I handed over the clipboard, and then, like clockwork, a half-dozen other people remembered that they’d moved or that they weren’t registered at the right address. Sam and I passed out clipboards and pens and let them fill out the information.
The mom who had first spoken just looked at our shirts and lifted her nose. “I don’t even know why you support her. She acts like she’s tough on crime, but then her son is such a mess.”
“But he’s hot, Mom,” the girl currently filling out the form said with a giggle.
The mom just glared at me as if I were the reason for all of this. But I was prepared. It wasn’t my first rodeo.
“I support Mayor Kensington because of the amazing work she’s done with wage disparity for women. I’m proud to work for her campaign and say that I make a dollar for every dollar a man makes there. It’s competitive, but no one is making less just because we’re women and we’ve been taught not to ask for more,” I told her with a smile. “And she’s working on doing that everywhere. I can get behind that.”
Her scowl vanished into something almost thoughtful. “I suppose that makes sense. At least you have a reason.”
I smiled. I wasn’t here to change minds. But personal stories were always more effective than yelling about political topics that literally no one could debate civilly. I had no intention of getting into a shouting match. I just wanted people to make informed decisions and vote how they felt best.
We finished up with that group, collecting the seven additional voter registrations, and then walked away.
“I lost count of how many people have bought up Court,” I said with a sigh. “I hope what English is doing is helping.”
“It’ll take time. Especially with both Reyes and Quinn harping on it.”
I nodded and pushed my shoulders back. “All right, let’s get back to work.”
We spent the next several hours walking the park. It was a beautiful, sunny day in the city. And as we got closer to the start of the fireworks on the East River, our numbers swelled.
Sam and I made it back to the mayor’s tent in the park and handed over our stack of voter registrations. One of the field workers took it from us with wide eyes.
“This is just from the two of you?” she asked.
“Yep,” I said.
“Wow. Can we send you back out? You got more than my last group of volunteers. And there were ten of them.”
Sam chuckled. “Old habits die hard.”
“Yeah, we’re staff. We’ve done this before.”
“Oh wow! That’s awesome. You guys rocked it.”
“We’d go back out, but I think final tallies should be happening soon.”
The girl pointed to the voter registration. “We’re working through them now.”
“Excellent. Keep up the good work.” I gestured for Sam to follow me.
“You don’t think we should help?”
“I might have a surprise after the conference call.”
“A surprise, huh?”
I nodded. “I think we’ve earned it. The two of us did more VR than ten volunteers.”
He grinned at me, and my heart melted. “All right, you’ve convinced me.”
Once we were out of sight of the tent, I took Sam’s hand in mine and directed him out of the park. We walked companionably through the busy streets of Brooklyn and to the marinas on the East River.
Sam stopped when we approached the docks. “What are you doing?”
I couldn’t contain my excitement. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
I pulled him toward a medium-sized yacht on the dock. My friends Lewis and Rowe were already on board along with Rowe’s boyfriend, Nicholas, and Lewis’s girlfriend, Addie. A dozen other people were already on the yacht, awaiting the time when the Coast Guard would allow vessels into the water for the fireworks.
“Are you serious?” Sam asked with wide eyes.
“Yeah. Lewis invited me, but I didn’t plan on joining him. But…I thought you’d like to see the fireworks from the water.”
He turned his attention to me completely. “You’re amazing. You know that?”
“I mean, we’re hitching a ride.”
But he didn’t let me finish downplaying what I’d done. He placed his hands on either side of my face and crushed our lips together. I stood, momentarily frozen by his enthusiasm. I hadn’t thought it was that big of deal, but I’d never really shared this part of myself with him before. I’d spent so much time hiding Larkin St. Vincent, trying to be someone else, that he never saw all of me. And now that he had…he wasn’t pulling away. In fact, he seemed to be even more all in.
Whistles came from the boat, and we pulled away with laughs and blushes.
“Okay, okay,” I said to Lewis and Addie on the boat.
I grabbed Sam’s hand and pulled him on board. I made introductions to the people he’d heard so much about all those years ago. It was still strange to have my crew so disconnected, but with Penn still in Paris and Katherine already in the Hamptons, it was impossible. Not to mention, things were still…rough after Natalie’s party earlier this summer.