Cleo raised her eyebrows as if to say: Exactly. She hoped Gaby would let it go at that.
“Fine, whatever, but even you mentioning ‘regrets’ raises the hairs on my neck.” Gaby leveled her gaze, and Cleo knew she was giving her one chance to tell her version of the truth before this went any further: into a real campaign launch, into a confrontation with MaryAnne, into a war with the press. Gaby was not the type of woman who liked to be caught unaware in the middle of a fistfight.
“Fine. Listen. My dad. He and I started something when I was younger. My mom thought it was . . .” Cleo hesitated, remembering. “Well, my mom thought it was ‘a tornado of negative energy,’ that’s what she would always say. ‘Why are you getting caught up in that negative energy? Go focus on just being a superstar!’” Cleo smiled at this because her parents had been diametrical opposites who also fit together perfectly. They’d had her late—Cleo always assumed that she was an accident, but she was never old enough or bold enough to ask. And they loved her so very much, so what did it matter? She was, they always told her, their shining star.
And then they were gone.
“So what was the negative energy?” Gaby brought her back.
“It’s just . . . it’s a way of sort of . . . tracking my mistakes.”
“We don’t make mistakes.”
“Fine. A way of tracking my regrets.”
Gaby inhaled. “I don’t even know what that means, and frankly I’m scared to ask. It’s not . . . I mean, please tell me that you don’t, like, have some sort of Excel spreadsheet for regrets?”
An Excel spreadsheet sounded exactly like something she would keep. Cleo loved Excel spreadsheets.
“It’s nothing. I mean, it’s something, a list. But it’s mine. And it’s private, and no one knows.” Cleo said this stridently, like she would in a debate or on the Senate floor while pushing a bill, but she couldn’t totally be sure of the list’s secrecy. Had she shared it with MaryAnne during one of their hundreds of childhood sleepovers? Had she drunkenly mentioned it during the rare college party she attended when she blew off too much steam to deal with dead parents and a black hole of loneliness and a wandering ambition that she didn’t know how to tame now that her parents weren’t there to guide her?
Maybe she had mentioned it once or twice unintentionally. She wouldn’t hold her hand on the Constitution and swear to it.
“Still waiting for this big reveal.”
“My dad, he just . . . he encouraged me to write down all my regrets, so I could look back and see if they truly were mistakes, and if so, learn from them, and if not, learn from that too.” Cleo paused. “You never knew them, my parents. They were just encouraging me to be my best. This was one of my dad’s tricks.”
“Oh!” Gaby looked both mystified and confused. “Most people write down their goals. Or aspirations.”
“Right. This was kind of the opposite of that but with the same end result. I think. I mean, I’ve never done anything with it other than add to it.”
“Hmm,” Gaby said. Again. Then: “I wonder if we can use this.”
“Use this?” Cleo felt something unfamiliar rise in her: panic.
“Yes . . . yes!”
Gaby was on her feet now, towering in her heels, dumping the remains of her omelet in the trash to the side of Cleo’s desk.
“Let’s tackle some of these regrets publicly!” Gaby was practically shouting now. “Let’s build a road trip around this. Your summer recess. Film it, bring a crew, no, wait . . . home video on our phones so no one thinks it’s too orchestrated! Could there be anything more humanizing?” She clapped her hands together three times, as if she were applauding herself.
Cleo was on her feet now too (albeit in one-inch wedges). “You literally just told me that admitting weakness is a terrible strategy! Why would I air all of my mistakes?”
“Because you are owning them. You are showing up at MaryAnne Newman’s doorstep and sharing your regrets, not apologizing as if she were the victim, rather making amends because you have realized you have grown. People love growth in a candidate, people crave growth.” Gaby went still. “I guess I should ask . . . these aren’t egregious? I mean, there aren’t any dead bodies anywhere, are there?”
Cleo glared.
“Anything short of murder I can work with.”
“I think this is a terrible idea,” Cleo said, plunking back in her chair, which squeaked again. “Arianna, please get me some goddamn WD-40!” she shouted toward the door, not even bothering with the intercom.
“You’re wrong,” Gaby shot back.
“I’m very rarely wrong.”
“True,” Gaby conceded. “But you pay me to tell you the rare times that you are.” She paused. “How long is this list? Twenty? Thirty?”
“Two hundred and thirty-three. I think. Give or take a few.”
Gaby’s eyebrows skyrocketed to the top of her forehead. “Holy shit.”
“Some of them are small! Most of them are small. Like, I didn’t have enough cash on me, so I couldn’t properly tip the Starbucks guy, so I wrote it down so it wouldn’t happen again. And in my defense, it hasn’t!” Cleo felt a little indignant. Also a little hysterical.
Gaby waved a hand. “We’re not filming you returning to tip the Starbucks guy. Although . . .” Her focus wandered to the ceiling as she considered it. “No, not that.”
“I just don’t see how pointing out all of my flaws makes me electable,” Cleo said in as close to a whine as she’d ever emitted.
“Because we’re beating everyone to the punch. They’re going to pull you apart if you run—for a lot of reasons, but also because of your XX chromosome. You are going to go on a ‘no regrets regrets’ tour and show everyone how likable, how relatable you are, even when you’ve made mistakes, stepped in the figurative shit.”
Cleo probably looked unconvinced. Because she was.
Gaby softened. “Cleo, the easiest, cheapest shot is for them to paint you as unlikable. If you were the majority leader, who cares; no one would give a shit. That’s the luxury of having a dick.”
Cleo groaned.
“This will make people fall in love with you. It will be your armor against the inevitable other stuff—the less-than-kind stuff—that will come your way. It’s already starting with MaryAnne’s op-ed.”
Cleo started to protest but then stopped because what Gaby said was the truth.
“We’re going to make them love you,” Gaby said. “Then we’re going to round them up to vote for you.”
Cleo audibly sighed, which Gaby correctly took as a concession.
“Narrow it down to ten,” Gaby said as her phone blew up again. “I want a list of ten regrets—juicy enough to be appealing but not so juicy that charges will be filed. And then I’ll pick five. Maybe more. We’ll see how it goes.”
“First of all, no charges can be filed! I’m not a criminal! I’m a senator.”
Gaby laughed. “You know those aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.”
“Fine,” Cleo huffed. “I’ll narrow it down to ten. But we get to agree on the five. Because this is my life out there, not yours.”