“T didn’t mean to remediate me!” “You're kinda hot when you get all indignant.” “Can we focus?” Alex puts in. “Okay,” Nora says. She shakes out her hands. “So, right now we can get over 270 with Texas or Nevada and Alaska combined. Richards has to get all three of those. So nobody is out of the game yet.” “So, we have to get Texas now?” “Not unless they call Nevada,” Nora says, “which never happens this early.” She barely has time to finish before Anderson Cooper is back onscreen with breaking news. Alex wonders briefly what it’s going to be like to have future Anderson Cooper stress hallucinations. NEVADA: RICHARDS. “Are you fucking kidding me?” “So, now it’s essentially—” “Whoever wins Texas,” Alex says, “wins the presidency.” There’s a heavy pause, and June says, “I’m gonna go stress eat the cold pizza the polling people have. Sound good? Cool.” And she’s gone. By 12:30, nobody can believe it’s down to this. Texas has never in history gone this long without being called. If it were any other state, Richards probably would have called to concede by now. Luna is pacing. Alex’s dad is sweating through his suit. June is going to smell like pizza for a week. Zahra is on the phone, yelling into someone’s voicemail, and when she hangs up, she explains that her sister is having trouble getting into a good daycare and agreed to put Zahra on the job as an outlet for her stress. Ellen is stalking through it all like a hungry lioness. And that’s when June comes charging up to them, her hand on the arm of a girl Alex recognizes—her college roommate, his brain supplies. She’s got on a poll volunteer shirt and a broad smile. “Y’all—” June says, breathless. “Molly just—she just came from—fuck, just, tell them!” And Molly opens her blessed mouth and says, “We think you have the votes.” Nora drops her phone. Ellen steps over it to grab Molly’s other arm. “You think or you know?” “T mean, we're pretty sure—” “How sure?” “Well, they just counted another 10,000 ballots from Harris County—” “Oh my God—” “Wait, look—” It’s on the projection screen now. They’re calling it. Anderson Cooper, you handsome bastard. Texas is gray for five more seconds, before flooding beautiful, beautiful, unmistakable, Lake LBJ blue. Thirty-eight votes for Claremont, for a grand total of 301. And the presidency. “Four more years!” Alex’s mom outright screams, louder than he’s heard her scream in years. The cheers come in a hum, in a rumble, and finally, in a storm, pressing from the other side of the partition, from the hills surrounding the arena and the city surrounding the streets, from the country itself. From, maybe, a few sleepy allies in London. From his side, Henry, whose eyes are wet, seizes Alex’s face roughly in both hands and kisses him like the end of the movie, whoops, and shoves him at his family. The nets are cut loose from the ceiling, and down come the balloons, and Alex staggers into a press of bodies and his father’s chest, a delirious hug, into June, who is a crying disaster, and Leo, who is somehow crying more. Nora is sandwiched between both beaming, proud parents, screaming at the top of her lungs, and Luna is throwing Claremont campaign pamphlets in the air like a mafioso with hundred dollar bills. He sees Cash, severely testing the weight limits of the venue’s chairs by dancing on one, and Amy, waving around her phone so her wife can see it all over FaceTime, and Zahra and Shaan, aggressively making out against a giant stack of CLAREMONT/HOLLERAN 2020 yard signs. WASPy Hunter hoisting another staffer up on his shoulders, Liam and Spencer raising their beers in a toast, a hundred campaign staffers and volunteers crying and shouting in disbelief and joy. They did it. They did it. The Lometa Longshot and a long-awaited blue Texas. The crowd pushes him back into Henry’s chest, and after absolutely everything, all the emails and texts and months on the road and secret rendezvous and nights of wanting, the whole accidentally - falling -in-love - with -your- sworn -enemy-at-the - absolute - worst- possible- time thing, they made it. Alex said they would —he promised. Henry’s smiling so wide and bright that Alex thinks his heart’s going to break trying to hold the size of this entire moment, the completeness of it, a thousand years of history swelling inside his ribcage. “T need to tell you something,” Henry says, breathless, when Alex pulls back. “I bought a brownstone. In Brooklyn.” Alex’s mouth falls open. “You didn’t!” “T did.” And for a fraction of a second, a whole crystallized life flashes into view, a next term and no elections left to win, a schedule packed with classes and Henry smiling from the pillow next to him in the gray light of a Brooklyn morning. It drops right into the well of his chest and spreads, like how hope spreads. It’s a good thing everyone else is already crying.