Part 30 (1/2)

I just love for people to see him as I do, to know the real man, the one behind the facade, the name, and the presidency.

The Matt Hamilton we all love.

I watch out the windows of Air Force One, the clouds beneath me looking like a carpet of cotton candy.

I lay my hand over my belly and think of Matt.

I'm so in love with him and I can't believe I'm four months pregnant with our second child.

The debates are over, the campaigning has been exhaustive but inspiring, and now we're heading back home.

Our little family of three, soon to be four.

I know from looking at my parents that no matter how strong the love, relations.h.i.+ps are always tested. Boundaries are pushed, some promises broken, and disappointments happen. That's just life. No road is ever perfectly smooth or straight.

But I also know from looking at my parents that love is a choice. Sometimes the hardest choice of all. And I know as I turn to look at Matthew, his profile showcasing perfect masculine beauty, his lips pursed thoughtfully as he looks quizzically at a stack of manila folders in front of him with his gla.s.ses perched on his nose, that I will always choose him.

A realization that comforts me.

I chose him over a normal life. I chose him over privacy. I chose him over insecurity about whether or not I would ever be enough, as a wife, as a mother, as a first lady. I chose him over fear. I chose him over everything . . .

Love can be pa.s.sionate, wild, consuming, mesmerizing. It catches you in the wake of what seems to be an ordinary life and it turns it upside down until you are fully living with every cell, every pore, every atom in your body. It makes you live life to its fullest potential. Love heightens all your emotions, until your past life looks like you were living on mute, like you were living with senses that were partly numbed.

This awakening to experiencing everything to its fullest potential is what makes life the most joyful and blissful experience, and also the most painful one. Looking down at the clouds beneath me and the blue sky stretching out before me, I simply let myself embrace it all, whatever comes.

I see myself with Matt. I see myself having kids with him. I see myself stretched out between his legs, reclining on him, while holding hot cocoa in my hands, hearing the crackling of a fireplace.

I see myself holding his face to my chest, quietly soothing him after a hard day. After having to make some tough decisions.

I see him climbing into bed beside me and nuzzling my neck, telling me how much he loves me, how I am his angel.

I see him holding our daughter's hand (yes, it's a girl-we got confirmation just last week!), her red hair in two little pigtails as she skips besides her father, looking up at him with all the love and awe in the world, and him looking down at her as if she were the greatest treasure.

I see myself thirty years from now, sitting next to an old and still ruggedly handsome Matt, talking about how we met, how he won the presidency, how he proposed, the life we've had.

Because even if he wins, four more years as president is not much compared to the years he will be an ex-president, and I his wife. The term is not the only thing that counts. What really lasts is what you did, your legacy for all time.

It's a simple choice, really. I choose him. Always.

And despite his own fears and concerns, disappointments and ideas about his ability to be both president and husband, president and father, president and man . . . he chose me.

Whatever happens, we chose each other.

It's cold outside, but that's where Matt and I spend the November evening of Election Day. I bring out a small speaker and I play some music, settling for a song Hozier played on our wedding, ”Better Love.” And we dance, like we sometimes do. I sway in his arms while our team watches television in one of the White House rooms, and Matt Jr. sleeps, and the country waits with bated breath, and I just dance with Matt.

And that's how Carlisle finds us, when he steps outside.

”Well, Mr. President,” he says, smiling wryly as he spots us. ”Looks like you're up for a second term.”

I gasp, my hand flying to my mouth. Matt's hands tighten on me, his jaw clenching, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng with happiness-with gratefulness.

He frames my face and plants a firm, fierce kiss on my forehead, then he steps up to shake Carlisle's hand. ”I couldn't have wanted to hear anything else.”

They shake hands, and Carlisle slaps his back. ”You do me proud, Matt.”

”Where's Matt Junior?” he immediately asks me.

”In bed. Matt, you cannot seriously wake him-”

”Oh yes I can,” he says, already striding inside. I follow him to the bedroom, where he slowly opens the door and steps into the room to find our son's sleeping form.

Matt sits on the edge of the bed and leans down to whisper, ”Hey, bedbug,” waiting for Matty to stir awake.

”Dad,” he just says, grinning a toothy grin.

Matt strokes one hand over his head. ”We're staying.”

Matty's eyes widen. He'd been worried. No matter how much I a.s.sured him that we'd find another home, that his dad has a lot of homes we could move into, he'd argued that none of the staffers he'd come to love would be there, nor the swans in the fountain.

”Jack too?” He blinks, and Matt laughs and grabs his face, kissing the top of his head.

”Jack too.”

”Okay,” he says happily. ”Jack, we're staying!” he says, and we tuck him back into bed and just watch him for a minute in the shadows as he falls back to sleep. Our boy, the apple of our eye. Jack is wagging his tail from the corner of his room when Matt embraces me from behind, cupping my stomach with both hands, his chin propped on the top of my head, his thumbs moving back and forth. He doesn't need to trace the letters ”I love you”; the way he holds me says he loves us, all of us, all the same.

45.

THE END.

Charlotte He won. By both the popular vote and the Electoral College again. The White House staffers breathe a sigh of relief. Matt and I wander the West Colonnade, Matt Jr. asleep upstairs. The noises of the White House are so familiar to us, every creak and shuffle, the hum and the bustle. There will be no transfer of power until four years-four more years of Hamilton change are under way, of slow steps forward, continued increase in economy and security.

It's a cold winter day, and hundreds of thousands of people flood the National Mall to watch Matt's second inauguration.

Usually protocol dictates that the operations supervisor organizes the dinners and the entire Inauguration Day, rearranging furniture for upcoming interviews, moving out one president as the next one moves in-all within a few hours. The few hours when the oath is taken, the luncheon is served, and the parade on Pennsylvania Avenue is held. This year, there is no such furniture moving. The first family is staying. But while that part of the protocol seems to allow the White House staff to breathe a sigh of relief, other parts are still taking place.

Getting ready to welcome the president after the inauguration through the North Portico doors. Organizing a buffet for us to share with our family and friends before the inaugural b.a.l.l.s.

Everyone is buzzing-the standard hustle and bustle of the White House seems to be triple its usual speed.

I spend the morning with a stylist and a makeup artist, while Matt has a security briefing to rehash what has been done so far, and where things stand.

We get ready for church service, and Matty and Jack go with us to visit Matt's father at Arlington Cemetery.

I feel a bottomless sense of peace and satisfaction, humility and honor, as we head to the U.S. Capitol, where the inauguration will take place.