Long Distance Desire

The lock on his apartment door clicked shut with a dead, final sound that echoed the day’s failures. Kurt dropped his briefcase by the door, the thud muffled by a week’s worth of unopened mail. He didn’t bother with the lights. The sprawling, indifferent glow of Manhattan bled through his floor-to-ceiling windows, casting long shadows across the polished hardwood floors. It was a view that had once made him feel powerful, on top of the world. Tonight, it just made him feel small and exposed.

He loosened the knot of his tie, the silk a goddamn noose he’d been wearing for fourteen hours straight. Every muscle in his back and shoulders screamed in protest. It was the kind of bone-deep exhaustion that came from smiling while your candidate imploded on live television, from spinning horseshit into something vaguely palatable for the morning news cycle, from knowing, with gut-sinking certainty, that the campaign was a dead man walking. They were hemorrhaging money, polling in the single digits, and their latest 'bold' policy announcement had been met with a collective, national shrug. Fucking pointless.

Kurt walked to the wet bar, his reflection a tired ghost in the mirrored backsplash. He looked like shit. Dark circles under his eyes, a tension in his jaw that hadn't eased in months. He grabbed a heavy crystal tumbler and poured three fingers of Islay Scotch, the peaty smell of it a familiar comfort. He took a long swallow, letting the burn sear a path down his throat, a welcome distraction from the loop of fuck-ups playing in his head.

His phone buzzed on the granite countertop, a fresh wave of anxiety jolting through him. Another email from the campaign manager, probably. Another fire to put out. He ignored it. He ignored all of it. The noise, the pressure, the relentless, grinding defeat.

In the quiet of his apartment, a thousand miles from the political machine chewing him up and spitting him out, there was only one thing he wanted. One person.

His thumb swiped across the screen, muscle memory guiding him past news alerts and work-related group chats until he found her name. Addison. Just seeing it there seemed to lower his blood pressure. He could already hear her voice, that warm Texas drawl cutting through the New York static in his brain, sharp and clear and real. She was the only real thing left most days.

He took another drink, the whiskey warming his belly, and sank onto the leather sofa. Outside, the city pulsed with millions of lives, a universe of noise and ambition. But all of it faded away. He needed her counsel, her wit, her uncanny ability to tell him he was being an idiot without making him feel like one. He needed to hear her laugh, a sound that could make even a day like this feel survivable.

It was more than a ritual; it was a lifeline. He hit the call button, the electronic tone ringing out in the silence, a signal sent across the country into the late Texas night. He held his breath, waiting for her to pick up, waiting for the one voice that could make sense of the chaos.

“Another five-alarm fire at campaign headquarters?” Her voice was exactly as he’d imagined it: a low, honeyed drawl that immediately cut through the Scotch-induced haze.

Addison was sitting cross-legged on the floor of her Austin apartment, surrounded by a fortress of legal binders and scattered exhibits. A highlighter was tucked behind her ear, and a half-empty mug of coffee sat cooling on the hardwood beside her. She’d been staring at the same deposition transcript for an hour, the words blurring into nonsense, until Kurt’s name lit up her screen. It was an immediate reprieve.

“Worse,” Kurt groaned, the sound crackling with static and exhaustion. “The candidate tried to relate to blue-collar voters by talking about his summer job in college. Turns out his ‘job’ was overseeing the landscaping at his father’s country club for twenty grand a month. It was a goddamn bloodbath on cable news.”

Addison let out a short, sharp laugh. “Jesus, Kurt. You can’t spin that. That’s not a gaffe, that’s a fucking character flaw. You need to tell him to stop trying to cosplay as a human being.”

“I told him that. He said my negativity was ‘harshing his authentic vibe.’”

“His authentic vibe is that of a sentient bag of lukewarm mayonnaise. You should get that on a bumper sticker.”

A real laugh finally broke from him, a rough, tired sound, but it was real. “God, I fucking needed to hear your voice.” He took a drink, the clink of ice against glass a familiar sound across the miles. “Polling is in the toilet. We’re officially less popular than Nickelback and colonoscopies.”

“High praise,” she deadpanned, leaning back against her sofa and tucking the phone between her ear and shoulder. She picked up a stray pen, tapping it against a binder labeled Peterson v. Sterling Corp. “Well, while you were babysitting the compost pile that is your candidate’s ego, I actually accomplished something today.”

His tone shifted instantly, the weariness replaced by genuine interest. “Oh yeah? Don’t leave me in suspense. Did you finally get that asshole Sterling to admit he knowingly sold faulty heart valves?”

“Not yet. But I did get his entire internal email server admitted into evidence. The one his lawyers swore up and down was ‘irretrievably corrupted in a server migration.’”

Kurt let out a low whistle. “No fucking way. How?”

“I found the IT guy who did the ‘migration.’ Turns out he’s got a nasty gambling problem and Sterling Corp stiffed him on his severance. For a couple grand and a promise of immunity, he was more than happy to provide us with a pristine, uncorrupted backup. He even gift-wrapped the emails where Sterling calls the FDA regulators ‘toothless old eunuchs.’” A grin spread across her face, the thrill of the victory still fresh. “Their lead counsel looked like he was going to vomit all over his two-thousand-dollar shoes.”

“Addy, that is fucking brilliant,” Kurt said, his voice full of an uncomplicated pride that made her chest ache. The exhaustion was gone from his tone, replaced by the focused intensity she knew so well. It was the voice he used when he was genuinely engaged, when something truly captured his intellect. For the last ten years, she had been one of those things. “Tell me everything. I want a full, unadulterated play-by-play of the moment his face fell. Did he go pale? Did he start sweating? I need details.”

She laughed, settling in. His problems, her triumphs, it didn’t matter. It all just flowed together, a continuous conversation that had been going on for a decade. The miles between them dissolved. It was just Kurt and Addison, the way it always was. “Alright, get comfortable,” she began, “it started when Judge Miller asked Mr. Henderson to please repeat his assertion for the record…”

She walked him through the entire exchange, her voice animated, mimicking the judge’s dry tone and the opposing counsel’s sputtering outrage. Kurt listened, completely absorbed, interjecting with sharp questions and appreciative laughter. When she finished, he let out a long, slow breath.

“God, Addy. It’s like watching a master at work. You haven’t lost a step.” He paused, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “You know, this reminds me of Albright’s seminar. The final presentation on campaign finance reform.”

Addison’s own smile widened. “Oh god. Don’t remind me. You were dying up there.”

“I was not dying,” he protested, but there was no heat in it. “I was executing a complex, nuanced argument that was perhaps… ahead of its time.”

“You were drowning in your own talking points,” she shot back, her voice laced with laughter. “You had three different colored notecards and you kept mixing them up. You looked like you were trying to land a 747 in a hurricane. I thought you were going to pass out.”

He chuckled, a low, rumbling sound. “Okay, fine. I was bombing. Hard. I remember looking out at the class and all I could see was Albright’s smug fucking face, just waiting to fail me. And then I saw you, in the third row.”

“I was trying not to laugh,” she admitted.

“No, you weren’t. You caught my eye and you just… mouthed the word ‘simplify.’ So I threw away the goddamn notecards. I just started talking. I used that stupid analogy you came up with the night before, about the bake sale.”

“The PTA bake sale versus a corporate fundraiser,” she supplied, the memory as clear as if it were yesterday. They’d been crammed into a study carrel in the library, surrounded by empty coffee cups, the air thick with the smell of old books and desperation. He’d been trying to memorize statistics; she’d been telling him to tell a story.

“Exactly,” he said, his voice softer now, stripped of the earlier bravado. “And it worked. I just talked to them. I passed. Barely. But I passed.” He was quiet for a moment. “You saved my ass, Addy. You’ve always been good at that. Cutting through my bullshit and finding the one simple thing that actually matters.”

The compliment landed squarely in her chest, warm and heavy. “You just get lost in the weeds sometimes, Kurt. You’re the smartest guy I know, but you think everyone else is, too. My job is to remind you that most people, even political science professors, just want the simple truth.”

“It’s more than that,” he said, and the shift in his tone was unmistakable. The humor was gone, replaced by a raw sincerity that always managed to catch her off guard. “It’s not just about simplifying things. It’s… you’re my anchor. When I’m spinning out, like tonight, you’re the one person who can talk me off the ledge. I don’t know what the fuck I’d do without that.”

The admission hung in the air between them, charged and intimate. The thousands of miles of static and fiber optic cable seemed to melt away, leaving only his voice, low and essential, right there in her ear. Her own fortress of legal binders felt like a flimsy defense against the sudden wave of emotion that washed over her.

“It goes both ways, you know,” she said, her voice quieter than she intended. “You were the only one who didn’t think I was a cold-hearted bitch for wanting to go into corporate law instead of working for some non-profit. You said I had a killer instinct and should get paid for it.”

“Because you do,” he said, without hesitation. “And I’m always going to be your biggest fan.”

The words settled between them, more substantial than the thousands of miles of wire and air that separated them. Your biggest fan. It wasn’t a casual compliment; it was a statement of fact, a role he’d held for a decade without question. A warmth bloomed deep in Addison’s belly, spreading through her limbs until the chill of her air-conditioned apartment was a distant memory.

“I know,” she finally managed to say, her voice barely a whisper. She could picture him perfectly: sitting on that worn leather sofa, a glass of whiskey in his hand, the skyline of a city she’d only visited a handful of times glittering behind him. The image was so clear it hurt.

A comfortable silence fell, not awkward, but full. It was the kind of quiet they had learned to share, a space where all the things they didn’t say could still be felt.

“I should let you sleep,” Kurt said eventually, his voice rough with fatigue again. “You have asses to kick tomorrow. And I have to go figure out how to put out a dumpster fire with a water pistol.”

“You’ll figure it out,” she said, her confidence in him absolute. “You always do.” She hesitated, wanting to say more, wanting to keep him on the line just a little longer, to hold onto the connection that felt so tangible right now. But the day was over. The call had served its purpose. “Get some rest, Kurt.”

“You too, Addy.” There was a finality in his tone, but also a promise. “Talk tomorrow.”

“Always,” she replied.

The line went dead. The sudden silence in her apartment was jarring. For a long moment, Addison just sat there on the floor, the phone still pressed to her ear as if she could absorb some residual trace of him. The legal binders surrounding her, monuments to her ambition and success, suddenly felt like little more than colorful stacks of paper. Her massive victory in court today, the thing that should have been the sole focus of her joy, felt muted, incomplete. It was a win she had needed to share with him to make it fully real.

She finally stood, her limbs stiff, and walked to her kitchen to pour a glass of water. Her reflection in the dark window showed a woman who had everything she’d ever worked for. A successful career, a beautiful apartment, a life she had meticulously built for herself. But the familiar warmth spreading through her chest wasn’t from any of that. It was from him. It was a warmth that had nothing to do with Texas heat and everything to do with a voice from New York City, a voice that knew her better than anyone else. And with that warmth came a slow, creeping ache—the undeniable recognition of the distance.

Across the country, Kurt stood up from the sofa and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window of his apartment. The city was a sprawling galaxy of light, a relentless, glittering machine that demanded everything and gave back a cold, anonymous beauty. He’d wanted this, fought for this life in the center of the universe. Tonight, it just made him feel profoundly alone.

He finished his whiskey, but the burn in his throat did nothing to chase away the feeling her voice had left behind. Her laughter, her sharp intellect, the unwavering belief in her tone when she’d said, “You’ll figure it out.” It was a more potent drug than any alcohol or political victory. For ten years, she had been his constant, his true north. The calls were their ritual, a lifeline he’d come to depend on more than he ever admitted, even to himself.

Staring out at the millions of windows, each containing a life, a story, he felt the weight of the space between his and hers. It wasn’t just miles. It was a chasm he filled every night with the sound of her voice. He wondered, as he often did after they hung up, what it would be like to not have to hang up at all. To turn from the window and see her there, curled up on his sofa. The thought was so powerful, so vivid, that for a second, the entire city outside seemed to fade to black, leaving only the sharp, painful longing for a woman a thousand miles away.