Her Secret Service (Jane Roe 1), Jason Letts [story reading .txt] 📗

as easily worked with cutoff jean shorts and a plaid button-up shirt, but she looked bone-tired and irritable too. Her eyes had quite a bit of redness to them and dark circles underneath.

“I’m not going to be issuing any kind of statement that this is an amicable breakup or that I still fully support the president,” she said. Taken aback, Jane quickly shook her head.

“My apologies, but you are misunderstanding me. I’m not concerned at all about anything of a political nature. The only thing that matters to me is your safety, and there are a few things to go over to ensure that going forward,” Jane said, and Bethany gave her a begrudging look.

“Sure, you say that now, but I’ve been around here long enough to know where it always ends up,” she said, brushing past Jane to walk across the room and forcing her to follow. “Everything eventually revolves around his approval ratings, his optics, his needs. Wait, that’s not mine. Don’t put that in there.”

A person bobbled a small vase he was clearing off a shelf and nearly dropped it as they swept by. It should be noted that the FLOTUS’s office had none of the grandeur of the Oval Office. The table, the armchairs, couch, and desk were nice enough, but they also looked quite ordinary.

How come the American people didn’t elect a first-couple as equals rather just one person to be the executive with the other ending up in a purely ceremonial role? Jane supposed the answer was in case one member of the couple decided to leave. Considering how much stuff Bethany needed to pack up around the room after being in it for two months, it occurred to Jane that this may not have been what she’d intended to do going into it.

“I can assure you that I’m not concerned with any of those things,” Jane said, stepping over a stack of folders piled up on the floor. “But there are practical realities of your security that need to be addressed. I’m sure we can count on the president intending to extend protection to you at least throughout his time in office, even though your marriage has ended.”

Bethany stopped and turned to Jane with a hard look, but there was a trace of her distraught interiority behind it. In a way, Jane couldn’t help but sympathize. No matter how she came to this decision it had to be brutal on her, and Jane couldn’t imagine what she was really going through.

“How magnanimous of him to spare me some protection, but you can let him know that I don’t want it and none of that will be necessary,” she said.

“What?” Jane asked, taken by surprise.

Bethany winced like she didn’t know what to do and sat back on the couch, rubbing her eyes before breathing deeply.

“The whole point of this is to get away from you people. No offense, but I don’t want people watching over me every second of the day. I don’t want people listening right outside the door when I’m alone with…the man who was my husband. I can’t stand having people know where I am every second, not having enough privacy to fill a thimble. This isn’t what I signed up for,” she said, getting more emotional.

“Bethany,” Jane said, taking a seat, but before she could say anything more the First Lady kept right on going.

“I don’t think anyone really understands what this has been like for me. When we got married, Alex was a 10th-grade history teacher. Then all of a sudden he decides to run for Congress. I hate to say it, but deep down I never thought he’d win. It was uncomfortable with him being in Washington all the time, but I lived with only seeing my husband two days a week, sometimes less, for three terms.

“Then one morning we woke up in bed and he says he’s going to run for president. I said, oh, great, but deep down I was like, yeah, sure, that’ll never work out. Little did I know that he would be the first person in one hundred and thirty years, since James Garfield, to win the presidency as a Congressman. I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t want it. What I want is my life back. We should be back at home in Dayton trying to sneak time to make love while our grade schoolers destroy the house, but his work has taken over our lives and prevented me from having the family I was supposed to have. It’s never going to happen with Alex.”

Jane listened quietly, at once trying to weigh this woman’s discomfort and anguish against the security needs of the people in these positions and the threats constantly looming over them. She never envied the protectees and the microscope they lived under at all, but this was the first time she’d run into someone who hadn’t at least in some way wanted it. Perhaps Bethany Morrin wasn’t able to think through her decision because she had no one to talk to among all these staffers.

“You know, sometimes I think about how I’m living a life I never expected to. What are any of us doing here, right? It might seem strange, but somebody has to do it,” she said with a grin.

As far as keeping her safe went, that would be most easily done if Jane could convince her to stick around the White House. But her attempts to be friendly and sympathetic didn’t seem to go very far.

“Well, I’m sure you applied for your job, or for something with the Secret Service, and then this was offered to you. And you accepted. Nobody asks to be First Lady. There’s no application process. We didn’t get hired. Just forty-six women and one man who’ve been dragged into a position with no responsibilities, no power, huge expectations, and a completely inappropriate level of attention,” Bethany said, her eyes frequently drawn to the people moving around the room.

Jane picked