After Afterall

14

Derek tilts his head a little and I hear him ask, "What?"

I shake my head and take another sip of coffee. "Nothing."

He gives me a knowing look and without a word, I think he knows exactly what I'm thinking.

"So what do you want to do today?" I ask.

"I was thinking of snooping," he says matter-of-factly.

I'm sure my eyes go wide. "What?"

Derek laughs and leans back against the counter. I love having these moments alone with him, but I wish any of his detractors could see him like this: relaxed, happy, and confident. "This house has to have some secrets and I want to know them. So I want to snoop. And then maybe a walk."

"In that order."

"Well, not necessarily." Derek turns his attention back to the stove. "What kind of eggs do you want?"

"Scrambled," I say, but I'm distracted by the idea of snooping around Camp David. "Aren't we not allowed to snoop? Wouldn't it be breaking some unwritten NSA law or something?"

"I'm the President. It's my job to know everything."

I roll my eyes. "First, you don't know everything. Have aliens landed? What's in Area 51? Who really shot Kennedy?" Derek glances at me with an amused smile, but says nothing. "Exactly. And even if it's okay for you to look around, it's definitely not okay for me. I'm a civilian."

Derek plates our food. He's very good at ignoring me. "I'm thinking we should just start in the big meeting room over there." He points beyond the living room. We never made it that way last night.

"How do you know there's a meeting room over there?"

"Oh, I creeped around this morning." He looks so proud of himself.

I sit down at the table. "You can't creep around when this is your house."

Derek sits next to me and his knee touches mine. "It doesn't feel like my house. I'm not yet convinced this isn't an AirBnB."

He looks so cute as he takes a sip of coffee and then a bite of toast. He's looking around like he's wowed that this place is his and I get it. The lifestyle change must feel insane. I sit up a bit and lean across our plates and kiss him and then sit back down. Derek is staring at me when I ask, "So, the meeting room first?"

\\\

We unfortunately get dressed because Derek can't really just walk around in boxers all day and I can't keep wearing this robe (which Derek assured me is brand new). Most of the time he's in suits and I'm in scrubs, so it's nice to just be in normal clothes.

He takes my hand and we walk into one of the various meeting rooms. One wall is lined with bookshelves and old looking books, frayed and weathered. The other looks to have a drop-down projector, which doesn't seem to fit at all in the old-fashioned room. There's a table in the middle, big and heavy, made of probably some fancy wood like mahogany. The chairs are leather and everything in the room smells rustic.

Derek walks to the wall of books and plucks one and flips through the pages.

"Are you expecting to pull the right book to find a secret passageway?" I tease.

He laughs. "There are actually secret passages around here, but no one's told me about them yet."

"I guess that makes sense."

For a while Derek fans through the books and I keep trying to find a listening device or a camera, but to my untrained eye, it feels like we're alone. I walk around Derek and take the book from his hand and replace it on the shelf. I turn back to Derek and he's watching me. I step forward, realizing we only have a few more hours, and I place my hands on his chest. He catches my drift quickly and takes my hips, pulling him to me.