The problem with early exposure to Terminator 2 was when the president ranted on social media and caused an international crisis, visions of nuclear apocalypse, with everyone and everything turning to ash and blowing away in a super-heated wind, took over your brain.

A speech on tax policy in one hand and a take-out container in the other, Graham Wilcox couldn’t shake the thought. This was it. The way it was going to end. The cause of death for humanity was going to be feckless presidential tweeting.

No more dark, humid summer nights with a million points of light shimmering down on him. No more roll call votes when he didn’t know the outcome and could feel the excitement throbbing in the General Assembly chamber. No more Chrismukkah holidays with his big, messy family.

And no more Cadence Martel. Cadence, who was probably watching the news and writing her own boss’s speech just three blocks away. Graham had many regrets now that he might be facing the end, but she…she was most of them.

There didn’t need to be regrets.

He set the speech and his dinner down hard enough to make the spork in the container rattle, and then he flipped to a clean page in his notepad and delineated two columns. One he labeled Reasons to go over there. Cadence was extremely attractive and also extremely smart and specifically a policy wonk. That might be an unprecedented combination. She was a bald-eagle-unicorn-hole-in-one. He wrote that down and then glanced into his open messenger bag.

When he’d left the office a few hours earlier, she’d handed him a county-by-county analysis of a school funding proposal. Distract yourself with this. ~CM she’d jotted on the cover page, and she’d added a smiley face. Or was it a winky face?

He was going to have to add it to the other notes from her he had tucked away inside his desk. He’d started the collection basically the moment they’d met. A simple crush at first, it had escalated every time she’d shared a white paper or snagged him a piece of someone’s birthday cake or helped him whip votes or debated policy with him. He’d stumbled further into it until he couldn’t find his way out.

But he’d held his tongue and hadn’t breathed a word of what he felt. Not only because he didn’t want to be that guy—from his observation, men were lining up around the block to be that guy—but also because he didn’t want to hold her back.

That became the first item in the other column, the Don’t do this, idiot column. Cadence saw this job, legislative assistant/speechwriter/shrink, as a stepping stone to something greater, and she had the brains and skills to get there. She should move on: analyze national legislation, fix the country’s budgets, and generally make the world better. Someday, she would leave without a backward glance, and he would wish her well. Wistfully.

Sure, there had been moments when he’d thought she was watching him with something more than friendliness and professional courtesy in her eyes. She’d even asked him to come up for a drink once, and he’d had dreams about what might have been every night since. Breadcrumbs to madness, those looks and words, but he’d swept them up and cherished them. It felt presumptuous to even write “she puts winky faces on my memos” and “she once asked me to come into her house and consume alcohol” on paper, but he did, because there was no point in not doing a full accounting.

The breaking news chyron swept in on TV. “We’re getting word the president is tweeting again,” the anchor reported breathlessly, and the apocalyptic images came roaring back.

“World ending” went on the list, and then Graham added, “live without regrets.”

Okay, so that wasn’t his regular mantra. He normally lived according to a different, more diffident rule: “Do small, incremental things to make a tiny difference in your immediate community.” But that was before the election, before this president, before the world went ass over tit.

He sat with his lop-sided list for a full thirty seconds. The evidence was in favor of going to see her…but this was him. He wasn’t a risk-taker. He didn’t do grand gestures.

But this might be his last chance.

He grabbed his keys and his phone, and he went, for once, to be brave.

The night was balmy though humid as Richmond springs tended to be. Every April the city suddenly remembered it was southern and made up for lost time. Graham dodged couples out for strolls and more than a few hipster gentrifiers enjoying their nights out—which probably included him.

Oh Christ, he was going to die as a hipster gentrifier. That was the cruelest cut of all.

The lights were on in Cadence’s tiny brick Victorian, but she might have gone chasing her own what-ifs. Graham opened the gate, walked past the small apple tree, flowers and herbs, to the postage stamp-sized porch. He knocked. Softly.

No answer. Well, this had already been about one hundred times more recklessness than he was comfortable with. He could sleep now—or watch headline news all night—with a clear conscience.

He was creeping from the porch when the door opened.

“Graham? What are you doing?” It looked like Cadence had showered recently and her hair, pulled up in a ponytail, was still damp. She was wearing yoga pants and T-shirt…and no bra.

Suddenly, there wasn’t enough oxygen.

“I need to talk to you,” he managed.

“That must have been some memo.”

For once, this wasn’t about policy. Only her enigmatic scrawls had anything to do with this. “It’s not about work.”

“Ah.” The light in the hallway silhouetted her, so he couldn’t make out her expression, but from her tone, he could tell she was smiling. “Then what can I help you with?”

Graham should have started composing this on the way over, written some notes on a card or something. He had plenty of experience coming up with the words, but he had much less practice delivering them. “Have you been watching the news?”

“Oh.” Her attitude went serious. “Yes, of course. I’m worried, and I’m certain everyone is.”

“It got me thinking, what if this is it?”

“Like it it?”

“Yeah, like the end of the world.”

Cadence nodded and her ponytail bobbed. “I guess I better get another bowl of ice cream. And stop working on that speech for Patty to deliver tomorrow.”

Just like he’d suspected. Knowing her that well made him glow with something remarkably like optimism. “Would you have any regrets?”

A long pause. A long, long pause. Then she whispered, “Yes.”

He shouldn’t feel hopeful, he shouldn’t, but this wasn’t a fool’s errand anymore. However it worked out, he knew it was right to tell her.

He shifted closer, his hands tight and swollen and his heart walloping into his ribs. “Will you tell me?”

“You first.”

He had been the one to start this. “What I’m about to say, Cadence? It’s okay to tell me no. It’s okay to shove me off your porch and call me a jerk, and I promise I’ll go and I’ll never say it again or change our relationship at work or anything. Okay?”

Her expression, her posture, was intent, serious. “Got it.”

He inhaled, savoring the rasp in his throat, and then he spat the words out. “When you moved here, I thought you were the prettiest woman I’d ever seen. But now I know that’s wrong. You are, but it’s not only that, not anymore. You have a keen legal mind, but it doesn’t stop you from understanding the politics. People do one or the other, but you’re both, and it makes me want to know what you think about everything. But I want to know how you taste too. This is going to sound crazy—I mean, crazier, this is already crazy—but I think I might…I think I might love you.”

During his speech, Cadence had moved one of her hands to the bottom of her throat. Her eyes were shiny, and she was blinking rapidly.

Oh God, he’d completely screwed up. Of course. He was always doing that. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I was upset, I was lonely, I never should have—”

She crossed the porch in two long strides, rose up on her toes, and kissed him.