Page 8 of Main Event

Travis is three rows ahead of me, off to the left. He gave me a nod when he came in and found his seat. He gets it. He’s not here for me, and he’s not here for himself. He’s here because she asked and because he understood what she was asking. That’s the version of Travis I respect.

The committee chair calls the session to order.

I don’t listen to the testimony the way the committee does.

I watch the room.

That’s the thing Mack always says—you learn more from watching how a person receives a punch than from watching the punch itself. What happens to the room when Andi speaks is more instructive than the words, because I already know the words. I was in the kitchen at six o’clock every morning while she refined them.

The chair, a woman in her sixties who came in looking at her phone, puts the phone down at the two-minute mark and doesn’t pick it up again.

The man on the far left—the one who’s been skeptical in the press, who has taken money from two of the agencies she’s naming—stops shuffling his papers at four minutes and looks up.

By the eight-minute mark, the room understands it prepared for the wrong fight.

I’ve seen that moment before. In gyms. When a fighter realizes the opponent he studied isn’t the one standing in front of him.

She’s doing what she came to do.

I let myself feel that for a moment. Not pride, but something quieter. There’s a unique joy in witnessing someone you care about fully embrace their authentic self—without masks or pretense—even in a space not designed for them, but they still make it their own.

Then I go back to watching the exits.

She finishes her remarks.

Two committee members ask questions. She answers them with the same precision she brought to the testimony—not performing, not advocating, just providing information that happens to be devastating. The chair thanks her. The session moves on.

Andi gathers her materials and goes to the door. She doesn’t look at the gallery.

Travis is already moving through the side exit. I let him go first.

They’re in the corridor when I walk through. Andi has her back to the wall, Travis facing her, a few feet of space between them—close enough to talk, far enough to keep it clear. He’s saying something I can’t hear, but the scene tells me what I need: quiet, precise, nothing being performed.

She nods once, the way she does when she’s heard what she needed to hear. She answers. He laughs—short and genuine.

Whatever this is, it’s being closed properly.

I don’t interrupt.

Travis sees me over her shoulder and gives me the same nod he gave me in the gallery. He says something to Andi. She turns toward me.

“How did it look?” she asks. Not fishing. Asking for data to assess the entire situation.

“The chair put her phone down at the two-minute mark.”

She processes this. “The skeptic?”

“Stopped shuffling at four.”

The corner of her mouth moves. “Okay.”

“Yeah,” I say.

My hand finds the small of her back as we move toward the exit. She leans into it slightly. I know her tells well enough to recognize it for what it is—how she lets herself be supported without admitting she needs it.

Travis has already gone ahead.

“Are you all right?” I ask. Just for us.