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In retrospect, of course it’s Helen who notices. Or— of course it’s Helen who says something, Andy amends, because there’s a non-zero chance this is just one of those things all the queer women of DC thought was common knowledge.
Andy does a quick sweep of the room. CJ’s knees are at her chin where she’s tucked into the loveseat, and she’s very carefully avoiding Andy’s eye. Donna’s jaw is ever so slightly ajar, her grip tightening on Amy’s calf. Amy looks— well, of the room, considering that she’s the one person here Andy hasn’t slept with, she looks surprisingly nonplussed. Helen’s grin is approaching new levels of shit-eating.
“God, that’s so butch of you,” Amy teases, the first one to bounce back. She lowers her voice, an imperfect approximation of a teenage boy: “Am I your first, baby?”
Andy manages to tamp down on the instinct to bury her face in her hands, but only just. Still, she can feel her entire face going beet red. “Shut up.”
“Aww, I think it’s cute,” Donna assuages, releasing Amy’s leg so she can close some of the distance between she and Andy. For a second, Andy exhales, but she should know better, should know Donna well enough to catch the wind-up. “You took very good care of me,” she says, pairs it with a bawdy wink that has Amy collapsing into giggles.
CJ takes another sip of her grasshopper, finally manages to pull herself out of her head and return to the conversation. “There are worse fetishes,” she says, so feather-light the rest of the room almost misses it but for Andy’s immediate kick to her shin.
“Fetishes,” Helen repeats, snorting. “You sound like a doctor.”
CJ’s lips twitch upward. Andy looks away, forces her gaze anywhere else.
“It’s not my fault I’m such a catch,” Andy says wryly, tosses her hair over one shoulder. “Oh, Andy, you’re my lesbian awakening, Andy, I’ve never seen a woman so beautiful—”
This time, it’s Andy who gets smacked, Helen leaning over and swatting at her shoulder. Andy grins, unrepentant, blows a kiss in Helen’s direction.
“Oh, we’re just falling over ourselves left and right to have you break the seal, hm?” Helen rolls her eyes, but her smile betrays her, fond and sweet. “You and Matt, I swear. One brain between the two of you.”
Donna cackles, her head thrown back against the couch cushion.
“Hey,” CJ frowns, points, “no heterosexuality allowed.”
Amy leans over and catches the offending finger, shakes her head. “You can’t stop her from bringing him up,” she says on a sigh, mock-sorrowful. “Even with her mistress right there—”
Andy chokes on her wine. “You’re such an asshole,” she manages through coughs. “All of you. Horrible.”
Helen thumps her between the shoulder blades. “I’m an equal opportunity lover,” Helen says, the arch of her eyebrow earning another peel of laughter from the room.
Donna tilts her head, shrewd and assessing. “How many?”
It takes Andy a second to realize it’s directed at her, even paired with the unyielding focus of Donnatella Moss. “Me?”
Donna levels her with a capital-L Look, the kind Andy thinks she must’ve perfected working with Josh for so many years. “No, the Queen of England. Yes, you.”
Andy breaks out her fingers, a perfect mirror of Molly counting her toys this morning.
“You have to check?” Amy half-shouts, voice cracking in the middle.
“Shush,” Andy replies, starting over. She starts with the women in front of her: Helen, CJ, Donna— and goes from there. Ellie, after a particularly awful fundraiser. Tabatha, in what may very well have been the only good threesome involving a pair of divorcees. The single mother of one of the twins’ daycare friends. “Six, I think?”
“You think?” Helen asks, sounding impressed.
CJ rolls her eyes. “I don’t want to know how many of them I’ve met.”
Andy hums, mischievous, doesn’t elaborate for the good of Claudia Jean’s fragile psyche.
Amy wrinkles her nose. “And I’m the one people have to watch out for.”
Donna reaches up, interlaces their fingers, gives a gentle squeeze. Andy wonders if she can read between the lines, if the passing remark means more than it seems.
Still, the room refuses to lose its levity.
“It’s one of the Bartlets, isn’t it?” Helen asks, heedless of CJ’s pout at the continued digging. “Not Zoey, can’t be. She’s practically a baby.”
The so-called baby in question is going to be married in the spring, but Andy just shakes her head and smiles. CJ aims a baleful, wounded look her way and Andy mimes zipping her lips, throwing away the key, to the sound of boos from the peanut gallery.
Helen is, predictably, undeterred. “You’d be ten times more insufferable if it was Abbey,” she decides, and Andy wonders if she’s the only one who catches Amy’s rising flush. “Liz?”
Embarrassment gives way to smugness, the crook of Amy’s grin. “Couldn’t have been.”
CJ forgets to be nervous about learning the intricacies of the Bartlet women’s sexual habits, snaps a wide eyed look Amy’s way. “Somebody’s sure.”
Andy sneaks a peek at Donna, who has stayed conspicuously silent. She’s fidgeting with her hands in her lap, studiously avoiding eye contact.
Amy snorts. “Liz and I fooled around in that barn constantly when we were kids. I bet I beat Doug, too.”
“Lord knows somebody should,” CJ intones, drawing even Donna out of her stupor and into the laughter that ensues.
Helen does the math. “Eleanor?”
“Don’t sound so shocked,” Andy retorts dryly. “We’re practically neighbors.“
“So we were right,” CJ marvels, prompts a grin and a fond eye roll from Donna, who must remember the same conversations. “Uh, word was Eleanor was gay,” she elaborates, “or that her parents thought so, anyway.”
“You could’ve just asked,” Donna points out, cat that got the canary smile. “She’s surprisingly talkative, once you get to know her.”
Amy laughs, full-throated and bright. “You talked girls with Ellie Bartlet?”
Donna lifts her chin primly, shrugs. “I’m very likable, Amelia.”
Amy doesn’t exactly blush, but Andy grins at the sight of her anyway. Amy catches her eye, grimaces at being caught. “No arguments here,” Amy mutters. And then, louder, thrilled to get the heat off herself: “Y’know, Congresswoman, a girl could feel left out.”
Andy knows an escape hatch when she hears one. She’s more than happy to cut Amy a break, given that she plans on interrogating her later— it’s not a fight worth having in front of Helen Santos. Andy leaves her glass safely on a side table, which is probably worth more than her entire house, and crosses the room, crawls into the nonexistent space between CJ and Amy and tugs Amy into a kiss.
It’s polite, perfunctory, but they do both lean into it a little bit for the sake of their audience. Donna starts giggling at their feet.
Andy grins, swipes at the smudge of lip color she’s left on Amy’s cupid’s bow. “Better?”
Amy laughs, airier than Andy expects. It’s good for her ego. “Yeah,” Amy says, punctuates it with a swig of her drink, “all better.”