Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
DANIEL
On Thursday, I burst in the wrong door on a call.
The alarm turned out to be a malfunctioning sensor in the dry storage of a restaurant on Commerce Street.
No fire. No danger. Back at the station inside forty minutes.
But I’d gone in the wrong door, which I had not done since my first year on the job, and Diego had stared at me over the roof of the engine in a way I knew I’d be hearing about for the foreseeable future.
When we returned to the station, he said, “Wrong door.”
“I know.”
“You’ve been in that building eleven times.”
“I know.”
“You want to talk about what’s going on with you?”
“Absolutely not.” I began to store my gear.
The problem was concentration. Compartmentalizing was a skill of mine.
The ability to set whatever was happening in your personal life on a shelf and deal with what was in front of you was practically a job requirement, the kind of thing they didn’t teach you at the academy but you figured out fast or you didn’t last. I’d been doing it reliably for eight years, through breakups and family drama and one genuinely terrible flu season where I’d functioned on four hours of sleep and sheer bloody-mindedness.
I was not doing it reliably now.
What I was doing now was thinking about Ellie. Specifically, Ellie in the kitchen with her hands in my hair and her legs wrapped around my hips and the sound she’d made against my mouth right before Gus had announced himself from the front hall in that carrying, unsuspecting voice of his.
I’d been imagining the continuation of that moment with a focus and dedication I was emphatically not bringing to anything else, because we hadn’t actually managed to continue it in the past week and a half.
Turns out having a septuagenarian housemate was like having a giant toddler.
He interrupted at the worst possible times, required monitoring, and had absolutely no concept of what anyone else in the house might be in the middle of.
Gus had wandered into the kitchen twice while the tension between us was sitting thick enough to taste, hollered up the stairs once at what could only be described as a critical juncture, and on one truly memorable occasion appeared in the living room doorway at eleven o’clock at night in his robe and ancient slippers wanting to know if anyone else heard something on the roof or if he was losing his mind.
It was a squirrel. There was no continuation that night either.
To be continued, I’d said in the kitchen, forehead against hers, both of us still catching our breath.
To be continued, she’d agreed, her fingers still curled in my shirt.
The universe, operating through the specific and enthusiastic instrument of Gus Granger, had other ideas entirely.
Moose found me in the weight room mid-afternoon, where I’d retreated on the theory that physical exertion might help.
It was not helping.
He leaned in the doorway with his arms crossed. “Wrong door, Meatball.”
“I’m working out.”
“You’re sitting on a bench, staring at the wall.
” He came in and dropped onto the bench across from me, and I heard footsteps behind him.
Twitch appeared at his shoulder, and then Rico behind Twitch, the three of them arranging themselves with the comfort of men who spent too many shifts together and operated as a single organism when the occasion called for it.
Powell materialized in the doorway a moment later, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, which meant Cord had probably sent him.
“So,” Moose said. “Thinking about your wife?”
“I’m working out,” I said again.
“You’ve been staring at that wall for four minutes,” Twitch said. “I timed it from the hallway.”
“Why were you timing it from the hallway?”
“Because Paladin told us you had a look on the way back from Commerce Street, and we wanted to see if it was still there.” He tilted his head. “It’s still there.”
“What look?” I asked.
“The look,” Moose said, as if this were self-explanatory.
“Man whose brain went somewhere more interesting and forgot to come back,” Rico supplied helpfully. He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed and the grin of a man who’d won five hundred dollars on the strength of his judgment and felt his credibility was fully established. “Classic.”
“Going in the wrong door happens,” I said.
“Not to you,” Moose said. “In six years I have never once seen you go in the wrong door.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“The first time,” Twitch said, “happened to coincide with you moving in with your wife. Who you married. Who you’ve been in love with since before any of us can remember.” He paused. “I’m not saying those things are connected. I’m just noting the timing.”
“They’re connected,” Rico said with conviction.
“They’re definitely connected,” Moose agreed.
“The wrong door,” Powell said from the doorway, “is the least of it. You want to know what Diego said on the way back?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “He said you looked like a guy composing a text message in your head the entire drive.”
“I wasn’t composing a text message.”
“What were you composing?”
I didn’t answer that because what had been scrolling through my head wasn’t fit for sharing with anyone but Ellie. In great detail. Preferably with hands-on demonstrations.
“He was thinking about his wife,” Moose announced to the room at large.
“We know, Moose,” Twitch said.
“I just think it bears repeating.”
“How many times are you going to repeat it?”
Moose considered this with genuine seriousness. “I’m not sure yet. At least a few more.”
“This is the most fun we’ve had since you backed the engine into the fence,” Twitch said to him.
“That was one time, and the visibility was poor,” Moose said with great dignity.
“The fence,” Rico said.
“The visibility—”
“There was no visibility issue, Moose, it was two in the afternoon—”
“Can we,” I said, “focus on literally anything else?”
They looked at me, unperturbed. These men had found their entertainment for the afternoon and weren’t giving it up.
“Wrong door,” Moose said contentedly, and that appeared to settle the matter.
I considered what Moose had said. Since before anybody could remember. Which was basically the beginning.
The thing was, I couldn’t argue with the timeline.
I’d been telling myself for years that what I felt for Ellie was friendship, and it was.
It was genuinely, fully that, and I wasn’t going to pretend it had all been something else dressed up in different clothes.
The friendship was real. It was the foundation.
But foundations weren’t the whole building, and somewhere along the way I’d built something on top of it that I’d been refusing to examine.
Gus had been looking at it for a decade. Pointing at it with his fork and naming it at every Sunday dinner, and we’d both smiled and deflected, and he’d never once stopped being certain.
I thought about the ring in the Decatur flea market.
The way I’d picked it up without knowing why and carried it home and put it in my jacket pocket and left it there for four years.
Four years of wearing that jacket to Sunday dinners.
Four years of sitting across the table from her while Gus made his case.
I remembered the vows in that hospital room. How I’d started talking and meant every word before I’d finished the first sentence. How none of it had been performance by the time it came out.
I thought about her hands in my shirt and her legs around my hips and to be continued, and Gus and his terrible timing, and the fact that she’d stopped arguing with me in that kitchen and looked at me like she was done being afraid of it.
What if we don’t, I’d said.
And she’d kissed me back like she’d been waiting to do it for years.
Maybe she had been. Maybe we both had. Gus certainly believed that.
I drove home at the end of shift with the windows down and the late October air coming in cold and clean, and I mused about the fact that I was going home.
Not to my apartment. Not to a lease through April.
Home. To a house with a cat who’d decided I was acceptable and a grandfather-in-law who was ahead of schedule at PT, and a wife who reorganized canned goods when she was panicking and kissed me back like she meant it.
Gus had been right all along.
The idea settled in my chest with the solid, unargued weight of something that had always been true and was only now getting its due.
I pulled into the driveway and sat for a moment with the engine off, looking at the lit windows of the house.
To be continued, I’d said.
I was ready to continue.