Chapter 15 Annie
ANNIE
The fairgrounds at this hour feel like a half-remembered dream—everything familiar, everything softer.
The sky is pale and undecided, the color of a bruise that never quite forms. A single gull circles like it took a wrong turn two states ago.
The fans in the medic tent tick as they swivel, pushing warm air from one side to the other like they’re bored of their own job.
The ground is powder, not yet churned to paste by boots and spilled lemonade.
For once, it’s quiet enough to hear my own thoughts. Which is probably why my mind is a blank.
No, that’s thanks to Brick. That man…
Mac slips through the tent flap like a secret with a grin. She’s got two coffees in a tray and a camera bag bumping against her thigh, hair in a knot that looks effortless. She puts the tray down on the folding table and slides one cup toward me. “Morning, doctor. Bribery for your soul.”
“Sold that years ago,” I say, but I take the cup with both hands. The lid is warm and the smell is dark and sweet, the kind that makes your shoulders unclench before you even swallow. “You’re a good person.”
“Tell my mother.” She drops into the chair opposite mine and crosses one ankle over her knee, watching me over the rim as I take a long drink. “Okay. With Jaden absent, we have a window.”
“For what? Inventory? I love inventory.”
“For gossip.” She looks me over. “And a wellness check, because you are glowing.”
“I’m sweating.”
“You’re glowing,” she repeats, sing-song, and points with two fingers at my face. “This is the kind of shine you can’t buy in a bottle. So. Who?”
“Who what?” I peel a piece of tape off the edge of a suture kit and stick it to my thumb because fidgeting looks better when it’s productive.
“Don’t make me get clinical. I will start using the word oxytocin, and no one wants that at sunrise.”
I take another sip, try to keep my mouth from curving. It has a mind of its own. Kind of like Brick last night.
She leans in, elbows on her knees, eyes bright. “Come clean already.”
“You first,” I counter. “Some of us have memories and recall a camera-wrist that was in need of treatment.”
She groans and covers her face. “You’re never going to let me live that down.”
“Not for at least a week.”
She peeks between her fingers. “Okay, fine. I will admit to having made out with a very delightful source of B-roll.”
I laugh. “Then stop deflecting and name names.”
“Absolutely not,” she says, then grins.
I set my cup down, the heat lingering in my palms. “Well, if we’re playing confession chicken, I have one caveat. Whatever I say next, it’s not Reno. It will never be Reno ever again.”
Mac leans back and throws her head with a hand to her forehead like she’s in an old movie. “Thank God.” She pretends to fan herself with a glove. “I feel twenty pounds lighter.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And relieved. That man started off great but flamed out hard, and you deserve better,” she says, dropping the theatrics and tipping her head. “Okay. Proceed.”
“Proceed to what, exactly?”
“To the information. You’re glowing. You hate mornings. You smiled at me before the coffee even touched your tongue, and that never happens unless you saw a puppy. So unless there’s a golden retriever under this cot, it’s a man.”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions.”
“I’m making correct assumptions. Who?”
I stare at a nick in the table, the little bite out of the laminate that I keep meaning to sand. “It’s someone I shouldn’t be involved with.”
“Aren’t they all?”
“I’m serious, Mac.”
She doesn’t gasp or scold. She just shifts in her chair like she’s moving closer to a good fire. “Ah.”
“Don’t get excited.”
“I’m not excited,” she lies. “I am concerned and also mildly thrilled, which are not mutually exclusive states. You never do anything unexpected or anything you shouldn’t be doing.
” Her eyes fall to slits like she’s studying an interesting rock.
“Shouldn’t be as in it would get you fired, or shouldn’t be as in it complicates all the wrong things, or shouldn’t be as in your heart knows better? ”
“Yes. To all three, possibly.”
“Okay.” She taps her cup with a fingernail, thinking. “If it’s someone you shouldn’t be with, maybe you should listen to that instinct.”
“Maybe.” I don’t like saying it out loud.
She nudges my ankle with her sneaker. “Or maybe the instinct is just fear in a nice dress. You’re allowed to want things.”
“We don’t always get to keep what we want.”
“I know,” she says softly. “But we get to decide how honest we are about it.”
I sit with that for a second, then flip the spotlight back like we’re fourteen in a sleepover. “Is your hookup someone you shouldn’t be with?”
Mac squirms, then catches herself. “Only in the sense that they are a little young for me.”
“How much younger?” My chest does a small, stupid flutter, because the years between me and Brick are not insignificant.
“Six years,” she says, fast, like ripping a Band-Aid. “Please don’t judge me for robbing the cradle.”
I snort. “That’s nothing at our age. As long as everyone is an adult, age doesn’t matter.”
“How young is too young for us?”
“I haven’t thought too much about that,” I admit. “But anything younger than twenty-one is probably too young for us.”
She nods. “That feels right.” She points her cup at me. “So how old is your…not-Reno?”
The word your slides right into a place in my chest that has been too quiet. I take a breath. “Forty-six.”
Mac’s eyes bulge. “But you’ve always said you only date guys within a year of your age. That’s why I thought you’d have a fit over my hookup’s age.”
I shrug, cheeks hot. “There are exceptions to every rule.”
“And he’s exceptional?” she asks, teasing, but gentle with it.
The truth rises before I can dress it. “In every way.”
She grins like she discovered buried treasure. “You’re killing me.”
“I’m killing myself,” I say, half laughing, half not. “It’s wrong. It’s complicated. It’s—”
“Real,” she finishes. “Which is the worst and best combination.”
We sit in that for a moment, our coffees cooling, the fan ticking, the sunlight crawling across the tent’s floor like a cat finding a warm spot.
I can hear a radio clicking somewhere out by the pens, a burst of static and a voice telling someone to move a gate.
It’s the happiest I’ve felt in a long time and the most precarious.
Then she quietly asks, “Do you like who you are when you’re with him?”
“Yes,” I say again, and my voice surprises me. It’s steadier than I expect. “I don’t have to perform. I don’t have to shrink. He listens. He also won’t let me get away with my bullshit.”
“So he’s a person,” she says, relieved. “Not a project.”
I shake my head, and a half smile creeps onto my lips.
“Okay. I like him, in theory.”
“You don’t know him.”
“I know you,” she says. “And I know what this face looks like when you’re about to climb into a burning building for the satisfaction of saving the wallpaper. That’s not the face you have. You have the face you get when something is easy in the middle of everything hard.”
I swallow and look at the doorway. The breeze decides to help for one long, generous second. “I hate that you’re good at this.”
“I know you a little.” Mac watches my eyes. She doesn’t look at the phone. She drains her cup, sets it down, and stands. “Promise me one thing.”
“Define promise.”
“If at any point your gut says stop, you stop. Even if your heart says go.”
“Deal. Your turn. Promise me you’ll ice that wrist before you work.”
She groans. “Rude. But fine.”
We’re grinning at each other like teenagers when the radio on the shelf cackles to life. “Grounds to medical, just FYI, the announcer will be testing audio in ten, and the petting zoo llama has escaped, again. Copy?”
“Copy,” I say into it, because I like being useful even when it’s stupid. “We’re on standby for hoof-and-mouth drama.”
Mac cackles. “Do not let that llama in here. I will film you fighting it.”
“Go away,” I say fondly, and she salutes with two fingers and slips out into the bright, just as the speakers across the fairgrounds crack and pop twice and a voice booms check one, two, three louder than God.
I’m alone with the fans, the radio, and my traitor of a phone. I pick it up because I’m tired of pretending my hands aren’t itching.
Morning, Doc, the text reads. You at the tent?
Yes, I type, then add, Pretending to enjoy the breeze.
He replies, I’ve got shade and a bad joke to trade for ten minutes of your time.
You’re incorrigible.
And you’re smiling. Don’t lie.
I set the phone down and let my head fall back just enough to feel the stretch in my throat. I do not give him ten minutes. I do give him the truth.
Maybe later. Early clinic hours.
He sends a thumbs-up and nothing else, which is somehow even worse than teasing. It leaves the air around me fizzing like a soda poured too fast.
I restock the glove caddy, tape a new list of heat-illness symptoms to the wall, align the gauze by size like it matters.
The movement calms me. The thought keeps humming anyway: I shouldn’t be with him, and I am already with him, in all the ways that count and none of the ones that break contracts.
I’m mid-thought with a teenage girl who thinks a twisted ankle is proof of moral failure when the flap lifts and Jaden strolls in backward, arguing with someone in the lane about using ice for beer and not for medical.
He turns, sees me, and breaks into that grin that makes the whole place feel a degree cooler.
“Who missed me?” he sings, then actually looks around. “No one? Liar.”
“You’re late,” I say, which is a lie. He’s exactly on time. I toss him a pair of gloves. “I’ve already saved twelve lives.”
“Perfect. I brought stickers. You get a gold star.” Jaden whistles tunelessly while he stacks gauze by size. “I’m going to the taco truck for lunch. They have gluten-free everything. It’s like a miracle.”
I piggyback my order onto his, and the day rolls forward.
And I hold the truth of this morning—the coffee, the confession, the relief, the rule I broke when I said the word exceptional.
I don’t know what it means yet. I’ll know when I know.
For now, I have a tent to run and a best friend to protect from her own wrist and a nurse to feed and a phone that hums to life when Brick texts me.
Or, maybe that’s just me humming to life. Can’t tell.
Mac was right. I’m glowing, and that’s Brick’s doing. He is exceptional.
In every way.