10. Lingerie
Lingerie
ANDY
On a four-ten rotation, weekends off came around every few weeks. When one landed and the weather cooperated, Diana invited me to their family picnic at the park. The kids chased each other across the grass while Doug held court at the picnic table.
"—so I'm coming around the corner of this building, full sprint, and this guy sees me and tries to cut through the parking lot. I close the gap, I get my arms around him, clean tackle, we go down. Textbook."
"He did not tackle the guy, Diana." I pointed my fork across the picnic table. "He tripped over a curb and fell on him."
Doug looked at his wife. "I made contact with the suspect and brought him to the ground. That is a tackle."
"You tripped."
"Still counts."
Diana laughed. She was sitting across from me on the picnic table. Lemonade in hand, legs tucked under her, completely at ease in a way that puts you at ease too. Doug lit up every time he looked at her.
"Well, you caught him," Diana said, reaching over to wipe frosting off Doug's cheek. "That's all that matters."
Doug smiled, satisfied. I let him have it.
Diana started inviting me to family dinners after the domestic call that left the scar beneath my shoulder blade.
A round came through a wall. I shoved Doug out of the way and caught the edge of it.
It was a graze, not a hit. Diana showed up at the ER an hour later.
She'd told me once that she'd been worried when Doug was first assigned a female partner.
I understood. Any wife would be. But after that night, she told me she was grateful he had me. The dinners started the following week.
Doug told everyone I got shot for him. I corrected: grazed. We'd been having this argument at every family gathering since.
"How's the new place?" Diana asked. "Are you settling in?"
"Getting there. The neighborhood's good. There's a bar nearby that's becoming my second home."
After Doug left the table to chase the kids across the grass, Diana leaned forward.
"How are you really doing?"
"I'm fine."
Diana rested her chin in her hand. "When Doug told me you were moving, I asked him why. He said he didn't know."
I laughed. Of course he didn't.
"Was there a special reason for the move?"
I turned my glass in my hands. The condensation was cold against my fingers. "I went through a breakup."
"Ah." Diana nodded slowly. "I had a feeling." She reached across the table and put her hand on top of mine. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."
Part of me wanted to leave it there—the short version, the clean version. But I'd been carrying this alone for weeks. I didn't have anyone else, and Diana was holding my hand.
"No. I think I should talk about it." I took a breath. "I'm glad you're here."
She smiled and nodded.
I told her. Not every detail. Not the bathroom mirror or the tears on the floor.
Just the bones of it. That my boyfriend cheated on me.
That he'd asked me to keep the relationship a secret for four years, and when I found out about the other woman, he twisted the whole story to make it my fault.
That he told me the soft parts of me weren't real.
She listened to all of it without interrupting.
When I finished, she sat back and shook her head.
"Sergeant Handler."
"Don't tell Doug, okay? Please, you cannot tell Doug."
"I won't." She squeezed my hand. "And even if I do, he'll forget about it in a week. Your secret is safe with me."
I huffed a laugh.
"Thank you."
Diana was quiet for a moment.
"That guy was an asshole, Andy. You deserve better than that."
I smiled. It was the first time anyone had said it out loud, and it felt amazing to hear it from Diana, especially.
"Only small men diminish women that way." Her voice dropped. "He looked at everything you are and the only thing he saw was a threat. That's not your problem. That was never your problem."
Diana said it like a woman who knew. She'd married a man who made her feel like the most important person in every room.
"He didn't deserve you, Andy." Her eyes stayed on mine. "You deserve to be with someone who doesn't feel small in your brilliance."
That night, I unpacked the vanilla candles.
They came with me when I moved. I packed them, brought them to my new place, and never took them out of the box. Every time I thought about it, I heard him. The candles, the baths, the romance novels. I watched you try, Andy. It was never you.
But Diana's voice was louder tonight. So I took them out of the box I'd packed them in, set them on the ledge of the tub that I hadn't used since I moved in, and lit them.
The flame caught and the vanilla filled the bathroom. For the first time since I moved in, the place felt like mine.
I pulled the TV close, settled into the water, and picked up where I left off.
He reached across the table and turned her face toward him. She let him. That was the thing about him. He never asked for more than she could give, but he always asked for exactly enough.
"Stay," he said. "Just for tonight. You can go back to being careful tomorrow."
The romance novel was supposed to be the escape. Someone else's love story drowning out the noise in my own head. It worked for a few chapters. Then the hero smiled at the heroine from across a crowded room, and the face I pictured wasn't the one on the page.
Blonde hair. Blue eyes. That grin I couldn't get rid of no matter how many times I told myself I wasn't interested.
I closed my eyes. Tried to shake it. He had no business being in my book. I opened my eyes and kept reading, but the words swam and his face kept replacing every description I landed on.
He slid the strap off her shoulder, his mouth following the curve of her neck. She whispered something against his ear. "You have no idea," he said, "what that filthy mouth of yours does to me." He looked into her eyes—
And I saw Wyatt Brooks.
I turned off the TV.
I stepped out of the bath, wrapped myself in a towel, and sat on the edge of my bed to catch my breath. My reflection stared back at me from the mirror across the room.
Broad shoulders. Arms that showed every hour at the gym.
Calluses across my palms that never softened no matter what I did.
I turned slightly and caught my scar. A thin raised line that hadn't faded.
My body was strong, capable, built from years of running and lifting and jiu-jitsu. The body of a cop.
You've got calluses and a braid you pin up so tight nobody can grab it. That's who you are. You dress like a man, Andy. You think like a man. Some days I think you're more of a man than I am.
Elliot's voice arrived without warning. It always found me when I was alone, quiet, the armor off and nothing between me and the things I was trying not to feel.
Only small men diminish women that way.
Diana's voice cut clean through his.
He didn't deserve you.
I sat with that for a moment. Two voices in my head, and for the first time since I'd walked out of Elliot's apartment, his wasn't the loudest.
I picked up my laptop and opened a browser.
Diana was right. Who was Elliot Handler to tell me what I could and couldn't pull off? So what if I had a little more muscle than the average woman? It didn't make me any less of one.
I scrolled through pages of lingerie. Black lace.
Delicate. Beautiful. I picked a set, entered my name, my address, and my card number.
My fingers moved fast. On purpose. Because if I slowed down even for a second, I'd close the tab and talk myself out of it, and I was tired of talking myself out of the things I wanted.
I hit confirm.
I threw on sweats and heated up Sunday's meal prep. While the microwave ran, I leaned against the counter, took a sip of water, and tapped the confirmation email open.
The delivery address said 823. I blinked. Read it again. I lived at 824. I entered the number too fast. I was one digit off, one house over, directly across the street.
My lingerie was being delivered to Wyatt Brooks's front porch.
The delivery was arriving on my day off. That was the one piece of luck I had, because it meant I could set up camp on the porch with my Kindle and a cup of coffee. All I had to do was grab the box before the delivery guy brought it to the wrong door.
The delivery window was between ten and two. It was eleven-fifteen. Every vehicle that turned onto the block sent my pulse up a notch.
Across the street, Wyatt Brooks chose this particular morning to mow his lawn.
In joggers. Without a shirt. I was trying to intercept a private delivery and the universe decided to put a shirtless firefighter twenty feet from my front porch.
I could see the sweat running down his back every time he turned at the end of a row, and I wanted to scream.
I stared at my Kindle. Read the same paragraph three times without absorbing a single word. Then I felt it. The unmistakable pressure of needing to use the bathroom. I shifted on the chair. The delivery truck hadn't come yet. I could hold it. I could absolutely hold it.
Wyatt looked up from the mower and raised his hand in a wave. The annoyance crept back in. I waved back without smiling. I set my Kindle down. What were the chances of the delivery guy coming in the three minutes it would take me to use the toilet?
High, apparently. Very high. Because when I stepped back onto the porch, a delivery truck was turning the corner at the far end of the block. Already leaving.
I looked at my doorstep. Empty.
I looked across the street.
Wyatt was on his porch with a box in his hands and he was already pulling at the tape.