6. The Secret
The Secret
KNOX
The Lantern was full that Friday.
Selena had hired help since Gus died. His photo still hung above the register, and every time the crew walked in, she poured a glass of whiskey and set it beneath the frame.
We took the table we always did. Travis was already two beers in and finishing a story about a raccoon he'd found inside an engine compartment on second watch. Greene was shaking his head. Carl was texting Jill under the table.
Andy and Wyatt were across from me. Andy was mid-sentence when I tuned in.
"—but the bentonite clumps better. The tofu one is supposed to be flushable, which sounds convenient until you read the reviews. And then there's this pine-based litter that's supposed to be better for the environment, but I don't know if cats actually like the texture."
"Why are you two talking about cat litter?" I said.
Wyatt took a drink. "We're getting Birdie a cat. But Andy wants to know everything there is to know about cat care before we bring one home."
"I've never owned a cat," Andy said. "I want to get it right."
"Have you picked the cat?" I asked.
"We're taking Birdie to the shelter on her birthday and letting her choose," Wyatt said.
"There are so many cute ones at this shelter, though. Look." Andy turned her phone toward me and started scrolling through photos. A gray one. A striped one. An orange one sitting in a shoe.
"They all look the same to me."
Andy lowered the phone and gave me a look.
"I don't know what to tell you," I said. "I've just always preferred dogs."
"That's exactly what Doug Price said. Now Duchess sleeps on his chest every night and Diana says he talks to her in a baby voice when he thinks nobody's around." She put her phone down and shook her head.
I took a sip of my beer. "The only good thing about cats is they won't tattle on you to the cops."
"Watch your mouth or I will arrest you right here at this table."
Wyatt snorted into his beer. I couldn't help it either.
Andy had been one of the better additions to the group. She was easy company, and it was always entertaining to watch her get annoyed.
A couple of hours in, the table had settled into its usual shape. Travis, Greene, and Carl had drifted to the pool table, and I could hear Travis arguing about a bank shot from across the room.
At our end, it was just the three of us. Wyatt had his arm around Andy's chair.
"So." Wyatt looked at me. "Have you heard from her?"
Andy straightened. "Her?" She looked at Wyatt, then at me. "Who's her? Are you seeing someone?"
Wyatt smiled. "Tell her."
"Tell me what?"
I looked at my glass. Then I told her.
Two years ago, the crew responded to a structure collapse after an earthquake.
I found a woman on the second floor, crouched behind a counter.
I was getting her out when a beam came down across my neck.
She started pulling the debris off me before Wyatt even reached us.
The two of them carried me down the stairs and out to the parking lot.
My neck was open from my ear to my collarbone. Wyatt had pressure on it, but we needed a stretcher. She told him she was a nursing student and she could hold it. He put her hands where his had been and went.
She talked to me the whole time. Asked me my name, what I did for fun, what I wanted to do with my life. She kept me awake until the helicopter came and the medics took over. She walked beside the stretcher with her hands on my neck until they pulled her off.
By the time they loaded me, she was gone. I never got her name. I spent two years looking for her. Every ER, every gas station, every woman in scrubs I passed on the street. Nothing.
Then the crew got dispatched to a house fire. I pulled a woman out of a second-floor bedroom. When the smoke cleared, I was looking at the same face.
Andy pressed both hands over her mouth.
"Knox."
She smacked Wyatt's arm. "Why didn't you tell me this story?"
"It wasn't my story to tell."
She turned back to me. "So how are things going? Have you asked her out?"
"No."
"But you want to?"
I thought about the past week. She texted me at two in the morning because she couldn't sleep, and we ended up talking about nothing for an hour.
She sent me a photo of the sunset from Gracelyn's balcony with the caption I think I can see the Strip from here if I squint.
I'd started checking my phone between calls, and when something from her was waiting, the rest of the shift felt lighter.
"I'm taking it slowly," I said. "We've only just met. I don't want to come across as a creep."
Andy nodded. "Friends first. That's good. That's respectable."
I turned my glass on the table. "She's looking for a place to stay. For her and her brother."
Andy sat forward. "Barb has a rental. I think she only rents to women, but we can ask her. She might know other renters too."
"That would help. Thank you."
By the third round, the pool game was done and the table was full again. Travis had his chair tilted back. Greene was peeling the label off his bottle. Carl pulled out his phone and opened a new note.
"Alright. Jill wants me to get everyone's birthdays."
"For what?" Travis dropped into the chair next to him, still holding his pool cue.
"She says it's ridiculous that I don't know them."
Andy looked around the table. "Hold on. You all spend almost every day together, and you don't know each other's birthdays?"
"I know all of them," Travis said.
"You do not," Greene said.
"Try me."
He went around the table one by one. Wyatt, Greene, Carl. He got every single one right.
Then he stopped at me.
"I don't know yours." He said it like this was a wound that had never healed. "I have asked you at least four times."
"And I haven't told you."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm not a sixteen-year-old girl."
"What does being sixteen have to do with knowing your friends' birthdays?"
Travis held up a finger. "Fine. I'll go through Thompson's personnel files."
I looked at him. "You're going to break into confidential employee records?"
Wyatt was smiling into his beer. Andy had her chin in her hand, watching like this was the best entertainment she'd had in weeks.
"I don't think you're stupid enough to try that," I said.
Travis opened his mouth, closed it, and pointed at me.
"That is the problem, Sullivan. I am exactly that stupid."
The table laughed. He pointed at me again as he stood up.
"I will know your birthday by the end of this year."
I took a drink and didn't give them a thing.