Trapp #2
The screen went black as he rolled his eyes again, taking momentary refuge from the throng of townsfolk at the side of one of the tents.
Julia was somewhere around. It was odd that he’d not yet passed his girlfriend, but he had no doubt that she’d been pulled into running the school’s raffle table or taking sign-ups for the summer booster events.
Trapp ducked his head, kicking at one of the tent poles, trying his best to appear as if her were on official firehouse business as he lurked behind the tent while the cellphone slowly came back to life.
He groaned again once the screen lit up.
A line of messages, several from his mother, attempting to press him into service at various other points around the event, the messages from Grayson that had pushed to his watch, one from a co-worker, the group chat between him, his father and two eldest brothers .
. . and a single message from Julia, received hours earlier.
Do you think we can talk? Are you going to be around at all today?
He could do her one better. He was available right now.
Sorry, I’m only just seeing this. Phone is still acting up.
Where are you?
There was a bounce in his step as he hastened towards the PTSA tent, clear across the wide park, nowhere near his lemonade duty.
“Trapp, I hope we’re going to see you in the Summer Homedays parade!”
He grinned at a mothwoman, never slowing. “Wouldn’t miss it!”
“Trapp, I was hoping I’d be able to ask when the best time might be to reach out to your dad about the parking garage over on—”
“Rhonda is the gatekeeper, not me. But that sounds like a call for the mayor’s office.”
“Trapp.” He nearly collided with a familiar wolf, the PE teacher from the high school, the same one who’d taught there when he’d been a student, two decades earlier. “Now, I know they’ve got you busy at the station, but I need you as shortstop for the Chamber of Commerce charity game.”
“Coach, is that a joke? This town is full of knees not pushing forty, including my brother, who actually sits on the board. You can’t tell me one of them isn’t able to step up and —”
“None of them get the other team’s wives hooting and hollering. And Owen already said yes. You think I want you for your fielding skills? You’re a distraction, Hemming. Next Tuesday, six p.m. over at the library fields.”
Trapp laughed in outrage. “I am wounded by that.”
The other werewolf made a dismissive hand wave. “Don’t be late!”
He was closer to the tent than he’d realized, turning to meet Julia’s eyes immediately. Her smile was small, almost wistful as he approached, still laughing.
“I saw you coming,” she murmured as he leaned down to press a kiss to her temple. “How many voluntold positions did you accept just crossing the field?”
He chuckled. “Technically only two, but the night is young and summer’s just around the corner.
I’m sure I’ll be snookered into trimming someone’s hedges and visiting a summer camp by the end of the week.
But I’ve been able to avoid the dunk tank, and that’s really the only goal of the day, so I can swallow down the rest.”
Trapp took a step back to survey the tent, immediately catching the eye of a gorgon on the other side of the center table, the principal from the middle school where Julia taught sixth grade.
“Trapp, there you are,” she said, as though he were late to an appointment he hadn’t known he was meant to keep. “We were just talking about next year.”
The smile he saved for Jackson’s office, for the community center volunteers, one that said we’re all on the same team, on cue. “That feels like a loaded topic during the last week of school.”
“As I was saying,” the principal went on, ignoring him, “we’re all hoping you’ll stay with sixth grade next year.
I know they’re a good bit rowdier than the fourth graders you’re used to; it’s all the hormones.
But it’s nice to finally get another science teacher, and I’d hate to lose you after one year. ”
Trapp’s eyes moved from the gorgon to his girlfriend’s, waiting expectantly.
Julia knew how to perform on script as well.
After all, if Trapp had been put in the role of the small-town hero star, then Julia had been perfectly cast as his love interest. Girl next door-beautiful, athletic, impossibly kind, always cheerful, always empathetic.
The fireman and the schoolteacher — well-liked, well-matched, as if central casting had written their relationship into existence.
She had her teacher conference smile, her monthly-brunch-with-the-werewolves smile, a bright, beautiful better-half-of-the-perfect-couple smile she employed at the coffee shop and farmer’s market.
The smile she used for principals and administrators wasn’t dissimilar to the smile reserved for Trapp’s father, and that was what he expected her to flash now.
Poised, professional, a look that said I got this . . . but it never came.
All around them, Cambric Creek continued celebrating the future.
Graduating seniors manned every table, swarming together for photos whenever the opportunity arose.
The scent of kettle corn drifted across the square on the evening breeze, and near the edge of the PTSA tent, over the sound of the band playing in the gazebo, a small goblin child burst into tears over a balloon-related tragedy, the shiny mylar drifting upward without looking back to the outstretched hands of the little girl.
“That’s very kind of you.”
Trapp blinked. The silence that had stretched between the gorgon’s statement and Julia’s response was overlong, and her words didn’t have the reassurance he and the principal had been expecting.
Well, it’s the end of the school year. She’s exhausted; all the teachers are.
This isn’t the week to press about next year, not unless the union wants a stack of resignations.
After all, if he’d been pressed about his future with the department only hours after responding to the scene of a grisly car accident, he’d not hesitate to tell Magruh to lick every part of his ass on his way out the door. Time and place. Read the room.
The moment was broken when a family of moths stepped up to the table to buy raffle tickets; the gorgon’s attention diverted as she counted tickets off the giant roll.
An orc Trapp had known since they were in diapers together stepped up to Julia’s side of the divided table, a small, green-skinned child on his shoulders.
Rasst’s wife was pregnant, and it had been months since Trapp and Julia had seen the orcish couple.
“Please tell me we’re going to do a weekend at the lake this summer. Vina and I decided that if we don’t start scheduling grown-up conversations, we might never have them again. I just got a new raft, and this one needs to learn to be a little more reckless before his sister gets here.”
The question was directed to Trapp and Julia both, the lakeside weekend a tradition they’d kept with Rasst and his family for the four years they’d been together. Trapp laughed at the little orc’s furrowed brow, gripping the sides of his father’s hair as Julia made change for his tickets.
“Of course we are! Wouldn’t miss it. Are you kidding?
After the school year we’ve had?” He motioned to the human at his side, her movements slow and her head bowed, not lifting.
“Plus, you know Gray’s getting married, right?
That’s going to be a circus. I might move into the cabin and not come back.
I’ll have to make sure Lowell didn’t leave it trashed the last time he stayed there, but absolutely.
Talk to Vina and let’s compare some dates. ”
Trapp traded knock-knock jokes with Rasst’s little boy, turning once the orcs had moved on, surprised to find himself alone.
Julia stood several feet away from him now, no longer smiling at the flow of passersby from the front of the table.
Her movements were slow as she gathered up her bag, measured and deliberate in a way Trapp only noticed because he had spent his earliest childhood years reading microexpressions and learning to intuit when silence was peaceful and when it held the threat of raised voices.
His grandfather had only lived with them for a few short years, but it had been enough.
He, Jackson and Gray all joked that they were bonded over their shared childhood trauma in a way that they simply weren’t with their three younger siblings, but the joke was merely a smile the truth wore.
They were his brothers in a way that Lowell, Owen, and Liam were not.
Similar to the way Vinlop and Ragnam were his brothers in uniform, in a way the rest of the firehouse was not.
They’d come through the ranks together, had each started in the box, EMT to paramedics, road trauma not shared by the members of Cambric Creek’s Fire and Rescue brigade who’d only ever worked on the fire side.
He had a smile for every script he found himself in, but the corner of his mouth faltered now. He didn’t know his line, and that wasn’t a position Trapp was comfortable in. Not at all.
Julia’s movements were still slow as she gathered up her bag, still not meeting his eye. His brows drew together when she swung the bag over her shoulder, realizing she wasn’t merely retrieving something from its depths.
“What—where are you going?”
Blue eyes met his at last. She did look tired, but end-of-the-year exhaustion wasn’t the only thing he saw there. “I’m going home. I told them I’d help until seven, and now it’s ten after.”
The notion of leaving a volunteer post before the event was done and dusted was completely foreign to him.