Trapp
Routines were a funny thing. They faded entirely into the background of one’s daily grind, never noticed until a single piece failed to land where it was supposed to, throwing the universe off balance in the space of an instant.
Failing to prepare was preparation for failure, and he had no intention of doing so.
“Well, well . . . look what the cat dragged in. Wasn’t sure if we’d even see you today.”
“Never been fond of being the victim of a cat in that scenario.” This was a game he knew how to play, having perfected it with his parents for years — play along and establish what they knew before giving anything of value away. “More of a dog person, to be honest.”
The chief and the others at the firehouse that morning had been sympathetic, listening to his story and clapping him on the back.
Trapp hadn’t bothered to hide that his first instinct had been to hit Cambric Creek’s nightlife and lose himself at the bottom of a bourbon bottle, and he hadn’t needed to.
After all, his relationship was over, his now-ex on her way out of town for good, and he was single.
Xenna had been most sympathetic when he’d told her the news about Julia leaving, ensuring he was the first to do so, as he picked up coffee for the firehouse.
Damage control meant getting out in front of an issue before it became a problem.
The sheepwoman’s mother-in-law had passed away not that long ago, and he knew she’d be sympathetic to his tale of his ex’s decision to return to her hometown for caretaker duty.
For his part, he simply couldn’t walk away from his own family and the department that needed him.
“Well, I understand why you both made the decision you did, but I’m sorry you had to. The firehouse is so lucky to have you, Trapp.”
In addition to being the busiest and most successful business in town, the owners of the Black Sheep Beanery were also the arbiters of who was worthy of admiration and support in the downtown area.
They traded in gossip like it was a stock market, and their opinions could make or break someone’s reputation.
It was a fact his own father acknowledged.
The night Trapp had pulled into his parents’ driveway, having been invited over for dinner by his mother, only to find Grayson and Jackson’s cars already there, he knew he was walking into a trap.
His brother’s election had been right around the corner.
Grayson’s face had been smug, Jackson’s strained, and their father had wasted no time once Trapp had joined the table.
“We need the coffee shop.”
Trapp understood immediately that he was meant to deliver it. After all, he was the Hemming everyone admired. He was the Hemming everyone saw. He was helpful and friendly and well-liked, and there was more power in that than either of his elder brothers recognized, but their father did.
“Okay,” he’d agreed, tucking into his mother’s chicken marsala.
It had taken just under a week. A week of smiles and banter, interspliced with reminding Xavier and Xenna what his brother’s campaign stood for, and what his victory would mean for the future — inclusiveness for all nonhuman residents; not just who City Hall deemed worthy of protection.
Grants for the businesses that funded their excellent public schools.
And perhaps more valuable than anything else — points with the most influential werewolf in the region.
Xavier had put the Hemming For Mayor sign in the Beanery’s window on the sixth day, and that was that. He and his sister influenced more than the town’s caffeine addiction, and everyone knew it.
Getting his story out in front of Xenna early was crucial. He was feeding his own well, confident that his version would become the official one by the end of the business day. And that’s how we get in front of a problem.
The week passed methodically, days slipping away as they always did.
Smiling through a visit from the daycare, allowing two dozen pre-schoolers of every species to climb through Engine Three, pretending not to notice the little reptilian boy who tried to chew a reflective sticker off his turnout coat.
A werebear suffering from cardiac arrest, a call to an Oldetowne property in the middle of the night, when the trollish owners woke to the slight smell of natural gas.
His first night off was spent at the Pickled Pig.
He’d overheard several different versions of his own breakup, just standing at the bar, each one contradicting the last with enough confidence that none of them could comfortably survive beyond the sidewalk.
Trapp hadn’t corrected a single one. He didn’t need to.
If he stayed visible, smiled at the right moments, and continued showing up exactly where everyone expected him to be, the details would sand themselves smooth.
They always did. Keep busy. Keep moving. Keep smiling.
He’d reminded himself that the worst was past him and he was single, leaving with an Elvish employee of the carriage house who flirted with him every time he came by for the yearly fire inspection, slipping out of her condo early enough that he was able to catch the last trolley of the night.
He slept through the majority of his three days off, going back to Grayson’s house for dinner the night Vanessa stayed in the city, a dinner that was mostly spent on a video chat with Lowell.
Their chaotic younger sibling had spent the entirety of the call talking a mile a minute, in between slurping up a bowl full of noodles, telling them he’d fallen halfway down a mountain the previous week, having lost his footing initially and then been dragged down by his camera gear until a llama had broken his momentum.
“I’m going to need a comprehensive list of everything I’m not allowed to say in my speech at the reception,” he added, punctuating his words by flicking a bit of broth on the phone lens as he slurped.
“Am I allowed to share my own news? Slide shows of embarrassing photos I have of you? You’re not going to hold something against me forever if I didn’t even know it was off limits. ”
Trapp snorted, nearly choking on his steak. Lowell was the sort who would absolutely announce during someone else’s wedding that his girlfriend was pregnant and also he’d started a crowdfunding effort to buy the llama he’d injured and would be coming around to the individual tables to collect.
Grayson’s laughter was a rough scrape, shaking his head. “Lowell, I truly can’t emphasize this enough, but no one — fucking no one — is giving you a microphone at my wedding. For any reason. To be honest, you’re lucky you’re invited at all.”
Once he was back at work, no one mentioned the break-up, and he was content to let the four years with Julia disappear into the horizon with the rest of his past away from Cambric Creek.
There was a series of fender benders on the highway, a catwoman in heat who’d required coaxing off the roof of the adult toy store, crowd control at the Makers’ Mart, and then, the last night of his shift, a car accident at the edge of Greenbridge Glen, the orc on the side of the road needing to be cut from his truck after being side-swiped on his way back to the commune in the neighboring hamlet.
His leg was in bad shape, trapped beneath the crumpled dashboard, and by the time the vehicle had been cut open and separated, the helicopter from Healers had already been dispatched.
He liked the adrenaline rush that came with this part of the job. He hated seeing anyone hurt, especially children, but Trapp couldn’t pretend that he didn’t love the rush of chemicals to his brain, leaving him amped up and jittery for hours afterward.
It was dawn by the time he left the hospital, and the coffee shop was just opening.
Trapp parked in the same spot he always did, whenever it was available, a slight bounce in his step, still keyed up from the fraught helicopter ride to the hospital.
Muscle memory was enough to carry him into the coffee shop on its own, as comfortable and familiar as turning the key in his own front door.
They had only just unlocked the door, he realized, the churn of voices not yet competing with the hiss of the espresso machine enough to make conversation impossible.
“There he is.” Xenna’s voice sounded exactly as it should, Trapp’s coffee shop smile already curving his mouth, eyes sparkling. “It’s been, what? Three days? I was beginning to think you’d found another coffee shop.”
Her smile was there, and if he were anyone else, Trapp might not have noticed that it didn’t quite touch her eyes. A piece out of place, off-script, the universe tipping. Something in him tightened ever so slightly.
“Oh, you guessed it. I’ve been seeing other cafés on the sly.”
His smile widened, waiting for her to catch his delivery, to say her line, keeping to the script of their daily lives . . . but she didn’t. Another smile, slightly thinner.
“That sounds about right, doesn’t it?”
Trapp stood there a moment longer than he needed to when she turned away to fill his cup. Muscle memory could have carried him throughout the majority of his day, but his body didn’t know how to navigate a missed line here, where every line and smile reliably landed.
Nif, the slender tiefling who worked most mornings, came out of the back, tying her apron as she pushed through the swinging door.
When her head raised, Trapp couldn’t tell if he’d imagined the moment when she stopped short at the sight of him, already bending to pull out the blender jars before he could blink, lining them up without looking up at him again.
This was the part when Xenna would ask after his mother or pump him for details on Grayson’s wedding planning, maybe a good-natured grouse about the job Jackson was doing or say something glib about his newly-single status.
“We met a friend of yours,” was what she said, voice light, eyes never rising from the pastry case as she set his coffee on the counter. “From med school.”
“Med school?” There was no one he knew from med school here.
Trapp made it a policy to barely know the doctors at Healers, save for the ones he was forced to interact with most frequently in the trauma ward.
Grayson’s friend Shay managed the private practice next door, but other than the shifter being a member of the wedding party, Trapp had no reason to socialize with any of them. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“Mmm, she told us all about it. Doctor Brunelli.”
Trapp blinked. The coffee shop doors pulled open, an entire construction crew moving through the doors noisily, prematurely ending the conversation as Trapp drifted down the counter stiffly. Doctor Brunelli. His wolf shifted, curling up, his guts clenching at the sound of her name.
Xavier came out of the back at that moment, grinning when he saw Trapp. “Hey, man. You’re in early today.”
He nodded, woodenly relaying that there had been an accident serious enough to require an emergency airlift to the hospital.
Xavier winced. “I don’t know how you all do it, day in and day out.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you do.” He glanced over his shoulder to where his sister rang out the construction crew, Nif lining up the cups in a neat line.
“Look, man . . . that doctor. She was in here telling a story. About you.”
Trapp felt his smile harden slightly. “I was in medical school for four years. I’d hate to think I’ve only managed to generate one story.”
“No. But I think you’d probably hate the particular one she told.”
Around them, the sounds of the coffee shop increased. The grinder had whirred to life, the door opening several more times, the rest of Cambric Creek waking up, facing the day with their vice of choice.
“ . . . What did she say?”
Xavier gave him what he could only call a sympathetic smile. “I don’t think repeating it would improve either of our mornings.”
“So it was bad.”
“I think . . .” The sheepman paused, choosing his words carefully as he operated the espresso machine. “I think she believed she was telling a funny story. And it’s not like you’ve been home nursing a broken heart since Julia left, so . . . it looks the way it looks.”
Trapp nodded, a heavy stone taking up residence within him. He could only imagine what fucking Adriana Brunelli had said about him. Here. In his home. “And everyone else?”
Xavier laughed shortly. “C’mon man. Everyone else listened. You know how it goes.”
Trapp nodded again. He did indeed.
Facts were negligible. He’d spent a lifetime at Grayson’s side to know that, and he knew firsthand that facts were usually the least important element to any situation.
Rumors were survivable, and everyone loved to embroider the truth.
Stories, on the other hand . . . stories were something entirely different.
Stories were engines, they breathed with life of their own.
People repeated stories because they enjoyed inhabiting them, and every retelling sanded away another inconvenient edge of the truth, changing shape, becoming something new as it grew.
Case in point — your break-up story. He thought of the several days he’d spent making sure the breakup looked like something he’d agreed to.
“Thanks, man.”
Xavier nodded as Trapp turned away, edging around the line to avoid Xenna and Nif.
He didn’t want to see again how much this story had already altered the way they looked at him.
In just a few days. Adriana Brunelli. The new doctor.
The doctor Grayson’s friend Shay had called him about, when she was still interviewing.
The malfunctioning cell phone stuck the pavement so hard that it bounced, the recently repaired screen cracking again.
It wouldn’t do to show his temper here, in the middle of Main Street. He needed to go home, needed to sleep for at least a few hours. Needed to wake up clear-headed and face this head-on. Get in front of it early.
After all, fucking Adriana Brunelli wasn’t the only one who could tell stories.
First, though, he needed to go buy a new phone. Trapp directed the wheels of his truck over the smashed remains of the mobile, satisfied over the way it crunched.
Fucking Adriana Brunelli, here, in Cambric Creek. For now. He didn’t know why she was running away from whatever hospital she’d tricked into hiring her, didn’t know how she’d wound up at Shay’s clinic, but it didn’t matter.
He was going to make her sorry she’d ever heard of Cambric Creek. The sooner the better.