Chapter 3
Hanna
I've been rehearsing this speech for seventy-two hours.
I rehearsed it in my car on the drive to the station.
I rehearsed it in the bathroom mirror at my mother's house while she was watching HGTV in the next room.
I rehearsed it in front of my cat, who's named Marshmallow and who my mother refused to babysit until she met him.
Marshmallow has been listening to the rules speech on loop from the ottoman, and Marshmallow isn't impressed.
The speech goes like this:
Ty. We need to have a conversation, and I'd like for it to be brief.
We work together now. We're colleagues. My brother is also our colleague, and my brother isn't going to find out about something that happened ten years ago, because there's nothing to find out.
We're professionals. The past is past. We aren't going to be alone together more than we have to be.
We aren't going to discuss the academy. We aren't going to discuss any of it. Thank you for your time.
There's a longer version, but the longer version is for a woman with feelings, and I'm not that woman this week.
I haven't had an opening to deliver the speech, because I've spent seventy-two hours calibrating for seventy-two hours' worth of Ty Brennan sightings, which amount to exactly twenty-six discrete visual events, seven of which were unavoidable (briefings, shared work calls), twelve of which were avoidable but unavoidable (the locker room, the hallway, the one time we both reached for the same radio mic), and seven of which were engineered (by him, to be clear, not by me, because I'm a woman with dignity, and also because Ty is doing this thing I'm trying to ignore, which is positioning himself in my proximity).
I haven't said the speech, because for seventy-two hours, he's been careful.
He hasn't pushed. He hasn't referenced anything.
He's made eye contact exactly three times, and each time he was the first one to look away.
He's, to be absolutely clear, being a saint about this, which is making me furious, because I had planned a speech to deliver to a man behaving badly, and he's behaving well, and my speech no longer makes any sense.
Which is why I'm giving it tonight.
The kitchen at Station 7 at 11:47 p.m. is empty because the crew is either sleeping in the bunkroom, out on a drug house standby with Engine 3, or in the rec room watching Ted Lasso, which is the station's approved nighttime programming because Beck says it's the only show on television that hasn't made him homicidal.
Ty is the only one in the kitchen. He's at the sink. He's washing mugs.
He's washing mugs at midnight, in a t-shirt, because that's the kind of man Ty Brennan has become, and I feel nothing about it, thank you.
Oh, and also I'm a liar.
"Brennan."
"Hey." He doesn't look up. He finishes rinsing the mug in his hand and sets it upside down in the rack, then picks up a dishtowel and dries his hands and turns around.
He leans against the counter, crosses his arms, and waits.
The speech I had prepared begins with four introductory sentences to set the tone.
What comes out of my mouth is: "We need rules."
Ty, to his credit, doesn't react. Not a blink. Not a single facial muscle.
"Okay."
"Don't just say okay. You said that last time."
"That's a lot of pressure on a man trying to wash his dishes."
"I mean it, Ty."
"I know you do." He tosses the towel onto the counter.
"This is serious."
"I know."
"Cal can't ever find out."
"Agreed."
"We're colleagues now. We're only colleagues. We're two people who work together and were classmates at the academy and that's — that's the entire shape of our history, all right, we're not going to — there isn't a — we're not doing whatever this — "
"Hanna."
"What."
"Breathe."
"I'm breathing."
"You sound like a woman who isn't breathing."
"I'm — " I close my eyes. I open them. I refuse to be doing whatever I'm doing. "I'm breathing."
He raises both hands. "Okay."
"Don't — "
"Sorry." It's the same sorry he used to give at the academy — the one carrying a level of genuine regret entirely disproportionate to the offense, because Ty has, for his whole life, been a man who believed that if he apologized carefully enough he could out-negotiate the entire human condition.
It didn't work at twenty-three and it's not going to work at thirty-three, but I hate that he's trying.
"Rules." I'm trying to get this speech over with.
"Rules." He repeats it back to me, flat.
"One. Professional at all times. At the station. On calls. In the bay. Everywhere."
"Yep."
"Two. Cal never finds out."
"Yep."
"Three. We don't — " I wave a hand between us. "This. We don't do this. We don't get caught alone in any kitchens at midnight having intense conversations about our feelings."
He tilts his head. "We're not having an intense conversation about our feelings."
I give him a look. "Ty."
"We're having a conversation about the rules." A beat. "Which you made."
"You know what I mean." He's so damn infuriating.
"I do." His mouth does a thing at the corner. Not quite a smile. The thing that Ty's mouth does when he's letting a moment tip toward humor and then deciding not to push it. "I do know what you mean, Hanna. I'm agreeing."
"Four. The past — " My voice cracks, just a little, just enough that I register it happening, and I plow through it like I can outrun it. "The past is past. We don't discuss it. We don't reference it. We don't — we don't tell the academy story. If somebody tells it, we laugh, and we move on."
"Okay."
"Five. We don't — this thing with the — "
His eyes go to the mugs on the drying rack. "Coffee."
"Yes. The coffee thing. That's — you can't do that. The crew will notice. Derek already noticed."
"Derek notices everything."
"Derek, for the record, has twenty dollars down on a bet that he can make me laugh."
"I know."
"You know?"
"I was there when he made it."
"Right. Right, of course you were there. Okay. So. You see what I mean."
"I do."
"You'll stop with the coffee thing?"
"Yeah."
"Just — just ask me how I take it like any other normal human colleague would do, and I'll tell you, and you can make me a cup if you want to, but you have to ask first, so that — so that it looks — "
He lowers his head to catch my eyes. "Hanna."
"What."
"I'll ask." His eyebrows lift slightly, and just like that — the same way it's always worked, which I resent — something in me settles.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"Six. We — " I look at the ceiling. The speech is fully off the rails. I can feel it happening in real time and I can't stop it. "I don't remember what six is."
"There doesn't have to be a six."
"No, I — I had more rules. I had, like, twelve rules." I wave my hands around uselessly.
"That's a lot of rules."
"It was a thorough document."
"Sounds like it."
"Don't — don't look at me like that." I point at him.
"How am I looking at you?"
"Like — like that." I jab a finger at his face.
He turns to look at the coffee pot. "Okay." It's the smallest kindness he can give me and I'm pathetically grateful for it. "Rules. Professional. Cal. Distance. Don't tell the story. Don't do the coffee thing."
I review them in my head. "Yes."
"Got it."
"Good."
"Anything else."
"No."
"Okay, then."
A silence opens up in the kitchen. Not an empty one — it's the kind with about eighteen things crammed inside it, none of them ready to be said.
The radio chatter is in the other room. The fridge is doing the thing it does, a low thrum that's usually background noise but now sounds like an orchestra.
Ty uncrosses his arms.
"Can I say one thing."
"No."
"Hanna."
"Ty. The whole point of the rules — "
He raises one finger. "One thing."
"No."
"It's not about us."
I open my mouth. I close it. "What."
"It's one thing I want to say, and it's not about us, and then you never have to hear it again."
"Is this a rule you're making up?"
"No. It's a request."
I shake my head. "You can't make requests. There's no subsection for requests in the rules."
"I'm making one anyway."
I stare at him. He stares at me. He's, I realize, exactly as scared as I am. He's just better at hiding it.
"Fine. One thing."
He looks at his hands. His hands are on the counter. He unfolds his fingers and folds them again, and he looks at them like the hands are the part of him doing the talking.
"You were right to leave."
This was not what I thought he was going to say. My stomach drops, and my chest feels heavy, and neither of those things should be happening because we have rules now. "What?"
"At the academy. You were right." He isn't looking at me.
"Ty — "
"I'm not — " He holds up a hand. "I'm not — it's not a negotiation.
I'm telling you. You were right. I should've seen it then, but I didn't. I was twenty-three and I was in over my head, and you needed to go be who you were going to be, and the version of me that asked you to stay didn't understand that yet.
I do now. I'm not asking for anything. I just — "
"Ty — "
"I thought you should know." He's quiet now, and still.
He looks up. His eyes are the same steady dark brown they've always been, and I'd like to put my face in my hands and scream about this for about an hour, but I'm a grown woman, and a paramedic, and I work here now.
The punchline I need isn't coming.
I can feel my mouth try to reach for it.
My mouth, which has gotten me out of approximately ten thousand emotionally inconvenient moments over the course of my life, is reaching for something — anything — to make his face laugh, or move, or do anything other than what it's doing, which is looking at me plainly and honestly like a man who's just handed me his heart across a counter of shared kitchenware and isn't going to take it back.
Nothing comes.
The silence stretches. I open my mouth. I close it.
"Oh, no you don't." It comes out finally, weakly.
"What?"
"You don't get to — "
"I didn't — "
"You don't get to make a request and then ambush me with earnest."
"I told you what it was."
"Yeah, you told me it was a non-negotiable ambush. That's — that's not — "
"Hanna."
"What."
He looks at me steadily. "It's okay to not have a comeback."
"Shut up."
"Okay."
"I have a comeback. I just don't — I haven't had time to prepare it." Even I don't believe that.
"I believe you."
"I'm famously funny."
He nods slowly, like he's reassuring a toddler. "You're extremely funny, Hanna."
"You're condescending me." I point at him.
"I'm absolutely not condescending you." He presses his lips together, not quite winning. "I'm telling you the truth."
The silence re-forms. He reaches for the mugs in the drying rack, picks one up, and pours coffee into it — doesn't ask how I take it, doesn't put anything extra in it — then sets it on the counter in front of me, wordless, and goes back to drying another mug.
It's black. It's filled to the three-quarter mark and it's perfect.
"Brennan."
"Yeah."
"Rule five."
"You didn't ask me for coffee." Not an ounce of guilt on him.
"Yes."
"I know."
"That was the — "
"I know, Hanna."
"You're — "
"I know."
"Unbelievable." I grumble it into the space between us. "This isn't going to work."
"Okay."
"I mean it, Ty. This isn't going to work."
"I heard you."
"Drink your own damn coffee, Brennan." I point at the mug. It smells incredible, and the last thing I'm going to do right now is drink it.
"It's yours." He points at the mug on the counter.
"I don't want it." I cross my arms over my chest.
"You drank the last one I made for you."
"That was a courtesy."
The corner of his mouth curls. "Sure. A courtesy."
"Stop saying sure like I'm lying to you."
"I'm not saying anything about lying."
"You're doing your sure face." I point at him.
"I'm literally — " He looks at me. One eyebrow goes up a quarter inch. "I'm literally not doing a sure face, Hanna."
"That's the sure face."
"This is my regular face."
"Your regular face is the sure face. That's the problem." I know I sound ridiculous, but I'm committed now.
"Okay."
"Don't — "
"Okay."
"You're impossible."
"Drink the coffee, Hanna."
"No."
"It's going to get cold."
"That's the point."
"That's the stupidest point."
"Don't call my points stupid." I can hear my own voice climbing and I don't care.
"Hanna."
"What."
He puts both hands on the counter and looks directly at me. "I'll ask tomorrow. If you want it. I'll ask. I'll do it your way. But for tonight — "
All my anger falls away. "Ty."
" — for tonight, just let me have this one."
I look at him. I look at the mug. I look at the coffee pot. I look at the doorway, because I need to know where the exits are.
I pick up the mug.
I take a sip.
It's exactly the temperature I like it. He let it sit for a minute. I didn't see him set a timer, but he set a timer.
"You broke every rule I just made — simultaneously, with one cup of coffee."
"Yes, I did." The teasing drops out of his eyes, and we're looking at each other, and I realize I've missed him. I've missed him for ten years, and there it is, on the counter between us, black coffee in a chipped mug, and I've missed him.
"I'm going to bed."
"Okay."
"The rules go into effect tomorrow."
"Okay."
"I'm serious, Ty. Tomorrow."
"I believe you."
I take the mug and drink it on the way back to the bunkroom. I don't turn around, because I don't need to turn around, because I already know what his face is doing behind me, which is nothing. His face is doing exactly the same nothing it has done for three days. He has a face like a closed book.
I wash out the mug in the bunkroom sink at 12:09 a.m.
I set it upside down in the drying rack.
The rules, from a strictly technical standpoint, are already broken, but I'll enforce them starting tomorrow.