Chapter Eight Hailey #2
“You’re not alone,” he says simply. “And for what it’s worth, I think at minimum you should get the mid-range system. The camera on your door, the smart locks. It’ll give you real-time alerts if something happens. A buddy owes me a favor, so I can get most of the equipment for free.”
“Cole, you don’t ha—”
Our waiter arrives with our entrees before I can argue, and the conversation shifts to lighter topics.
I tell him some of my more ridiculous ER stories, like the one about the guy who superglued his fingers together on a dare, or the woman who came in with a potato stuck somewhere it definitely shouldn’t have been.
He laughs in all the right places, his whole face lighting up with genuine amusement.
“What about you?” I ask, cutting my ravioli with the side of my fork. “What are your most interesting work stories?”
“Nothing as entertaining as a potato foreign body,” he says with a grin. “But I once accidentally caught someone conducting an affair using company property.”
I cringe. “An affair? What happened?”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “He was using the company’s phones and computers instead of their own. That’s how he hid it from his wife.”
“Did he get fired?”
“Yes. The security industry takes infidelity more seriously than just about any other occupation.” He takes a bite of his pasta.
“If you’re willing to betray the person you live with, the person you’re supposedly closest to, then why would you be faithful to your company?
Too much of a liability. But most of what I do is pretty mundane.
I find vulnerabilities, patch them, set up new security protocols.
When work gets exciting, it usually means something’s gone very wrong. ”
“Sounds a bit like emergency medicine. Boring days are good days.”
“Exactly.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice movement at a table near the front of the restaurant. A man in his mid-thirties with slick black hair pushes out of his chair and lowers himself onto one knee.
“Oh shit,” I murmur, flicking my eyes from the man to Cole and back again.
Cole follows my gaze, his fork pausing midair.
The whole restaurant catches on at once, conversations immediately dimming. A violinist appears from nowhere—where the fuck did he come from?—and starts up a one-man version of Pachelbel’s Canon, minus the canon.
The woman at the table has gone very still. Her hands are flat on the white tablecloth, her face impossible to read.
I lean toward Cole, whispering quietly. “He’s wearing a Bluetooth earpiece.”
“I see it.”
“During his proposal.”
Cole gives me a patient glance, meeting my eyes before repeating, “I see it.”
The man keeps going. He’s loud and performative. He wants the entire restaurant to watch them. We listen to him go on and on about how his mother always said he’d find someone who could “tolerate his work schedule,” and then mentions, unprompted, his condo’s appreciation rate.
The woman, who the entire restaurant now knows is named Brittany, hasn’t moved this entire time. I’m not entirely convinced she’s breathing.
“Brittany Marie. Will you m—”
“No.”
The word is as hard and sharp as a slap.
“What?”
“No,” she repeats, her voice flat.
She’s already standing, her napkin long forgotten as it tumbles to the floor. She quickly grabs her purse off the back of her chair. The violinist is still playing.
Can he not read a room?
She’s halfway across the dining room when she stops, doubles back, snatches her wineglass off the table, drains it in one long pull, sets it down with a loud clink, and walks out.
The door swings shut behind her, leaving the entire restaurant consumed by absolute silence.
The violinist plays three more increasingly uncertain notes, then trails off.
The man—still on one knee, still holding the open ring box—says, very softly, “Brittany?”
The restaurant manager rushes toward him, urging him to stand and pull himself together. Everyone else resumes eating, though I sense what we all really want to do is talk about whatever the fuck that was.
I exhale slowly. “Holy shit.”
Cole runs a calloused hand through his hair, looking stunned. “A Bluetooth earpiece.”
I lean forward, shaking my head in bewilderment. “A Bluetooth earpiece!”
A man two tables over clears his throat before shoveling a too-large bite of pasta into his mouth. The room’s volume gradually rebuilds, hushed at first, then restoring itself like nothing happened. Eventually, the violinist sneaks toward the exit.
“That,” I say, “was the most unhinged thing I have ever witnessed. And I work in an ER.”
“She really came back for that wine.”
“She committed. That’s a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and what she didn’t. I would have gone back for the wine, too.”
“Honestly? Power move.” Cole chuckles, and I love the way he’s smiling at me. “I’m impressed.”
Our waitress drifts past our table, refilling our waters without being asked. There’s a shit-eating grin on her face as she watches us eye the now-empty table.
Cole and I fall into easy conversation, trading stories and learning about each other. I discover he’s from Colorado originally, that he’s been hiking these mountains since he was a kid. And that his favorite trail is actually Greyrock, which I haven’t done yet.
He tells me about his time in Afghanistan, carefully skirting around the harder details but sharing enough for me to understand the way his experience shaped him. I tell him about growing up on Army bases. He didn’t have the same upbringing, but he understands life on base.
“Do you miss it?” he asks. “Moving around?”
“Sometimes. But I’m discovering I really love having roots. Choosing my own place, building a life here. Colorado in the fall is my favorite place to be. The oranges and yellows in the mountains are to die for. I’ve been wanting to take a drive one of these days to go see them.”