12. Buzz #2
I deserved it, but it was still a puck to the cheek. “I know.”
“No.” She shook her head once. “I don’t think you do.
I think you know the outline. I think you know the polite, convenient version where we were young and it ended and time passed and now we’re supposed to be mature adults who can stand on opposite sides of an arena and pretend history is a scheduling conflict. ”
“Lucy—”
“You broke my heart into such small pieces that some still aren’t done healing.”
My throat closed.
The dog leaned against her shin, tail sweeping over the frosted grass.
Lucy looked at me then, and there was no armor left in her eyes. None. Just the truth, raw and exhausted and so much worse because she was not trying to wound me with it.
She was trying to survive me.
“I can’t risk that again,” she admitted. “I might not be able to put myself back together.”
I took one step toward her before I remembered I had no right.
Everything in me wanted to argue. To tell her I was not the same kid. To tell her I knew what I’d done, even if she didn’t know all of it. To tell her I had spent years losing her in different ways and still woke up reaching for the ghost of her sometimes.
But she wasn’t asking for a defense. She was drawing a line.
And for once in my life, I needed to learn how to stand behind one.
The dog chose that moment to sit on my shoe.
Lucy stared down at her. “Traitor.”
I looked down too, because if I looked at Lucy any longer I was going to say something selfish. “She has good instincts.”
“She has terrible instincts. She tried to eat a pinecone twenty minutes ago.”
“Maybe it was delicious.”
Lucy’s mouth trembled. Not a smile. Almost. The almost nearly killed me.
“What’s her name?” I asked softly.
Lucy hesitated. For a second, I thought she wouldn’t tell me. Then the dog looked up at her, ears too big for her face, leaf dust stuck to her nose, and Lucy’s expression gave way to something helpless.
“Dottie.”
“Dottie,” I said again, crouching carefully. “I’m Buzz.”
Lucy’s face changed. Because once, a long time ago, she had been the only person who called me Ty like it meant something no one else was allowed to touch. And now I had just introduced myself to her dog as the name everyone else got.
The safe one.
The public one.
The one that didn’t belong to her.
Dottie put both front paws on my knee. I swallowed and scratched behind her ear. “Nice to meet you,” I murmured.
Lucy’s voice was barely there. “She likes you.”
“Yeah.” I looked up at her. “I like her too.”
A cyclist called, “On your left,” as he passed, and Lucy stepped closer to the grass automatically, tugging Dottie with her. The leash stretched between us before Dottie reluctantly lowered her paws from my knee.
The distance came back. So did the cold.
Lucy cleared her throat. “I need rules.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“At work, we are coworkers.”
“Technically you’re front office and I’m roster property.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Sorry,” I said immediately. “Bad time.” I nodded before continuing, “Coworkers.”
Dottie found a stick near the edge of the trail and picked it up sideways, immediately discovering it was too wide to carry without hitting Lucy in the calf.
Lucy closed her eyes. “Dottie.”
Dottie wagged her entire body.
“She’s really undermining your authority,” I said.
“I am aware.”
“Do you want me to talk to her?”
“No.”
“I’m good with discipline.”
“You once convinced half the roster to put googly eyes on Coach Holloway’s whiteboard markers.”
“That was morale building.”
She looked at me. This time, she did smile. Tiny. Unwilling. Gone almost before it arrived.
God help me.
“This is what I mean,” she whispered.
I stopped breathing. “What?”
Her eyes shone, but she did not cry. Lucy Thomas would have walked barefoot over broken glass before giving me that much in public. “Because every time you’re close to me…” She looked down at Dottie, as if the dog could lend her the courage to finish. “I want to make terrible life choices.”
The world went quiet around us.
Not actually. The park kept moving. Shoes hit pavement. Dogs barked. A child laughed somewhere near the playground. The wind worried dead leaves across the trail.
But all I heard was Lucy breathing. All I saw was the way her hand trembled once before she tightened it into stillness.
She still wanted me. And she hated herself for it.
“Lucy,” I said, and my voice did not sound like mine.
She shook her head. “Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to—”
“Yes, you were.” She looked up at me, and this time the pain in her eyes had teeth. “You were going to make it better. Or try to. Or say something that makes me forget why I can’t let you matter again.”
I had no answer. Because she was right. “I have practice,” I said finally, even though it was the last thing I wanted to say.
Something like relief passed over her face. “Then you should go,” she replied.
Dottie dropped the stick at my feet.
I nodded once, slow. “I’ll follow the rules.”
Lucy searched my face like she wanted to believe me and hated that she wanted to. “Thank you,” she said.
Then she tugged gently on the leash. “Come on, Dot.”
Dottie resisted for one full second, looking between us like she had strong objections to unresolved emotional conflict. “Dottie,” Lucy cooed.
The dog sighed. Then she trotted back to Lucy’s side, tail still wagging, like she was willing to leave me but wanted her disappointment noted.
Lucy turned toward the curve of the trail. I watched her take three steps before I said her name. She stopped, but she did not turn around.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Her shoulders rose with one breath. Then lowered. “I know.”