Page 13 of Second Alarm
Two nights later, I catch him alone in the kitchen at 11:47 p.m., and I set the rules.
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."
