Page 6 of Second Alarm
" — that's Mason Deluca, he's our probie, he waves at everything — "
"Hi again!"
" — and that over there — " Cal pivots. His arm comes off my shoulder. His whole body turns the direction of the man at the lockers on the far wall, and my heart does the thing again, harder this time, because I know what's coming. I've known since Cal told me in February that Ty had made senior firefighter and was still at Station 7. I've had four months to prepare for this. None of it helps.
" — that's Ty Brennan. Ty, come over and say hi to Hanna. You haven't seen her since forever."
I keep my face still.
Ty turns around.
I've spent ten years in the business of not thinking about Ty Brennan, and I thought I had made a lot of progress. In the academy, Ty was twenty-three and had skinny shoulders and a crooked nose from some fight he refused to talk about. That Ty, I could handle in memory. I had packaged him neatly. I had filed him underFoolish Things Hanna Did at Nineteen.
This Ty isn't him.
This Ty is thirty-three years old, and broader through the chest, and the nose is still crooked, but now it suits him, his eyes are the same eyes, and the eyes are the problem, because the eyes see me seeing him, and that half second when our eyes meet across the locker room — in front of my brother and Derek and Rivera and Harrison and Deluca and a dying fluorescent bulb — is a small private detonation that nobody else in the room catches.
I keep my face still.
"Hanna." He crosses the room the way he does everything — slow and deliberate — and sticks out his hand.
"Hi."
"Welcome." His hand is a firefighter's hand. I saw it do any number of things, none of which I can think about right now, at nine in the morning, in front of my brother, who's still grinning like a pleased idiot.
"Thanks."
I shake his hand. It's a handshake. A professional handshake between two professionals who haven't previously met, but we have met, and this is fine.
"Ty and I roomed together at the academy," Cal announces, to me, in case I needed a refresher on the single worst piece of information about my life. "He's basically my brother. He's family."
"Right."
He grins. "You'll love him and you know it."
"Sure." My heart stops for a full beat as I stare at Cal, trying to read his face — to see if he knows about Ty and me, or if it's just a common thing to say about your best friend.
Ty drops my hand. I drop my hand. We both pretend our hands were doing nothing just now.
He lifts the coffee pot off the shared counter and tips it toward the room. "Coffee?"
"Sure," Derek says.
"Thanks," Harrison says.
Cal holds up his cup. "Yeah, top me off."
"Hanna?"
"I'm good."
"You sure?"
"Had some already."
"You take it black, right?" Cal keeps going, because my brother, my lovely oblivious gremlin of a brother, can't leave asilence alone to save his life. "She takes it black. Always has. Mom says she's a savage."
"Mmhmm."
