Page 15 of Second Alarm

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"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 — "

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