Page 19 of Second Alarm
"You broke every rule I just made — simultaneously, with one cup of coffee."
"Yes, I did." The teasing drops out of his eyes, and we're looking at each other, and I realize I've missed him. I've missed him for ten years, and there it is, on the counter between us, black coffee in a chipped mug, and I've missed him.
"I'm going to bed."
"Okay."
"The rules go into effect tomorrow."
"Okay."
"I'm serious, Ty. Tomorrow."
"I believe you."
I take the mug and drink it on the way back to the bunkroom. I don't turn around, because I don't need to turn around,because I already know what his face is doing behind me, which is nothing. His face is doing exactly the same nothing it has done for three days. He has a face like a closed book.
I wash out the mug in the bunkroom sink at 12:09 a.m.
I set it upside down in the drying rack.
The rules, from a strictly technical standpoint, are already broken, but I'll enforce them starting tomorrow.
Chapter 4
Ty
Cal is strapping himself into a harness he has no intention of using when he turns to me. "Sunday dinner. Mom's making pot roast. Six o'clock. You're coming."
"Cal."
"Don't cancel on me."
"I have a shift."
"You don't have a shift. I looked."
"I was going to trade for a shift."
"You're absolutely not going to trade for a shift."
"Cal — "
"Ty. You've come to Sunday dinner at my mother's house on the first Sunday of every month since the year we graduated from the academy. You've missed two. One was when your grandma died and the other was when you had food poisoning from Derek's eggs. Do you have a dying grandma?"
"You know I don't."
"Have you eaten Derek's eggs?"
"Not today."
"Then I'll see you at six." Cal yanks the harness strap and doesn't look at me. "Hanna's going to be there. Yeah, she livesthere till she finds her own place — that's why I want you to come. So it's not weird. So everyone's just — you know. Normal."
I close my eyes for a half second in the apparatus bay and I ask the ghost of my father, who died of a heart attack at fifty-six years old, eight years ago, and who would've found this entire situation hilarious, to give me strength. My father isn't able to comply because he's dead, but the asking helps.
"Six o'clock," Cal says.
"Six o'clock."
