Page 17 of Vigilante Twink and the Cop

Lennox

Idon’t decide to drive to Hackney. I just find myself doing it, the way I’ve found myself doing a lot of things lately, my hands on the wheel before the rest of me has signed off on the plan. I tell myself it’s for air. I tell myself a lot of things these days that don’t survive contact with daylight.

I park across the road from the warehouse, two pool cars in one week, which is its own small professional offense I’m choosing not to examine too closely on top of all the others. I don’t get out. I just sit, engine off, watching a building I have no legitimate reason to be watching, like a man who has fully and completely lost the plot, because that is exactly what I am.

I tell myself I’ll give it five minutes. Five minutes turns into fifteen, which turns into me composing increasingly pathetic justifications for my own presence on this street, none of which would survive being said out loud to another human being, least of all the one I’m currently parked outside the home of.

I’ve been there twenty minutes, maybe longer, working up to either driving away or making a fool of myself, when the Micah comes around the corner at a jog, earbuds in, kitted out for a run in shorts that have no business being that short in this weather. He makes it about ten feet down the pavement before he clocks the car. Clocks me in it.

He stops dead. Pulls one earbud out. And then his whole face does that thing again, lighting up like I’m the best thing that’s happened to his evening, before he’s even decided whether he should be alarmed.

I get out of the car because there’s no version of staying inside it that doesn’t look worse.

“Detective.” He’s grinning, jogging back over, slightly out of breath in a way that does something unfair to my concentration. “Are you stalking me?”

“I was in the area.”

“No you weren’t.” He says it cheerfully, like he’s delighted to have caught me in it rather than offended. “Why would you be in Hackney?”

“I had a thing nearby.”

“What thing?”

“A thing.” I hear how it sounds the second it’s out of my mouth. “I’m not going to dignify that with further detail.”

“You’re a terrible liar for a man whose entire job is catching liars.” He’s still grinning, hands on his hips, getting his breath back, clearly enjoying this far more than the situation warrants. “It’s actually a little bit wonderful.”

I don’t have a good answer for that, mostly because he’s right.

“I don’t have your number,” I say, which is true, and also possibly the saddest sentence I’ve said out loud in years.

Something shifts behind his eyes, soft and a little startled, like that admission landed somewhere he wasn’t expecting it to. “Yes you do. I gave it to you when we first bumped into each other. You called me to ask me to come to the station.”

“I’m not supposed to use police systems to get a personal number for someone, especially someone I’m meant to be keeping a professional distance from.”

He blinks at this, as if I’ve surprised him and he’s having to recalibrate.

“But driving to my flat and sitting outside it in an unmarked car is fine.”

“No,” I admit. “It’s considerably worse. I’m aware.”

He laughs, properly laughs, head tipped back, and it’s such a good sound that I’d probably commit several more professional offenses just to hear it again. “Come up,” he says. “I’m about to cook. You can keep me company while I pretend I was always planning to make enough for two.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” He’s already turning back toward the building, clearly assuming I’ll follow, which is, infuriatingly, exactly what I do. “Am I a suspect again?”

“Not exactly.”

“Officially?”

“Officially, no. You’re off the board.” I follow him through the lobby, past the same concierge who clocks me with the same weary, knowing look as last time. “There’s nothing currently connecting you to anything.”

“Then there’s no problem.” He throws it over his shoulder, light as anything, the same trick he pulled on me in a club booth that started all of this, and it works exactly as well the second time.

The loft smells good, like he has been baking, and for one disorienting second I forget every reason I had for not coming up here.

He makes me a cucumber and mint soda, hands it to me with a wink and then leaves me to my own devices while he showers and changes out of his jogging clothes.