Page 11 of Faking the Heat

I nod. “Iced, decaf, extra-hot flat white with an espresso shot.”

She raises a finger. “That’s not a thing.”

“It is if you try hard enough.”

She makes the coffees. I move to the living room, set up my laptop on the edge of the couch, and start going through my emails. There are three from Chief, two from the shift scheduler, and one from a guy I barely remember from Army days, subject line ALL CAPS: “YOU STILL ALIVE?”

I don’t answer that one.

Mandy brings over the coffee and sets it down next to my hand. She sits at the other end of the couch, Bowie immediately filling the gap between us, and boots up her own laptop. The next hour is a blur of keys, clicks, and muted cursing.

But every so often, I catch her looking up from her screen, glancing over at the notebook on the counter, and then back at her work, as if she’s checking to see if the rules are still holding.

I look at the notebook too.

I wonder which of us will be the first to break one.

By eight p.m., the day has been accounted for. Mandy hit her noon deadline, I cleared my emails and did two loads of laundry, we ate lunch at separate ends of the kitchen island, and somewhere around three o’clock we watched half a documentary about competitive dog grooming before mutually abandoning it without comment. Now I am stretched out at one end of the couch, one socked foot on the coffee table, the other tucked under my thigh, and Mandy is at the opposite end with her knees drawn up and her laptop balanced on her shins, glasses sliding incrementally down her nose with each click of the trackpad.

Bowie is the Switzerland of this arrangement, sprawled diagonally between us, tail draped over the touchpad of my work laptop so that any attempt to get productive is interrupted by a judgmental cat.

The lamp is set to low, just enough yellow to keep the city’s cold blue from dominating the room. Mandy’s screen is a sunburn, bright white rectangle, reflecting in her glasses and painting her features in a series of flickers, intense, intent, then abruptly softened as she flips from email to meme, then back again. I make a show of scrolling through my phone, but mostly I watch her through the middle distance.

This is the kind of evening that is supposed to make a place feel like home, predictable, harmless, sanded smooth of anything that could get under the skin. It should not be difficult, and yet I am hyper-aware of every inch that separates us on the couch, every shift in posture, every time she tucks her hair behind her ear or absently taps her thumb against the space bar.

At some point she uncurls, leans forward to plant her feet on the floor, and Bowie, sensing a betrayal of his Switzerland status, shifts to wedge himself more firmly between us. Mandy laughs, not the polite kind or the filtered through teeth kind, but a real, surprise your self kind of laugh that bursts up and out and momentarily resets the oxygen content of the entire room. She glances over at me and, for once, doesn’t try to take it back.

I feel it hit, somewhere in the space between my ribs, and immediately redirect my gaze to the TV. Which is not even on.

“You ever seen a cat this lazy?” she asks, stretching her toes until Bowie rolls belly, up and exposes a patch of orange fur that practically glows in the lamplight.

I shake my head. “The department got a call once about a cat who went missing for three days. Turned out he was living in the drop ceiling at the McDonald’s on 17th. Gained two pounds on fries and Filet-o-Fish. We had to lure him down with a Happy Meal.”

She grins, genuine, then picks up her mug and sips. She’s switched to tea, and as she sets it down, I can just barely read the inspirational quote on the tag: “Great acts are made up of small deeds.” I file this away, unsure whether it’s ironic or a sign from the universe.

After a lull, I realize I have been resting my arm along the back of the couch for the better part of an hour, elbow just inches from where her hair is feathered out on the cushion. I have no recollection of putting my arm there, but now that I notice, I cannot un-notice. I slowly retract it, hoping she doesn’t clock the maneuver. She does, of course, but she lets me off the hook.

The living room fills with the low hum of the city outside, the radiator clanking in a language only it understands, and the periodic click of Mandy’s keys. Slower now, though. More errors. I’ve watched her delete and retype the same word three times in the last five minutes.

At 9:13 she closes the laptop.

It’s not a dramatic gesture. She just folds it shut, sets it on the cushion beside her, and sits there for a moment with her hands in her lap, like she’s waiting for her body to remember what comes next.

“Okay,” she says, mostly to herself. She pulls her glasses off and rubs the bridge of her nose. “I think I’m done.”

“You’ve been up since the fire,” I say.

She looks at me. “So have you.”

“I’m used to it.”

She makes a sound that is not quite a laugh. She stands, collects her mug, and pauses at the edge of the hallway. Something in her posture is softer than usual, the bravado dialed down to something closer to actual human tiredness.

She stops at the hallway. Leans a shoulder against the frame.

“Night, Sparkles.”

She looks back, just for a second. “Night, Sterling.”