Page 40 of Cuffed (Everyday Heroes 1)
“So no aspirations to be chief and follow in your dad’s footsteps?” I suddenly want to know everything about him.
“In time.” He shrugs and takes a sip of his beer.
“Give up the routine of sitting in The Donut Shoppe’s lot and doing paperwork?”
“I actually despise donuts, and I’m more of a sit-in-the-parking-lot-of-Starbucks-on-Main-Street-and-do-my-paperwork routine kind of cop.”
“A cop who hates donuts?” I hold my hand to my chest in mock horror. “Isn’t that sacrilege? No wonder you haven’t been promoted yet.”
“It is. Actually, I’m up for detective right now. I debated for the longest time whether I wanted it—more responsibility, more politics, and less being on the streets, which is what I love doing the most. But, we’ll see. It’s a long process, and I’m not sure who else has applied for the position. Time will tell . . .”
“You’re a Malone. In this town, that’s gold, isn’t it?”
“Depends who you ask.” He angles his head and stares at me for a beat, curiosity owning his eyes. “So tell me, you’re buying Blue Skies? Why that? Why now?”
I take a long sip of my wine and marvel at how easy it is for the words to want to spew off my tongue. It’s unsettling; yet, I find myself wanting to tell him. I find myself wanting him to know I’ve been okay.
“My mom was a gypsy at heart. We wandered around a lot, moved from one town to the next the minute she started to feel too settled.” I smile softly as I think of her. Her crazy, colorful clothes. Her unconventional ways. Her fierce protection of me from everyone.
“That must have been hard with school and—”
“She homeschooled me for the longest time. Trust was hard for her.” As it is for me. “If I was learning about American history, we’d take a road trip and live in Washington, DC for a while. We were fluid.”
“That must have been hard, always moving around.”
“It was isolating in a sense because I didn’t have many friends, but it was rich in so many other ways.” I shrug. “One year, we went through Missoula where the fire jumpers are based. It was hot and humid, but I sat and watched them practice their jumps for hours. I knew right then I wanted to try it.”
“Did you?”
“Not then. I was too young, and if my mom wasn’t willing to trust a babysitter watching me for an hour, she sure as hell wasn’t going to trust an instructor to get me safely back to earth.”
“True.” He traces the line of condensation on his beer bottle with his fingers.
“I had to wait until I was eighteen for my first jump.”
“That’s a long time to wait.”
“It was.”
“As non-traditional as it was, it sounds like she taught you a lot.”
“It was all I knew.” I smile softly at him, the memories of my mom and the life she created for us so clear despite all the time that has passed. “We stopped moving around when I was a senior in high school. I could have easily taken my GED and opted out, but my mom refused to let me. She wanted me to experience high school for at least one year.”
“That had to have been brutal.”
“Yeah, well, when you live in a bubble, sometimes you don’t have the cognizance to notice or even want to care. It was definitely an experience. Gone were the lazy days where we’d finish our lesson and then take a tube and float down river wherever we were to celebrate another day lived to the fullest. I fought her on it, but she wanted to settle for the first time in almost ten years. Little did I know it was because she was sick.”
“I’m so sorry, Em, I didn’t know.” His hand covers mine and gives it a squeeze.
“How could you have?” I squeeze his back, loving that he keeps his hand there even when the moment is over. “She was fine for a while, but after I graduated, I spent most of my time taking care of her. She fought hard, but the years of being ill finally took their toll. During it all, the one friend I had made in high school was my moral support. That was Desi.” I lean back in my seat and lift my eyebrows. “This is all a little too depressing, isn’t it? Let’s change the—”
“It’s okay. I want to know.”
I stare at him for a moment, hesitant to talk about one of my deepest sadnesses, but realize he loves his mom just as fiercely as I loved mine. He’ll understand why the grief robbed me of so much for so long. And some days still does.
“When my mom died, I took to her ways to cope. The day she passed away, I headed to a local skydiving school and jumped. It was the only way I thought I could be free of all the grief I felt. At first, I couldn’t concentrate, but then I hit this moment in my jump where there was silence in my head. It was almost soothing, and it forced me to think of what was next and where to go from there. It was liberating and sounds ridiculous . . . ” I look down to where my fingers are fidgeting with the coaster. It’s weird how easy it is to tell him about it when it’s something I don’t think I’ve ever given a voice to before.
“It isn’t ridiculous at all.”
