One More Time

by Caitlin Ricci

  This time he really was going as I heard him get his things together and head downstairs. I showered quickly, put on a pair of shorts, locked the door behind him, and then started a load of sheets before I tried to get some sleep. I didn’t get much, but at least I was more rested than if I hadn’t tried to get any sleep at all when I showed up for work.

  My dad was already standing there with a cup of coffee in his hands and a whole lot of questions ready to go for me. “What’s the new man like? Will he be giving us trouble?” Dad asked as soon as I came in. He plopped a cup of coffee in front of me too, and I sniffed it gratefully. It needed to cool down some before I could actually start drinking it, but I desperately wanted to. I wasn’t a morning person, not at all, and so I felt as if I were suffering just by being there so early.

  “He seems fine,” I said as soon as I was able to take a sip. It was still a bit too hot for me, but the caffeine would help me wake up. I just needed to stay awake long enough for the caffeine to make it into my system. I had seen a sign a few weeks back at a grocery store, not ours but somewhere in Denver where I was waiting to meet with a guy before we headed to a hotel, and it said “I Own You” with a coffee cup under it. That was pretty much how I felt every miserable morning that I had to be at the precinct. Which was really little more than a one-room office a block away from my dad’s house—the same one I’d grown up in, the same one he’d probably die in. We were those kinds of people, where we lived in the same little town where he’d been born and where my grandparents had moved to when they were younger than me.

  I couldn’t imagine living anywhere other than Thornwood. This was home to me, and even though I went into Denver, I was always eager to come right back. There was far more to do in Denver, but I felt more alive, more whole, and more myself back home.

  I hadn’t had a text from the guy last night, and I didn’t expect to. There had been very few guys in my life recently who hadn’t gotten the picture. I needed the release, and the sex was typically good. It didn’t have to mean more than that.

  “He have a family coming?” Dad asked as he sat down at his desk that touched mine. Sometimes it was weird working across from my dad, but most of the time it felt completely normal. I couldn’t slack like some of the guys tried to do, which was a pain sometimes when all I wanted to do was level up on whatever game I was playing on my phone that week. But I’d been coming into the station with him since Mom died, and before I had my own desk, I’d been right beside him. I’d colored at first, and after that I learned how to read, mostly from the police reports his guys turned in.

  I shook my head and took a bigger sip of my coffee. It was starting to really work. “Not that I know of. He has a sister, but I don’t think there’s anyone else coming.” I debated telling my dad that he was gay, especially since no one else was in the office yet, but I figured that wouldn’t be my thing to share. I’d been outed, by my dad of all people, when I was about eight. It hadn’t felt amazing to have people stare at me, or for them to tell me I couldn’t possibly know my own sexuality at that age, but my dad had always been decent about it.

  “Think he has any friends in town?”

  I wasn’t sure why my dad seemed so focused on Caleb, but I figured it was probably because nothing much happened in Thornwood. We didn’t get murders, and maybe three times a year we responded to a break-in call, but that was usually just some kid coming home late and trying to be all quiet about sneaking in. Caleb moving here was kind of a big deal. If we’d had our own paper, he would have probably made the front page as not only the new guy, but a guy who had moved into the biggest house in town and bought it with a cash offer. The Smiths had told everyone who would listen about that, since it seemed so strange to them. It was a pretty big deal. I half thought Caleb must have been some kind of billionaire from Wall Street or something like that.

  “I don’t know, Dad. Anything happening police related?” I asked. I hoped to get the focus off Caleb, not because I didn’t like him, but because it was too early in the morning for me to be thinking about having him, which was where my thoughts would probably go in a bit if my dad didn’t drop him as the preferred topic for the morning.

  But my dad was stubborn when he got focused on something. “You have plenty of friends. Maybe you should introduce him to one of them.”

  I had no idea who he would be talking about. I was friendly with the people in town, but I wouldn’t actually call any of them friends. “What friends?”

  Dad gave me a stern look, and if I’d been a kid, or hell, maybe a bit more awake, I would have expected to be in trouble. As it was, I was still trying to figure out these “friends” he was talking about. “Your townhouse is on my way home. I’ve seen the guys you bring home on occasion, and you look like you’re close to them. Now, I’m not upset that I’ve never met any of your friends. I know you have your own life. But maybe you should introduce them to the new guy. It must be hard moving to a new town and not having anyone you know.”

  By the time he was done talking I was openly staring at him. “Dad….” I had no idea where to begin. “Those guys aren’t my friends. We’re friendly, but they’re not someone I would bring over to introduce to you. And the new guy’s name is Caleb.”

  I hoped my dad figured out what I was saying without me having to go into detail about it. I really needed him to do that for me.

  “So they’re….” He made a face and shook his head. “You’re safe, though, aren’t you? We had that discussion when you were a kid. Maybe I should have done it yearly to get it to stick.”

  I laughed and finished off the last of my coffee. I was finally feeling normal and awake. “Yeah, Dad. Everything’s good. Now, can we please do some work? I’d really like to do something else rather than keep talking about my sex life.” I tossed the coffee cup into the trash and my dad fished it out for me before tossing it into the recycling container not more than two feet behind me. He gave me another stern look, and I nodded, remembering we were supposed to be doing better as a department about that.

  “Yes, anything else besides that. You go respond to the e-mails. I’ll go out on patrol. The guys should start coming in at nine.”

  I waved to him as he gathered up his jacket and left. “See you.” We all came in on a staggered schedule so someone was always around. It was a good system, I thought. And if I’d wanted to be chief someday, I would have kept it that way. But I wasn’t next in line for the position, and I didn’t want to be either. I liked my lack of responsibility and being given orders from my dad instead of being the one to give them and make the hard decisions. Not that those came up often, maybe once every three years, but I didn’t want to be the one to fire one of my neighbors. I left that up to my dad instead. He was good at it, and at making sure the people didn’t leave angry. I liked my neighbors and couldn’t have imagined having to fire any of them.

  I turned on my computer, grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge while it booted up, and then opened up the e-mails. It was a lot of the usual stuff I dealt with each day. The mountain paper wanted to know if we had any news we wanted to share. Their base was three towns over, so a lot of their news was about snow and the best places to ski during the winter. I let the guy who had e-mailed the department know that we didn’t have anything to share at this time.

  A mom wanted to know if we could show up at her son’s birthday party since he wanted to be a cop. The kid was six and his mom worked at the grocery store. I smiled thinking about how some of the older guys, those with grandkids that age, would get a kick out of doing that.

  I took out my phone and texted Tony, the oldest member of our little force besides my dad. They were both in their sixties, but neither of them looked it and on my bad days they could still outshoot me.

  Six year old boy wants a cop at his birthday party. Want the assignment? I texted him.

  Who’s his mom? Tony texted back.

  I rolled my eyes. I didn’t know Tony had a thing for single moms, whic
h I knew Amy Anderson was, but I figured if it made Tony want to do it and spend time with the kid, then whatever. I brought random guys home when I didn’t even know their first names, so I figured I didn’t have any room to talk about love lives and relationships.

  Amy Anderson. Works at the grocery store. Son is Tim. I texted back.

  I’m in. I’ll get the details from you when I get into work. Let her know I’ll be there.

  Thanks. I figured I knew why he said yes, and it didn’t bother me in the least. Amy was pretty, I guessed. She always smiled at me and asked about my dad when I was in the grocery store. I sent the e-mail and continued on with them.

  Ben, who lived two doors down from my dad, was complaining about a barking dog in the neighborhood that someone from the precinct apparently needed to deal with immediately. I shook my head at his tone, but also because I didn’t remember there being any noisy dogs in the area. I was pretty sure my dad would have mentioned one to me if there had been. And besides, Ben knew who my dad was. Everyone in Thornwood did. He could have taken five minutes to walk down the street to go talk to my dad instead of spending that much time writing a pretty long and ranting e-mail about some dog barking.

  I decided to call my dad and let him know.

  “Hello?” he answered.

  “Hey. Your neighbor Ben is complaining about a barking dog,” I told him.

  I heard a message come over a loudspeaker wherever he was and figured he was probably at the grocery store. “Can you get me a bag of chips while you’re there? I didn’t eat breakfast.”

  “Boy, chips aren’t breakfast. I’ll bring you a banana and some chocolate milk. Now, what’s wrong with Ben?”

  I could have argued about how I wasn’t five and didn’t drink chocolate milk anymore, but that was a lie. I loved everything that had chocolate in it, and my dad always got the good kind of chocolate milk for me, the one made with actual milk and not the one that had filtered water as the first ingredient. “He’s complaining about a dog barking. I didn’t think people had many dogs near your house. There’s the golden retriever on the corner, but who else?”

  “The Hendersons just rescued a few Maltese so that’s probably who he’s talking about. I’ll stop by the hardware store to see Ben after I bring you back your breakfast. Don’t skip meals. It’s bad for your blood sugar or something.”

  I snorted. I didn’t care about my blood sugar. I’d wanted to sleep in and coffee didn’t do much to tide me over until lunch. We had some granola bars in a cabinet next to the computer paper, but they were nearly a year old and pretty hard at this point. “Thanks. See you in a bit.”

  “Bye.”

  I hung up and continued on with my morning of going through the e-mails.

  Chapter Three

  Caleb

  I MANAGED to get my TV set up, luckily without needing to call the cable people to help me figure out how to plug the damn wires in correctly, but after a four-hour marathon of my favorite cop show, I had Trent on my brain and needed to turn it off. He really was pretty cute. I’d never had a thing for cops, but he might have been able to convince me to change that if I was actually looking to have a relationship. Unfortunately Paul had soured me on that front. It was close to noon, I was starving, and I’d had jerky for breakfast, so I was starting to feel a bit sick to my stomach. Fortunately for me I didn’t have to drive far to get to the nearest grocery store.

  I grabbed a basket, figuring I’d be loading up for a while, and walked toward the frozen food section. Most of my meals came from there normally, but I did want to check out Rosie’s menu completely too. Financially I was in a good place, with clients waiting for me to start working again, which I promised them would happen that week. Without a mortgage or rent payments hanging over me, I didn’t see any reason not to spend a bit more on my food than I usually would have.

  Six frozen pizzas went into my cart, along with a couple of local Colorado craft beers. I’d never been much for craft beer, or really trying new beers in general, but I figured I might as well give them a chance. Maybe I’d end up liking one at some point.

  I grabbed some packs of cookies too. One peanut butter, a chocolate chip, and a sugar cookie were all added to my growing pile of food that wasn’t going to be good for me at all. I added some double chocolate with mint chips too. I hadn’t tried them, but they didn’t sound disgusting, and they were cookies, so I wanted them. Without Paul there to make crappy remarks about what I ate, I wanted all the junk food I’d been limiting, or completely denying myself altogether, for the past three years.

  By the time I was done, my cart looked like a frat boy’s preparty haul, and I didn’t feel guilty about it at all. In fact, it felt pretty good.

  “Hey,” the woman at the register said as I pulled into her lane. Her name tag said Amy, and there was a rose pin below it on her shirt.

  “Hi.” I started loading my groceries onto the belt.

  “You’re the new guy in town, huh?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Is it that obvious?”

  Amy shrugged and gave me a big smile. “We don’t get a lot of new people here. I drive past your place most mornings to drop my son off at school, and I saw that your pastures are empty. When will your horses be coming in?”

  I wasn’t sure what the obsession was with my pastures, but I didn’t think it was that weird that I didn’t have any plans for them. I knew why they were all assuming I did, but my empty pastures couldn’t have been the most interesting thing to happen in Thornwood that month. “I don’t have any.”

  She looked a bit disappointed. “Oh. Well, that’s okay too.” She’d finished ringing up my groceries, and I paid for them. “Do you need help out?”

  I shook my head. “Thanks anyway.”

  “Have a good day.”

  “You too.”

  After loading up my junk food haul, I headed back home, but I decided on a different route that would take me past the precinct. I thought it would have been pretty easy to find, but I was wrong about that. The only thing telling me I was near the police station was a tiny sign on the front of an office building. I would have missed it entirely except it was the only place that had two police cars parked in front. I shook my head and let the new reality of my small-town life actually start to sink in. Honestly, I kind of really liked it. It was small and adorable, which was a huge change from LA, but that was a good thing. There were no highways, no heavy traffic jams, no sirens blaring at three in the morning, no people shoving on the sidewalks. It was nice in a way I hadn’t remembered LA ever being.

  I drove home after that, and it didn’t take me too long to bring my junk food into the house. With my groceries unloaded, I put my laptop on the island, grabbed a soda and a box of the cookies—since I didn’t feel like waiting for a pizza to get done for my lunch—and got to work. I’d finished all my projects before moving, which meant a fresh start on everything. I was excited and ready to get going as I turned on my music, a nice change from the silence of the house, and got to work making a new logo for a reptile store in Arizona. They wanted a whole new setup in addition to the logo, with a new banner, new letterhead, new website—the works. It was good money for me, and I got to practice drawing a snake for their logo, which wasn’t all that hard to do since it had no legs or anything really complicated about it. I thought it turned out pretty well, though, and an hour later, I had a few drafts of it sent off to them.

  I checked my phone when it beeped, welcoming the distraction and at the same time praying it wasn’t Paul. It was my sister, Marie, which made me really happy. Call me if you’re not busy, her text said.

  I dialed her number and waited for her to pick up, hoping it wasn’t one of those times where she meant to call her at some point if I wasn’t busy and not to drop everything right then and there.

  “Wow, that was fast,” she said as she answered.

  “I had a minute between projects. How’s things there?” I got off the stool, rubbed my lower back, and went to
the couch to stretch out and hopefully keep my back from hurting. I was supposed to take breaks every fifteen to thirty minutes while my back recovered. It hadn’t even been a bad accident, but my doctor said I’d been hit at just the right angle to really throw things out of alignment. “Good. The boys are out working with Dan and some of his new horses. They’re learning fast.”

  I heard the pride in my sister’s voice, and it made me smile. She was a good mom, always had been. I liked kids well enough too, but I knew I wouldn’t have been nearly as comfortable with them as she was. “Good. Hey, once I get things moved in here and I pick out some real furniture, why don’t you all come for a visit?”

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  I heard the uncertainty in her voice and wondered what caused it. “Nope. Not at all. I haven’t seen the boys in years. It would be good for us all to catch up.” I tried to keep my voice light, since I had no idea what was going on with her and why she sounded so weird at my invitation. I hoped it wasn’t anything really serious.

  “Great. I’ll talk it over with Dan. I think it could be fun, but I need to see what his schedule is like.”

  I took a second before saying anything to her just in case I said something I didn’t want to. I’d meant every word of it, but my sister didn’t need me nagging on her. “Or, hey, here’s an idea. Why don’t you and the boys come visit? Dan could get a break from them for a while.” Good, I sounded perfectly light and fluffy as if my ulterior motive wasn’t getting my sister and her kids away from her husband for a few weeks. I’d asked her to come to LA, but she’d always claimed the city wasn’t a good place for young kids, and they couldn’t afford a hotel room for a few weeks since I didn’t have any place for them to stay while they were there with me. She didn’t have that excuse now, though, since I doubted she could get much safer than in a tiny town like Thornwood, and I had plenty of space for them. I didn’t want them moving in with me, but a few weeks would be fine.