by Anne Connor
He’s looking down at the brown paper bag from Adam’s, my fingers wrapped tight around the top of the bag. I loosen up, unaware that I was holding my breakfast in a death grip.
“Depends on how big your appetite is, officer,” I say, forcing some banter and a smile, but it’s too early on Monday morning for me to really feel into it.
Colin has his uniform on already, even though most officers opt to come to work in their regular civilian clothing and then change once they’ve arrived, in one of the locker rooms on the police campus.
I spent the whole weekend in my room, pretending to be sick to my mom and dad. It gave me a good excuse as to why I had to cut out of the party early, and it resulted in them leaving me alone to wallow in my own confusion - which is exactly what I wanted. The only human contact I had all weekend was a few texts with Sarah.
Colin knows why I left early, or at least he knows what I told him.
The day is gray and cold, and I push the collar of my coat up around my chin to break the wind against my skin. My eyes scan up from the front of the station where Colin and I go in together so many mornings to the tops of the trees rustling in the wind, reaching up around the building and hiding the station from the off-ramp of the interstate off to the east side of the building.
Taking a sip of my coffee, I try to forget that my purse is a little bit lighter today.
“Your hands are full.” Colin strides a few paces ahead of me and pulls open the door to the reception area of the police station, and we walk together in silence past the two rows of chair set up back-to-back in the middle of the cold brick and linoleum room. This is the view I have all day, where I sit just beyond a passcode-protected metal door, and all I can do to keep myself from falling asleep between checking in civilians looking to file police reports and telling people they’re in the wrong place if they want to pay a parking ticket, is stare at the local news TV station on one of the two flat-screens set up high on each wall across from the rows of seats.
Sometimes I’ll even watch one of the TVs, and then the other, as if they aren’t showing the same exact thing every single day. That, or I’ll read a book hidden on my lap under the the desk.
Colin and I pass the rows of seats, and they’re empty now and will remain empty for most of the day.
Of course I like that Riverside is basically free of crime, but I could use some excitement. Maybe a puppy went missing from a yard and I need to fetch one of the officers to go rescue it and bring it home safe and sound.
But instead, Colin and I go through the heavy metal door and I sit down behind the shatter-proof, bullet-proof glass protecting me from the bad guys, turning on my old computer and then getting up to hang up my purse and coat on the coat rack in the far corner of the room.
Colin lingers in the hallway leading to the back where he and the other officers have their desks, leaning against the wall a few few away from me. I busy myself with making sure my coat is hung up neatly, but it’s really because I don’t want anything more than just idle chit-chat with Colin. It’s not because I have a lot of work to do; it’s because I want to forget what happened at the gala, and I want even more to force myself to forget what happened after it.
“How was the rest of your weekend?” Colin tries, scratching his chin and putting a hand on his hip. He can already tell there’s no point in going down this line of conversation.
“It wasn’t so great,” I say, letting out a little cough that sounds as fake it is. “I was feeling a little under the weather at the party, and I spent the rest of the weekend in bed.”
“Oh,” Colin says, taking a step back into the hallway. “Right. Sorry to hear that.”
I pull my breakfast sandwich out of the beat-up paper bag and plop it down on my desk, peeling it out of its wax paper and tin foil wrappings. I take a bite of the deluxe lox bagel with cream cheese, onions, tomato and lettuce.
“Thanks,” I say, grabbing the half of the bagel I’m not working on, waving it at Colin. “Want?” I say between bites.
“Hm,” he says, waving his hands in front of him. “No thanks.”
“Oh,” I say, putting it back down on the wrapper. “Sorry. Right. Germs.”
We hear the front door open, and our dads come through the door in plain clothes, striding over to the door to the station as I push a button under the desk to let them in.
“I better get to it,” Colin says as the men come through the door. My dad gives me a warm smile and waves as he walks past, and Colin’s dad quietly tilts the tip of his Mets cap down at me.
I smile and wave as the three of them disappear down the hallway, and then turn my attention to the paperwork I have sitting at my desk, off to the side, next to my computer. There isn’t much. I have to enter some parking tickets into the bookkeeping software we use. It would be easier if they just streamlined the process and let me accept payments since I put them into the computer, but there’s a lot of bureaucratic procedures around here that are never going to change.
There’s something else underneath the parking ticket summonses that were issued over the weekend. I pull it out by its corner, careful not to send the rest of the paperwork spilling all over the desk, and I see that it’s paperwork for a release. I check the name on the top of the form, and it’s stares back at me as though it has a life of its own.
The knot that I’ve been trying to distract myself from feeling all weekend tightens up in my gut as I realize I need to process Travis Bloom’s probation paperwork.
For a minute, I consider just packing my stuff up, walking out, and calling my dad to tell him I need to take a sick day, but instead, I finish my bagel while watching the morning newscast from an overly bubbly man and woman in blue suit jackets and perfect teeth, sipping my coffee like nothing’s wrong.
I glance down at the paperwork and see that his probation officer works here in this building.
Of course she does. This is the only police station in the county. I wonder to myself whether my dad knew about this, whether he realized that Travis would be waltzing through this office complex twice a week for the next - I check the paperwork - six months, checking in with me at this desk while I issue him a visitor’s pass.
I groan, pinching the bridge of my nose and closing my eyes. Not only did he do something epically stupid a year ago, he left me alone here with no answers and only a million questions. It hurt to have to answer all of the questions from the people at the police station who wanted to know what pushed Travis to do what he did, but I had no answers for them. As far as they were all concerned, he and I were nothing more than friends. No one knew that I’d opened my heart to him, and it was all my fault. I was afraid to wear the ring he’d given me, but I carried it with me always.
I never figured out why I kept it - if it was because I never had a chance to give it back to him, or because it made me feel less like there was a Travis-shaped hole in my life. It filled some need, but I still don’t know what.
Giving it back when I saw him seemed like the right thing to do. I was never able to wear it a year ago, and I wouldn’t be able to wear it now.
Only fair to give it back to him.
And now, with him on probation and his imminent visits here, I’m going to be bombarded with more questions than I know what to do with.
We never dated openly in college or the summer after it when our relationship faltered and stalled when we found out his mom was sick. We never really had a chance to be together.
My dad warned me about him constantly. He called him the devil next door - not literally - but he knew that I was vulnerable to what he could give me.
Maybe he was right. I did get caught up in Travis, but it all ended before it even really started.
What did Travis really give me, aside from a childhood friendship and a messy breakup over a relationship that never really existed?
No, I could never tell my parents that Travis had proposed. I don’t even know why I said yes.
It was stupid.
And there’s nothing I can do now except process Travis’ paperwork, and hope that I can act like I’m okay.
Travis
I have a list of things I need to do with the house about a mile long, but all I can do since seeing Daisy at the bowling alley is sit on the couch and flip through a seemingly endless loop of infomercials for male hair loss products and advertisements for attorneys who specialize in slip-and-falls and weather-related accidents.
A disembodied voice on the TV comes through, shouting at me to call now if I’ve been injured during a winter storm.
What the hell am I going to do, sue God?
I get up, thinking that I need to take my mind off the TV and do something more productive. But I’m afraid if I unchain myself from the TV, I’ll spin toward something bad. I consider picking up the phone to call Alec, but it’s Monday night at ten and he has a young daughter at home to care for. He’s probably watching TV with Jess right now, or maybe they’re lying in bed together, each reading a book. Alec always had his nose in books back in high school. I imagine he has plenty of time to read now that he’s a stay-at-home dad, and he must love it.
I feel a smile pull at my mouth, and my heart warms when I think of him sitting on a rocking chair in the corner of his daughter’s room, with her across his chest and reading something to her. He probably doesn’t even read kid books to her. He’s probably training her on War and Peace or other classics. That’s the stuff he loved in school. He was always so far ahead of all our other classmates.
He shouldn’t have tried to throw it away in an instant of anger, no matter how justified his anger was. What he did wasn’t justified.
He’s fucking better than that.
I walk into the kitchen and grab a beer from the fridge. There’s not much else to do. I pop the metal cap off with a bottle opener from my keyring, and look around the room at everything and nothing. I don’t know when I ate in the past few days, but there’s a stack of bowls piled up in the kitchen, along with a few bottles and glasses. I start pulling open a few cabinets, but everything’s empty except for one which houses a few packets of instant oatmeal and cans of soup, stuff I picked up at the gas station on Friday night before Alec and I hit the bowling alley bar.
I go into the bathroom and strip off my clothes. It’s been a long couple of days. It’s been a long time since I’ve had the chance to talk to Daisy. I wonder if she is still working down at the police station. If she is, I’ll be able to see her again, and often.
When Mom got sick, she took a second mortgage out on the house to cover the stacks of medical bills piling up.
I tried to save the house, and I succeeded, and now I have to preserve it. It would be a shame if I were to allow it to fall into complete disarray now that I’m back home. I spent enough time away from it, and saving it, to see it fall apart now.
My eyes travel along the ceiling in the kitchen as though I’m not controlling them. As though something inside me is searching for a secret hidden a long time ago.
The ceiling hasn’t been upgraded since the 1970s. Wooden slats cover the ceiling and long incandescent bulbs run the length of the ceiling between the beams, covered with cheap plastic slats. Mom always talked about replacing them. The wallpaper is peeling off in places at its corners, the result of humid summers and damp winters.
I should gut the place and sell it, and get the fuck out of here.
But Daisy keeps pulling me back.
The next best thing would be to gut it and keep it for myself. Live here and keep it as the home I’ve always known.
I sink down into one of the chairs at the circular wooden table, rings all over the surface from years of hot bowls of food and desserts placed on it. I put my beer down, not worried about the condensation getting onto the table and damaging the wood.
I can’t stop thinking about Daisy. She came over to the house all the time back in the day. She practically lived here. She was a staple in my home, especially after Dad left. She treated my mom as good as she treats her own. And I know that even if she had to travel farther than just across the lawn to get here, she would.
She would have done anything for me, for my family.
I close my eyes, taking a long pull from my beer and tilting my head back, letting the cold carbonation sting at my eyes and fill up my belly, and let the memory of her laughter bouncing around the house, and the silence that filled it after Mom got sick, fill my brain.
I can’t do anything now but think.
I slip my hand into my pocket and take out the ring. Her ring. I have to make sure she’ll wear it again.
My phone starts buzzing inside my pocket and I pull it out. It’s Alec.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing right now. Jessica is at her mom’s house with the baby. Want to go to some stupid party?
I punch in my response, telling him that I’ll pick him up in ten minutes.
When I get to his house, I don’t honk because I don’t want to wake the whole fucking neighborhood.
Alec lumbers out of the house when he hears my car drive up over the gravel onto his driveway.
I lean over the center console and jimmy the door open for him. My ride’s old, and I’m not certain the door on the passenger side will open from the outside. Lowering the volume on the radio with my other hand, I look at him through the window.
“You alright?” I ask. He looks like shit, like he hasn’t slept or taken a shower.
“Yeah. Me and Jessica got into it a little. She took the baby to her ma’s house. Not a big deal.”
I hold my pack of reds to my lips and shake out the end of one of my smokes, pinching it in my mouth and pulling the pack away, tossing it down onto the console. Alec picks it up and takes a cigarette from it.
“So where is this party at?” I know that his family is the most important thing to him, and I don’t want to pry into his business. I know from school that his wife can be a little bit controlling, so I figure the fight was nothing. They probably got into an argument about some petty bullshit like which sheets to put on their bed.
“Thompson’s.” Alec looks out the window at the streetlamps rolling past us, their dim light flashing inside the car. “Do you think we’re too old to be going to parties like we’re still back in high school?”
“Parties like the ones at Thompson’s probably. I don’t even think I’m supposed to be going to any parties right now. Probation, you know?”
“Right. You can just drop me off if you want.”
“It’s fine. No explicit rules against it. I just want to stay out of trouble.”
“You were never in trouble to begin with.”
“If you ask her father, you’d get a different answer.”
Alec chuckles. “There’s no way to please that guy.”
We roll up to Thompson’s house and I cut off the engine. The guy always had the best parties in high school. When I think about Alec egging on two girls who were making out with each other, I shake my head and laugh. Never would have thought he’d become such a family man, which is why what he has is so precious. Like it’s dangling by a thin string that can be cut at any moment.
Thompson comes outside and greets us.
“It’s been a year, hasn’t it?” he says.
“A year too long,” I say, reaching out my hand and giving him a shake and a pat on the back.
“So are you a new man now?” I shove past Thompson and make my way into the kitchen. The ceiling is covered with multicolored Christmas lights, even though it’s not the right time. It’s either way too early to have lights up, or way too late, but either way, he doesn’t seem to care.
In the kitchen, I look around at the place. There’s a line of liquor bottles set up on the counter, along with red plastic cups.
“You know that the inventor of these plastic cups died last year?” I ask, ta
king one off a tall stack and unscrewing the cap of one of the bottles. I choose something dark. I don’t know what it is. Either whiskey or bourbon.
“No shit,” Thompson says as he and Alec come into the kitchen. I look down at their feet as I steady myself against the kitchen counter and take a sip of my drink, letting the hot burn flow down my throat and soothe me with its sting. It shouldn’t feel good, but it does. But it’ll take more than this to make me forget the past two days.
Now that I’m out, I feel more trapped than I was before, either a year ago or a week ago. I counted down the fucking seconds to when I could see her again, but I guess I was too arrogant when it came to how everything would shake out. I thought I would be able to pick up where we left off.
I never counted on her giving me back the ring.
I slip my hand into my pocket and palm the ring, the hardness of the diamond digging into my hand. I’m an idiot for keeping it in there. I’m not keeping it safe. I could lose it.
Alec comes up beside me and claps a hand onto my back. We used to get into a lot of shit back in the day at parties like this. Alec was always the guy who fell in love hard and fast, and he didn’t care who it was with. He was a serial monogamist back in high school, and he always had a new girl he was in love with and would never let go.
A true fucking romantic. It didn’t stop until he met Jess and took her to senior prom. She was the last girl he was in love with, and he’d argue with me if I brought it up, but I think he was the first girl he was really in love with, too.
He cried on my shoulder so many times when it came to girls, and he was stuck in the friendzone often.
“He hasn’t changed a bit. Same old man you knew a year ago, right Trav?” He reaches past me and grabs his own cup to fill up with some poison to make him feel good. I consider whether I should tell him to stop. I don’t know when Jess will be back with the baby.
“I think it’s pretty cool, what happened to you. You beat up a guy who was trying to mug an old grandma, right?” Thompson says with a smirk, flicking a broken light switch up and down.