He glanced at me, pausing in his writing. “We can finish this up another time if you want. Or I can write this up and email it to you or something.”
I shook my head. “It’s fine. Just work bullshit… stuff,” I said, irritated with myself. It’s like I don’t even know how to act around normal people sometimes.
He nodded, then went back to writing.
“I can get started tomorrow if you want.”
“That would be great. I’ll give you the extra key for the front door.” I tried to keep myself calm, together.
It hurt. I’ve never even been close to being in love with someone before. I had no idea that this was what it felt like when something you had such high hopes for ends. I thought it would be easier, especially since I already knew he was lying to me. None of it had prepared me for hearing him talk to me the way he had, for the way the warmth I’d once heard in his tone had turned to icy derision.
Justin finished writing, and he handed me the forms. I mentally shook away the Connor issue to focus on what I was supposed to be doing. I looked over the list and the corresponding estimates, along with an initial quote for the work.
I gestured for the pen and signed and dated the bottom of the forms and handed them back to him. He gave me a copy of each one, then held his hand out and we shook on it.
“This place is going to look great. It’s already a good house. A little bit of work, and you’ll be proud to have your mom living here,” he said. I let go of his hand.
“Thanks. I’m excited to see it. And thanks for agreeing to start on it so quickly.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled the extra key off of the ring, handed it to Justin.
“My pleasure. I’ll be here throughout the day, and if I need to finish stuff up, I’ll probably be here some evenings, too.”
“I don’t want to take away from any other responsibilities you have,” I said, feeling guilty that he expected to have to spend all of his time here.
He smiled. “My cat will get by, somehow,” he said, and I gave him a small smile back.
“Okay. If you need to get in touch with me, you can always contact me at the number I gave you before.”
“It should go pretty smoothly. I’ll definitely call you before I do any painting, because I’d rather you pick the finishes in the house. Unless you want everything just to be painted white?”
I shook my head. “Mama can’t stand white walls,” I said.
“Okay. I’ll call you then before the painting starts. And of course, any time you feel like checking in, do so.”
“I don’t want to get in your way,” I said.
“You won’t,” he said, meeting my eyes briefly before looking away.
I gestured toward the door. “I have to get back to work, actually,” I said.
“Sure.” We walked out, and I noticed a large dark gray pickup truck parked near the curb. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Ms. Faraday,” he said.
I smiled a little. “Jolene,” I said. He nodded. “Have a good day.”
“You too,” he said. Then he gave me another small smile before walking toward his truck and climbing in. I watched him drive away, then started walking down the street. I locked up, then walked to the bus stop a few blocks away for the trip back to Command. It gave me plenty of time to think, but I wasn’t so sure that was necessarily a good thing.
At least something good had happened today, I thought as I stared out the window. Mama’s house was going to look great in just a few weeks. And I wouldn’t waste any more thoughts or feelings on Connor, because he sure the hell wasn’t wasting any on me.
I made it through the next few days alternately pissed off and depressed about how stupid I’d been over Connor, getting the silent treatment from my patrol partner, fielding dumbass questions from reporters and the “new media” assholes who were even worse, and just generally wanting to fall off the face of the planet for a while. On top of that were the dozen roses that Connor had sent to Command for me, in addition to the three voice mails he’s left, telling me how sorry he was.
I was fed up with pretty much everything.
I finished up a patrol with Portia, since Dani had backed out on yet another shift and they needed someone to fill in, then made my way to the team lounge to see who was around. Mainly, I was hoping Jenson was around, because she’d been trying to get me to talk and I hadn’t been in the mood and I kind of felt like a jerk for brushing her off all the time.
I walked into the team lounge to find Ryan, David, Amy, and Jenson in various states of slouch on the long couches there. Ryan was lying flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling and specifically not looking at me. Amy sat at the end of the couch, a book open in her hand, but she wasn’t reading it. Jenson sat cross-legged on the other couch next to David, who had a tablet in his hand.
“Can’t we turn this crap off?” Ryan was asking as I came in. “Why do you even follow that dipshit?”
“Because sometimes he’s entertaining, and other times, he’s kind of brilliant,” David said.
“What dipshit?” I asked, sitting on David’s other side so I could look at the tablet. On screen, there was a guy with a white mask over his face, sitting in an empty looking room. I listened for a moment. His voice was kind of distorted, the way they do on the news when they’re trying to keep someone’s identity a secret.
“This,” David said, nodding toward the tablet. “Blogger, podcaster, livestreamer. The Detroit UnPowered guy?” he said, and I nodded, recognizing the name from hearing Portia complaining about him. “He records a new stream every couple days or so.”
“What’s with the mask?” I asked, and he shrugged.
“We can hardly point fingers about that, can we?” he asked.
I settled in next to him and watched. The guy sat at his desk, in front of his camera.
“It seems to me that Daystar isn’t exactly what StrikeForce was expecting when she signed on. I’ve heard reports, and gotten tweets, emails, messages from all over the city that she’s not only rude, but disrespectful as well.”
“Oh, go fuck yourself,” I muttered at the tablet, and my teammates laughed.
We listened as he went on, David still chuckling over the “rude” comment.
“And I was able to experience this first hand. And I wasn’t the only one. I ended up at a crime scene where Daystar was one of the StrikeForce members who responded. I’ll admit: she was fantastic in doing her job. She was amazing. Yes, I said it. I can respect what our city’s heroes do when they do it well. As you all know, though, ‘doing their jobs well’ isn’t exactly par for the course for StrikeForce.”
“Should I say it again?” I muttered.
“He’s not wrong,” Jenson said quietly. “We all know that.”
“But on this occasion,” the streamer guy continued in his distorted voice, “this time, they did a great job. Particularly Daystar. We’ve all noticed that Daystar is not especially fond of the press. She doesn’t like being looked at, and I wonder, sometimes, why that is. It’s so out of character for super heroes, both in Detroit and in other cities. At any rate, one of the reporters, Bill Greenberg for the News, called out a question to Daystar. He said, pretty respectfully, actually, that it had been noted that her fighting style was different since that horrendous battle she had against Maddoc. Which is a fact. I’ve noticed it. Everyone who pays attention to this aspect of our lives had noticed it. So he bit the bullet and asked her about it. And she responded by holding up both middle fingers and taking off without another word.”
“I wanted to do a hell of a lot more,” I muttered. This was the last thing I needed, after the week I’d been having.
On screen, the streamer guy continued. “I guess I just think that we deserve better. This isn’t the kind of behavior I think any of us need to see from the super powered beings who are supposed to be protecting us. It doesn’t make any of us feel better to see this kind of… disdain for us.”
“Why is he sh
itting on me?” I grumbled. “Caine does stuff like that all the time.”
“You’re a girl. You’re supposed to be nice,” Amy said with an eye roll.
“And don’t forget the ever-popular ‘likable,’” Jenson added.
“Such a bunch of bullshit,” Amy said, and I gave her a surprised look. “Yes, Jolene. I curse sometimes. Don’t look so shocked.”
I laughed, and David looked over at me. “Is that really what it’s like? All the time? Does everyone expect women to be nice?”
“It happens often enough,” I said, thinking of my not-so-friendly phone conversation with Connor. “No matter what’s said or done, if you stand up for yourself, if you’re anything other than calm and cool about it, you’re immediately an overly-emotional bitch. There is no in-between.”
“Truth,” Amy said.
“And that’s a good example of it. That reporter was shouting out questions about kind of personal crap, bringing up some bad memories when I was supposed to be focusing on something else. So I was less-than-nice about it. And then you get assholes on the internet talking about how horrible you are,” I said with a shrug. “It’s nothing new.”
David turned the stream off. “What an ass,” he muttered.
“Keep watching him if you want. It doesn’t hurt to know what they’re saying about us. Is this guy popular or something?”
David nodded. “He was the first blogger to really focus on the super powered people here in Detroit. He has a huge following, including a bunch of national media outlets.”
I thought that over for a while. “Well, just our luck that our local blogger is a dick, isn’t it?” I asked. He laughed, and I patted his leg and stood up. “I’m going out for a while. I have my comm on if you need me.”
“Want company?” Jenson asked.
“Sure.”
Jenson followed me to the elevator, then we each went to our rooms to change into street clothes. She met me out in the corridor, and we took the elevator down to the lobby. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“I want to check on the work that’s being done at the house I bought for Mama,” I said. She gave me a look. “I’m paying for it with money I made before I started with StrikeForce,” I said with a sigh. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Do you still want to come?”
“Of course. You were so excited about this place, I’m kind of dying to see it.”
“We’ll walk to the bus stop down the block,” I said. “I want to switch buses a few times before we get on the right one.”
“Sounds good,” she said.
“You don’t think I’m being paranoid?” I asked, and she shook her head.
“We have enemies. It would be stupid not to do everything you could to cover your tracks and keep it all a secret. I’m doing the same thing,” she reminded me. “I had to literally cry and beg to get my parents to do it, but they don’t even live in the country anymore. I haven’t seen them since this all started, because I’m too afraid some villain will figure it out. And you have more enemies than I do. More personal ones,” she added after a moment.
I nodded. We walked, catching a bus on a route we didn’t even want. We went through several bus changes, and then I felt okay about taking a bus to the Grosse Pointe border. We could walk to the house from there. We mostly rode in silence, but every once in a while we’d comment about a restaurant or something we were passing. I never really appreciated how freely we could talk to one another at Command versus out in public. Or it was kind of pathetic that our entire lives revolved around work, so that was all we had to talk about. Either way, we didn’t say much during the ride.
We got off at the stop and started walking down Mack. It wasn’t a long walk, and we could talk more freely now that we were alone.
“So, I meant to ask you… you seem kind of down the last few days. Is everything okay?” Jenson asked.
I shrugged.
“I mean, if you don’t want to talk, it’s fine. I won’t be insulted. But if you do want to talk, I’m here,” she said, shoving her hands in her pockets.
I took a breath. “It didn’t work out with Killjoy,” I said, looking straight ahead.
“Why not? What did he do?” she asked.
“He only wanted one thing, I guess. I thought it was more,” I said, feeling stupid. “I called him out on some bullshit that he told me, and he didn’t like that very much.”
We walked in silence for a few moments. “This is why I don’t date,” she finally said. “I really thought you two maybe had something.”
“That makes two of us,” I admitted. “He told me some things I wasn’t okay with, and he couldn’t understand why. We got into a whole argument about it, and then it all just came out. I was stupid. It seemed too good to be true, too easy, because it was. He didn’t know me. We only even talked a couple of times. And then there I am, daydreaming about forever like an idiot.”
“You’re human,” she said. “And it’s his loss.”
“Yeah.” We walked in silence for a while.
“My parents have been married for forty-seven years,” she finally said, shaking her head. “I can’t even imagine.”
“You ever been married?” I asked her, and she shook her head.
“That is one mess I definitely don’t need,” she said with a smile. “I thought I would be, once, but then I got into a crazy situation — this was back when I was in the military — and I realized that I didn’t want to put someone through that. I fully expect that I’m going to have a pretty short lifespan— ”
“Why the hell would you say that?” I demanded.
“Please. I can self-replicate, but it’s my only power. In a world full of people with super strength and toxic skin and healing factors, it’s not exactly the kind of thing that anyone even looks at twice.” She shrugged. “But I can do some good while I’m here, and who knows? Maybe I’ll live to a ripe old age and get to ogle lifeguards on a tropical beach somewhere in my golden years.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again, trying to argue with her logic. Jenson laughed.
“That actually worked,” she said, still smiling.
“What?”
“He doesn’t seem very important now, does he?” she asked with a wink.
I stared at her, and she laughed again.
“I won’t let anyone get to you,” I said, still thinking it over.
She shook her head. “My point was, he’s nothing. Yeah, you had some feelings for him, and they were maybe a mistake. But it’s not life and death we’re talking about here. It’s one absolute asshole of a man.”
“So, what? This is the girl equivalent of ‘bros before hoes?’”
“Pretty much.”
“You are nuts. I mean, you seem sane at first, but you’re just as crazy as the rest of us,” I said, and then I had to laugh.
“And you adore me, so there we go,” she said.
By now, we’d reached the block with my mom’s house on it, and I pointed it out to her. I made out the shape of the contractor’s pick up truck in the driveway. “Looks like the carpenter is still here,” I said.
We walked up to the house and I opened the front door. I could see Justin in the kitchen, bending over the kitchen counter, which was maybe half-covered with tiles that looked a lot better with the kitchen.
“Hey Justin. Just stopping by to see how it’s going,” I called.
“Great. I got a lot done on the second floor. Bath is done except for the paint, and all of the plaster repairs are done. I also sanded the floors up there for refinishing.”
I raised my eyebrows at Jenson, and we headed up the stairs, Jenson looking around the entire time. “This is a great house,” she said. “Reminds me of my grandma’s house.”
I nodded, and we looked in each room. I was amazed by how much he’d gotten done. This floor was ready for paint already, and I could see the cans of colors I’d picked out lining the hallway.
W
e headed back down. Justin was in the kitchen, apparently taking a break. He sat on a folding chair in the kitchen, steaming cup of black coffee in his hand.
“I can’t believe how much you got done,” I said.
“It went fast. Everything but the bathroom, but my brother came to help me with that.”
Jenson nudged me, and I remembered that sometimes, people actually expect me to have manners. “Oh. Justin, this is my friend…” I turned to glance at her.
“Tina,” she said, holding her hand out. Justin shook it. “Nice to meet you,” she added.
Justin looked back at me. “So… how are you doing? Last time you were here, you seemed kind of stressed. Work stuff,” he added.
“Much better. Work is still crazy, but I’m doing better,” I said.
“What kind of work do you do again?” he asked.
“I’m a security guard,” I said.
“Yeah, I bet that gets weird,” he said. “Oh, before I forget, I double-checked the plumbing from the upper bath, and there was some corrosion and it looks like there was a small leak behind the wall on the first floor.”
I groaned, and he held his hands up. “I fixed it. I was repairing the plaster in that room anyway. There was some staining on the wall, and I traced it back to that. I had to tear out some of the plaster, but I patched it and you shouldn’t be able to see the difference once it’s all painted.”
“Thank you. Just add it to the invoice, then,” I said.
I looked around. “It really is looking amazing. I feel like the house is in good hands. Can’t wait to get Mama in here.”
He ducked his head a bit, and I had the sense that he was pleased. He really was good looking. And handy. And polite. It was just too bad I was never, ever getting involved with anyone again. Ever.
“With any luck, it’ll only take two weeks instead of the three I had planned. She’ll be in here before the end of the month,” he said, and I smiled.
Jenson’s phone rang, and she glanced at it and quickly excused herself. I heard the front door open, then Justin and I were left in the kitchen.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked him, and he nodded. “How long have you been doing this?”
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