The Anti-Social Season (First Responders #2)

Chapter Two

Two

O n Friday afternoon, Thea went back to her old station house to pick up the few remaining personal items she’d left there. The rooms felt too bright, everything a little too clear and sharp. Familiar and oddly not at the same time. Her former squad mates Sean and Felix were cleaning up the kitchen, gently bickering as usual about how to stack the dishwasher. Sean’s pale Irish face was a contrast to Felix’s dark-skinned Black complexion, but these two might as well have been brothers to each other and to her, closer to her than she’d ever been with her own sister. Three peas in a pod. Until now.

“Hey, guys,” she said, hovering in the doorway, uncertain how to talk to them now. Sean looked up from his task, grinning broadly at her. He did that a lot now—being in love made his naturally sunny temperament even sunnier.

“Hey,” Felix said, crossing the space in between them and folding her into a hug. “We’re sorry you’re leaving us, but you’re staying part of the family, so you better not be a stranger, ’kay?”

She nodded, scrubbing her face against his shoulder, though she wasn’t sure how she could face coming back here. How could she be part of the family if she wasn’t in the trenches every day? She couldn’t. Because she wasn’t really a member of their squad anymore, and nothing Felix could say would change that.

Sean stepped up for his hug, and Thea wrapped her arms around him gingerly. “Knock that off,” he said, squeezing her tightly. “I’m good as new, mostly.”

“It’s the mostly I’m concerned about,” she said, trying for her usual goofy tone and failing miserably. Pulling away and reaching into her bag, she drew out a book. “I didn’t get a chance to finish this, but I wanted to give it back.” She held it out to him, but he waved it away.

“I don’t lend books. I give them away. Either keep it or pass it along to someone else who might enjoy it.”

She thought about the unknown library staffer who was going to help her in her new job. She felt like she was going to have pretty unlimited access to books in her near future, which was silly—she already had a library card. But somehow knowing that she was going to be working with this unknown person made the access to books seem even more infinite.

And it made the distance from these two guys, who were like the brothers she’d never had, widen into something more like a chasm. Felix seemed to be in tune with her mood, gripping her shoulder and saying, “You’re okay, right?”

“You mean aside from washing out of the only career I’ve ever known?” Wow. That was a little more real than she had planned on being, even with these two.

“C’mon.” Felix grabbed her hand and towed her to the big family-style dining table on the other side of the kitchen island. “Sit.”

Thea sat at the head of the table, her two friends dropping to seats on either side of her. Sean leaned back and folded his arms, a concerned look on his face, the wooden chair creaking slightly under his bulk. Felix chafed her hand in his. “You didn’t wash out,” Felix said.

“Sure I didn’t.” Thea snorted, her mood plummeting.

Sean added his soft voice to the argument. “You didn’t.”

Thea’s gaze shifted guiltily to her big friend. She’d never told him how his injury had affected her. It felt silly, melodramatic. Making his injury, hospitalization and rehab all about her. Especially when he was back on the job and claiming to be “good as new,” even if only mostly.

Felix squeezed her hand. “You did the work for a decade, Thea. If you’d washed out, you would have done it in training or in month one. You’ve done the work—done it well—and maybe it’s just time for you to move on.”

“But you’re still here. And Sean’s been here for even longer.” Sean had already been in the job for years when Thea started. That was one of the things that made him seem so invincible, though obviously he wasn’t.

“We’re not you. Everybody’s different.”

She couldn’t help but hear the echoes of It’s okay, you’re a girl. Girls are different in Felix’s words, even if it was unfair of her. He’d never said anything like that to her, or anyone, as long as she’d known him.

Sean leaned forward and tapped her other hand with his big forefinger. “You haven’t really been the same since I was in the hospital. I don’t want to make this about me, but did me getting hurt have anything to do with...” He paused, not seeming to be able to find the words. “Whatever it is you’re going through?”

“No. Of course not,” Thea lied. “It was just time to move on, that’s all.” Because move on sounded a heck of a lot better than to admit the truth: that she was a quitter.

Simon was deep into his review of how Emergency Services had been using their social media when a tap on his shoulder made him startle. He yanked his earbuds out of his ears and whirled in his chair to find Mary-Pat standing over him, glowering.

“Does Amy know you’re using library time for...whatever this is?” she asked, waving at his computer screen.

His jaw clamped tight. Do you know you’re not my boss? he wanted to fire back. For all she knew, he could have been doing research for a patron. He coiled the wires of his buds meticulously around his fingers and placed them on his desk. The best way to annoy Mary-Pat was to not let her rattle you. Because she loved pushing people off balance.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but Amy’s asked me to cross-train a new social media manager coming into Emergency Services,” he said, keeping his voice quiet and level. “Can I do something for you?”

Mary-Pat inhaled sharply and her face went pink. Her mouth opened slightly, but no words came out.

“I have a lot to do to get up to speed here, so if I can’t help you with anything...” He looked pointedly at the doorway to his cubicle. Mary-Pat, clearly unable to come up with something else to say, snapped her mouth shut with an angry click, whirled and stomped off.

When her footsteps, muffled by the industrial carpet, faded into nothing, a soft voice sang from the next cubicle, “Ding-dong, the witch is dead...”

“Which old witch?” Simon squeaked, the mild adrenaline spike of his confrontation making him loopy.

“The wicked witch,” the voice responded in artificially low tones and then dissolved into giggles. Then Chloe wheeled her chair around the corner, pointing at him and continuing to laugh.

“It’s not that funny,” he said, unspooling his earbud wires into a messy pile now that he had nothing to prove to Mary-Pat.

“It’s super funny,” Chloe said. “Not that I’d have the courage to freeze her out like that. You’re my hero.” She flattened her hands under her chin and fluttered her eyelashes.

“Knock it off,” Simon said, even as he felt his lips curling into a smile. Chloe could always get him to laugh, even at the passive-aggressive bullshit that was such a feature of their workplace. She was also the only person on the planet who could get him to squeak like a munchkin on helium. He would have said she was the sister he never had, but he had a sister.

He would have traded Ashley for Chloe any day though.

“So is it true that you’re training this Emergency Services social media guy?” Chloe asked, her brown eyes twinkling.

“Yeah. Apparently, he’s been in the fire service for a while, looking to make a change.”

She pouted. “Figures that you get to work with the firefighter hottie. Something you won’t at all appreciate.”

“How do you know he’ll be hot?” Simon asked. “Maybe he’s a bridge troll.”

Chloe wrinkled her nose. “Are you kidding? Did you even see the ‘hug a firefighter’ booth at the county fair this past summer? Wall-to-wall hotties. Not just giant cis men, I should add.”

Simon glanced at the mess that was his notes from his meeting with Amy. She hadn’t given him a name. Had there been any pronouns? If Amy had said she , he was pretty sure he would have remembered. “I think this is a guy from what Amy told me,” he said.

“Well, boo to that, unless you’re suddenly bisexual,” Chloe said, her usual lack of filter on display.

He turned back to his computer screen. “You do know that you’re literally the only person in my life I wouldn’t just get up and leave after an intrusive comment like that, right?”

The social media for the ES department was pretty basic up until now: it seemed like it was set up to just repeat headlines from the county’s general communications department’s press releases about the department, with links back to the full text. Probably a bot of some kind.

“I think I can actually do some good here,” he murmured.

“Go you, do-gooder.” Simon winced as Chloe slapped his shoulder and trailed her chair back to her cubicle.

Monday morning, Thea showed up at the library branch she’d been instructed to report to and went to the reference desk, where an older woman with perfectly coiffed hair and a sour expression was sitting. Thea’d spent most of the weekend alternately doing research on how social media professionals operated and battling nerves. At least they were different nerves from the anxiety that hounded her out of her last job.

“Can I help you?” The sour-faced woman asked the question like she doubted it.

“Um. Yeah. I’m supposed to see someone named Simon for a meeting about social media?” She wished she’d noted the guy’s last name, but somehow that wasn’t a thing that made it into the scanty notes she’d gotten from Landseer after she agreed to this trial run.

Sour Lady looked even more like she’d just sucked on a lemon, if that was at all possible. She picked up the receiver on the phone next to her and dialed. “Simon, you have a visitor,” she said, then hung up the phone.

Okay, then. Thea tried to tell herself that this wasn’t a bad omen.

“He’ll be right out,” the lady said and then immersed herself in the computer screen in front of her. Thea, now beyond tense, took herself off to a nearby display of new books, browsing to see if maybe she could find something she’d want to relax with later. A tall guy with auburn hair came out, glancing around as if he was looking for someone, and Thea brightened, thinking this must be the elusive Simon. But his gaze swept right over her as if she wasn’t even there. He walked over to the circulation desk and scanned the open area in front of it, then returned to the reference desk and asked Sour Lady a question. She pointed at Thea, looking even more annoyed.

Then he straightened up and turned, his eyes meeting hers. And something went zing inside her. She didn’t usually find people attractive on first meeting them, but there was something about this guy—something almost like recognition.

His amber eyes widened, and he crossed the distance between them.

“Thea? Thea Martinelli?”

“Um, yeah. Hi. Are you Simon?” She stuck out a hand, remembering Landseer’s comments about professionalism.

He blinked, and his head snapped up as if she’d smacked him. “Yes. Simon Osman. We went to high school together.”

Thea froze, her hand still out. They had? She searched his face, seeking some sort of visual anchor, anything to pull her back to a memory of this man. She couldn’t have forgotten him—he was too good-looking. Intimidatingly so, with his perfect bone structure and big, light brown eyes. A faint dusting of freckles across his nose seemed to tug at something. Nothing so strong as a memory, more of an impression.

She realized she was taking an embarrassingly long time to figure this out, and Sour Lady was watching with barely suppressed glee at the awkwardness that stretched between her and this man. “Yeah,” she finally managed, realizing her hand was still extended and giving him a dorky little wave. “It’s great to see you again. Fourteen years is a long time, you know?”

His reaction wasn’t reassuring, his expression going stony in the face of her obvious lie.

Oh great. This was the guy who was going to help her launch her new career?

Seriously, universe? Simon raged internally. You have to send the one girl I was utterly and completely crushing on for two years to be my trainee?

He reminded himself to calm down. Especially since Mary-Pat was watching their stilted interchange with undisguised delight. And, as Thea had said, it’d been fourteen years. But it sure didn’t seem like that many with her standing right in front of him. Her eyes still looked too big for her face, like some kind of Disney princess. Her face was leaner and her hair was cut short now, feathering over her forehead and the tops of her ears. Cute, but also practical.

He didn’t know that she was a firefighter. Adult Thea Martinelli was apparently the same fearless person he’d mooned over as a teen. And she clearly had no idea who he was. Humiliation washed over him in a sickening wave. He’d received a graduate degree, achieved some professional successes, supported an institution and a mission he was passionate about, and apparently none of it mattered. He was the same dismissible dork he’d always been.

He shook himself out of his reverie and cleared his throat, which suddenly felt like he’d swallowed a handful of gravel. “Um. I have a conference room reserved. C’mon back.” Without looking at Mary-Pat, he turned and went to the door behind the circ desk, hoping Thea was following him. He couldn’t bear to turn around to see. His face felt like it was on fire, and given his pale skin, no doubt everyone in the library this morning could see it as easily as if it was written in words of one syllable across his forehead.

Entering the small conference room, he flicked on the lights with unnecessary force. They buzzed to noisy life overhead, and he thanked his lucky stars that this was the crappy room without windows. No more witnesses to his embarrassment, unless you counted the dingy walls in need of new paint and the faded old READ posters featuring celebrities from a decade ago in frames on every wall. “Have a seat,” he said, his voice sounding gruff even to him. He waved at a chair, and Thea drew it back and sat in it slowly, as if making any sudden moves around him was a bad idea.

That just pissed him off even more. What, he was such a monster?

Check yourself. He might not be a monster, but he sure as shit wasn’t being a professional right now. He sat and put his laptop on the table in front of him, carefully not looking at Thea’s face as she drew out her own computer and put it down. “Um. So, you’re the new social media manager for Emergency Services, huh?” What a conversationalist. Brilliant.

“Um, yeah? I was just offered the job on a probationary basis last week.”

Probationary. That was interesting. “I took a look at what the account has done up until now.” He flipped his laptop open and looked at the notes he’d made. “Looks to me like the communications department probably just has some sort of feed that pushes out their headlines with links to the press releases.” An endless string of bad news, mostly: fires, car crashes, trees blown onto houses. Not the kind of thing that a lot of people tended to follow avidly.

She nodded and he actually looked at her. Her skin was pale, her eyes appearing even more huge than usual. “Yeah. That’s been it so far. They’re going to keep doing that, and I’m supposed to add updates as needed—stuff that doesn’t get its own press release but keeps the community informed. But I’m also supposed to do some more public safety stuff. Be more proactive with information about preventative measures.”

“That makes sense.” He had to give her that. Information about accidents that had already occurred was important news, but with the exception of sharing photos from a few school visits and the like, there was a clear lack of announcements and information about avoiding disasters and other topics the average person would care about.

“I’m also supposed to make things more engaging. Give ES some personality.”

He nearly scoffed. “Personality?”

Her gaze sharpened on him. “Yeah. Personality. A lot of people respond better to messages if they think you care.”

Simon felt his eyebrow lift. “Sounds awfully touchy-feely for a firehouse.”