The Anti-Social Season (First Responders #2)

Chapter Three

Three

W hat was this guy’s problem , anyway? Thea took a deep breath, trying to settle herself. Regardless of where he was coming from and what he was doing, she was the one starting a new job with a probationary period, and she could practically feel the county’s eyes on her from far above. Getting along with him was important to her success.

“Are you suggesting that firefighters don’t care about the people—the property, pets and, most importantly, lives—they actually, literally save?” She spoke with a measured calm that she didn’t feel and usually didn’t have to use outside of an actual emergency.

Simon, whose face had gone from brick red back to pale, reddened again. “No, I just... I guess I just...”

She waited. His voice seemed to fizzle out, so she said, “We care. And one of the ways we care is we do education—preventative stuff. Better to never have that accident in the first place, you know? A lot of that education is in person. A lot of it is with kids. But our reach isn’t super great beyond that. We’re behind the times on bigger outreach, mainly with adults, and my job is to get caught up on that. Because we actually do care .” Damn. She hadn’t put that many words together in a professional manner in a long time. She used to get tapped to do the elementary school outreach a lot when she was first on the force. Female, shorter than most of her colleagues, young, all made her more “approachable” for the kiddos. She hadn’t minded it. Well, she hadn’t minded the visits to the schools. She had minded the mentality behind her being the one assigned to them.

Anyway. She reined in her careening thoughts. He obviously knew who she was. She still couldn’t remember him, though memory seemed to be tapping at her through a thick pane of glass. And not necessarily a great memory, at that. Had she pissed him off somehow when they were teenagers? Enough for the grudge to last fourteen years? That seemed a little extra, even for her.

“Sorry,” he said gruffly. “I get it.”

As long as she was being careful and patient, she decided to throw him an olive branch. “I think a lot of professions are caring professions. Sometimes in disguise, you know? Like, it’s pretty obvious that being a librarian is one. Helping people find books they like, to spend time in worlds they will enjoy, that kind of thing.”

His brows snapped together. “It’s not all readers’ advisory, you know.”

“What’s that?”

“Exactly what you were just talking about. Helping patrons find pleasure reading. A lot of the stuff we do helps people in other ways. Helping to find jobs, using the public computers, our conversation clubs for people looking to improve their language skills...” He wound down. “Sorry. Hot-button issue, you know? The whole ‘oh, it must be fun to read all the time’ thing. As if that is all we do.”

She grabbed eagerly for this conversational life preserver. “Yeah. I got that sometimes too. Saving kittens from trees, that kind of thing. But it’s not like people thought that was all we did. Just sometimes...” She trailed off, not knowing how to finish her statement. She wasn’t used to talking like this. She was used to joking and deflecting.

“There are always jerks who want to minimize what you do,” he finished for her.

He actually understood! This guy who’d seemed so dismissive actually got it. Sudden grief ripped through her. Sean and Felix had understood too. She went on, her initial excitement dampened. “Especially if you’re a female firefighter. They think you must be holding the squad back. Professional kitten rescuer, but that’s it.”

“Or if you’re a male librarian. The same people think all kinds of things about me.”

“Fuck gender essentialism,” she said without thinking. Her hand flew up to her mouth a split second later. “Sorry,” she mumbled through her palm. “I have a lot to learn about workplaces that aren’t squad rooms filled with fart jokes and pranks, you know?”

But he didn’t look offended. His light brown eyes gleamed with humor. “Oh, I would give five dollars to hear you say, ‘fuck gender essentialism’ in front of Mary-Pat.”

Thea let her hand fall away from her face. “That’s the prune at the reference desk?”

He nodded, his face going somber as he pointed at his laptop. “Yeah. Anyway, we should probably get back to what we’re here to do.”

Two hours later, Thea looked overwhelmed. He told her that they could just start with the minimal approach that ES had taken up until that point, but she seemed determined to do it all, to learn everything all at once. Finally, he shut his computer and said, “Enough. Maybe you can go for hours without sustenance, but I need some food to keep going.”

Thea picked up her phone, her eyebrows going up when she saw the time. “Wow. Sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you from your lunch. Do you know a good place where I could grab something fast?”

He’d brought a sandwich. He should direct her to one of the great hole-in-the-wall places that abounded nearby and squirrel himself away in the break room to eat. The humiliation of her not recognizing him still burned. His past was sitting there like a bridge troll, just waiting to reach up a long, knobby arm to grab him by the ankle and bring him down. But somehow he didn’t want to think about her wandering off all alone to eat on her first day of a new job.

“Well, within a five-minute walk, just off the top of my head, we have Asian soup dumplings, Peruvian roasted chicken, a Polish deli and an Italian place that does great pasta.”

Her expression brightened. “Anything but the pasta. I almost never eat sauce out.”

Sauce out? What the heck was that? “What do you mean?”

The crests of her cheekbones reddened. “It’s an Italian thing. When your mom or your nonna makes the best sauce, there’s no point in eating it at a restaurant.”

“Your mom or your nonna ? What happened to ‘fuck gender essentialism’?” he asked, unable to keep the grin from his face.

“Oh, Nonno—my grandfather—is gender essentialist as fuck,” she deadpanned. “The only way you’d catch him in a kitchen would be passing through on his way to the dining room.”

“Noted. Which of the other non-sauce options appeals to you?”

Her face went a little wistful and Simon’s breath caught in his throat. Thea’s face had always shown exactly what she was feeling. Which reminded him of that crush. Just as one example, the hours he’d spent working on lights and sets for the drama club when Thea was cast as Rizzo in their production of Grease . He’d spent hours on ladders with paintbrushes and hammers just to have a chance to watch her, to listen to her sing, to appreciate the vulnerability that underlay the toughness of the character—and imagine that maybe the performance was a reflection of her own personality? His gaze drifted to the hollow of her throat, a place he’d been obsessed with. He’d spent many afternoons imagining pressing his lips to that tender spot, of threading his fingers into her hair and making her moan. Meanwhile, she hadn’t even known he existed.

Maybe he should eat his sandwich in the break room as planned.

Oblivious to his reverie or the fact that he was shifting in his seat to ease the growing tension in his pants, Thea nodded and smiled. “Peruvian chicken. But only if they have good yuca fries.”

“The best.” His voice had gone all creaky. “I can show you where to find it.” He dug in his pocket for his phone, but was immediately arrested by the feel of her fingers on his arm.

“Come with me. My treat.”

Well, hell.

Was there some sort of librarian code of etiquette she just violated? Because Simon had seemed to unwind a little out of his testy crouch while they were working. But the offer of paying for his lunch clearly put his undies in a nasty twist. His face went hard.

She reminded herself for the umpteenth time that this was the guy she needed to impress to get through the probation period, swallowed her pride and backpedaled. “Unless you don’t like Peruvian chicken?” Maybe he was vegan? But honestly, she’d never met a vegan who would recommend a restaurant specializing in meat dishes.

“No. I like it fine.” He pushed back from the table and stood abruptly, causing her to hustle to keep up. Dang. He could have kept up with the squad racing for the trucks when the alarm went off.

“Can we leave our stuff in here?” She waved a hand at the laptops as she picked up her bag.

“Yeah. We have the room for the whole day.” He pulled a bunch of keys out of his pocket and ushered her through the door, locking it behind them, then turning on his heel and walking toward what must be a back exit, never checking to see if she was still following.

Okay, she was pretty sure that there was no violation of any sort of code of etiquette on her part. This guy was just being rude . Even her hellion nephews had better manners than this. She followed him out into the afternoon sun, which took the edge off the day’s chill.

Thinking of her nephews, she grinned. Simon was still a couple of steps ahead of her, and she raised her voice to carry over the sound of the cars passing on the street. “Knock knock.”

His steps seemed to stutter for a moment and he glanced back over his shoulder, his eyebrows drawing together. “Uh. Who’s there?”

“Interrupting cow.”

“Interru—”

“MOO,” she bellowed, and he stopped, his eyes sliding shut and his mouth going hard. She closed the distance between them and stood in front of him.

“Is there a reason why you just told me what has to be the silliest joke ever committed to memory?” he asked, his eyes still closed.

“Silliest knock-knock joke, maybe.”

“Knock-knock jokes are, by definition, the silliest jokes, so by the transitive power of silliness, it’s the silliest joke.” He finally cracked one eye and squinted at her.

I was hoping to remove the tree from your asshole , she didn’t say. “Test audience.” She grinned at him. “I figured you’re a tougher sell than my nephews. They’ll laugh at anything.” Normally, she’d try out all the silliest jokes she could think of on Sean and Felix before springing them on the nephews, but now... Even with their insistence that she was still one of the gang, she felt adrift and lonely. And somehow, this actually seemed to be working with Simon too.

His eyes fully opened and he started walking, but slower this time. Less like a man who wanted to leave her in the dust. “You have nephews too, huh?”

“Two of them. Little monsters. You?”

He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Just the one, at least so far. He’s only three, so not sure if he’s going to be a monster or not at this point.”

“Oh, trust and believe. He will be. They all are, even when they’re cute as fuck and you simultaneously want to snuggle them and drown them.”

His eyebrows went up at the fuck . Damn. Second one—or was it the third?—of the day. Great. She was going to have to learn to rein it in. It used to be easy: when she was suited up, the professional, calm demeanor that every good first responder needed to cultivate would settle over her like it was just another layer to her protective gear. But outside that context? Everyone, including her, was usually about jokes and pranks, the less mature the better. It was a way to blow off steam, to decompress from the stress and tension of a difficult, often dangerous job.

But there was no duality in this job. She had to be a professional all the time now. She sighed as they walked to the chicken restaurant, the mouthwatering smell from the rotisserie wafting to her as Simon opened the door.

Well, if she had to be a sober, staid professional, at least she was going to have an excellent lunch.

When they got their meals and moved to a table in the corner of the restaurant, Simon reminded himself for the thirtieth time today to be polite , dammit. There was no reason to sulk about the fact that she’d been a princess in high school and he’d been the frog that she had no idea even existed, let alone wanted to kiss. He was an entire adult now, not ruled by teenage hormones and angst. She was already working incredibly hard to learn the job, so he might as well unclench and treat her as if she was someone he’d only just met. No history there at all. For crying out loud, it had been so long it should be as if there was no history.

She popped open one of the extra containers of hot sauce she’d ordered and dredged a yuca fry through it, shutting her eyes as her teeth closed around it with an audible crunch. “Mmm. I haven’t had this in forever,” she groaned after she’d swallowed the morsel.

Simon shifted on the hard plastic chair and focused on his own lunch, peeling a strip of chicken off and dipping it into his own sauce. It was good. Savory and juicy and falling off the bone. And now she was emulating him and her eyes were glowing with pleasure and her lips were shiny from the juices—and not to take a word out of her notebook, but fuuuck . Nope. There was no way to treat her like someone he’d just met. There were too many memories, too much longing wrapped up in those memories, that peeled him open all too easily.

“So what’s your nephew like?” she asked. Thank god for the boner-killer that was Noah. “Is he at the ‘why’ stage yet?”

“What’s the ‘why’ stage?”

She rolled her eyes. “Literally ninety-five percent of the words that come out of his mouth will suddenly be ‘Why?’”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Literally? You’re not one of those people who uses that word as an intensifier, are you?”

She shot him a look. “I totally am, but it’s also literally true. It starts with a seemingly innocuous question. ‘What are you doing, Uncle Simon?’ You tell him you’re making dinner. ‘Why?’ You say it’s because people get hungry. ‘Why?’ Because people’s bodies need fuel, and hunger is the way bodies tell us that the tank is low. ‘Why?’ And so on, and so forth, until you’re ready to sign up to be a Buddhist monk and take a vow of silence because that’s the only way you’ll ever know peace again.”

“Noah hasn’t done that to me yet. Maybe he will when I go out to California to see my family at Christmas.”

“It’ll happen. But I thought you grew up here... We went to high school together?”

He fought a scowl at the reminder that she had no recollection of him. “Yeah. I did grow up here. But my sister and her husband moved to California and then they had Noah, and my parents moved so they could be closer to them.”

Thea’s lower lip jutted and her eyebrows drew together. “Wow. So you’re on your own here now?”

And thank god for it , he didn’t say. “Yeah. It’s okay though. I’m kind of the family cuckoo.”

She twirled a finger next to her ear. “Seriously?”

He sipped his soda. “Not like that. More like my family is one kind of bird, and I feel like some other bird laid its egg in their nest and I’m the result. They raised me, but we don’t understand each other.”

“That sounds like it sucks,” Thea said, though her voice held no judgment.

“Yeah, well. I just try to stay out of the way. My sister kind of needs to be the center of attention at all times.” And why was he telling her this? But there was no way to reel it back, to retract the impulsive confidence.

He braced himself for additional questions or commentary. Opening doors the way he just had usually made people walk through and make themselves all too thoroughly at home. But after a long pause, where her gaze roamed his face until he wanted to squirm, she didn’t say anything else except, “So, what’s on deck for this afternoon, coach?”