The Anti-Social Season (First Responders #2)

Chapter Seven

Seven

W hat are you doing? The control center of Simon’s brain, the part that was in charge of rules and regulations and doing things the right way, was blaring like, well, like a fire truck’s siren. She’ll say no , a more prosaic, everyday voice assured. Her compliments had probably just been to assuage his wounded ego, which he didn’t hide well, as cranky as he’d been this week.

But Thea was looking at him almost shyly, a little smile curving her lips. God, those lips were pretty. Full and pink and, well.

Kissable.

He swallowed hard and almost missed it when she said, “Yeah, that sounds fun.”

She said yes! His inner teenager screamed. Outwardly, he managed, “Um, okay. Let me just lock up this equipment, then.”

She gave him the iPad, then put her hand on his arm to keep him from turning to go back to the staff area. His pulse hammered hard in his ears.

“Don’t forget this,” she said, letting the magnetic stylus snap onto the side of the device.

“Thanks.” He cleared his throat. “Uh. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

“I’ll be here.”

He nodded and wheeled, trying to move with enough speed to make sure she wouldn’t leave without him and enough leisure to communicate that he wasn’t worried about that happening. But that eighteen-year-old portion of his brain that was so excited she said yes was also absolutely sure she was going to ditch him. He locked the iPad and camera in a drawer in his cubicle and went back out into the public area of the library.

She was still there.

It felt like a small miracle, seeing her talking to one of the parents whose kid he’d photographed, a really little girl who looked younger than Noah. As he drew closer, Thea noticed him and said, “Yeah, I don’t work for the library, but this guy does. I’m sure he can tell you.”

Turned out, the dad wanted to know about weekly story time. Easy enough to set him up with that information and let him know where on their website the library’s calendar was for all their programs.

“Ready to go?” Simon asked as the dad hoisted the toddler on his hip and wandered off to examine the children’s section. He still half expected her to slap his arm and holler, “Psych! Loser!” and run off.

But she didn’t. Instead, she looked at him as if she was surprised that he came back. She shrugged on her jacket and looped the strap of her bag over her shoulder, tucking a book she must have checked out into it. The latest collection of the Inferno Girl comic. “Yeah. Got any favorite places with great happy hour deals?”

The only place he’d ever gone to after work was a brewpub a few blocks down, and only when Chloe had dragged him out. “I know a place,” he said as if this was something he did all the time.

Surprising him, she said, “Well then. Lead the way.”

Holy crap. Had she just finagled herself a date with Simon?

No. Not a date. They were coworkers. Well, sort of. Could you be coworkers if you worked in entirely different divisions of an enormous county system? Did it matter when she was on probation and had to be on her best behavior? Anyway, he was way too much of a rule guy to ever want anything romantic from her.

Mrs. M’s voice echoed in her head. Maybe he had a little crush on you all those years ago.

No, he absolutely did not. He found her annoying and frivolous. He’d made that entirely clear when they were teenagers. And even if he was less uptight as an adult, he was obviously someone who took his responsibilities seriously. Therefore, he was just being nice to someone he’d been asked to mentor.

That was just science.

He cleared his throat when they exited the building and turned to walk down the sidewalk. “Brewpub okay with you? If it isn’t, there are a bunch of other options.”

“Beer’s fine,” she said. Then silence stretched between them as they navigated to the brewpub two blocks down, with its shiny fermentation tanks proudly displayed in windows bedecked with greenery and twinkling lights. Simon opened the door and held it for her, and she nearly said, “What the hell are you doing?” but stopped herself just in time.

She absolutely needed to learn to roll with her new reality. And that new reality might include someone who saw her as something other than one of the squad. Someone who held a door for her even when her hands weren’t full.

Simon led the way to a high-top table in the corner of the dim bar. “This okay?” he asked.

“Sure.” Her nerves were zinging now. This absolutely felt like a date. She sat on one of the tall chairs and slid out of her coat, searching for a topic of conversation. “Did you have a good Thanksgiving?”

He shrugged his shoulders, handing her a beer menu. “I didn’t really have one. I didn’t have the time to go out to California for it. What about you?”

How incredibly sad. But he was giving those closed-off signals again, like he didn’t want her to comment on him being alone on a family holiday. But seriously, none of his colleagues thought to ask him if he wanted to go to their place? Was it that the library didn’t have the same camaraderie that the fire squad did, or was it his choice? “Just the usual Martinelli chaos. We used to have a lot more family over, but my cousins have started their own families mostly. So it was my folks, Nonna and Nonno, and my sister and her evil brood of evil.”

The waitress came by and they ordered beer and a basket of fries, the awkward silence landing over their table yet again. Well, she’d broken the ice the last time. It was his turn now.

He seemed to know it too. He shifted in his seat, visibly uncomfortable. She wondered if he’d regretted his hasty invitation and she bit her lip, chagrined. His gaze went to her mouth then and he inhaled sharply.

“Do I have something on my face?” she asked, lifting her hand to brush at the corner of her lips.

He shook his head, laughing softly. “No. Sorry.”

Her self-consciousness only increased though. The waitress returned with their beers and a promise that their food was coming out shortly. Thea took a grateful sip, glad she had something to do with her mouth that wasn’t trying to think of something to say to this aggravating man. He set his beer down and looked her in the eye. “So, what do you think about the job so far?”

Good. Fairly safe conversational ground. “Well, it’s definitely early to say, but I think one thing that’ll be good is that it’s got a creative side to it that was missing in my old career.”

His eyebrows went up. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But I should have. After those plays back in high school. You seemed to really enjoy that.”

She nodded, smiling to think back on that. “Yeah. It was fun while it lasted. I never really thought about it in quite that way though. I liked being a part of a group, working together to produce something. That was one of the reasons I joined the fire and rescue service.”

Another awkward pause as Thea sipped more of her beer. Then Simon cleared his throat, his gaze flickering down toward the table then meeting hers again. “Don’t answer if you don’t want to, but why did you leave it?”

Thea’s gaze snapped up to meet his, and Simon wondered if he grossly overstepped some kind of boundary. Her dark eyes seemed to bore right through him, and he welcomed the return of the waitress with their fries, pounding the bottle of ketchup to create a satisfying puddle on his plate before he risked looking at her again.

Her expression was sad. He wanted to crawl into a hole for putting that look on her face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked,” he said.

“No. It’s fine. It’s a natural question.” Her voice didn’t have the same snap that it usually did. She fiddled with a fry. “It feels kind of shameful, honestly. A friend of mine on the squad got badly injured. I lost my nerve. I couldn’t get it back. That’s the short version, anyway.”

Her confession brought him up short. He almost couldn’t believe that this was the fearless Thea Martinelli. But then again, vulnerability was its own sort of fearlessness. “That doesn’t sound shameful at all. It sounds really human.”

She laughed, but it sounded forced. “Yeah. That’s what my therapist said. I tried a few different ways to get back in the groove of things, but I just couldn’t manage it. I was going to quit, but then they offered me this job.”

“Was that what you wanted? To do social media for ES?”

She shrugged and stuffed a fry into her mouth, seeming to chew to buy some time before she answered. “I didn’t even know it was a possibility. But now that I’m learning more of it, figuring stuff out...” Her gaze lifted from the table to his face. “With you helping, it’s starting to look like something I do want.”

An unfamiliar warmth bloomed in his chest. “I’m glad I could help.”

Her lips quirked in a crooked smile and she looked down again. “Yeah. Me too.”

Awkward silence settled over the table once more, and when Simon reached for a fry, she did too. Their hands didn’t touch so much as they collided , their reaching fingers intertwining and sending an electrical jolt up his arm.

“Sorry,” they said in unison, then Thea laughed. This time it sounded natural.

“Do you think that website you showed me will have advice for how to handle situations like this?” she asked.

“What kind of situation do we have?” Simon didn’t join her in her laughter. Instead, he felt kind of loopy, like a moth that had fluttered close to a too-bright light. He didn’t like this feeling. It made him feel like he was all of seventeen again and he did not want to go back to that stage of life for anything.

She sipped her beer, then considered him over the rim of her glass. “I don’t know.”

Annoyance ripped through him. She was the one who had said situations like this . She obviously meant something she could identify. “Oh?”

Her expression went wary at his single syllable and she shrugged defensively. “All of this is new to me. Office job, having drinks with someone who’s kind of a colleague but kind of not. I don’t know how to define that. If you were on my squad it would be like you were my brother. But this—” She stopped short as if she’d said too much. And maybe she had.

“So you’re saying I’m not like a brother to you.” He fought a smile as warmth bloomed in his chest.

She cleared her throat, shook her head. “No. Not in the slightest.”

Thea’d only had half a beer. Not even that. So why did she feel so unmoored? Maybe it was because Simon had a really direct gaze. It was unnerving. His eyes pinned her to her seat, leaving her unable to think clearly or say anything.

No, he was nothing like a brother to her. People like Sean and Felix mostly made her feel comfortable, made her laugh. And she made them laugh. Getting laughs from Simon was work .

It was worth it though. More of a challenge. And his stern face had its own kind of rare light when he laughed. A light that she’d like to see more often, even though it sent shivers through her. Maybe that was part of it: getting Simon to laugh unlocked that free side of her personality she now felt she had to keep locked down.

She racked her brain for something to say that would unfreeze that expression on his face, something that would bring warmth to those hazel eyes.

She came up empty. Panic spiraled up through her, sickeningly familiar. No. No, no, no. This job was the escape from the anxiety. She couldn’t do this now. She closed her eyes and concentrated on taking a deep breath, holding it, letting it out slowly, like her therapist had showed her. Again. Warmth slid over her skin, and she looked down to see Simon had leaned across the table to clasp her hand.

“You okay?”

She nodded jerkily as her face flooded with heat. “Yeah. I just... Like I said before. I get freaked out. I guess not just by my old job. Crap. Is this my life now?”

His brows drew together. “Were you having an anxiety attack just now?”

She shook her head. “Not quite. But I’ve been working at recognizing the early stages and heading them off at the pass.”

“What made you anxious?”

Her empty head could only offer up the truth. “I wanted to make you laugh. That’s something I’m usually good at—making people laugh. But I couldn’t think of anything to say.”

His expression softened. “Not everyone is a comedian.”

“I know. And you’re an especially tough nut in the humor department.”

“Tough nut? Hard to crack up, you mean?” And yes, humor did dance in those earnest eyes of his. And there was a glimmer of that light, making her insides zing.

Thea groaned. “See? I was the one who should have thought up the pun. That’s usually my job.”

He blinked, eyes darting from hers to the table, realization dawning that he was, in essence, holding her hand. He straightened up, covering his mouth with that very hand as he coughed a little too unconvincingly. Great. It was clear that he thought touching her was a bad idea. And she wanted to crawl into a hole and pull the dirt back over her SpongeBob-style for nearly having an anxiety attack right in front of him. Over nothing. He was so together he probably thought she was the biggest hot mess he’d ever seen.

Or cancel the hot part. Just a mess.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, stuffing fries into her mouth to keep her from having to say anything else.

“Why are you sorry?”

“For nearly losing my shit.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. I had a college roommate who had anxiety. I know it can be difficult to deal with.”

“Yeah, in my case it was a career ender.” The thought made her feel hollow. If this was her life, would it dog her into this career as well? She took a deep breath and then a swallow of beer, seeking to head that new spiral off.

“Or...” He shot her a small, secretive smile. “You could look at it the other way. It’s a career starter.”

Okay. She could maybe see it that way. If she squinted and looked sideways. He still had that tiny smile on his face. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

Mistake. The question sent him spooling back inside himself, leaving only the stern exterior she’d gotten used to.

“I was thinking that Friday we’ll start you making some content in earnest.”