The Anti-Social Season (First Responders #2)

Chapter Eight

Eight

F riday morning found Simon rubbing his eyes and drinking too much coffee while he checked his email in his cubicle before Thea’s arrival. Her freak-out the other night, combined with the date-like atmosphere and the way he’d practically held her hand? It all added up to make him massively uncomfortable. Yet again, it sent him straight back to high school, not a place he ever wanted to find himself again, either physically or emotionally.

At the same time, the way she’d opened up to him had his inner eighteen-year-old giving a tight little air punch and hissing, Yessss.

Because even his inner eighteen-year-old wasn’t about to hop up and down and holler.

He could practically hear his sister telling him to loosen up. Which reminded him to email Amy since he hadn’t yet heard about holiday vacation. He typed a quick note and sent it, then took another gulp of his all-too-rapidly cooling coffee and perused the checklist he’d come up with for creating social media posts that work across different platforms. So much of this job was about maximizing and reusing.

“Got a delivery for you, Simon,” Chloe singsonged from over the cubicle wall. He swiveled in his chair to see her come around the corner with Thea in tow. “How’s this dude treating you?”

Thea shot him a hesitant smile. “He’s treating me fine. Being very patient with my inexperienced as—behind.”

Chloe leaned over and cupped a hand around her mouth, saying theatrically, “You can say ass . Just don’t say it in front of Mary-Pat. She might get the vapors.” She appeared to consider this for a moment. “No, please say it in front of her. I’d love to see her get the vapors. You were a first responder. You know CPR, right?” Thea nodded and Chloe grinned her most evil grin. “Okay. So it’s not like an attack of the vapors would kill her...”

“Thank you for bringing Thea back,” Simon said, cutting her off and tabling any further discussion of Mary-Pat. She gave him a jaunty salute and retreated to her own cubicle. “We only have the conference room for a half day today,” he told Thea.

She nodded. “Yeah. The other evening kind of got me thinking—like you said, it’s time to start generating some of my own content. Get out into the field some.”

“Sure, we could do that. What did you have in mind?”

She shrugged as they moved off to the little room that was no longer just theirs. “I was thinking pretty basic stuff. Like a video about twice annual smoke alarm testing. A lot of people suggest that you test and change batteries on New Year’s and Fourth of July—makes it easier to remember, so having it ready to go for New Year’s seems like a good idea. Plus it’s reusable, like you told me.”

He considered this as he set his laptop down on the table. “First of all, really good idea all around. The only thing is, it gets a little tricky if you’re talking about an actual demonstration of household devices. Because you have to have a house that has smoke alarms. My apartment’s alarms are all controlled by my landlord and centrally wired.”

She shrugged. “That’s not a problem. We can use my place.”

“You have a house?” Maybe she lived with her folks.

“Kind of. A small one. It’s not mine,” she added quickly as if she didn’t want him to get the wrong idea.

His eyes narrowed at her unusual caginess. “Where exactly do you live ?”

She told him the address and Simon’s mind whited out. “Christ, Thea, are you rich ?”

Thea barked out a surprised laugh, even as she kicked herself for not expecting this response. “No. Most definitely not. My living situation is, well... It’s kind of unusual.”

His expression was both aghast and fascinated. Not quite as compelling as his laugh, but fun nonetheless. “Do you live on a commune on a lobbyist’s estate? Are you the grandchild of a senator?”

“No! Nothing like any of that. It’s a weird story, and I’ll take you out there this afternoon and show it to you, but I guarantee your guesses are going to be way off.”

“Huh,” he grunted, then walked her through the basics of planning a video. “Even one of only a minute or two should be worked out in advance—the script, the shot plan, it all has to work together. It’s easy to think you’ve got a shot that’s lasting way too long,” he told her. “Then when you have to do a voice-over over it, you realize a couple of seconds of footage isn’t enough for you to say even a full sentence.” He remembered learning these lessons the hard way. It was pretty cool to be able to give this knowledge to Thea so she didn’t have to do the same.

“But don’t you talk at the same time?”

“I try not to,” he said. “It can be like walking and chewing gum at the same time—if you’re walking on your hands and chewing gum with your feet. Plus, the idea of winging anything practically gives me stress hives. Better to be prepared.”

“Oh- kay ,” she said, laughing a little, and she followed along as they worked to create a rudimentary shot list and script.

By the time they were done, they grabbed sandwiches at the deli he told her about before. But when they got into her car, the engine resolutely would not turn over. “Shit. I knew I was skating on thin ice with this battery,” she said. “Figures I’d be planning a literal battery video and have this happen.” She glanced at him. “This time, it’s not an intensifier.”

Her little inside joke gained her a tiny smile. “Let me drive,” he offered. “Then when we come back, I can give you a jump and you can go get a new one.”

“Good plan,” she said, wondering why he was taking her ineptitude so lightly. She would have expected him to be exasperated, especially since he was made of plans and lists and checkboxes. Instead, he just rolled with it.

As they headed for her home in his compact car, prickles ran up the back of her neck. Simon was just right there next to her. Having his broad shoulders only inches from her made her feel like the space was filled up in a way that was unusual. She couldn’t figure out if she liked that or not, that feeling of having him so close she would only have to reach out a tiny bit to touch him. There was a light scent that teased her nose too. Too light to be cologne. Maybe soap or even laundry detergent, clean and fresh.

It took them about twenty minutes to get to the driveway of Mrs. M’s home, her nerves only increasing with every mile. When she pulled in, rolling down the gravel toward the big house, she could see Simon’s jaw dropping as he looked at it. “You live here ?” he asked, his voice veering toward a squeak.

“No,” she said and directed him to drive around the side of the house, past the garage bays, and come to a stop in front of the converted stable. He turned off the engine and she pointed at her home. “I live there.”

Thea lived on an honest-to-god estate . There was no other word for it. Granted, the little building that she used was compact. And the house—which he could see only part of if he glanced in the side mirror—might be a midcentury ranch-style house in whitewashed brick, but it was enormous , comprising two angled wings. And it was on several acres of land in a town whose zip code was synonymous with wealth.

“How on earth did you swing this living arrangement?” he asked. He already envied the quiet she must enjoy on these grounds. She probably heard owls hooting in the evening and wrens yodeling their mating songs in the springtime. She most definitely didn’t hear anything like the heavy steps of his upstairs neighbor. Whom he’d never met, but had to be at least eight feet tall and normally wore steel-toed boots around the apartment if the sound of their footfalls was anything to go by.

Her cheeks were pink as she unbuckled her seat belt and reached into the back seat to grab the bag with their sandwiches. That brought them practically nose to nose, and for a long moment they stared into each other’s eyes, hers looking as startled as he felt.

Kiss her , a voice hollered from what must have been the left field of his brain. Because that was a completely absurd thing to even think, let alone want to do. This must be his inner adolescent reasserting himself, even though randomly kissing girls he was interested in wasn’t something teenage Simon would have done either.

And yet, he wanted to do it. He really wanted to do it. Her pupils, easy to see at this close range against the velvety dark brown of her irises, dilated and her breath quickened.

“Um. I guess I should show you around,” Thea said. And was her voice husky or was that just his imagination?

“Okay.” He cleared his own throat as they got out of the car and headed for the front door.

The exterior was painted red and looked a little like a barn with its rough wood cladding, but it was the homiest-looking barn he’d ever seen. There were large windows to either side of the front door and they had actual window boxes underneath. The boxes didn’t currently have anything in them on this chilly day, but they looked like they’d been tidied up for the colder months, no dead stalks with equally dead leaves fluttering from them.

Thea unlocked the door and led him inside, and he stopped dead to gaze around at what was basically a spacious, modern apartment. It was almost a one-bedroom, but her bed at the far end of the room was only half-hidden by two ranges of tall bookcases set at right angles instead of against walls. A little galley kitchen with an island ran to the left, a living area and little dining table with four chairs to the right. The only enclosed room in the place opposite the bedroom had to be the bathroom. The decor was casual and colorful, containing a deep blue sofa with its back to the kitchen area, facing a wall with a mounted television and bright art prints in frames. A desk was tucked under one of the front windows. A perfect place to work...or to daydream.

“What... How? ” he asked, unable to be any more articulate.

“Mrs. McAnally—the woman who lives there—” she pointed her chin at the big house, visible through the front windows “—rents it to me. In exchange, I make sure she’s okay, shovel her walks, that kind of thing.” She put their lunch on the island, where two tall stools sat. “Let me just go get some plates...”

Without thinking, Simon clasped her wrist before she could go past him. “It’s okay. Don’t go to any trouble.”

For the first time since the car, their eyes met. “It’s okay. I want to.”

It’s okay. I want to. Her own words reverberated through her skull, and a little smile hitched up one corner of his mouth.

He released the loose clasp on her wrist. “Okay. Anything I can do?”

She inhaled, realizing she’d been holding her breath. “Um. Just unpack the stuff, I guess?” Moving quickly to the cabinets, she pulled down two plates, then felt kind of silly. It wasn’t like she had fancy napkins. They didn’t need silverware. The deli paper that the sandwiches were wrapped in would be perfectly fine even if her kitchen island wasn’t clean—which it was.

She just wanted to take care of him a little.

Shoving that thought aside, she laid the plates out and turned to get glasses for their sodas. Might as well be as fancy as she could. Rounding to the other side of the island, she sat next to him, accepting her sandwich with a shy, sideways smile.

“You aren’t exactly who I thought you were when we were teenagers,” he said, popping open his soda with a hiss and pouring it into his glass.

She paused, folding the tape of her half-unwrapped sandwich over on itself. “Um. Who did you think I was back then?”

“I don’t know. You seemed...” He trailed off, his gaze leaving her face and roaming around her little home. “Larger than life? Always going, always doing, always in the spotlight. Invincible.”

A snort escaped her and she put her sandwich on her plate, crumpling the wrapper and shoving it in the bag. “I wasn’t anything like that. I was just...loud.”

“You’re not loud anymore?”

She blinked, her vision going a little blurry, and stuffed her sandwich into her mouth to buy time. She knew she’d felt off, weird, muted since the anxiety kicked in. Had it really changed her that much? She chewed, waiting for him to go on, to fill the silence, but he just waited until she’d swallowed her mouthful and washed it down with a sip of her drink.

“I can be,” she said. “Firefighters, we’re—they’re like walking prank factories when they’re not on a call. It’s a stress release. I was as bad as any of them, maybe worse, for years. Making up for not being a guy, you know?”

“For one, I like that you’re not a guy.” From anyone else, the words would have been joking, maybe even flirtatious. But Simon looked as serious as ever.

“Well, I like that I’m not a guy too. I’m happy being who I am, mostly.”

“Only mostly?”

“You’re one hundred percent happy with who you are?” she asked.

He tilted his head. “Fair. I guess I’m glad you’re not a walking prank factory anymore too.”

“But you want me to go back to being that brash, loud attention whore again? Just without the fart jokes?” Outside of drama club, the squad was the only place where she’d been accepted for this side of her personality. Her family was constantly on her to tone it down. Even her occasional dates mostly ended up thinking she was weird.

“Who said anything about attention whore?” Those thick auburn brows drew close over his eyes, and she almost forgot what they were talking about. It was both intoxicating and difficult, being the focus of Simon’s concentration.

She shrugged up one shoulder. “My sister, for one.”

“That sucks. My sister is a bossy pain in the ass too.”

“Oh, she doesn’t mean it. Mostly. We’ve always given each other shit. It’s practically our love language.”

He just grunted at that and ate his sandwich.

After lunch, Thea pulled down the attic ladder that, handily, was positioned right next to the smoke detector. They went over the script and the shot list again, making adjustments now that they were actually in the space and he could see what they were dealing with. All the while, his brain churned with the new things he’d learned about Thea in the few short days since they’d started working together.

He’d really seen her as someone larger than life. Maybe not even really human. More of an idea than a person. He’d been very, very wrong. Vulnerability ran like an underground stream beneath that outsize personality. And maybe part of that outsize personality was a shield, protecting the vulnerability, the same way he wielded rules and careful politeness to keep people at a distance.

He was also starting to get the idea that she was attracted to him and it was doing a number on him.

“Ready to start?” she asked, and he startled out of his absentminded reverie.

“Um, yeah.” He rummaged in his bag for the camera as she climbed the ladder. When he joined her and pointed the camera up, however, he realized the ceiling was tall enough that he would have to use the zoom. “Shit. I should have brought a tripod.”

She glanced down at him. “How come?”

“Because zooming in on the shot like I’m going to need to is going to make the video jittery and bouncy.”

She frowned at him, then glanced up at the smoke detector. “It’s social media, not cinema, Steven Spielberg.”

“But you want it to look good, right?” He’d told her she didn’t have to have her face in the shot, but she argued that it made it more relatable. He squashed his initial impulse to try to get her to do it his way with some difficulty, but he had to admit there wasn’t just one method of getting results.

She shrugged. “I read somewhere that the lo-fi stuff actually gets people’s attention more.”

This was a bridge too far though. Irritation bubbled under his skin. “There’s lo-fi and there’s unprofessional. Besides, you’re going to want people to be able to follow what you’re talking about without getting motion sickness.”

She sighed, looked up at the smoke detector again, then down at him. “Okay, fair. How about you get on the ladder with me?”

His brain shorted out. “How about I what?”

A teasing smile hovered around her mouth. “Get. On the ladder. With me. Seriously, if you’re on it, you’ll be higher. Closer to the ceiling. That way you won’t have to use the zoom.”

It did make sense. Of a diabolical kind. He nodded and mounted the ladder until his feet were just one rung below hers. “Okay?”

She turned to look at him and it was like being back in the car when they were so close, but even more so. Her face was just an inch or two higher than his, her soft, plush lips quirking into a little smile. The front of his body pressed lightly to the back of hers, even though he was trying to maintain some sort of space between them. “Okay by me.” Her voice was raspy and she cleared her throat. “Should we run it through a few times? I do believe in rehearsal. Mr. Preparation.”

“Sure. I’ll just, uh, record all of it. Just in case it produces usable footage.”

“Makes sense. Okay.” She looked at him a moment longer, then back up at the smoke detector. “You let me know when you’re ready.”

“Oh. Right.” He fumbled one-handed with the camera, realizing he should have set it up more completely before he was several feet off the ground.

“You can lean into me. If you want,” she said. “For balance.”

Balance. Right. Leaning into her would push his brain completely off balance. He glanced up to see if she was teasing him, but her eyes were clear and guileless. Leaning forward a little, he tried not to register how warm and wonderful her body felt against his as he quickly set the camera up. “Ready when you are,” he said when he grabbed the ladder with his free hand and reestablished the distance that was so necessary to keep him from losing his mind. Then he started recording.

“Okay, so this is a standard household smoke detector,” Thea said, her finger entering the frame and tapping on the plastic housing. “You should be checking it twice a year...”