The Anti-Social Season (First Responders #2)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Twenty-Two

I might have overcompensated. A bit . Thea pulled to a stop in front of her house, the top of her little tree bobbing over her windshield. Her back seat was full of bags from the big-box craft store she’d stopped at after going to the garden center. When Alan, the nice guy on the tree lot, had asked her if she wanted a fresh cut on the trunk so the tree would take up water more easily, she realized she didn’t have a stand to put it in. And the tree had been a bit bigger than she’d intended, but it was perfectly symmetrical and, well, just perfect. She’d fallen in love with it on sight and named it Noel.

She felt proud that she’d already remembered she needed lights. But the craft store was a big mistake. In addition to the tree stand, she picked up some glass balls for filler, since her tiny cache of ornaments wasn’t going to decorate Noel adequately. And of course she needed a tree skirt. And a topper. And then there were a few more items that looked so wonderful and Christmassy and...

She had a lot of bags in the back seat.

“Okay,” she said, trying to regain her former buoyant mood. Getting out of the car, she regarded Noel. “Sorry, you’re going to have to stay up there for the time being.” She opened up the back door and grabbed as many bags as she could, then lugged them inside. Dropping them on the sofa, she moved over to where her desk sat under one of the front windows. She shoved that farther into the corner, making room for Noel in front of the window. She would be able to see the twinkling lights from her car when she pulled up. Rummaging through her shopping bags, she realized the stand must still be in her car. She dashed out again and brought the remaining bags inside, finding the box with the stand and unpacking it.

“Music,” she muttered, and turned on the portable speaker in her kitchen so she could stream something suitable from her phone. Once she had that going, she grabbed a pair of scissors and went outside again, cutting the twine Alan had used to tie Noel to her roof rack. She had dragged the tree halfway to her front door when she realized her biggest problem.

She wasn’t going to be able to get it set up in the stand without help.

Resting the tree on the wall next to her front door, she let herself back into her house, thinking hard. Was there any way she could rig this up on her own? No. She tapped a fingernail on her front teeth. Mrs. M was too old for either tree wrangling or for getting on the floor to adjust the bolts that would hold the trunk in place. Simon had just left not even a couple of hours ago, and besides, he was probably already at work by now. Her sister would be dealing with her family, and anyway, Thea was still pissed at her, apology or no apology.

Her brain still had the rhythm of her old firehouse schedule as if it had worn grooves into her frontal lobes. Felix and Sean would be off right now. But would they be available? They might have plans with their partners.

Would you dither like this even a few months ago? She knew the answer. She wouldn’t.

Sighing, she dug out her phone and opened up their group chat, which had been silent for weeks.

Hey guys. I have a problem.

Their reactions were nearly simultaneous. Sean: What’s wrong? Felix: Problem-problem or Thea problem?

She smiled, but her throat was tight and her eyes itched. She typed rapidly. Nothing’s wrong. Thea problem . Stepping outside, she snapped a photo of the tree. His name is Noel and I can’t get him in my tree stand by myself .

This time, the response was simultaneous and identical. On my way .

Simon paced around his apartment, furious energy coursing through him, leaving him unable to do anything but move and seethe. He stopped in the kitchen for a glass of water, drinking slowly, trying to calm his racing heart.

His phone rang from the bedroom.

“I swear to god, Ashley, if that’s you, I will fly out to California just to throttle you with my bare hands,” he muttered as he strode to retrieve the device.

But the name on the screen wasn’t his sister’s. It was his mother’s.

Great .

Taking a deep breath, he answered, thanking whatever generational habit made his mother prefer voice-only calls. His face must be as bright red as his sister’s had been.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Honey, what is going on with you and Ashley? She called me in an absolute tizzy and didn’t make any sense.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “What did she say?”

“Just that you were being unreasonable and wouldn’t help with Christmas, and I don’t understand. You always help.” Her voice sounded bewildered, her enunciation careful.

He took a deep breath and worked his tight jaw. “She seems to think I can drop everything and fly out early because I’m usually the one who does most of the preparation.”

“Oh—could you?” His mother sounded delighted at the idea.

He held back the strangled growl he wanted to emit. “No, Mom. I told you. Because I got so much leave at the holidays last year, I can’t do that again this year. We have to trade off. That hasn’t changed.”

“Oh.” His mom’s voice sounded so tiny and tragic he felt like he wanted to sink into the floor.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed deeply. It would be just like his impulsive family to never think about the consequences of their actions in moving all the way across the country.

“Have you ever thought about moving out here with the rest of us? That way we could always be together at the holidays. The libraries out here are really wonderful. I could see if any are hiring. I think you’d enjoy it.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised that this was her solution. Somehow though, he was. He tried to make his voice gentle, but he was so frustrated he wasn’t sure if it was working. “No, Mom. I have not thought about it. And before you start, I’m not going to think about it. I like my life here. I get why you and Dad moved. It’s great for you to be there to see Noah growing up. But I’m not going to upend my entire life because you made that choice.”

“But what if you have children someday?” His mom’s voice was high and tight, like she was trying not to cry. He felt like his heart was an empty soda can being crushed by a giant fist. He hated it when his mom got this way. But it was also just like her to not ask this question before she moved to the other coast. Ashley always came first. She always had. It was easier to ignore when it was just the background noise of daily life. But the move had magnified everything, and he couldn’t ignore it anymore.

“If that happens, then you’re just going to have to come out here and visit them. I’m not going to arrange my life around you guys. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.” I’m not going to help you make me into even more of an afterthought.

“Oh.” Now her voice sounded small. There was a rustling, and then his dad was on the line.

“Simon? What are you doing to make your mother cry?”

Great. Just what this situation needed. “Nothing. I just can’t come out any earlier for the holidays and Ash is having a fit about it.” He didn’t repeat his mother’s ludicrous suggestion that he make a cross-country move just to make everyone else’s life a little more convenient.

“Oh.” That single syllable told him that his father had just about had it with his sister at this point. And maybe his mother too.

That made two of them.

Felix arrived at Thea’s first, giving her a hug and looking at her little Christmas tree, leaning forlornly against the side of her house. “This is the critter, huh?”

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t exactly need both of you to help, but it’s nice of you and Sean to offer.”

He scrubbed the top of her head, making her feel simultaneously loved and exasperated.

“It’s not just about helping you, silly. It’s about getting to see you. You’ve made yourself pretty scarce lately.” He raised a hand when she inhaled to speak. “It’s okay. Really. Just as long as you don’t stay away forever. I know that change can be hard. We both do. But we also miss you.”

“Yeah.” The urge to say something, to defend herself for her isolation, drained out of her as fast as it had come. Sean pulled up then, hopping lightly from his truck and looking every bit as healthy as he had the day before that horrible house fire where he’d been so badly injured.

“Hey there, Gracie Lou Freebush,” he said as he wrapped her in a strong two-armed hug. The old joking nickname squeezed her heart as hard as his arms did her body.

“Hey there, yourself. Looking good,” she said. “How’s Eva?”

He stepped back and grinned. “Beautiful, brilliant, amazing, wonderful...” His expression went a little loopy as he trailed off.

“In other words, our human golden retriever is as infatuated as he was the moment he met that woman,” Felix said, but his gentle smile was indulgent. They’d all watched Sean tumble ass over teakettle into love with the college professor, and Thea knew Felix was just as glad as she was that it was working out.

Sean clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “So, let’s get this little bitty tree set up for you.”

Without another word, he strode forward and picked up the tree one-handed. It looked like a toy in his big paw. Felix opened her door and they all went inside, Thea feeling more and more silly about having both of these guys show up for such a small task, but also loving the warm familiarity of them being together. Sean got Noel set up in the stand while Felix lay on the floor, adjusting the bolts until Thea told them it was straight.

“Okay, what now?” Felix asked as he got to his feet. “Want us to string it with lights?”

“No!” Thea said, then clapped her hand over her mouth.

“That was an awfully emphatic ‘no,’” Sean said, one eyebrow going up. “Don’t you trust us to string some lights?” He was joking, but there seemed to be a little hurt behind it too.

She dropped her hands away from her face. “I do,” she said. “The thing is, I have this friend. And he really likes doing holiday prep. And I was thinking maybe he’d like to help me decorate...”

Felix’s brows knit together. “Why didn’t you ask him to help you set up the tree, then?”

Thea swallowed hard. Caught. “Um. He was already here today. And he had to go to work.”

“Aha.” Felix wagged one finger, his expression lightening as he apparently did the it’s-late-morning-now math. “You don’t just have a friend, I’m thinking. You have a naked friend.”

“Well, when he left he was wearing clothes,” she said, sticking out her tongue and trying to regain her usual bantering vibe with these two. But it had been a while since they’d seen each other and everything felt a little off.

Sean just chuckled though. “So, that means he wasn’t wearing them at some point earlier, I’m guessing. Good for you. Who’s the guy?”

Thea sighed. “His name is Simon. He’s the librarian who’s teaching me about social media.” For the first time, she let herself wonder how these two guys—practically brothers to her—would react to Simon. They’d never met any of the guys she’d sporadically dated during her time on the squad. But even though she didn’t have brothers in her birth family, she knew they could veer toward protectiveness as a breed.

“Damn. You both went and snagged yourselves some literary types,” Felix said. “Should I assign Kevin a reading list to get him up to speed?” His boyfriend was a money manager at a small firm in the District. A lovely, smart guy, but not a huge reader.

“Kevin is perfect, and you’re as smitten with him as Sean is with Eva, so don’t even start with that,” Thea said, pushing her friend’s shoulder, the oddness slipping away as they fell into their usual teasing banter. “Don’t try to change him. You know you’d hate the results.”

Felix grinned. “Yeah, I know. But hey, good for you, my friend. As long as he’s sweet to you.”

Thea’s gaze landed on the comic book he’d bought her. “So far, so good. Very good.”

“I really wish you didn’t have to come all this way out for such a short trip,” Simon’s dad said on a sigh. “But you know how your mother and Ashley get when they’ve got their hearts set on a thing.”

Yeah, Simon knew. And he also knew that his father was always going choose his battles, waiting for a conflict he had more of a stake in. When it was just Simon’s being buffeted by his sister and his mom, his father would leave him to twist in the emotional hurricane the women could generate without even trying.

But there was no point in trying to play this game any other way than by filling the role he always had in the family. The one who played nice, who didn’t make waves. “Okay, Dad. I’ve got to go get dressed and get to work now. Try not to get caught up in the drama.”

His dad sighed again. “Yeah. That’s not gonna happen.”

No, it wasn’t, he reflected as he hung up the phone. He and his sister had always been more different than they were similar, despite their physical resemblance. Where he was stolid, Ash was a whirlwind. Where he planned and appreciated routine, Ash created and seemed to relish chaos. Where he preferred solitude, Ash would always demand that everyone rally around her. It didn’t surprise him at all that she was making a mess of the preparations for the holiday. She had no idea what method or planning actually were.

His sister was, frankly, exhausting and his mom was only a hair less so. Not for the first time, he contemplated his upcoming trip with dread. Now that he really thought about it, it was pretty wild that flying all the way across the country for two days was less trouble than enduring Ash’s tantrums and his mother’s tearful disappointment if he just stayed home.

Walking into the kitchen to pack a quick lunch, he spied the container of pizzelle that Thea had sent home with him. Popping it open, he took out one of the fragile cookies and looked at the patterns on its golden-brown surface. He didn’t have any powdered sugar, but he took a bite, liking it all the better for being slightly less sweet.

At first, he’d thought Thea was the same kind of chaos engine his sister was. But he was starting to learn that wasn’t the case. She was more impulsive than he was, for sure. But so was 99 percent of the population. He took another bite, marveling at how it was tender and crunchy at the same time. Yeah. Chaos couldn’t make anything like this.

His phone chimed and he stuffed the rest of the cookie into his mouth, then scrubbed his hands over his face before he picked it up to look at the screen. He had zero ability to deal with any more family drama today. But it was from Thea. He smiled as he crunched and opened the text app.

Thea: Are we still on for this weekend?

Simon: Sure, if you want.

Thea: I want. This time, I get to plan, okay?

Simon: Now I’m intrigued. Do I get a hint?

Thea: No hints! Just come to my place as planned.

Simon thought about how he’d have to go to the airport on Saturday morning. He had his plans already set, but Thea was asking, not demanding. And he wanted to spend more time with her before he left. Hell, he wanted to spend more time with her period.

He could pack his bag and leave it in the car. Just in case.

Simon: You’re on.