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“It’s my dad’s 50th birthday celebration party and I’m supposed to bring a plus one…”
“And you want me to help come up with an excuse to skip because you’re a terrible liar?” He asked.
“No, no—God no, it’s my dad. If I don’t go I’ll have to see a therapist, be fully psychoanalysed and provide a written statement or something.” She laughed, crinkling her nose. “I wondered if you’d come with me, seeing as you’re—you know. A guy. My parents keep expecting me to bring whoever I’m dating, but that’s kinda the problem because I’m not dating anyone because the moment anyone gets close, I freak out. There’s just way too much risk out there that I don’t want to take, just for the sake of a damn birthday party.”
The words seem to fall from her mouth; like she was pouring her soul out to him and even though when she’d finished she let out a small chuckle he could since sense the sadness and fear laced in them. She was alluding to the trauma that she kept bolted down and hidden away from the face of the world. Even if she didn’t notice it he could recognise that tiny change in pitch in her voice when something about her kidnapping and near-death experience cropped up, like she was still trying to look over her shoulder just in case he was behind her.
He nodded, wordlessly at first. “Sure.” He eventually followed up, still nodding. “Sure, especially seeing as you ask me so nicely.”
“Really?” She asked, moving to sit on crossed legs.
“Yes really.” He affirmed with a smile. “I can do Freddy, he’s a banker and a bit of an asshole but he’s very rich and has a great health insurance plan from work. Or there’s Shaun, he’s the soft artist and altruistic kind, he can’t hold a job down but none of that matters anyway because he’s just waiting for his big break. Oh and he wears scarves. He’s got a whole collection of scarves. Maybe even Mike, he works in a hospital and he’s a nurse practitioner, he’s very sensible and also super boring.” He was interrupted as Lucy erupted into laughter.
“Are you being serious? Where did those things even come from?”
“Hey, hey. I take being a wingman very seriously. It’s an important part of my craft.” He retorted, feigning hurt. She was still laughing.
“Since when? How long have you had these under wraps because they are great.”
“Started when I was in high school, some girl was getting harassed by a guy for saying no to a date so I stepped in and said I was her boyfriend and one thing to another.”
“What, you two ended up dating?”
“No, god no. I punched the guy in the face.”
“Good for you. I never knew you were a knight in shining armour.”
“Oh yeah, I’m great at it. Ask Lopez; I was her fake boyfriend for a whole dinner when her parents were in town. I developed Peter especially for that time; he’s an architect who loves cats, has a special interest in the history of the Titanic and only shops at Whole Foods.”
She was laughing again, her tense shoulders relaxing slightly. He was slowly chipping away at the pain etched into her soul. He smiled, just watching her laugh.
“I’m going to get a beer, you want one?”
“Mm, I’m good. This salsa is so good, I had no idea you could cook.” She flicked through the channels of his TV, then through Netflix.
“It was Isabel’s mom’s recipe. Isabel really couldn’t cook; she could burn water if she set her mind to it. I just got used to being the one doing the dinner every night and she’d do the dishes, it was sort of our thing.” He smiled fondly at the memory.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry—.”
“Old scars, Chen. It’s fine. I saw her the other day at the precinct; she’s doing pretty well. She’s getting ready to move to Arizona. Some sort of job in tech policing, she sounded pretty excited.”
Lucy smiled, patting the bit of couch at her side. “That’s good, really good. Come sit down. It’s nearly 9pm.”
He tossed her a beer, hopping over the back of the couch so he was sitting beside her. “Okay, what’s on tonight? We could watch Shipping Wars or 90-Day Fiancé or even Say Yes To the Dress. All programs with great substance and very diverse storylines.”
She snickered, backing herself into the corner of the couch with a pillow, wrapping herself up comfortably as they settled on a movie. Over the time she’d spent at his home during movie nights, she’d soon enough found that he could be fussy when it came to choosing a movie to watch. He wanted no less than 4 stars and even then, he wasn’t always quiet in announcing his disapproval in the middle of an intense sequence.
Lucy on the other hand was perfectly settled where she was with whatever he would choose. She’d even found herself actively looking for recommendations and things he would like when they were apart, sometime she would even watch the YouTube ads before a video if it showcased something that she thought he might like.
It’d all started when Jackson had gone out of town for a weekend with Sterling. It was going to be their first official date-vacation and it would mark the first weekend where Jackson hadn’t been at work or at Lucy’s side. Jackson had brought her home from the hospital, he’d made her eat when she’d fallen into a dark place, he’d even helped her properly wash her hair on the first night home from the hospital, trying to tease out the knots and leftover sand and dried blood. Jackson had been her rock through it all, he’d never hesitated when Lucy would ask him to check a door that he had just locked was definitely locked, he’d let her fall asleep in his lap with him stretched in the most uncomfortable positions for long periods of time just so she could fall asleep and he’d cradled her through the early nights of paralysing nightmares. It only seemed right after so long that he should take some time to himself; Lucy was earning her fledgling wings and getting ready to fly for herself again. She’d been back to work, stopping with friends for drinks after work and had been doing really well. She hadn’t anticipated the fear she would feel on the first night she was entirely alone in her apartment again.
That’s where Tim had come in, she’d called him in the late evening as she felt the burning rise of anxiety and fear bubbling in her belly and threatening to spill over. He hadn’t argued or hesitated to come over straight away, he’d even brought pizza when he arrived. When she asked him to check the door was locked for a second time he didn’t refuse. He’d sat by her side, until he had carefully pulled her into his arms and held her as sobs racked her frame as the trauma had replayed over and over again in the mind. She was as stubborn as him and he knew how much she hated therapy, the fear and anticipation in the run up to every appointment as she mentally prepared herself to talk about anything. But she didn’t feel it around him and just as much he didn’t mind listening to what snippets into her mind she would give him. They’d settled into a routine of Thursday night being pizza and movie night and it suited them both perfectly.
Tim was happy to have her within his reach, for Thursday nights he could make doubly sure that she was entirely safe. She knew that on Thursday nights she would be safe. It worked for them both. After a while as the trauma subsided from a sharp and continuous pain to a dull intermittent ache, the routine had stuck and Thursday night was movie night.
Lucy was half-asleep in a daze of her own thoughts as Tim was still watching the film intently through narrowed eyes. From the edge of his gaze, he saw her sit up slightly in her position against the couch.
“You okay?” He asked.
“Yeah, I was just thinking. I think I just ended up thinking too much.” She explained, trying to relax back into the pillows, she pressed her head against her fist with her elbow on the armrest.
“Do you want to talk to me about it?” He turned to her, watching her expression carefully. “Or I can just sit here, if you want.”
“Mm, I don’t know. Sorry, it’s probably nothing. Just a niggle I can’t get out of my mind.”
“Was it the movie? We can watch something else if you want.” He offered.
“No, no. It’s not that.”
“Spit it up Boot, or it’ll eat you alive.”
“What if it happens again? You know—what if something happens to me again and no one notices?”
“Chen, I’ll always notice.”
“No, Tim, I mean it. What if I’m gone and I’m not on shift for a couple of days and you all think I’ve just gone out of town? Maybe next time you won’t get there just in time. I don’t want to die, I mean I think I made peace with dying back then or maybe that’s just oxygen deprivation, I don’t know but I don’t want to die, but I keep thinking of all the ways to die or be killed and I can’t get them out of my head. Some ways take hardly any time at all, if I went missing for 60 minutes, I could be dead for 59 of them and the person who did it would be long gone.”
He studied her expression, noticing she was clenching her fists into a white knuckled embrace.
“Hey, don’t think like that. You’re spiralling; don’t let yourself do that. Don’t go down that rabbit hole.”
“The thing that scares me most is if I’m taken again sometime, I don’t know how long I could survive with the pain and fear and uncertainty. It’d drive me mad. I couldn’t do it. I’d rather die than live through that again I think.”
“What about if I call you, once, twice, three times a day, however many times you need just to check in on you? Then we both know you’re safe if you pick up.”
“But what if I pick up, but I’m not safe?” She asked, already picking holes in the plan as the fear rallied, building with a bitter taste in her mouth. She had tears welling at her eyes; she wiped the sleeve of her shirt at her eyes, before they had the chance to fall.
“Alright, when you pick up you say something you’d always say if you were fine and if you’re not fine say something else instead. We can have a word, like a codeword. If I call and you’re safe, you tell me to stand down. If I call and you’re not safe, you can say something else or maybe nothing at all and I’ll know.”
“Okay.” She replied quietly.
“Yeah? Does that sound like a plan?” He asked, leaning in with a warm smile.
“Yeah, that’s a plan.” She replied, leaning over towards him so she could rest her head on his shoulder.
“Then it’s a deal. Codeword is stand down. Nice and simple.”
“Okay.”