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Weight shuffles in bed. Bare feet patter, and a door opens. Closes.
You frown and shift your legs under your comforter. “Em’ly…?” you mumble. You’re so warm, the blanket the perfect heft. When no one replies, you feel around on the mattress next to you. There’s heat there but no shape. “Em’ly?” you try again. Shuffling onto your side, you prop yourself up on your elbow. The darkness intimates no one else in your bedroom, just a nightstand, window shutters, and a desk with your PC setup. Under the door, the living-room light shines through.
What time is it?
Yawning, you grope around your nightstand for your phone. After a few tries, you realize it’s not there. A voice outside tips you off as to why.
“…a few hours…. I already…yeah…uh-huh….”
For a second, you almost wonder if Emily had another nightmare. She crawled into your bed because of one in the first place, and she did seem to go back to sleep more easily than normal. You kick the blankets off and stand, stretching your lumbar region. At 23, you shouldn’t have back aches, but you guess two days of wrestling the undead and getting kidnapped and crashing a helicopter and…well, those events would mess with anyone’s health.
After wincing at the cold floor on your feet, your fingers close around the door handle. Emily’s voice comes again.
“Please,” she says, and you hesitate, “I know it’d mean a lot to her if you could. It’ll be empty with just me and…. Oh. O—OK…. Yeah. I understand. Yeah…. OK. I will.... Bye.”
There’s no more sound behind the door. You lean your forehead against the wood for a moment. You could go back to sleep, but….
The hinges don’t creak when you pull the door open, and you blink into the hazy lamplight. Your living room is filled with items you got on the fly, mainly IKEA furniture and your dumpster-diving finds from the nearby college town. The collection is incongruous but cozy: Novels line the bookcase; brightly colored throw blankets tumble off the sofa; and the TV usually plays some form of children’s media or nature documentary. It’s quiet now, though. You can hear the fridge humming in the kitchen.
“Emily?” you whisper. Wide-eyed, her face jolts toward you where she’s sitting on the sofa. Her hand scoots something—what must be your phone—out of sight behind her thigh. “Do you…um, do want me to get you some water?” you ask.
Emily shakes her head quickly. “No,” she answers in that airy, pleasant tone of hers.
“Oh.” You want to ask her who she was on the phone with. Instead, you peer into the kitchen pass-through at the microwave clock, fiddling with your hands. It’s almost three. “Well, um, it’s a school night, so…. Do you need anything? Otherwise, I—I’ll go back to bed.”
“I’m fine,” Emily replies, her posture rigid. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
You look at her for another second. “OK,” you decide, then, “I love you.”
Emily smiles. “I love you too,” she returns easily. “Good night.”
You nod once, a stilted period for the conversation, before turning around. The mattress is still warm when you clamber back onto it. A car drives by outside on the road. A few minutes later, the light under your door goes out, and it’s a small comfort when Emily enters and hoists herself back into your bed.
Per usual, you wake up in the morning ten minutes before your alarm. Emily’s still beside you, drooling out of the corner of her mouth while her fingers latched onto your sweatshirt sleeve at some point during the night. You appreciate the innocence of that (One day, she’ll be too old for it) before noticing that your phone is back in its rightful place on your nightstand. Quiet so as not to wake her, you retrieve it and turn off your alarm. The phone app is directly next to it, and you hover your thumb over the icon. You inhale, thinking, before opening your phone log. Just as you thought, there’s a new entry.
Today, 2:53 AM
📞 Leon K.
Mobile +1 266-555-0173
Outgoing call, 4 mins 10 sec
Tilting your head, you glance back to Emily. You have no clue why she’d make a call that early in the morning. All you know is that Leon’s in Europe somewhere, a time zone six hours ahead of you. Maybe it really was a bad dream, and Emily was simply too shy to wake you up….
Shaking your head, you gently pry Emily’s fingers free from your sleeve and set about getting ready. She’s still clearly hiding something when she wanders into the kitchen 20 minutes later. Her hands are behind her back, and she spends too long shifting her weight between her feet, waiting for you to try (and fail) at flipping an egg over easy. “Broke the yolk again,” you laugh, pulling two bagel halves out of the toaster. “I’ll get it one of these days.”
“That’s OK,” Emily says. She’s still standing there. You’ve already set out a place for her with a saucer of cut apples and some orange juice. Her doctor’s been on you that she’s too small for her age, so you try your best despite your limited culinary experience. Hell, before Emily came into your life, you primarily subsisted on takeout and the premade salads in the FBI lounge.
“I can, um. I can make you something else. I—if you want.”
Emily doesn’t say anything, just bites her lip before finally drawing closer and throwing her arms around your waist. You hug her back, of course, concern throttling you.
Oh god, did she accidentally break something? Did she get in trouble at school? Did she get her period?
Once Emily slips away, you get down to her eye level, already preparing to tell her that nothing could ever make you love her less, but instead, she presents a box to you—what she must’ve been hiding behind her back.
“Happy birthday,” she says bashfully.
You blink at the gift, then at her.
No, that—that can’t be right. It’s a Thursday. That’s all you know. You try to think of the last date you put on a report. There was the one you turned in Monday. Right. Then add three days to that date, and….
You burst out laughing. “I totally forgot!” you explain, still unable to catch your breath. Your hands are nearly shaking from it when you take her gift, Emily beaming and soothed. “Thank you so much. You didn’t have to get me anything.”
“I wanted to,” Emily says. Like always, you look at her and wonder how any of those scientists could have seen her and thought she was anything other than lovely. Running a hand over her hair, you return your attention to the box, undoing the pink ribbon and lifting up the lid.
“Aunt Sherry helped me pick it out,” Emily supplies as you pull a scarf from the box. It’s tan plaid with enough black in it to match your rather monochromatic wardrobe. You imagine Sherry gave advice on the color while the softness of the fabric was all Emily.
“It’s perfect. Thank you.”
Emily nearly bounces on her heels. “You should wear it. It’s supposed to be chilly today.”
You agree, and fifteen minutes later, the scarf’s wrapped around your neck as you climb into your sedan with Emily’s backpack, your jangling keys, and the bagel and egg sandwiches you threw together last minute. Emily munches in the backseat and makes predictions on the audiobook you have playing. It’s not a bad drive either. The leaves have finished coming in, the roads damp from yesterday’s rain, and petrichor and wet grass scent bleeds through the open windows. Soon enough, Emily’s hugging you around the driver’s seat. “Have a good day,” you tell her, and then she’s clambering out and into school where one of her friends waits near the entrance.
You spend a while watching the two grin and greet each other, your heart nearly pained from how full it is, until someone else in the line honks and you scramble to put your car back in drive. Dutifully, you pause the audiobook until after school, and the rest of the ride progresses in silence. Pavement rustles below the tires. Your turn signal clicks.
“Hey,” Sherry’s voice comes in through your Bluetooth shortly after. “I was wondering how good of a performer you are.”
You stop at a red light. “P—performer?”
“You may have to act surprised later. Just giving you a heads up.”
You think on this for a moment, then remember Sherry was in on the gift Emily got you. “Oh, no,” you laugh.
“Yeah, Emily was adamant. But in our business, I figured it’s better to be safe than sorry. When I was younger, I tried to surprise Leon for his birthday, and he nearly kicked my head off.”
“I’m sure he did.”
“Uh-huh. You don’t have to go that far, but you better put on a show.”
You promise and chat for a bit longer until something urgent must come up on her end. A bite of worry catches you, but of course, you don’t ask what she and Leon are up to on the other side of the world, pulling into your employee parking space at the FBI field office. You turn off the engine and sit. You’re twenty minutes early like you usually are. There’s no point in heading home after dropping Emily off, and normally, you’d beeline into work, pour yourself some black coffee, and settle into a day of squinting at your monitor. Given how the phone call concluded, though, you’re antsy, fidgety. You stare at a leaf caught in your windshield wiper before opening the door.
It’s your birthday. You can allow yourself a treat.
It’s a five-minute trek on the sidewalk to the nearest café. The place wasn’t here when you started, but someone must’ve heard that FBI agents will pay out the nose for good espresso, and to their credit, it is good espresso. The crowded interior speaks to that. Too many customers are chatting to warrant an entry bell, receipts whirring out of registers. A few people talk on their phones.
Adjusting your scarf, you hustle in out of the chill and take your spot in line. There’s never enough staff here to tackle the demand, a husband and wife duo darting in and out of the back while college kids bus tables and yawn over the French press. It smells like pastries, prepackaged tubs of butter, and freshly ground coffee.
“Next!” someone hollers, so you step up in line. A young woman hovers her fingers over the POS system, waiting for your order. By happenstance, one of the owners turns at that moment with a steel carafe, and recognition crosses her face.
“Wait!” she says. “What’s your name?”
You glance between them, the person at the POS system stepping aside and accepting the carafe. “G—Grace?" you reply. "Grace Ashcroft?”
You’re struggling to keep eye contact, but you clock that the owner grins. "Oh! You don’t need to pay, then. Someone already covered you.”
You freeze. There’s a gun on your hip, trained agents piled into tables around you, but you’re thinking of photos checkering a mattress, of a gramophone playing at the end of a flight of stairs. You already have the exits marked. Swallowing, you ask, “Who w—was it?”
“He left a message for you,” the owner doesn't answer, tapping the touch screen and collecting a piece of paper from her apron. “He paid with a 20, so you should be able to buy anything you’d like. What can I get for you?”
Shaking your stupor off, you figure it can only benefit you to see the message at least, selecting a macchiato on autopilot and assuming your place on the other end of the counter. You bounce your foot and play with the fringe of your scarf, watching the floor. Coffee beans churn in a grinder. Someone behind you swipes through short-form videos, the split seconds of sound setting you on edge.
“Grace?” someone calls.
You jump and step forward. “Th—that’s me,” you say despite the fact it’s obvious.
While handing over your coffee, the worker must notice something on your cup, as they smile and say, “Oh, and happy birthday!”
You frown and check the label. Beside the printed cost and order number, someone’s transcribed the message:
Sorry I couldn’t make it. Happy 24th – L.K.
All tension immediately falls from your shoulders. That’s right. You did take Leon here once. It was purely coincidence: Leon had DSO matters to discuss with FBI higher-ups—some incident that crossed state lines, and he swung by your desk afterward. It was only proper that you show him where good coffee exists, so the two of you spent an hour at one of the bistro tables near the window, Leon with one elbow propped on his chair’s backrest, you spinning your cup. Despite the events that brought you together, he seemed calm and nearly pedestrian among the flocks of FBI agents, a healthy tint to his skin. (“Never been better,” Leon assured, and you didn’t remind him he’d lied to your face about that before). Still, before you knew it, you both were clearing your table and heading out. It wasn’t until you waved farewell to him back in the parking lot that you realized he’d spent most of the time listening, his focus content as you filled him in on mundanities like zoo field trips and parent-teacher conferences. Next time, you promised yourself. I’ll get him next time.
Now, it seems “next time” is actually “next next time.” You get the impression that’s going to be a trend if Leon has anything to say about it, and you smile at the unfamiliar handwriting. Distantly, you debate if it’d be lame of you to peel off the label and keep it in your wallet beside Emily's school picture and a photo-booth print-out you and Mom did years back.
In the continual hum of the café, people walk around you to the adjacent condiment station. You’re in the way; you’re going to be late for work.
“It’s really sweet,” someone says. You glance up and find the owner there carrying a tray of dirty plates and mugs. She slides them over the counter to someone else. “He came in last week. Is he your dad or something?”
“Oh, um....”
How do you explain that he’s the stranger who handed you his best weapon through bars? The agent who covered for you while you carried your daughter from a helicopter crash? The friend who sat with you in the crumbling remains of a lab, the lights going out, your side burning, and no one else for miles?
“Something like that,” you figure with a shrug and a laugh.
The air is brisk as you duck back out onto the street. You’ll have to hoof it if you’re going to be on time, especially with how packed the elevator gets, but you can’t bring yourself to go faster than a stroll. The pavement underfoot is piebald with sunlight, the canopy of paper-bark maples and oaks stretching over the street. Someone across the way walks their dog.
Fumbling with your drink, you retrieve your phone. You reason a photo is the least you can do, trying to fit yourself and your to-go cup into the frame. In the end, your smile looks goofy, but you tell yourself it’s fine, hitting send and adding
Got your coffee! Thanks!
You don’t bother waiting for a response (Who knows what Leon’s up to?), pocketing your phone and continuing your hike. The cup keeps your fingers warm. The scarf is clean and new under your nose. Overhead, a cardinal lands on a branch and twitters. You like to think it’s Mom.