When the Truth Slips Out

Some nights the dispatch desk felt less like a job and more like a chair I rented from the university. I'd been at campus security for nine years now, I was thirty-four, and I could tell you exactly how a Tuesday goes. Radio check at seven. Coffee at seven-fifteen. Some freshman loses his bike at eight. A smoke alarm goes off in the dorms at eleven because somebody microwaved a burrito in its foil. Then lunch, then nothing, then something dumb, then home.

Antoine, our shift lead, says I've got the best temperament on the floor. What he means is I don't panic and I don't gossip. I log the call, I send the officer, I file the paper. Nine years of that will sand a person smooth, you know?

"You doing anything Friday?" Antoine asked me that afternoon, leaning over the partition with his coat half on.

"Probably not," I said. "Why?"

"Because you're coming to The Rusty Mug with the crew, that's why. Mara's working. You've been moping around this office like a wet rug for two weeks."

"I do not mope!"

"You absolutely mope," he said, already walking. "Friday. Eight o'clock. I'm telling your radio."

He was gone before I could argue. Antoine's been married since he was twenty-eight and he thinks everyone should be as settled as him, so he pushes people around like it's his second job.

* * *

So Friday found me at the Rusty Mug, wedged into our usual corner booth with two officers from the night shift who were arguing about a fantasy football trade I couldn't have cared less about. Mara looked over from the taps and gave me the little nod that meant I see you, your usual is coming. God bless her. She's been my best friend since college, and she runs that bar like a general runs an army.

That's when I saw him.

Fletcher came in through the front door, and my stomach did the stupid thing it always does, that slow drop like an elevator with a bad cable. He's a grad student in geology, thirty-five, tall, always a little rumpled like he's been leaning over rock samples all day. We were classmates a decade ago, in a night class we both took at twenty-four, and I have been quietly, hopelessly hung up on him since roughly the second week of knowing him. Ten years! A decade of waving at a man across a bar!

And he wasn't alone. He had a woman with him. Tall, blonde, great coat, the whole package. She laughed at something he said and touched his arm, and I felt my face go hot.

"Kimmie." Mara was suddenly at my table, setting down my cider. "You're staring across the room at Fletcher again like he owes you money."

"I wasn't staring!"

"Babe. You've been staring at him since that night class. You stared at him at my thirtieth birthday party. You stared at him when he got food poisoning at my trivia night and left in the middle of round two."

"I remember that," one of the officers offered, unhelpfully.

"Thank you, Dawson," Mara said. "Kimmie. Sweetie. Light of the dispatch floor. Why have you never once in ten years said a single word to that man beyond 'hey, how's it going'?"

I looked into my cider like it might have an answer written on the bottom. "Because it never came up?"

"It never CAME UP?" Mara sat down across from me, which is what she does when she's clearing her schedule for a lecture. "You literally light up when he walks in. Antoine notices. ANTOINE notices, and that man does not notice anything that isn't a shift schedule."

"Okay, fine!" I threw my hands up. Two officers turned around. Great. An audience. "Yes. I've had a thing for Fletcher since we were classmates, which was a decade ago, which means if I had said something back then I could've been divorced from him by now and I'd have a story to tell."

"That's not the flex you think it is," Mara said.

"Look, I dated a coworker when I was twenty-three. It lasted like four months and it was fine? It was fine. Nobody ever made my stomach do anything. And then I got comfortable, and I got this job, and every time I work up the nerve to say something to Fletcher, he shows up with some new person on his arm." I jabbed a finger toward the window. "Like tonight. Look at that. Look at her coat."

Mara looked. "She's pretty."

"I know she's pretty. That's the problem. You think I don't know she's pretty?"

"Have you considered," Mara said, ticking it off on her fingers like she'd rehearsed this, "that maybe he keeps showing up with dates because you've never given him any sign whatsoever that you'd be interested? Have you considered that men are dumb? Because they are. They're so dumb, Kimmie. He could be hanging a sign around his neck and you'd both sit here being polite at each other until we retire."

"He's never once given me a sign either."

"Have you ever looked?"

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Because honestly? Had I? Or had I spent ten years keeping my eyes safely on my drink whenever he was in the room so I wouldn't have to find out?

"Here's what's going to happen," Mara said, standing up and smoothing her apron. "Nothing, tonight. You're going to sit here and be a normal person. But you're going to let me do one thing, and you're going to trust me."

"Which is what?"

"Nothing yet." She patted my shoulder. "Drink your cider."

And then, I swear, the universe took pity on me or was setting up a punchline, because the blonde with the great coat stood up, hugged Fletcher's shoulder, and left. Alone. Early. Not even nine o'clock.

Fletcher stood there for a second with his hands in his pockets. Then he scanned the room, found me, and started walking over.

"Kimmie. Hey." He slid into the booth across from me like he owned it, all long legs and elbows, and knocked a napkin dispenser over in the process. "Sorry. Hang on." He righted it. "There. Okay. Hi."

"Hi yourself," I said. "Where'd your date go?"

"Oh, Liz? She left." He waved vaguely at the door. "She's, uh... she's very into podcasts about true crime, and I made the mistake of saying I don't really listen to podcasts, and it kind of went downhill from there?"

"From podcasts?"

"From podcasts, yeah." He laughed, and my chest did the thing. "It's fine. We'd been out a couple times. It was clearly not going anywhere. She agreed. We shook hands over it, more or less."

"You shook hands?"

"We're very formal people, apparently." He flagged Mara down. "Can I get whatever Kimmie's having? And a water."

"You two are so predictable," Mara said, already pouring. She set his pint down, looked between us with an expression I did not appreciate, and sailed off.

"I haven't seen you here in a couple weeks," he said.

"I've been working nights. The radio and I have a very exclusive relationship."

"You still on dispatch? I thought you'd have moved up by now."

"Moved up to what? There's me, Antoine, and a kid named Perry who answers the phone like he's apologizing to it." I took a drink. "I'm good at it, though. Nobody panics on my floor."

"I believe that," he said, and he said it in a way that made me look at my glass again, because the man could not just be nice, he had to be nice with his whole face doing things.

We talked for a while about nothing. His dissertation, which involves rocks, or rather one very specific rock formation he'd been arguing with for two years. My fantasy of replacing the dispatch coffee maker with a live raccoon, on the grounds that a raccoon would make better decisions. He laughed at that one for real, head back, and I felt ten years of careful sitting dissolve a little.

Then he got quiet for a second, turning his glass around on the coaster.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

"Depends how nosy it is."

"Sure, fine, tell me to shove off." He smiled, then didn't. "Why haven't you ever dated anyone serious? Anyone I've ever seen you with, anyway. It's been what, ten years I've known you, and I can count your dates on one hand and still have fingers left."

I should have said something breezy. I had a whole shelf of breezy answers stocked up. Instead I looked up at him and the cider must have been stronger than Mara pours, because what came out was:

"Because I never wanted any of them."

The word hung there. He didn't blink.

"Never?" he said, quiet. "Not once?"

"Not once. Not really." My heart was doing something ridiculous and I let it. "And before you ask, no, I'm not telling