He had this thousand-yard-stare on his face.
Sighing heavily, I looked up into the rearview mirror. He was avoiding my eyes.
“So what’s the story this time?” I asked him in my cop voice.
“The fuck do you care?” He answered, gritting his teeth.
“Come on Tim, we’ve seen each other enough times, we’re friends. There’s no need to be rude.”
“Fuck you!” he cried.
I sighed again and said, “You know, this will all go so much easier for you if you just trust me. Come on kid, just tell me how it started. We’re going to figure this out anyway. We could do it the easy way, or the hard way. The hard way will take weeks of investigation, and during that whole time you’ll be watched. You don’t want that.”
Tim looked out the window, his eyes narrowed. He was thinking about it.
“The easy way is that you just tell me how you started it, and why, and we’ll figure out the rest.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I fished it out as Tim remained silently staring out the window.
“I had to go home, I saw you next to a house on fire! Are you okay?”
I smiled as I read the text from Luke. What stood out to me was that he asked if I was okay, not what was going on. Most people saw a crime scene, or a fire or whatever, and wanted to know what had caused it with a morbid curiosity. I’d expected him to ask what had happened, or who was involved.
But no. He cared about me.
“Fine,” Tim spat from the backseat, “This was… this was an accident. I was lighting matches in the garage, dropping them in puddles of gasoline that I was pouring.”
I swept my palm over my face. “Tim… why the hell would you think that was a good idea? Why were you pouring out puddles of gasoline in the first place?”
He shrugged and said, “To see what happened, I guess.”
My brother’s face swam to the surface of my mind.
I could easily see him doing the same impulsive thing at Tim’s age, if he was a little more wild. If he cared less about what we — his family — thought of him.
Then I looked over Tim’s features again, wondering if he cared what anyone thought of him. Maybe he was the opposite of his mother. Maybe he didn’t actually care what anyone thought of him. Maybe he wanted them to.
“At least… next time you do that, do it in the driveway or something.” I said grumpily as I texted Luke back.
“I’m okay, just doing my job.”
Stoic. Manly. I wanted Luke to think I was invincible. Then I thought about how he’d collapsed in my playroom earlier, and I was filled with worry. Was he really going home because he had to? Was he disgusted by seeing that side of me, so much so that he fainted?
The feeling of losing control made me uncomfortable. I frowned slightly.
But if he decided to leave, I had to let that pure white bird fly away.
“Sorry Tim, but I’ve got to take you in,” I said gruffly.
“What? But I already told you what I did,”
“You set a house on fire. That’s not something we take lightly.” I said.
But as I pulled out of the driveway in the squad car, I couldn’t help but feel a deep sadness knowing that after this, once I got home, my house would be empty.
I’d be alone again.
* * *
On the first day I didn’t hear from Luke, I was nervous. Then the second day rolled by without a sign of him. On the third day, I’d finally resigned to never hearing from him again.
He must have thought I was a freak. I’d scared him by showing him my playroom. I should have realized that it was too much too soon.
A sadness had crept into my soul as the loneliness pressed in on the edges of my life. I missed having a partner. I missed having someone I could tell things to — someone who saw the real me.
I wandered into the kitchen to make myself a lonely little dinner for one and passed the newspaper lying on the table. In black and white on the front page, was an image of me in my uniform, standing up straight, and leaning against the squad car as the fire burned in the background. The camera must have appeared when I wasn’t expecting it; I didn’t see it. My eyes were focused on the burning house, the flames licking the sky behind me.
Even with my modest nature, I had to admit that I looked pretty badass.
All I wanted to do was to send it to Luke, but then I thought that would come across as too desperate. It was clear that he wanted nothing to do with me anymore.
Every time I closed my eyes, I could see Luke sitting across from me when we had lunch, those blue eyes boring into me. Seeing past the layers of stoicism and gruffness; peeling back all the fake shielding I’d constructed around myself. That image of the badass cop in the photo? That wasn’t the real me. That was the carefully curated version of me that the world saw.
Luke had been the only one that I had an inkling could see through that.
But I’d scared him away; he’d flown away from me. And now I was alone.
When I was relaxing one afternoon in my living room watching football, my phone buzzed in my pocket. With lightning-like reflexes, I dug it out and looked at the screen, hoping and praying that it was Luke.
But instead, the name that appeared was that of Brian, my old sub.
“I saw you in the paper. How are you?”
My gut clenched. A swirling cocktail of emotions that I wasn’t prepared to deal with all came bubbling to the surface.
I was angry that he decided to text me now. I was grateful for someone’s company. I was confused by
