Mira stopped dead in her tracks, rolled her eyes at Charlotte with a little wink at the end, then spun around so fast Chris didn’t have time to stop and plowed into her. “Chris, you don’t have to trick me into spending the rest of my life with you.” Just seeing the couple look at each other made Charlotte uncomfortable. Like she was intruding on something too intimate, despite the fact they were having this little argument out in the open for everyone to see. “I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we’ll be together well into old age. You getting me riled up still when we’re grey and stooped, just so we can have hot make-up sex.”
Chris chuckled, running his hands from her shoulders, down her back and gripping her hips. “Absolutely.”
“But I want to wait just a little longer before we get engaged, okay?”
“Okay.” Chris leaned in, giving her a kiss that made Charlotte blush uncontrollably. “But I’m still going to propose every day until you say yes. I just love seeing you get all worked up.”
“You’re impossible.”
Chris slapped Mira on the butt as he passed by, winking at Charlotte.
“Hey, hands to yourself in the workplace, buddy.” Michelle called out from her office, even though everyone knew she didn’t mean it. Her husband came in quite regularly to visit. Those ‘visits’ were the only time Michelle’s door ever got locked.
Mira climbed up the circular platform to the assignment desk, a genuine smile on her face that Charlotte kind of envied. “Hey sweetie, get any sleep today?”
Just the mention of sleep had Charlotte yawning widely. “Yeah, I slept for two hours in the break room last night while Cory covered the scanners.”
Charlotte focused on her screen, the long night behind her having made her exhausted and edgy. The thought of looking Mira in the eye and faking her way through another conversation felt like too much at that moment.
“Anything good overnight?” Mira lapsed into shop talk, somewhat letting Charlotte off the hook.
“Not really, a few trashcan and dumpster fires again, but still nothing I think we should be covering. This guy is definitely upping his game, but at this point, reporting on him would just fuel his obsession.” While trying to keep her mind occupied overnight, she had done a little research on fire bugs, and discovered that they sometimes see the product of their fires on media sites and get even more excited about their next attempt. That reason alone was enough to make Charlotte extra careful about how they approached the story. “Plus, as far as I can tell, no one else has connected the dots that we have a budding arsonist on our hands. So, I think it is safe to hold off for a while. My contact in the fire department is starting to worry that the frequency is getting higher, though.”
Mira tilted her head, taking in all the assignment editor had said. “Okay, sounds good. Let me know when we should roll with the story, though. Hey, since when do you have contacts in the fire department?”
Heat rushed Charlotte’s cheeks, and her eyes darted down to her fingers resting on the keyboard. “Ummm, just a couple of weeks, actually.”
Mira leaned forward, suddenly even more interested. “Oh really? And why would a contact make you light up like a Christmas tree, young lady? Is there something you aren’t telling me?”
“Yes.” The exhaustion and confusion Charlotte had been battling for weeks unleashed in the form of words spewing from her mouth like they never had before, seemingly not under any direction of hers. “His name is Trey. We started talking one night when he filled in at the dispatch center, but really, he’s a firefighter. But we’ve been talking almost every night since. And he isn’t even at the dispatch center anymore. I gave him my cell phone number. The only person that calls that number is my mother. And now him. And he wants to meet, but I have no idea what to do. I’ve never been on a date; I’m a freaking virgin, for God’s sake. And I’m freaking out, because I like him. A lot. More than is logical considering I’ve only ever heard his voice.”
Charlotte stopped the flow of words abruptly, slapping her hand over her mouth. Mira’s jaw fell in a shocked gape that Charlotte had never seen from the normally collected reporter.
Before she could stop them, tears swelling in Charlotte’s eyes, threatening to unleash in a storm of embarrassing sobs in the middle of the newsroom. “I can’t believe I told you all that. Please don’t laugh at me.” Her voice warbled with emotion.
“Honey, why would I laugh at you?” Mira rolled her chair closer, placing a hand on Charlotte’s slim arm.
“Because I’m a twenty-four-year-old virgin with her first crush on a boy.”
Before Mira could respond, the scanners lining the ledge above them crackled to life.
“All fire units in zone seven please respond to the corner of Murray and Braddock Streets. Reports of a multi-structure fire with entrapment.” The dispatcher repeated the message twice more before the scanner went quiet again.
“Mira, that’s the location of one of the dumpster fires last night.” Charlotte snapped to attention, pulling up new windows on her screen. “Shit, that’s a low-income neighborhood with lots of row homes. If there are already multiple buildings involved, this could get bad.”
No further urging was required from Mira. She jumped to her feet, seamlessly transitioning into the badass news reporter she projected on a daily basis. Even through the chaos, Charlotte felt a pang of jealousy that her coworker could so completely embody that person in the span of mere seconds. “I saw Rufus loading up in the back. We’re on our way.” Clearing the two stairs to the main floor in one step, Mira raced across the newsroom. “Send me everything you have on the suspected firebug and the trash fires. I’ll call the fire marshal; you get a hold of your contact.”
Mira stopped, whirled around and took a giant step back towards Charlotte. “And this conversation isn’t over. Saturday night, girls’ night, we’re doing this. Deal with it.”
Charlotte groaned, already dreading the interrogation Mira and Bekah would be giving her during their self-declared girls’ night.
