Chatty.
Funny.
Harassed as hell as Esme climbs him like a human jungle gym.
Restless fecker, though. He only sits when Esme tells him to. Otherwise he’s up fetching things, fiddling with the telly, pacing around while he talks, an edge to him as though he’s never learned the art of stillness. As though he spends all night kicking his bedsheets around unless someone’s there to hold him.
Don’t think about that.
Why would I?
Sab’s lush, but I don’t?—
Stop thinking at all.
I try, but as I watch Sab pack leftovers for me to take to work, his hands so fecking busy, it’s easy—too easy—to picture what he might’ve been like when he was using. And the damage it’s left behind.
Still, as he pushes a foil parcel into my grasp and gives me a smile that’s almost too bright to look at, it’sthisversion of him that undoes me. That has me spinning on the doorstep and reaching out to wrap a hand around his cheek while he has half an eye on Esme picking a bath bomb from a cute as feck little basket. “I meant what I said the other day.”
Sab takes a breath.
I tap my finger to his lips. “Shh. No pressure. Just come on over when you’re ready.”
I fully expectcome on over when you’re readyto stretch out into another week where I don’t know what to do with the person I’ve become since I met Sab.
Somehow, I make it through a dayshift where nothing happens and I’m mostly left alone with my thoughts, my quiet phone, and the ugliest tree in existence to decorate for the station.
Makes me miss Logan, and I almost call him up to tell him so, but in the end, I don’t have to. He FaceTimes to get a proper look at the mess I’ve made of the tree.
“That’s even fucking worse than last year.”
“I still had an iron lung then,” I remind him. “This year, I’m hitting my solo stride, don’t you think?”
I take him around the tree, treating him to every angle of the bent plastic monstrosity.
“Is that fucking bog roll?”
“Yup.” I give the Andrex a flick. “Tinsel’s a fire hazard, don’t you know.”
“Boss is going to make you do it again.”
True story. But I’m hoping to be gone by the time the watch commander comes downstairs and then it’s someone else’s problem. Preferably whatever melt from Green Watch ate my last Pot Noodle. Christ, what I wouldn’t give for another round of Sab’s roast chicken.
“Did you fall asleep standing up again?”
“That was one time.” I tune back into Logan. “And your fault for letting me drink three pints of Murphy’s on an empty stomach.”
“You’re a lightweight.”
“I don’t drink,” I protest. “And that’s why. I always nap through the fun part.”
Logan laughs. Well, as close to laughing as he ever gets. But his gaze pins me all the same, and I wonder what Nash told him when he went back. Then stop wondering pretty quick, knowing Nash would never. But that maybe I wish he had, so me and Logan could?—
The bells go off. The two-tone alert that wipes my brain clear of just about anything.
I hang up on Logan as the station Tannoy crackles to life. On my feet and in motion as the shout for a lorry fire on themotorway filters out, darting down the appliance bay towards the pump.
It’s the first in a run of calls that keeps me busy well into the evening. I have six hours of overtime under my belt by the time I stagger to my car and remember I still haven’t swapped out the flat tyre.
