And the great room, which had floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the downtown area, had a dance floor in the center. Poppy, Frankie, Talia, the yoga master, and Jenna, the beauty store owner, had been on the dance floor all night. They’d performed the Monster Mash and Thriller twice.
AJ was happy to see Poppy feeling better. The past few days she hadn’t seemed as tired or nauseous. They still hadn’t really spoken about the baby. He hadn’t wanted to bring anything up and upset her. Once they had the twelve-week checkup, then he’d talk to her. Hopefully, by then, she’d feel comfortable letting her friends and family in on the news.
“I always wonder what you’re thinking, but most of the time I’m scared to ask,” Zion teased as he stepped beside AJ then changed the subject. “So how are you liking small-town living?”
“It’s fine.” Zion followed Frankie from New York to Hope Falls. As far as AJ knew, he had always lived in big cities. He was born in London but traveled the world and lived in Rome, Moscow, and Beijing. “Do you like it?
“Surprisingly, I like it a lot.” He took a sip of his drink. “So what’s the deal with you and Popsi-Cola?”
“The deal?”
“Are you two…hanging out?”
“We have hung out.”We’ve hung out every day because she’s pregnant with my child.
“Okayyyy. And what’s the deal with her boss? Deacon St. Claire. I heard he showed up tonight at the festival.”
Poppy invited Deacon and Tabitha because they were new to town. AJ could admit part of the reason he’d ended up going was because he knew they were. He was glad that he’d gone. If he hadn’t, he would have missed the expression on Poppy’s face when she turned around and he was there. It was shock and also happiness. Then when he told her he was there for her, he could see it meant something to her.
“Hi!” A woman with unusually large brown eyes and short blonde hair who looked vaguely familiar was suddenly standing in front of them. Her gaze ping-ponged between Zion and AJ before it landed on AJ, and she pointed at him. “Is this…?”
“Oh, right, yes. Desiree, this is AJ Costas. AJ, this is Desiree Dove.”
AJ’s chin dipped. “Nice to meet you.”
Desiree and Zion exchanged a look before Zion continued, “Des just got cast in a new pilot as a CIA operative who is highly intelligent and neurodivergent, she was wondering if she could pick your brain.”
“No,” AJ replied.
Desiree’s eyes widened, causing them to take up most of the real estate of her face.
Zion did not react at all, just calmly asked, “Why not?”
“I can’t discuss any classified information, and even with similar or exact diagnoses, neurodivergent men and women present very differently.”
“Oh, I just had a few very general questions, nothing classified,” Desiree quickly clarified. “And I’m just trying to get a sense of what the day-in and day-out challenges or advantages would be for someone neurodivergent in that field. But I totally understand if that is not something you feel comfortable with.”
AJ had been doing a lot of things he wasn’t comfortable with lately, none of them had killed him yet. “Okay,” he agreed.
“I will leave you two to it.” Zion wiggled his fingers in a wave as he backed away from them, like Homer Simpson in the bush.
“Should we get a drink?” Desiree suggested.
“No.”
“Oh, okay.” Desiree began asking him basic questions about what his day-to-day duties were. How he handled being deployed and in situations that were so unpredictable, when he thrived on routine. He explained that as cyber intelligence, evenwhen deployed, he was rarely out in the field. If he was, he had different tools and ways he’d learned to cope.
He told her the truth, or at least the sanitized version of it. “Most of my day is analysis, sifting through data, flagging anomalies, and writing reports. If there’s a deployment, I handle systems in the field, but I’m rarely boots-on-the-ground.” He left out the parts about the boredom, the isolation, the impossibility of switching off, and how, in the rare moments he was forced into face-to-face field-work, he felt like a tourist in his own body. There was always something to interpret, an expression, a tone, the unsaid. Sometimes he missed the dull, honest predictability of code.
Desiree pressed on, undeterred. “And when you do have to operate out of routine, like, say, if you’re called up suddenly and have to drop everything, how do you cope? Is it something you’ve trained for, or is it always a struggle?” She said it almost apologetically, as if the question itself were an insult, but AJ had fielded worse.
He considered his answer. “Experience helps,” he replied. “You can’t train for unpredictability except by being exposed to it over and over. The first few years were hard. I learned to make routines out of the unpredictable such as packing lists, rituals, breathing exercises. I don’t like surprises, but I can manage them if I see the edge before I hit it.”
They talked more about how he navigated relationships within his squad, with commanding officers, and even in his off-duty life. He explained as he had to Melinda how he studied the way people laugh, the cadence of their speech, etc., and how he did that on a broader scale in group settings to pick up social cues accordingly.
Desiree smiled, relief evident. “That’s actually really helpful. A lot of what you’re describing tracks with what I’ve read about masking, but you don’t seem to resent it.”
“I don’t.”
