Setting coffee down beside her wasn't a plan. That's the part that keeps surfacing.
She was reading on the couch — her feet tucked under her, one of Ivy's blankets across her lap — and I walked through the room and put the mug on the table and went back to what I was doing, and somewhere between the kitchen and the hallway I realized I hadn't thought about it at all. No calculation. No decision. Just: she takes it with one sugar, and there was an extra mug, and that was the end of it.
That's the part I can't stop thinking about.
I carry it into the shower, through my shift briefing, and all the way into the station, where it continues to surface at intervals where it has no business being while I'm supposed to be reviewing apparatus maintenance logs.
My phone buzzes on the desk. A text from Aiden.
Aiden: How's it going with Lockhart
I stare at it. At some point I told Aiden enough that he felt entitled to have opinions about it. This was my first mistake. My second was not specifying that Derek did not need to be consulted.
Beck: Fine
Aiden: That's it? Fine?
Beck: Yes
Aiden: Beck.
Beck: What
Aiden: You have to actually do something. You can't just exist in her vicinity and hope she figures it out.
I set the phone face-down on the desk. I pick up the maintenance log. I read the same sentence about hydraulic pump pressure three times without retaining any of it.
My phone buzzes again.
Derek: Aiden added me to this thread. You're welcome.
I have no idea why Derek is involved in this conversation and I make a note to address it at a later date, potentially in writing.
Derek: I have thoughts
Beck: I don't want them
Derek: Too late
A link arrives. Then another. Then, because the universe is actively hostile toward me, a Pinterest board titledRomantic Date Ideas for the Modern Manlands in the group chat. Derek has sent a quantity of pins that constitutes a harassment case on its own merits.
I open exactly one of them. It's a photograph of a table covered in rose petals with a string of fairy lights overhead and two wine glasses arranged at artful angles. There is a handwritten note leaning against one of the glasses. The note says, in what appears to be professionally calligraphed script,You are my forever.
I close the app. Aiden means well. Derek is a liability. Neither of them is going to help me here.
I screenshot the entire thread. This is exhibit A through Z for future reference if either of them ever gives me grief about anything for the rest of our natural lives. I am building a case. It will be airtight.
I set the phone face-down again, go back to the maintenance log, and this time I actually read it. Hydraulic pump pressure, normal range, no anomalies. Good. At least something in my life is functioning within expected parameters.
Aiden has been in a relationship for over a year. He needed a viral video to get there. This feels like relevant data.
It comes to me mid-shift, while I'm in the apparatus bay going over pre-run checks and not thinking about it at all, which is apparently when my brain decides to work.
Gemma mentioned it once, early on, standing on the back porch with her coffee mug wrapped in both hands and her face tilted up like she could drink the sky. She'd said it the way she said a lot of things — offhand, conversational, like she was just narrating whatever crossed her mind.I've never seen the Perseids properly. I keep meaning to find somewhere dark enough, but I've always lived in a city.
She'd moved on to something else before I could respond. I'd filed it away the way I file most things — quietly, in order, accessible when needed.
The Perseids peak tonight. I looked it up weeks ago when a fire safety bulletin came through with a note about dry conditions and increased campfire risk. I knew about The Overlook, but The Overlook has a parking lot and a historical marker and, on a clear night, approximately half of Copper Ridge. That wasn't what this was. The ridge above the old forestry road, about a mile past the fire break, has zero light pollution. I know because I drove up there in the first week after I moved to Copper Ridge, when the silence of the town was still unfamiliar and I needed to confirm that the stars up here were actually different from what I remembered.
