The smile growing over his face sends warmth through me.
CaptainHammond.
I can’t hold back the one that spreads over mine.
“Officer Tennison, it is.” Miles nods at me.
Before I can think of something to say to him, a congratulations or anything remotely normal, he’s pinned the clipboard under his arm and is walking toward the back door of the station.
“God, girl. I was watching you the entire time from the kitchen window, my damn heart was in my throat. You make the rest of us look like slugs.” Heidi chuckles, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.
My focus doesn’t drift from Miles’s back as it recedes and then disappears through the back door.
“This calls for celebration,” Sandy says, wrapping his arm over my shoulder from the other side.
“Why do I suddenly feel like a smothered only child?” I say.
Heidi cackles.
Sandy messes up my hair, again.
“That’s because, London, we are a big happy family. Isn’t that right, Cap?” Heidi says.
Cap smiles. The genuine emotion on his face is like nothing I’ve seen before. “Damn straight.”
“Well, family, this girl is so thirsty.”
Parched, I walk in step for the station with Owens and Sandy, Cap following.
Despite the achievement, and the promotion from probie to officer, something is missing.
Ha, that’s stupid, London.
It’s not something, it’ssomebody.
Sitting on the internal steps of this old apartment building is not the way most people spend their Saturday. Me, I’d wait here for eternity for the chance to fix what I broke.
To find out if the one thing I discovered I can’t live without is still mine.
Live. A bland word, in all.
The concept and execution are two very different things.
To live is to be alive.
But you can be alive, host a heart that won’t quit beating, and still feel dead. Dead inside.
Dead in mind and spirit.
Most likely, you don’t even realize when you became comfortable living in your own orbit and it being enough.
It’s only when you’ve stepped into the universe of someone else, felt things you’ve never felt before, seen things you’ve been looking at your whole life and never actually saw in detail until now, that your perspective is forever changed.
I like our universe better than my own orbit.
I guess that’s the point, isn’t it? The point of life, of living, is the perspective you hold. The lens you view it through. How you decide for yourself what is good and what is to be left behind. Not forgotten; simply put down so it can’t cause you pain. The ember no longer singeing your palm.
I will never forget why we left our homeland, or Davey. But I choose to put those parts of my life on the shelf, not forgotten, not out of sight because I can still see them clearly. I choose to spend my time and energy carrying the things that move me forward, that make me happy.
