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The old folks on our route got him talking about all the places he’d been with the military, and then it seemed like he was an old folk. The guy could talk for days about cars, and I’d learned quickly, when one of the elders couldn’t get his truck started, that Dan knew how to make them run too. He fixed Mr. Quimbly’s twenty-year-old Ford right up and got the engine revving in no time flat, which earned him points with the cranky old goat and all his neighbors.
When we returned to the station, I checked in with Shelley and then made my way over to Ace’s House, hoping to see Devo back in action before the end of her workday.
My stomach felt like it had a whole nest of caterpillars crawling around in there. My heartbeat thudded in my throat. I didn’t know what last night meant for us. She’d never answered about going to the dance with me.
But the sex we’d had wasn’t only that. It hadn’t been just sex.
It had been… transcendent. Something more than a hookup. It had been a hell of a lot more than just fucking.
It was a belonging.
Had she felt it too?
Theo smiled when I jumped up the few steps leading to the center’s front doors. I crossed the threshold, and his face turned into a big ol’ smirk while he stood there, watching me.
What the fuck was that about? He wasn’t usually such a smiley guy.
“What?” I said, and I looked down at my uniform to make sure I hadn’t spilled any of José’s chili on my shirt.
“Nothing. Can’t a guy smile when he’s having a good day?”
“Sure. Why’s it such a good day?”
The center seemed chill and quiet. There weren’t any kids throwing tantrums today. Everybody was probably preparing to wind down for the weekend, and I knew Devo and Theo would be busy making last-minute preparations for the Fall Festival.
“Well,” he said, “for one, Red has made a complete turnaround in his attitude. He just took a break from his store to pop over here to ask if he could sign up to volunteer. Apparently, he liked it here.”
“He did,” I said with a nod, and I took off my hat. I could feel the rat’s nest tangled on top of my head since I’d fallen asleep in Devo’s arms last night with wet hair, but there wasn’t much I could do about it at the moment, and besides, my workday wasn’t over yet, so it’d just get messed again later. I ran my fingers through it anyway. “Red told me as much.”
“Well.” Theo laughed. “Isn’t that just…”
“It’s nuts,” I said, finishing his sentence, “but I’m not gonna complain. I’ll take weird-but-happy Red over grumpy Red any day.”
“Me too.” He shuffled the stack of papers in his hands, tidying them into a nicer pile and switching them into the crook of his arm. “Devo’s in her office, by the way.”
“Oh.” I looked around, trying not to seem too interested. And then I realized that was dumb. A new era had been settling in all around me. It had come time for me to get with the program.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he said. He was too polite to call me out about a relationship with his assistant director, even though, of all the buildings in Wisper, this one was the most welcoming no matter who you were. No matter who you loved. “Unless you need me for anything?”
“Nope. Just came to talk to Devo.”
“Okay,” he said. “Have a good evening, Abey.” And he turned to make his way to the staircase at the back of the hallway. He climbed the stairs two at a time and disappeared.
When I peeked my head around the door to Devo’s office, she was standing behind her desk, talking on the phone.
She waved me in with a sexy smile, and I plopped down into the chair across from her, getting a good eyeful of a mess of decorations and what looked like fun activities for kids she’d been working on for the festival.
A box full of miniature Halloween candy bars sat by my boots on the floor, next to it another box filled to the brim with toy bracelets, rings, and trinkets of all shapes and sizes, and resting against the wall behind her, there was a life-sized tic-tac-toe board someone had made out of a huge piece of cardboard and black felt, with red felt X’s and blue felt O’s stuck around the sides.
I smiled, thinking of all the kids who would get a kick out of it at the festival, playing the game, dunking for apples, and getting their faces painted, plus a whole host of other games and rides.
“Yeah, Calysta, you got it,” Devo said into her phone. “And again, I’m sorry about Vern. He really does mean well, he’s just not… um—” She hesitated, her brown eyes drifting to the side as she tried to come up with a way to describe Vern Wexler to this Calysta on the end of the line. I held in a chuckle. I doubted there was a good way to sum the guy up. He was one of a kind. “He’s never really worked a job where he had to be professional, but in the future, it’ll be me or Theo who calls to make the orders. We could always do it online, but you know I love gabbin’ with ya.”
Scrunching her cute little nose, she flashed me a grin, listening to whatever Calysta had said before they ended the call. “Absolutely,” Devo said. “And thanks again. Have a great weekend.”
She hung up the phone, setting it back in its cradle on her desk, and her smile grew till her teeth gleamed in the overhead office lights.
I placed my hand flat on my stomach, trying without success to quiet the bite of the ache I felt when I looked at her. I’d never seen anyone so beautiful.
