As it happens on occasion,the gods listened to mortal men.
Things were quiet at Station Eight today. Tim was napping after a late-night out. Morgan and Courtney were watching a movie on her phone as I dug some hot dogs out of the huge stainless-steel fridge. Tonight we were having chili dogs withonions and homemade coleslaw on the side. I’d just finished shredding the cabbage and dousing it with my mother’s slaw dressing. Somewhere in the back were some pickles that would go well with the dogs as soon as I could find them. Also, some cheese was needed. Grated finely. Sharp cheddar. There should be a block of that in this mess of a refrigerator as well. Sully would be bummed when he returned to the station after his meeting with the city budget planning committee to see that the cheese had been eaten. That’s if he hadn’t gotten to it already. God knows that man loved his cheese.
“What is going on in this damn movie?” Morgan asked as I rummaged about while the chili warmed over a low heat on the stove. “These kids go to some hippie camp in Sweden, which is fine. But when they get there, they see a bear in a wooden cage and not one person asks, ‘Why the hell is there a bear in a cage?’ in this camp. Is that just a White person thing to not ask about the bear because if I saw that at my vacation mindfulness camp, I’d be asking about the mother humping bear.”
“Just watch,” Courtney said as I emerged from the fridge with a half block of cheese, a jar of pickles, and a nice white onion. “You’ll see.” Snickering at the two of them, I glanced up from placing my finds on the counter to see Tim arrive, yawning widely, and dropping into a chair on the other side of the table from Morgan and Courtney.
“When will dinner be ready?” Tim asked, stretching widely. “I’m starving. Last night was exhausting.”
“Pleasuring all those gigabytes must besotiring,” Courtney fired off without lifting her sight from her screen. Morgan guffawed. I chuckled softly, my sight darting to the doorway when it filled with someone I thought I might never see again. Chip Cornish in all his adorably awkward glory. There he stood, holding a bakery box, his hair a little rumpled, a crutch under his arm. His gaze flew around the room until he found me, thenit stayed locked on me as his cheeks went slightly pink. Tim was rambling on about his night being filled with flesh-and-blood women. He was just too easy.
“I brought cupcakes,” Chip said.
“I see that.” God, he was cute.
“I called the station yesterday to confirm shift assignments because I wanted to bring the right number, and because I wanted to know who specifically was with Station Eight on the seventeenth. Sully—Captain Wright—gave me the names. He was very helpful. I told him what they were for.”
“Come in,” I said while trying to figure out why my pulse had spiked. He stepped inside, and Sable adjusted with him. Morgan paused their movie, then Courtney closed the door and gave me a look that I was going to hear about this for the rest of my natural life. I cleared a space on the kitchen island. Chip set the box down with both hands, with the crutch propped under his armpit. He opened it, and even Tim shut up for a second because the box held a small piece of art. Twelve cupcakes, in a four-by-three grid, each one a different flavor, each one with a tiny, printed label tucked into a paper flag on a toothpick.
“There’s one for each person on the rig that day,” Chip said. “Plus, the paramedics. Plus, three extras because I didn’t want to leave anyone out if shifts had changed. I researched preferences where I could. The rest are guesses based on demographic statistics about flavor preference, which I understand is not ideal, but it was my best available data.”
Chip’s finger hovered over the first cupcake. I had to hold still not to reach out and steady his hand.
“This one is for Captain Wright. It’s bourbon pecan because I researched and his wife mentioned in a community board interview last year that he likes pecan pie at Thanksgiving and is the only person in the family who does. Bourbon was the closestcommercial flavor profile I could find. I called four bakeries before I found one that does bourbon pecan.”
“Jesus Christ, kid,” Morgan said, which, from Morgan, was a standing ovation.
“This one is for Lieutenant Wells.” His finger moved. “Vanilla bean with a sea salt caramel center. You make soap, and several of your reviews on Etsy mention vanilla as your most consistent base note, so I extrapolated that you preferred vanilla to chocolate. The sea salt is because two of your soaps include it as an exfoliant; that suggested familiarity and approval. I am open to being wrong about that.”
Morgan’s mouth twitched. He didn’t let it become a smile because Morgan didn’t let things become smiles in front of an audience. “You’re not wrong.”
“This one is for Pearce.” Finger to the third. “Lemon ricotta with a blueberry compote. Your social media shows a recurring interest in cozy mysteries with food themes, particularly the Hannah Swensen series, in which lemon and blueberry feature heavily. I made a probability assumption.”
Courtney made a noise I had never heard her make before. It was small. It was the noise a person makes when a stranger has correctly identified something private about them and put it on a cake.
“Chip,” I said. “Buddy. You looked Court up online?”
“I looked all of you up online. I had a week and a half.” He said it without apology. “I’m trying to be precise.” He moved on. “This one is for Pegg. Plain chocolate with chocolate frosting. I was unable to find any public information about your preferences, so I selected the most statistically common cupcake flavor in the United States. There is no offense intended in the lack of customization.”
Tim opened his mouth, and I watched him do the math on whether to be a dick about it in front of the man on the crutch,and Morgan, Courtney, and me. He chose silence. It was the smartest thing Tim Pegg had done all month.
“This one,” Chip said, his finger stopped, and he didn’t look at me. “Is for you.” The kitchen went quiet. “It’s dark chocolate with a chili and cinnamon ganache. Mexican hot chocolate, essentially. I chose it because, on the day of the fire, I could smell that you’d been cooking before the call, and the only spice profile I could identify on your turnout coat through the smoke was cumin, garlic, and a chili pepper I think was jalapeño. It suggested chili, which suggested you cook for people, which suggested that flavor would be more interesting to you than something sweeter. The cinnamon is because I like cinnamon. I included one element that was just for me… ” He frowned. “That’s probably a thing I shouldn’t have done. I can take it back.”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I said before I could think about it, and Courtney coughed into her fist. Tim made an amused sound. Morgan looked at the ceiling. Chip looked at me. Direct. The green of his eyes was a thing I hadn’t seen properly in the smoke, and it turned out the color was the deep one, the one with gold inside it where the light hit.
“Okay,” he said. Quiet. “Okay.”
“What about the other ones?” I asked because I had to say something, and the air in the room had become hard to breathe in.
“The remaining seven are general assortment. Carrot. Red velvet. Lemon poppy. Hummingbird, which is a Southern flavor. My brother’s wife is from Atlanta and likes it. Two are funfetti because funfetti is a controlled variable, everyone likes funfetti, and one is buttercream on chocolate because the bakery had one left and I felt sorry for it.”
“You felt sorry for a cupcake,” Courtney said.
“Yes.”
“Chip.” I put my hand on the edge of the box, not on his hand, but close. Closer than I needed to. “This is the nicest goddamn thing anyone has done for this station in the eight years I’ve been here. Thank you.”
He looked down at where my hand was. He didn’t move his.
