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She’s laughing and hasn’t noticed the catch in my breath. I wrap my free arm around her waist and watch her face as she attempts to pull my arm down. I bring my hand down in between us and hold the candy out.
“Okay, so how am I supposed to eat the candy?” I ask. She places her hands on my biceps and lowers her feet back to the floor. I feel like my heart is going to beat out of my chest when she keeps her hands on my arms and looks up at me. Does she know what she’s doing to me right now?
She takes a Snickers and unwraps it. “For starters, you don’t eat it in such rapid succession. You take the time to enjoy it,” she says and takes a small bite. Actually, I can’t even label that as a bite. It’s more of a nibble. I’m half-tempted to shove the whole thing in her mouth. It takes her five times longer to eat that tiny Snickers than it should.
“See?” she asks when she’s done.
“That was torture,” I reply and throw two pieces of candy in my mouth at once just to annoy her. She rewards me by reacting just as I expect. She grabs a chair from her table and scoots it up to the pantry so she can reach the box of candy.
“You know what, I’m relocating my stash. You don’t deserve to know its location.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t refer to it as a stash…” I call out as she runs down the hallway to her bedroom.
A few minutes later, she comes back out, having changed into lounge clothes and her thick-framed glasses. She looks just as nerdy as one would expect a librarian to look…and I love it. Gosh, she drives me crazy. I never knew I had a thing for nerds until Millie.
Work has been slow all day today, which is fine with me. It gives me time to catch up on all of the paperwork I have to do. Crash reports have piled up over the last week, thanks to some bad weather. Why don’t people understand that you can’t go seventy around a huge curve when the roads are wet? That’s a dumb question—this is Texas. People seem to think they’re always driving in a Nascar race in this state.
I’ve managed to knock out three reports when I decide to take a break and go grab myself some lunch. I go to the local sandwich shop downtown. I’m standing in line when an eerie feeling comes over me, like I’m being watched. I scan around the room, but there’s hardly anyone else in here other than the two employees behind the counter. It’s still a little early for a lunch crowd, but when you start your shift at 6 am, your schedule gets weird.
I look out the window, and a man in a navy-blue hoodie across the street takes off running down the sidewalk. I dash out the door of the sandwich shop, but the man is gone before I can get a good look at him. All I have to go on is a pair of gray sneakers and a scraggly light-brown beard. So, basically nothing.
I order my sandwich and head back to my patrol car to spend my lunch break searching for information about who the man in the hoodie could be. I’ve got it narrowed down to three different men. I study their pictures, but it’s useless to try to compare them to the man I’ve just seen.
I send some information over to my friend at the sheriff’s department who’s trying to help me find this sneaky guy. He hasn’t had much luck finding any information.
I shove the last bite of my sandwich into my mouth right before my phone starts ringing. I grab a napkin and wipe my hands before grabbing my phone and seeing Millie’s name on the screen.
“Hewwo,” I answer around a mouthful of bread and deli meats. I’m glad it’s just her calling and not the communications office calling me to go to a crash or something.
“Uhh, are you busy?” she asks, confused by how weird I sound.
I swallow before saying, “No, I’m just finishing my lunch. Sorry. Go ahead.” In reality, even if I had been busy, I would’ve taken her call. Ever since the other day at her house, I’ve thought of little else than Millie. She has consumed my brain.
“So, I need to ask a major favor of you…” she says and pauses for a long time. I can hear her overthinking whatever it is she’s called to ask me. I wait, and wait, check my watch, and wait some more.
“You still there?” I ask after a few moments.
“Yeah. I need to have my wisdom teeth removed,” she says and then stops talking again. I have no idea what this has to do with me.
“Aren’t you, like, twenty-five?”
“Yeah, yeah. Twenty-six, but whatever. Listen, I’m scared of the dentist. Terrified, okay? I’ve put this off as long as I can, but these bad boys have been bothering me for like a solid two months,” she says. Now that she mentions it, I can hear the panic in her voice. I still don’t understand why she’s calling me about this in the middle of a work day, though.
“So, what are you needing from me?” I ask.
“Lo can’t miss school again so soon after her suspension, I can’t ask Hannah because she has to fill in for me at work, and Tess has her kids…” she says. I think I know where this is going.
“You need me to drive you?” I ask. I scratch the back of my head, going over my schedule in my mind. It’s pretty crazy this week. I have to go to court for someone trying to fight his DWI charges (He won’t win. The guy was clearly trashed.), and we have a big area meeting.
“Could you? Would you? Pretty please with sprinkles on top!” she says, making me laugh. I haven’t heard that phrase since I was eight years old. She doesn’t have to beg. I would pretty much drop anything to help her.
Gertrude told her to take whatever day she can, so long as it gets done. According to Millie, Gertrude said she’s tired of watching her wince from the pain. She schedules her surgery for the upcoming Tuesday, because I’m already off that day.
I imagine this is what it would be like to be an old married couple, making appointments around each other’s work schedules. I’d like for Millie to be the other half of my old married couple.
I’ve never been anyone’s chauffeur for dental surgery before, but if this is what it’s always like, I will never do this again. I think they got a little carried away with the laughing gas back there. I’m trying to get Millie into her seat, and she reaches up and places both of her hands on my cheeks. For a second, I think she’s about to kiss me, but then she smooshes my cheeks and says, “Boop!” She doubles over in a fit of laughter, and I’m no closer to having her buckled than I was five minutes ago. I could really use the leg and arm restraints from my patrol car right about now.
“Millie, they said you weren’t supposed to talk for a little while,” I remind her.
