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Miguel kept sifting through the letters. His eyes lit up. “Ooh la la. One from a dude. You gotta give me this one. You’re straight.”
Miguel liked to brag that he straddled every line. Half-black, half-Hispanic. Bisexual. The guy said he could tick every minority box out there, and he loved it.
“Take the letter. Take them all. This is getting on my nerves.”
“Look on the bright side,” Miguel said, leaning on the edge of his desk. “Everyone has forgotten about the bumper sticker.”
Landon scowled. “You know what? Let’s go back to that. I prefer the bumper sticker jokes.”
Miguel’s eyes widened. “Damn man. Never thought I’d hear you ask for that.”
He and Finn had had a practical joke war running since junior year of high school, and currently, Finn was one up.
The son of a bitch had slapped a bumper sticker on his car of a weed plant with the words “Fuck the Cops.” Landon hadn’t noticed it, but the state police had, and they’d pulled him over for going five measly miles over the speed limit. When they’d run his license and discovered he was a cop too, they’d pointed out the bumper sticker, amused to find out it was a prank.
They’d managed to tell enough fellow officers that the story got back to this precinct. For the past few months, Landon had been barraged with marijuana brochures, flyers, and other weed-themed knickknacks from the other cops, who had shown no signs of letting the joke die. Until now.
Cops were like dogs with a bone when they got ahold of shit like this.
The fucking reporter had added background music to the video of him with Sunnie. If he never heard Faith Hill’s “This Kiss” again, it would be too soon.
Some wiseass—he suspected Miguel—kept changing Landon’s ringtone to the song, and someone had decorated the men’s stalls in the bathroom with memes created from screenshots from the video and lyrics from the song. No matter how many times he tore them down, they kept going up.
Or at least they had—until Aaron found them and put a stop to it once and for all.
“Did I convince you to do that calendar thing yet?” Miguel asked.
Landon shook his head. A photographer who was putting together a sexy blue-collar calendar had approached him. She’d rounded up beefcake firefighters, construction workers, fishermen, and coal miners from all over the country. She had asked him to represent the cops. “They want me to pose shirtless, Miguel, with my gun belt unhooked. I’d feel like a jackass.”
“Yeah, but…she’s giving you December. Bet you could convince her to let you lie on a bearskin rug in front of a fire.”
“You’re hilarious. It’s not happening. I’ll do the basketball game.”
Miguel was unimpressed. “You do that every year, asshole.”
Each year, the firefighters and the cops played a charity game to raise money for cancer research. Sunnie was an oncology nurse, and she’d shared stories about the patients on her floor, what they went through, how brave they were. It was a cause he could definitely get behind.
“Just ask the calendar photographer to give your portion of the proceeds to a charity of your choice. Start using your fame for good.”
Miguel should have been the one to go viral. He had the right personality for it. Hell, so did Sunnie. Finn said she was getting a kick out of her time in the spotlight, posing for pictures and even going so far as to sing “This Kiss” at the pub’s monthly karaoke night. Landon had been relieved—and sorry—he’d missed it.
“I’ll think about it,” he said at last, just to get Miguel off his back about it for a little while longer.
Mandy looked up from her desk, her hand over the microphone part of her headset. “Landon, I swear to God, I’ve got someone from Ellen on the phone asking if you and Sunnie would want to make an appearance.”
Landon leaned back in his chair, defeated, rubbing his eyes with one hand. “Fuck.”
“Landon?” Mandy called out. “What should I say?”
“Tell them no!” he yelled back, his heated response enough to reduce the noisy room to silence.
Feeling bad for his tone, he added, “Please, Mandy,” but it was too late.
“Riggs. My office.”
Landon looked up at Miguel. “Aaron was behind me listening to all that, wasn’t he?”
Miguel nodded, not bothering to wipe away his grin.
