Chapter Text
Amy still remembers the minute she met Jake, sitting across an ashy, gray folding table at her first staff meeting. Admittedly, she’d been a little smitten, watching as he scribbled a note to her on a decorative green napkin left over from last Christmas.
welcome to the district!! it’s nice to meet you
Nice to meet you, too! How long have you worked here?
just two years, teaching third grade
He’d looked up at her then, whispering his name before Amy gave hers. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as she leaned in to shake his hand 一 “I took a seminar,” she murmured underneath her breath, hearing Jake laugh back. Principal Holt had introduced Amy as the new nurse on campus, and she’d grinned softly as the teachers clapped and introduced themselves. Maybe she was too close to tell, but it seemed Jake applauded the loudest.
She recalls how he’d introduced her to his friend Rosa and walked her back to her office afterwards, asking for her cell number just in case of quote-unquote dire medical emergencies.
Amy had been too flustered to even make fun of him.
She hadn’t gotten over her feelings in the two months since, hands fumbling over themselves as she’d walked into his classroom to demonstrate stop, drop, and roll. There were drawings plastered over the walls, some of them framed and some laminated (he liked laminating things - it was a sign, right?), waxy crayon or silken pencil traced over the papers. A few were people, she could tell, spotting smiling police officers scrawled in the corner. Jake had strolled over, shown her who was who 一 “that right there’s Cagney and Lacey’s dad, eating the mango yogurt” 一 and placed a thin stack of crisp papers in her hands.
“I know you got here, like, ten minutes ago, but the kids wanted to show their appreciation,” he said quietly, still keeping an eye on Jordan Boone, the fire marshall’s son and their resident class clown. “I, uh, I’m glad you’re here.”
Amy remembered flipping through the pages, deciphering the messy handwriting and rampant doodles. They were still sitting in her file cabinet (“Rosa, do you think it’d be weird if I put them all over my office? would I look too obvious?”), waiting to be hung up.
Thank you for the drawings, Amy texted Jake later that day, and she’d stared a little too long at the screen once he sent ten emojis back, half of them hearts.
“Is it okay if I sit here?” Amy asks, briefly looking down at her new manicure as she nervously clutched a little porcelain lunch container. She’s aware she’s the one and only school nurse that Brooklyn Public Elementary has, but she hopes it doesn’t mean she has to eat alone. Fingers crossed that the teachers don’t have ‘nerd’, ‘jock’, and ‘band geek’ tables, at least.
Miss Perez, the junior ESL teacher, frowns a little at the prospect. “Sorry, Amy, but we’re kind of having a lunch meeting. Maybe some other time?”
Sophia doesn’t even notice as Amy pulls away from the table, trudging back to her lonesome office and pulling out her key. To her surprise, Jake’s pacing around the door as she arrives, mumbling somethings under his breath before he looks up at her.
“I, uh, was gonna ask if it was okay if I came by? I figured, since it was your first day and all-”
Amy walks him in with a shy grin on her face, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling a little too widely. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Jake had an easy grin. It hadn’t let up all throughout lunch, mentions of their hometowns and undergrad degrees sprinkled into the conversation. Knowing someone would ease the newness of the job, Amy reasoned, and she went on from there. They’d been close ever since.
“Jacob Peralta, my old friend from childhood, is that you?” Gina exclaims, waving to her friend over the cheers and clamor of the bachelor parties at the beer..
“Hi.” Jake waves back feebly, the one-word sentence clipped a little too short. “Do you mind if I join you?” He wishes he had a drink to hold. Maybe he’d look more official or something.
“It’s good to see you!” Amy pipes up, also beckoning him over. Her eyes are bright and crinkled at the edges, Jake can’t help but notice.
“Hey, Amy! Hey, Gina,” Jake greets, more comfortable at the sound of Amy’s voice. His eyes gloss over the gold ‘99’ pin fastened to the peter pan collar of Gina’s dress. She hasn’t taken it off since she made detective two months ago, he knows, remembering how he brought flowers to the ceremony. “It’s good to see you both.”
Gina’s phone rings, the ringer set higher than any millennial would dare, and she picks up in mere seconds. She mutters something about the squad and tells her friends to continue without her. As she holds her cell between her head and shoulder, she blurts, “No way, you’ve gotta be kidding me! The Iannucci and the Murphy crime families both picked tonight to do those drug trades?”
Across the bar, Rosa rolls her eyes, also on the phone. Mission accomplished, it seems. “Dial it down, nerd.”
“Okay, it’s just the Iannuccis and Kyle Murphy?” Gina shouts. “I’m on my way, sarge, and I can bring Detective Boyle too.” She shoves the phone into her pocket, reaching into the other for her wallet.
Pulling out a long chain attached to her badge and stringing it around her neck before sliding a tip onto the table, Gina gets up and walks over to the bachelor party. Boyle is eagerly talking about wine with one of the bridesmaids at the party. “C’mon, Charles, America needs us. Have a good night, lovebirds!”
Amy bites her tongue, cutting in. “We’re not-”
Gina’s gone, having slipped out hand in hand with Rosa, Charles third-wheeling awkwardly behind. The click of high heels on the wooden floorboards is hardly audible, but it’s insistent as Rosa hails a taxi over the shrieks of a bachelorette party that just walked in, the maid of honor suggesting they do jello shots.
The bartender, a very stressed-looking man with a towel haphazardly swung over his shoulder, tries to explain that they don’t have jello in the bar until the bridesmaids storm out. Their pink polyester sashes glint under the lights, and Jake holds back a laugh. “Talk about drama queens. And I thought Gina was bad.”
“Yeah, let’s hope my bachelorette party isn’t anything like that,” Amy replies, glancing down at the two shots Rosa forgot to take with her. It’s puzzling; Rosa regularly takes drinks that don’t even belong to her, she doesn’t just leave ones she already paid for sitting around to share. “You want the other one?”
“Thanks,” Jake says, softly clinking the edge of his glass against Amy’s. “This’ll be the second for me.”
“It’s my third,” she shrugs, smiling before the liquor touches her lips. “I have a pretty low tolerance, so I might need to share a cab home with you.”
“Which way are you headed?”
She gulps down the tequila, then answers. Her eyes look slightly glassier. “A few streets north, up to my apartment building, the Laurel. I’m on Kent Avenue.”
“You’re kidding,” Jake replies, downing the drink. “Me, too! I live at the Pinewood across the street.” He tries not to think about his place, about the Die Hard posters lining the walls and piles of crayon drawings he can’t bear to throw out. People like Amy Santiago don’t keep posters and kids’ doodles laying around for no good reason. People like Amy probably have Instagram-ready study spaces and kitchens straight out of Good Housekeeping.
Amy eyes the shot glass carefully, trying to make sure she drinks every last drop. She needs the courage, gulping it all down before she takes a shaky breath. “Maybe, if you wanted … you could come over to mine instead of going straight home?”
She asked me if you were unattached. I said yes. You’re welcome. At this moment, Rosa Diaz really, truly is Jake’s favorite person on the planet. His voice almost cracks as he responds.
“Yeah, I - I’d really like that. D’you wanna go right now?”
“Uh, if you’d like, that sounds good.” Amy’s hand swings toward his as she gets up, then back, and she watches his eyes, kind through all this. She’s going home earlier than she ever intended, following his steps out to the parking lot. Never will she notice, but the bartender casts a knowing glance to the door as Jake and Amy slip out in unison, laughing at something they won’t forget.
“Amy, this is unsafe, you’re a nurse-”
“Again, very sorry I only have one mostly-singed oven mitt, I’ll make this up to you later...” she coaxes to him, eyes transfixed on the tray of cookies he’s taking out of the oven.
There’s powdered sugar dusting Jake’s cheeks and eyelids and just the faintest smudge of vanilla extract on the back of his ungloved hand, gripping the edge of one of Amy’s towels around the side of the tray. She’s just starting to think she wants to ask him out when he offers her a spoon for the leftover cookie dough.
Thoughts of safe and sorry aside, Amy takes him up on the offer. A few chocolate chips are scattered over the granite counter, most of them mixed into the batter. Jake laughs a little as Amy grabs the bag and tosses a few in his mouth jokingly, without rhyme or reason. She wants to be the one who makes him laugh like that.
“I-” Amy begins, all her confidence waning away to nothing, all that liquor replaced in her bloodstream. “It’s good that you’re here. Thanks for coming.”
“Yeah, um, same to you.” Jake pauses for a moment, eyes dart to the watch around his wrist, and Amy tries as best she can to ignore the subtle frown on his face. “I mean, not really-”
Something sinks.
“-what I mean is just that it’s your apartment, so, you know, it’s not especially good that you’re here at your own place, but it’s great to … be here. With you.” He tries not to clench his jaw as his sentence trails off, glancing at Amy and pretending she isn’t playing with a hair tie in an effort to distract herself. Great, he’s even less interesting than a twenty-five-cent piece of elastic.
“Thank you,” Amy says for what seems like the tenth time tonight. It’s earnest nonetheless, the way she laughs. “You want to try the cookies now? I’m pretty sure they’ve cooled down by now.”
She smiles adoringly as he pads over the floor mat and to the clearly marked drawer for a spatula (“what else are you supposed to use a label maker for, huh, Peralta?”), and stops speechless for a second when he offers her the first cookie, baked a golden brown.
“You sure?” Amy asks, hesitant. She hates how meek she sounds.
Jake holds back a grin, brushing crumbs away on his blue jeans. “Trust me, I’m sure. It’s your apartment, you invited me over, and it’s the least I can do for a woman who invests in Die Hard bandaids, right?”
He remembered, she thinks, nodding eagerly at once. And there’s just something about his demeanor as the clock strikes eight, the way he fiddles with his hands before extending his offer, that makes her like him a little bit more. Jake passes her the cookie, and Amy reaches out to the flour stain on his cheek, rubbing it away with a swipe of her thumb.
“Thanks,” Jake replies, quiet. He might’ve opened his mouth and asked Amy to dinner right then and there, but the doorbell rings. In that moment, it dashes away any semblance of courage he has. They both look to the entrance of the apartment.
“Hey, Ames, can I use your shower?” A woman’s voice calls from outside. “Mine ran out of hot water again.”
“Yeah, no problem!” Amy replies, saccharine-sweet, then lets her friend inside. The lock sticks before the door swings open, and she simply tugs harder, as if to counteract the delay. Amy’s gaze moves to her guest. “Um, this is my neighbor, Kylie. Kylie, this is Jake. We work together at the elementary school.”
Jake gives a slight wave, not sure how to approach this situation.
Kylie’s wrapped in a pink towel and her hair is a nest of soap suds, so she does the only logical thing, of course 一 with a soft flick of her eyes, she whispers “he’s just like you said” to Amy and makes for the shower.
Amy raises her brow and mouths “shut up” right back, making sure her back is turned to Jake.
“Sorry,” she excuses, walking to the counter for another cookie. “You know how it is. The building is kind of old, and the plumbing is, too.”
Jake rubs the nape of his neck, fiddling with the collar of his shirt in the process. “Oh. Yeah. Of course.”
It’s a good night, the stars almost visible against the sky’s canvas. They end up sitting on the couch, perched on the cushions and peeking out the windows. The conversation never seems to end, Jake at Amy’s side as he tells her all the gossip at school. There’s something strangely intimate about late-night talks. She can’t put her finger on it.
“Wait, so Nikolaj Boyle’s dad, Charles, almost got married to Vivian Ludley, that food critic on Chopped?”
Jake nods. “Mm-hm. Boyle was, like, her biggest fan. Sent her letters and everything. But they eventually broke up because she wanted to move to Ottawa, and he didn’t want to go.”
“Because of Nikolaj?” Amy gasps, clutching a couch cushion. She claims it’s because she’s cold, but she surprises easily as well.
He shakes his head. “Actually, he hadn’t been adopted yet. This was before he met Genevieve.”
“And she is…?”
“Refer to the diagram, remember? Section A.” Jake laughs, tapping at the notebook he’d gotten from Amy’s freakishly organized kitchen cabinet. She might be the only person out there without a junk drawer somewhere in their home. “Genevieve used to be the art teacher at Brooklyn P.S. Ninety-Nine, but she left to open her own gallery. And, even though she’s adopted Nikolaj with Charles, she actually refuses to get married because she had a really messy divorce.”
“So Charles isn’t married, but he’s just living with the mother of his child?”
Jake nods.
“Has he ever been?”
“He was married to this woman, Eleanor, before, but I could spend all night trashing her. She was so bad for him. She even threw his extra-extra-extra virgin olive oil down the drain,” Jake gives Amy a knowing look, his tone dropping to a melodramatic timbre near the end.
Amy smirks, playing along. “And we all know how important that third ‘extra’ is.”
“Hey, I just remembered. You wanna hear about everything that went wrong the one week when Charles was a substitute teacher for Nikolaj’s class?”
“Yeah, do you even have to ask?” Amy hands him another cookie. She hopes this feeling never goes away. Jake’s got that tired grin and rumpled hair, the kinds that only come out past midnight, and he’s just beginning his story.
He cheers a little, clinking the rim of his coffee cup with Amy’s. “Yes! Finally, someone who hasn’t heard about this. Okay, first of all, roll-call took twenty minutes because he got into a fight with Nikolaj’s classmates about how to pronounce his name…”
“But they’re, like, eight years old!”
He smirks. “And don’t even get me started on his wolf urine tactic to assert dominance.”
Amy buries her head in her hands, gnashing her teeth as she cringes. “Oh, I hate this story, but I also need to hear it immediately.”
Since Jake lives in the apartment building across the street, he stays up talking with Amy. It’s almost difficult to run out of things to say. She’s like a breath of fresh air, the way she carries on about her life. Amy opens up about her brothers, about wanting to become a nurse practitioner, about rent control and her fear of grasshoppers and the hundred-dollar bill she once found on the side of the street. Jake can’t get enough. He likes her in that undeniable way that makes people think about someone else’s mannerisms before their eyes flicker shut at night.
“Hey, I might be reading into things-” Jake says, crossing his legs as he leans forward a few degrees. He’s like a deer in the headlights, stuck.
Jake smooths out the hem of his flannel shirt, trying to look busy before he continues. He thinks about Kylie and how she’d conveniently listed off so many Amy Santiago attributes (“hey, Ames, your keys! Speaking of cars, did you ever tell Jake about the time you witnessed a hit-and-run and saved a woman’s life?")
“Yeah?” Amy responds, smudged mascara on her eyelids. She couldn’t look better. He wants to get to know her like this, wants to know what she’s like when her guard’s down.
“Would you maybe want to, I don’t know, get coffee sometime? Like, a date?” The second sentence comes out quietly, and Jake’s nervous haze only cuts short when Amy smiles back.
“I’d love to. Definitely.” She puts her hand on his shoulder, and he can smell a little vanilla as she gets closer. “I can finally make fun of your habitual nine sugars and six creams. I never wanted to point it out at the staff meetings.”
“You noticed?”
Amy scoffs. “I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. You know, playing it cool.”
“This, from the woman who said ‘I ooze swagger’ to Principal Holt? Not likely.” Jake smirks back.
Before he goes home, he kisses her goodnight. Here, in the threshold of the door, standing between the perpetual dark of the hallway and the blinding glow of Amy’s living room chandelier, they’re quiet. Jake’s hands are cupping her cheeks and she chuckles a little, ticklish, as he lets go. This is hard to surpass, Jake thinks, still looking at Amy. Her eyes are bleary but kind.
“Did I ever tell you thanks for using up one of my Die Hard band-aids? Nobody else wants any.”
“Maybe I should just get injured a lot more often.” He smirks, wishing her goodnight, and doesn’t know how to feel on the walk home.
The next day, at coffee, Amy informs Jake that they technically shared a good morning kiss, which makes him roll his eyes. And this is how it ought to be, Jake realizes, as he teases her about any number of things. She wears rosy, owl-eyed glasses to the café. She accidentally butters her sleeve as she eats her scone. She tips ten percent, down to the penny. This is life, and becoming her friend was just the beginning of it.
At work on Tuesday, six different children ask to go see the nurse. Nikolaj Boyle is strangely persuasive, and Charles even goes to the trouble of exchanging a high-five with Terry Jeffords, Cagney and Lacey’s father, when it comes time to pick the kids up.
Jake raises an eyebrow. “Is, like, your entire precinct dedicated to getting me and Amy together?”
Charles grins. “I don’t know, I guess it depends. Did it work?”