Chapter Text
Amy Santiago gets over Teddy Wells like this.
(It’s easier than she thought.)
Dark hair, darker eyes, and wearing a pine-green sweater decorated by a horizontal trail of trees, she’s laughing at a throwaway joke that Gina just said before catching a man’s eye. He has a kind smile, she notices. Without pause, she returns his sentiment, gaze connecting to his with invisible thread.
The lights in the bar move a few degrees back and forth as the doors swing open. There’s a faint creak in the air as it happens. Amy bites her lip and glances to the barstool where he, her future paramour, sits. She takes a slow breath, turning back to her friend. “D’you think he’s cute?”
Gina scoffs, reaching for the leather jacket slung over the back of her seat. “Wouldn’t leave you alone with him if he weren’t.” She’s nothing if not observant, whispering a ‘see ya’, ever casual, in Amy’s ear.
“Emergency call in fifteen minutes?” Amy responds, words sharp. There’s a nervous crease between her eyebrows. She turns to her watch for a moment, then glimpses the thread fraying on the right sleeve of her turtleneck. Of all the evenings to come loose, it’d picked tonight.
“You know it.” Gina’s speech is far smoother, and her line of vision flies over her shoulder to the guy at the bar. She’s the kind of woman who never leaves a room without looking back. You ever know when you’ve forgotten a napkin covered in ten ink-stained digits and a blurry but classic ‘call me.’
The strap of Gina’s purse, a rusty Eiffel tower charm clipped on, jingles as she walks out. The keyring is already wrapped inside her fist. Amy drums her fingers on her lap, watching her friend exit with a whoosh of the door. Now or never. With crooked steps, she leaves the beloved corner booth only large enough for two and approaches the barstool.
“Uh, hi.” Amy gives a small wave.
“Hi, there. Can I buy you a drink?” the man asks, turning to her with a glass in hand. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Course. I’ll have a beer.” Amy grins. It’s been a while since she’s picked up a guy at a bar, and the unfamiliarity is welcome. This might just be the palate cleanser she’s been needing ever since she and Teddy broke up.
Replacement-Teddy (apparently three-drink-Amy’s fond of nicknames) looks a year or two younger than her. He glances down to Amy’s Christmas sweater for a brief second, and then his eyes return to meet hers. His expressions are so subtle, they’re hardly there.
Amy notices a faded dimple on the stranger’s cheek while she’s trying to stop staring at him. One voice in her head says it’s rude, and another says she should fixate on that chiseled jaw until the image cements itself in her mind.
“So what do you do?” the guy casually says, breaking the silence with one or two blows of his words. He traces his finger along the jagged edge of the bottlecap on his beer. Amy smiles, watching the way he leans into her frame.
“Uh, I’m a cop.” She manages to couple the clipped words with a half-confident air (Flirting for Dummies, copyright 2008, wasn’t just restricted to kissing lessons. Give her some credit.)
“Got a license to kill?”
“Not yet,” Amy teases, cool. Her lipstick’s smeared, but she hasn’t a clue.
Some star aligns above them just then. The evening courses along, and the shadow of a good time makes its presence known at the barstools.
Guy-at-the-bar’s name is Glenn, and he’s a pediatrician who regales her with stories of his twenty-month stint in the Peace Corps. He knows how to transform the flimsy napkins at Shaw’s into origami boats, and he can anagram with the best of them. During a drawn-out conversation about books and movies, she learns he even likes Flowers For Algernon.
Seriously, does her guardian angel live down the street from the precinct or something?
Glenn mentions his childhood with nonchalance, like it’s an old science fair project forgotten in the basement. His eyes light up when Amy mentions Typing Camp. He tells jokes like he can’t wait to hear the punch line, holding back youthful laughs as he speaks. In fact, Amy’s three quarters of the way through her beer before she gives her watch another quick glance.
He’s easy on the eyes. And Amy’s just a drunk girl with inhibitions lowered like guardrails on a risky night, headlights cut and the road wide and open.
This might be the beginning of something new, it occurs to her.
Meeting Glenn is like diving into a cold pool on a sweltering day. No strings attached, and certainly none of that ‘romantic-stylez’ mess and ‘maybe, yes, a little’ heartbreak that keeps replaying in her mind. She’s leaving it behind. Amy tips her head back, downing the beer, and she forgets a little more about handsome detectives with badges slung around their necks.
She calls out for another drink, one hand braced along the wood to balance out her turbulence. No rules in breakable heaven, Amy repeats to herself. The realization breaks through the perfumed fog clouding her memories, and it feels like liquid sun.
She smirks, the obvious cheer making her head spin, and gives Glenn her phone number.
Glenn Mahoney doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve this girl.
Amy’s exciting and attractive and good at crosswords; she knows enough Percy Jackson trivia to give a TED Talk about the significance of blue desserts; she says she wants to be the youngest captain in NYPD history, and there’s not a doubt in his mind that she’ll make it.
Amy’s the dream.
And she’s in love with someone else.
It hurts to tear himself away from this mirage of the perfect woman. She could even be the one, but he knows better. Glenn takes his rose-colored glasses off, blinks once or twice, and comes back to reality.
“And then I pointed to Jake 一 you see, he’s got this bad habit of not cleaning out his desk, which is why the missing files were in there 一 hey! I never told you about Algernon, did I? He’s this mouse that lives in Jake’s desk, which was annoying at first since Jake and I sit right across from each other…”
Glenn nods.
“But, anyways, Jake named him after Flowers for Algernon, which I’d recommended to him a few years ago-”
Glenn takes another sip of his drink. “You know, that’s actually a really good book-” he tries to interject.
“I know, Jake really liked it, too! Well, he watched the movie, but I really don’t think we as a society should shame people who prefer the movie to the book because it still expands the reach of the story…”
He supposes Amy’s dose of denial is simply too strong to wear off anytime soon. “Yeah, I agree.” Glenn gives a small laugh.
Under the table, he shoots his sister a quick and coded text 一 a police siren emoji for an emergency bail-me-out phone call (the irony isn’t lost on him) 一 and he looks to his watch for the fifth or sixth time tonight.
Seriously, Glenn doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve meeting Amy. He’s not ‘the one’, he’s just ‘the one who makes you realize who you ought to be with.’
(And that role, he thinks with a roll of his eyes, is even better.)
Amy’s on cloud nine.
She grins with the last of her energy, and tosses back a shot with a flick of her wrist. Glenn likes sudoku puzzles and dark chocolate just like she does. Better yet, he likes her. He’s dreamy and kind and well-read, all adjectives at the top of her list.
Glenn could be everything.
Glenn could take her far, far away from the overrated melodrama of liking someone who’s (A) convinced that Die Hard is the best cop movie ever made and (B) dating Sophia, with her law degree and winged eyeliner and lyrical laugh.
(Amy’s not bitter. Far from it.)
No use moping over lost chances, Amy tells herself.
(Okay, admittedly, Jake’s stories are much funnier than Glenn’s.)
Somewhere in her muddled, late-night haze, she thinks about the way Jake always ribs her about typing camp in that lovable, I-can’t-believe-you kind of way, instead of just nodding along. But she can’t go back, or force what isn’t hers to begin with.
It’s her own fault.
Stuck on a fork in the road, caught between what she could have and what she truly wants, Amy doesn’t even notice when Glenn excuses himself for an emergency phone call. She only has the time to nod along to his pleas. A few seconds later, Glenn’s mumbling something about flat tires and sisters, steps clicking upon the floorboards on his way out of Shaw’s. His coat’s tucked securely under his arm. The bell above the door gives a ring, and it’s only then that Amy realizes she’s been left alone at the bar.
Left alone at the bar again.
She looks to three of Glenn’s origami napkin boats sailing along the edge of the counter, picking up the largest of them and fiddling with its impeccably-placed umbrella. It’s a leftover from a bachelor party and not really origami at all, but still. It’ll pass the time and keep the lulls at bay. The clock seems to tick slower. Something dawns on Amy as she twirls a toothpick between her fingers, profound and important, soft and yet sullen.
She’ll remember it the next morning.
Two feet away, tucked into the secret pocket of her purse, Amy’s phone lights up with message after message.
[jake, 10:57 PM]
hey i need you im coming over is that okay
[jake, 10:58 PM]
pls ignore the tear marks all over the aberdeen file ive had a rough night
[jake, 10:58 PM]
srry