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The problem, Tim thinks, is that people think he doesn’t.
Think, that is.
Angela thinks he tends to act before he thinks.
Genny thinks he doesn’t think about their childhood enough to process it.
Isabel thought he didn’t thoroughly think through how her addiction would affect their relationship.
And Lucy, well, Tim thinks Lucy thinks he doesn’t think about her.
They’re all wrong, but Lucy probably most of all.
And that’s the real problem, because he does think about Lucy. A lot.
Since the first day he met her she’s been a constant thought in his head. First, at the back of his mind. Different ways he could push her. Making sure to stay just on the right side of the line between tough and mean.
After she showed more times than he could count that she wasn’t going to wash out and that he didn’t intimidate her, his thinking of Lucy shifted. He didn’t want to push her out, he wanted to challenge her, push her to be the best she could be.
Then she was taken by Caleb and sometime in the aftermath, his thoughts went from professional to friendly. From the back of his mind to the front.
And then, after Rachel and Emmett, and spending time together outside the shop in the wake of Jackson and Guatemala, those friendly thoughts turned into something he doesn’t want to think about. Or at least, he didn’t.
It’s part of the reason, he thinks, he started dating Ashley. So he’d think about Lucy a little less.
Except it didn’t really work and Ashley broke up with him.
Ashley broke up with him and Lucy had kept him company in the hospital.
And now he’s got two weeks of paid leave while his back heals to do nothing but sit around and think.
At first, Tim sits on the couch, flips through football reruns and live games and thinks about how he feels sorry for himself. His back is sore, he’s bored out of his mind, he wishes he could take Kojo for his usual run so he’d stop pacing around the couch, and he’s alone.
Genny is finishing packing up her house in San Francisco, Angela told him not to call during work hours unless it was an emergency, Nyla told him if he bothered her while she was taking care of a newborn she’d block his number, and Ashley, obviously, is out of the picture.
Nolan did offer to stop by if he wanted but Tim will not be taking him up on that. He doesn’t think he can take the relentless optimism right now.
He thinks of Lucy instead. Lucy, if this was any other time, would probably be over at his house after shift, dropping off warm home cooked food and home baked desserts designed to promote healing that he would accept with a smile and then shove into the back of his pantry. (He tried those cookies she baked for Angela after she gave birth and had to spit them out in the trash when Lucy’s back was turned.)
She would probably be texting him during slow times in the shop and even though he would definitely tell her she should be paying attention to her surroundings, he’d be doing it with a smile. Which she would somehow know and he would deny.
All it does is make him feel more sorry for himself.
So instead he switches tactics and thinks about what he’d do differently.
If he could have a redo, he’d never suggest to Lucy that they should kiss. He would’ve mentally prepared himself to touch her more and informed her to be prepared to do the same.
Except it’s not far back enough, because even if they hadn’t kissed, he thinks they would’ve ended up in a similar place when they got back from Vegas. Standing outside her door, high on adrenaline, Lucy worrying about Rosalind and asking him to come inside.
And there’s no universe where he doesn’t cross through that door, no matter how bad of an idea it is.
So instead he goes back further. If he could have a redo he’d never let her ride with him. Wouldn’t agree to her being his gopher. He’d see her around the station and he would watch her excel professionally from a little further away. Hear about her life before roll call and pretend to be annoyed even though they would both know he looked for her too.
Except he knows that wouldn’t work either. Because not spending twelve hours a day with her in the shop means he would’ve sought her out more outside of work hours. Asked her to grab a drink with him, implied she could come on hikes with him and Kojo, mentioned he was renovating his dad’s house just so she would invite herself to help.
So he keeps going back further and further until the only solution would’ve been to bounce her from the FTO program on her first day for some reason or another. Before he had a chance to get to know her.
And then, he thinks, he wouldn’t have done that either, because as rocky as her first day was, she didn’t actually do anything that would’ve caused her to be bounced.
So he sits with it and he thinks about almost every interaction they’ve had that he can remember and he comes to the conclusion that he would’ve ended up here all along.
With feelings for Lucy Chen.
The real redo would be never asking out Ashley and trying to figure things out with Lucy instead. Never setting her up with Sanford. Going on that date just the two of them. Maybe taking her home after Nyla’s wedding.
But thinking those thoughts doesn’t get him anywhere either.
And when his two weeks are up and he’s allowed back at the station, he’s not surprised that his eyes automatically seek her out as he’s walking down the stairs. It grates his nerves when he realizes she’s talking to Sanford, but he swallows it down because he has no right to feel jealous. He didn’t even tell her Ashley broke up with him.
He’ll keep his distance and he’ll act a little cold and eventually he’ll get over it. He’s forty. He’s lived enough life to know that he can’t sit around and pine after a woman who’s dating someone else. He won’t make things even more uncomfortable between them.
So he’ll get over it and salvage their professional relationship and maybe they can even get back to being friends at some point.
And then he loses his radio and Lucy spends two days getting under his skin in more ways than one.
He thinks she’s doing it as payback. Maybe even a little bit out of resentment. Tim stole her duty belt when she had to pee to teach her the importance of securing a bathroom, Lucy keeps his radio to teach him a lesson about how everyone makes mistakes or something. Maybe she’s just trying to make the point that he should be nicer to rookies.
Regardless, it doesn’t even cross his mind until he’s standing in front of her that she’s doing it because she thinks he’s upset and withholding personal information from her.
And he is upset. But probably not for any reason she thinks and definitely not for any reason he’s going to tell her about.
So he tells her he’s fine and isn’t surprised when she doesn’t believe him.
Even though he’s annoyed, it’s hard not to think she’s cute when she’s obviously frustrated and then immediately tries not to think that.
And when she finds him out in the parking lot at the end of the day and gives him back his radio and tells him she should know better than to get into his personal business, all he thinks is that he can’t have her thinking that.
Even if they can’t be anything more than colleagues or friends. Even if she doesn’t feel about him the way he feels about her, there’s no one else he’d rather have in his personal business. And he thinks if she thinks the opposite, then he really did do something wrong, because no matter how many times he’s stated it, he thought they reached a point where it came off more teasing than serious.
And if she thinks they’re back to a place where it’s not teasing anymore, where he doesn’t want to be personal with her, then they’re worse than he thought. And that’s more upsetting than anything else really.
So instead of telling her he’s upset because of how he feels about her and the hundred reasons they probably shouldn’t pursue anything, least of all being that she’s not even single, he goes with the half truth.
Ashley broke up with him. Which is upsetting, but not for the normal reasons. It’s upsetting that he didn’t see it coming, upsetting that he should have done it first and a while ago, upsetting because it forced him to recognize that his feelings for Lucy are very much real and present and not going away anytime soon.
It doesn’t even pain him to admit that her thing with the radio took his mind off the break up in the first place. Even if it did nothing to stop him from thinking of her.
And then they’re just watching each other and Tim thinks there’s probably nothing left to say. Except he also doesn’t want to end the conversation, because minus the hospital, when he was still coming off the sedation, this has been the most they’ve talked since they stood outside her apartment months ago.
He misses her.
So he thinks he’ll ask her to get a drink, or maybe come walk Kojo with him. But he doesn’t get that far because Sanford is walking towards them and Lucy is inviting him to come to dinner with them.
And if life has taught him anything, it’s that going to dinner with Sanford and Lucy is a terrible idea, so he declines. And if he sneaks a look back in as they’re walking away, well, no one has to know but him.
So time will move on and he’ll go back to just being friends with Lucy, once all this has passed. He might even manage to get over her.
And if he can’t then he’ll wait. For her and Sanford to run their course. Or for her to realize how he feels and let him down gently.
Either way he’ll wait, he thinks, because she’s worth it.