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It was hard for Jackson West to admit it, but he could tell that something was off with his best friend and roommate, Lucy Chen. She was a bit distant even as she sat beside him in the shop. “Hey,” he said to break up a silence that made him uneasy, “I think we should go out tonight.”
“That’s a great idea,” she replied excitedly. “Let’s invite everyone.”
“Everyone? I was thinking you, me, and Nolan, and maybe Angela if she isn’t too busy planning her wedding.”
“We can ask other people to come, too.”
“If Nyla is free, she’s welcome to join us.”
“There are other people at our station.”
“None that we like going out with.”
“What about Tim?” She suggested as casually as she could despite how her pulse quickened over his name.
He scoffed. “He hardly ever goes out with us unless Angela drags him along, and we don’t actually LIKE going out with him. I thought you couldn’t stand him.”
“I never said that.”
“Yes, you have at least a dozen times just in the last month of our rookie year.”
“Do I really complain about him that much?”
He turned his head to look at her and read her face as she continued driving. “You’re joking, right? I mean, I get it. He was a rough T.O..”
“Not rough. He was challenging me the way I needed to be challenged to become the best cop I could be,” she defended Tim.
“Okay, even if that’s true, you couldn’t wait to be done with Tim, and now you want to hang out with him after shift. What changed?”
“Nothing. I just don’t think there’s anything wrong with inviting him to get a drink.”
Jackson pursed his lips and eyed her as he started to think back to when she began acting distant. By their second shift on patrol as P2’s, gone was Lucy’s bright smile of freedom and in its place was the beginning of a frown constantly tugging at her lips. He was a bit offended. “Oh my God! You miss riding with Tim!”
Her heart stopped. It had not been said aloud. She was unprepared to hear that accusation…even if there was a slight chance it might have been a little bit true. Lucy panicked. “I-I didn’t say that.”
“Am I really so bad to ride with? Angela didn’t have any complaints.”
“No, I love riding with you.”
“I must be pretty bad if you would rather spend your days with Tim,” he spoke the other man’s name with disgust.
“He’s not THAT bad.”
“Since when?”
That was a tough question; one she racked her brain trying to to answer for weeks. When had her perspective changed? When had things shifted? When did her heart start changing its rhythm when saying his name? When did glancing at him from across the bull pen become something that gave her pause? “We should stop for coffee,” she suggested to change the subject, and thankfully, Jackson did not press the topic. By the time Lucy parked their shop in front of their favorite coffee shop, she had stopped thinking about Tim. He was far from her mind for the rest of the day until she was seated at a high table at a bar with Jackson and John Nolan on either side of her. Her second beer began to cloud her brain, and then Tim flooded back to the forefront; beyond any rational thought was HIM. The way his eyes would lighten when the afternoon sun hit him just right. How his voice would soften when he would ask if she was okay. The tiny grin he would wear when she said something funny but tried not to laugh. How he would drone on and on about sports. The casual direct approach he always took when giving advice.
“Why are you smiling? Is my fight with Bailey that amusing to you?” John asked when he noticed how Lucy seemed to be happy about his suffering that he had spent far too long complaining about.
“I, w-what? No, I’m sorry you two are fighting,” Lucy said; she felt guilty that her mind wandered to Tim and completely blocked out the conversation her friends were having.
“You know what I think we all need? Shots!” Jackson suggested and went over to the bar to order some.
Shots made it worse.
When one shot of tequila coursed through her veins, she thought about the rhythm Tim always drummed on the steering wheel during particularly slow shifts.
Shot number two made her ears echo with the timbre of his voice when he said “Lucy”.
The third shot made her start to sway on her feet as she thought about his genuine laugh that caused the corners of his eyes to crinkle.
When Jackson offered her a fourth shot, she shook her head and unevenly stepped away from their table and out of the bar to get fresh air, but the alcohol in her veins overpowered the crisp evening wind that swept at a few of her hairs. She saw a man walking towards her and froze; she was certain it was Tim, who must have decided to accept her invitation to go out after all despite rejecting the offer at the station earlier in the day. As the silhouette approached, her lips parted, and then he came into view. Much to her disappointment, she only thought she saw Tim, but it was actually a stranger. Lucy wished he had joined her at the bar; as much as she enjoyed evenings with Jackson and John, she wanted to hang out with Tim, and the drunker she got, the more she wanted to see him.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket, unlocked it, navigated to his contact, and then her thumb hovered over his number. A pattern was emerging; the second she started feeling a buzz, she thought about Tim. It happened so often it was undeniable. Wine nights with Jackson turned into dropping his name after her second glass. Drinks with her friends would include stories of her favorite calls with him. She had consumed more than a usual night, so talking ABOUT him was not enough; she had to talk TO him. With that thought in mind, she dialed him.
It rang.
And rang.
Then, his gruff voice came through the phone, and even though it was his voicemail message, it made her breathing hitch.
When the beep blared, she took a deep breath. “Hey, Tim” she said with a smile as she always did when she said his name. “I miss you,” she sighed. “I miss riding with you. Not because I can’t do this job by myself, because I can…I guess I miss seeing you everyday…You barely say ‘hi’ to me at the station anymore when we used to spend all day talking. You replaced me so easily with that new rookie, but I didn’t, and oh, by the way, she didn’t stick around, and I did, so I should be your favorite-” The beep cut her off, and she groaned that her call was being interrupted, so she hang up and redialed.
“Okay,” she started with. “I didn’t mean to end the call like that…what was I saying? Oh, right, I was telling you that I miss you. It doesn’t make sense, because you’re impossible, and you can piss me off sometimes, but…I don’t know. I can’t help it, especially after tequila. Remember when I had tequila with you the day we thought the world was ending? I remember thinking that I would be okay if the whole planet exploded and the last thing I did was have a drink with you. That’s what pops into my head every time I have tequila, and it makes me happy. Does that make me sound pathetic? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I have feelings for you…” her eyes flew open, her blood ran cold, and every drop of alcohol she had imbibed suddenly evaporated. “Crap! F-forget I said anything. Delete this and let’s never talk about it, okay?” That beep came through the phone again, and the call was disconnected. “Oh, crap,” Lucy muttered to herself. She had no idea what to do. For a brief moment, she considered running away and changing her name, because she might have told her friend she has feelings for him in a round about way, but it felt true. When she said those words to Tim as a prank on the last day of her rookie year, Lucy laughed, because it was meant to be funny, but perhaps the idea settled into her brain where it percolated, especially when drinks lowered her inhibitions, and then she really admitted it for REAL in a voicemail. Without any good options, her legs shook as she walked back into the bar where all she could do was pretend that she had not set her life ablaze.
Lucy hardly slept as she pondered the range of Tim’s reactions to her voicemails from trying to let her down easily as he had in the shop on her last day as his rookie to sweeping her into his arms and kissing her, which made her blush wildly. What she had not expected was for him to be broody and quiet when she came upon him at the station. “Good morning,” she greeted him awkwardly.
“Hey,” he clipped.
Tim’s clear discomfort compelled her to suggest, “Maybe we should talk.”
“Sure, actually, can you help me out?”
“Uh, yeah.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Angela waterlogged this thing last night.”
“She what?” Lucy took the device from his hand, brushing her thumb over his palm as she did, which made her nerves tingle.
“We were at her place trying to make decisions for her wedding, and she got pissed at me and dropped my phone in my water. Before you ask, it wasn’t my fault, okay? I made a joke about how pregnant brides are unreasonable, and between the stress of making all these plans and her raging hormones, which you can’t tell her I said that, she’s not thinking straight, so I said one little joke, and she retaliated by ruining my phone. It looked like you were calling me last night. I was gonna pick up, but Angela had other plans.”
Her lungs stuttered; he missed her calls and had not listened to her voicemails, because his phone had been sabotaged. There was a chance she did not have to run away to some foreign land and go by another name out of embarrassment after all.
“Do you know if there’s a way to salvage my phone?” He wondered.
“I’ll take care of it. Find me at the end of shift, and hopefully, it should be working like new.”
“Thanks,” he offered her a smile. “So, what did you want to talk to me about last night?”
“N-nothing. Nothing at all,” she responded with a relieved grin. Lucy hurried into the break room to pour rice into a bag then placed Tim’s phone in it. She put it in her locker when she changed, and she stared at it as she thought about what to do next: having him hear the voicemail would not exactly be the best way to share her little alcohol-fueled revelation, but she could tell him with sober words if she had any hope of getting that kiss she fantasized about. Lucy knew she had until the end of shift for his phone to be operational again, so she had that long to decide what to do. Part of her wished she could have some tequila; a few drops would sway her into telling him, because alcohol made her want him when sober logic did its best to bury those desires DEEP. If Jackson noticed her distractedness throughout the day, he was gracious enough not to point it out, but her mind did wander away from work between calls, because had no idea what to do and no one to turn to about it, since the only person whose advice she could imagine asking for was Tim’s.
Left to her own devices for the day, she weighed her options as reasonably as possible, and by the time she returned to the women’s locker room at the end of the day and changed back into her blouse and jeans, she had made up her mind: she was going to tell him. Lucy took his phone out of the bag of rice, and it successfully turned on. Because she knew his passcode, she unlocked it before erasing the voicemail messages and expelling a long breath she had been holding in since making such a confession over the phone. She held his device to her chest as she exited the locker room where he was waiting for her with a crooked smile.
“Any luck?” Tim inquired.
“Yeah, it works again,” she replied and offered it to him.
“Thanks, Lucy.”
He said her name with a distinct softness that made her heart skip a beat. “You can pay me back with a drink.”
“I can’t tonight. More wedding planning.”
“Let’s hope she doesn’t drown your phone for the second night in a row.”
“I hope not.” He smirked. “Why’d you call me last night anyways?”
She had her chance. It was hers to take. “I…” Lucy studied his face. She wanted to tell him. She wanted to confess what had only been uttered as a prank and in a drunken voicemail. Taking the risk could mean either a great new beginning or the loss of a precious friendship. “I don’t even remember. I was kinda drunk,” Lucy lied.
“Oh,” he responded a little disappointed, because even if there was no purpose to the call, he wished he had picked up if only to hear her voice and those high giggles that would float out of her whenever she was under the influence as far as he knew from his limited experiences interfacing with a buzzed Lucy.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.
“See you tomorrow,” he replied, and he shuffled down the hallway towards the exit of the station.
As she watched him leave, she felt good about the decision she made; she could not risk losing Tim because of her pesky feelings for him. Since that voicemail did not find its way to him, she believed it was a sign that she was not meant to tell him. Lucy made it a rule to keep her phone in her pocket when she started drinking, because she did not want to profess anything via voicemail ever again. Even if it was a poor substitute for Tim, she settled for the taste of tequila that made her think about every little thing about him that she loved like it was a growing, never-ending list she enjoyed running through.
For a time, Lucy was sure all she would have was tequila, but one day, when she finally mustered up the courage to tell Tim how she felt (more gracefully than via a drunken voicemail), she did not have to confine what she loved about him to her mind; she could tell Tim and kiss the parts of him she wanted to show appreciation for like his jawline that she enjoyed running her mouth along to remap it or his chest that when she dropped her head to it became her home and deserved a few reverent pecks. She did not have to want him; she could have him in more ways she could have dreamed of. The best part, however, was that any alcohol, especially tequila, tasted better with him when she could bring her lips to his after taking a sip and experience the mixture of him and her drink on his tongue, which brought on an even stronger, fiercer want than she had ever experienced before; thankfully, he met that desire quite enthusiastically- no drunk dialing necessary.