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They’re sitting in his car together, paused at the end of his drive: Tim at the wheel, Lucy browsing dog-friendly restaurants and Kojo squeezed in the front between them, with his tongue out and a huge dummy grin on his face. He’s slowed down a bit this past year or so, but Tim could swear he’s perked up over the last few days, since Lucy came home. He wonders if the change is that noticeable in him too, and finds himself hoping that it is, hoping that the whole world can see it like a neon sign over his head: yeah, I got the girl back, actually. Yeah, she really loves me. Everyone in the whole world wishes he was me.
He leans over their dog to hook his chin into her shoulder. “Babe, just pick something.”
“Don’t rush the process. You’re the one who’ll be whining if we don’t get somewhere with a good view and a good menu.”
Tim lifts his head to look at her, his face mere inches from hers. “Nah, my view’s gonna be great no matter where we go.”
She side-eyes him, half-angled towards him in her seat with one foot tucked up underneath her.
“You’re such a cheeseball,” she scolds, but what with her smile and the way she quickly wraps her hand around his upper arm to hold him in place when he starts to lean back in mock-offense, it’s pretty unconvincing. “Oh, here’s a nice spot! Vegan nouvelle cuisine, with organic mini-cocktails and a karaoke bar.”
This time, he really does pull away, staring in genuine horror, and she breaks down into the coarse snort-laugh she does when she really gets one over him. “No, no, I’m kidding, obviously I’m kidding. Like, c’mon Tim, ‘organic mini-cocktails’?”
“This is LA. Literally anything is possible.” He scratches Kojo’s head because at least Kojo doesn’t think baiting him is funny.
“True,” she laughs, then sobers, her eyes fading into the far-away look that means she’s scheming. “Hey, maybe that’s a niche. Something for the retirement plan.”
Retirement? Hell no, they’re just getting started.
“Think dinner, Lucy,” he says, nudging her. “Kojo’s getting hungry. Look at that face.” He cups the dog’s jaw in his hand, easily steering his bulky head in her direction — much like Tim, Kojo needs very little persuasion to look at Lucy. “You’re gonna look into these big eyes and tell him he’s eating vegan?”
“Oh, my baby.” She abandons her phone to lean down and press her forehead briefly against Kojo’s. “Don’t worry, little carnivore, mama’s gonna find you a nice place that does plenty of meat.”
“Mama?” Tim repeats, seriously amused.
“Don’t tell me you don’t refer to yourself as Kojo’s daddy.”
“I have literally never referred to myself as ‘daddy’ in my life.”
“Well, that’s gonna change,” says Lucy casually, and it could have been provocative or teasing, but it’s not. It’s just a statement of fact, of the future. Tim mentally updates the neon sign: got the girl back, she loves me, she wants my babies.
“Ooh, okay, okay.” Lucy straightens in her seat, hyper-focused on her screen. “How about this tapas place on Sunset? Look how gorgeous those treehouse patios are.”
She holds up her phone to show him a photo of a restaurant, which does actually look pretty nice and also not like the type of place that’s going to try and serve him a flavoured bubble as dessert. He still hasn’t forgotten the double-date fiasco.
“You got it,” he says, and she leans over and kisses him again, like she did as they left the house — like it’s an essential, unskippable ritual. That neon sign can probably be seen from outer space.
* * *
Tapas are a good idea, it turns out, because the coming and going of the small plates stretches the meal out, letting them linger, and Tim feels a whole lot like lingering. It’s a nice spot, for one thing: the outdoor seating is more or less in a garden, the tables dotted between tall patches of bamboo and a gigantic sycamore with canvas canopies hanging from the boughs. And for another, the company is second to none: Kojo’s got his head in his lap, waiting trustingly for his next scrap from the table, and Lucy’s pulled her chair right around so that they’re next to each other instead of across. Whenever they finish a course, she wipes her fingers on her napkin and slips her hand through the crook of his elbow again, like it belongs there. He kinda likes to think it does.
“So you wanna tell me again what a great job I did today?” she asks, dropping into that girlish voice she uses when she wants something from him and knows she’s going to get it. If it were anyone else, Tim would be nauseated, but of course, it’s her, and there’s a fire pit behind them and strings of those bare bulbs that make everything look golden hanging from the canopy above, so she’s just drenched in this soft, warm light that makes her look like a movie star. It goes without saying that he’s utterly, completely charmed.
“Just in general, or any specific detail you wanna hear about?” Tim lets his hand drop under the table to rest on her knee, because he needs at least three points of contact with her at all times, and her grip on his arm and the press of her shoulder against his only count as two.
“Any and all forms of positive commentary are accepted as legal tender at the Bank of L-I-G-F Lucy Chen.” She delivers this with a coy tilt of her head, looking up at him from beneath lowered lashes, and he really does have to hand it to her, she sure knows how to wrap a guy around her little finger — not that the experience is exactly unpleasant.
“Okay,” he says, and pauses, trying to think of what he can say to her that will really land. Partly because when she looks at him like that, he wants to give her the whole world, and partly because, well, he’s just so conscious that she’s taken a lot of hits this past year, and that he’s been at the bottom of a good part of them. He has undo all that. He’s got to take every damn chance he gets to build her up instead of tearing her down, and for that, maybe he has to go a good bit further back than today. “You wanna know the first time I realised you were going to be a truly great cop?”
“Ooh!” Her eyes brighten, and she does what he’s mentally labelled her “cute boot” pose, that irresistible chin-up, shoulders-back, hands-folded-in-lap thing that got her out of trouble more times than she knew back in her rookie year. “Okay, you’re going back in time. That’s cool too, I like it.”
“Yeah, but it’s related to today, trust me.”
“All right.” Her voice takes on a heavier tone, something more serious and more womanly, like she senses he’s about to step out into deeper waters, but she’s still smiling. “Colour me intrigued.”
“Look, you had potential from the start, okay? Day one, everyone saw that. You made damn sure they did, making your first collar before you even saw the inside of the building.”
“Yeah, yeah. The hotshot,” she murmurs, with a faintly self-conscious laugh.
“You bet.” Tim tips his drink towards her in a brief toast. “But I’d seen dozens of cops come in with bags of potential, and I could count on one hand the number of them who lived up to even a fraction of it. You know why?”
“Why?” She’s getting into the story now — leaning forward with her elbow propped on the table, velvet lips faintly parted.
“Every cop’s got a superpower,” he says and she nods along with him. She’s heard this part before. “But they’ve all got a fatal flaw too. And the superpower will do jack for them in the long run if they can’t master that flaw. Take me, for example. I’m not afraid to be decisive, accept responsibility — that’s my superpower. But I’m the world’s worst communicator.” Lucy makes a noise of protest, and he holds up a hand, patting the air in a universal “hold your horses” gesture. “Well, I used to be. I’m working on it now. But as a decision-maker who didn’t communicate well, I was only ever one bad day away from being a tyrant.” She lets out another of those little noises, like his self-criticism is hurting her, so he moves on hastily. “If I had kept going the way I was, I would have kept on crashing and burning. Superpower wasted, right?”
“Tim —” she begins, her eyes large and worried and he has to hold up his hand again.
“Just stay with me, okay? I’m going somewhere with this.”
“Okay, okay.” She settles back in her chair, a little wary now. “This is just a bit heavier than I had in mind for a romantic third first date.”
“It’ll be worth it,” he promises, ignoring the obvious “third first” baiting. They would be circling back to that. “Because like I said, you had more potential than any cop I’d ever seen come through the door at Mid-Wilshire. You didn’t just have one superpower, you were the complete package: brains, courage, empathy, integrity, resilience. And you still are, by the way.” He picks up her hand and kisses it.
Her cheeks dimple as she smiles. “Why do I feel like you’re buttering me up so that I won’t be mad when you mention my fatal flaw?”
“Because you know what that flaw is, what it’s always been.” Tim takes a deep breath and looks her dead in the eyes. Funnily enough, she’s calmer now that he’s come to the point. She meets his gaze without a hint of a flinch. “Self-doubt; risk aversion: all that talent bottled up inside because you were too afraid to share it with the world. It would have been a tragedy, if it had gotten the better of you. That was what I saw, those first few months of your rookie year. You had the potential to burn brighter than any cop I’d ever trained, but that would just have made it more bitter if you didn’t get there. And I wasn’t sure that you would. Not until —”
“Plain clothes day.” As always, she’s kept pace with him, and that’s just one of the many thousands of things he adores about her.
“Right. I’d thought a few times before, that you had something special in you, but that day, when I did everything I could to undermine you and get in your head, and you still put everything on the line and made the right call when it mattered? That was when I really started believing you were going to go all the way. That you were going to be the best cop I’d ever trained.” He swallows, caught up in the moment: Lucy-now briefly shares space with Lucy-then, with her long sleeves and impertinent eyes. “That night, when I rewrote your evaluation, I remember thinking, ‘shit, she really can do it. She can move past that flaw. If she can do that, she can do anything.’ I didn’t really admit to myself at that point, of course, but I think some part of me knew then that you were even going to outstrip me some day.”
“Tim.” Lucy-now’s voice breaks on his name and the present comes rushing back in. Her eyes are shiny, unshed tears catching the glow from the firepit and making it dance.
“Being part of your career is my greatest professional achievement, Lucy,” he tells her, and she covers her mouth with her hand. One of those tears brims up and spills over, tracing a bright line over the curve of her cheek. “And seeing you over the last few days, taking command of your team, taking every obstacle in your stride, even that complete asshole from the secret service, mastering an unbelievably complicated process like a presidential visit, and still having time to back me up and check in on me? You’re already more than I ever dreamed you could be, and you’re barely getting started. You want me to pick one thing you did well these past few days? Well, that’s impossible, because I’d have to pick everything.” He smiles faintly, struck by another memory, and recites the words with weighty significance. “Sergeant Chen impressed me with every decision she made today.”
Lucy inhales sharply, a second tear joining the first, and for a moment, he thinks he’s gone too far. Then she reaches out and skates her fingers along the edge of his jaw, angling his face towards her so that she can press her lips softly to his, not chasing or teasing, but simply meeting him there. And this is — wow, this is something new. Tim’s not sure he’s ever been kissed like this before actually, not even by her. She’s kissing him like he’s made of glass, like he’s fragile and precious, and it triggers one of those sudden surges of emotion that he gets these days, since starting therapy. It’s disorienting and wonderful and too much, almost like he might start crying, so it’s nearly a relief when she breaks the contact and leans her forehead against his.
“You are the best guy I’ve ever known,” she says in a low voice, and he doesn’t know how to answer that. He just leans back into her and brings a hand up to cover hers where she’s still holding his face. They stay like that for a moment, and then Kojo snuffles and butts Tim’s thigh with his head, protesting the lack of attention.
“Okay, okay, jealous boy,” he laughs, and maybe his voice is a bit shaky, but Lucy doesn’t call him on it. “We love you too,” he adds and lets go of her hand to scratch between his ears.
A waiter stops by to clear their plates and refill their glasses, probably taking advantage of what must be an obvious break in an intense conversation, and Tim sneaks in a couple of deep, grounding breaths. Is this “improved communication” business supposed to be so emotionally taxing? Lucy seems equally affected: she’s wiping away tear tracks with her napkin, folding it to a point to avoid smearing her eye make-up.
“So… that wasn’t too much?” he asks, and she laughs. Her eyes are still a little wet, but her smile is the one he’s been missing all this time.
“Be honest,” she says, her hand worming its way into the crook of his elbow again. “How long have you been working on that one?”
“Hey, that was spontaneous,” he protests. “Straight from the heart.” She gives him one of those unimpressed looks, with the cocked head and the raised eyebrow, and he caves instantly, because that’s his life now. “Okay, and maybe I spent a couple of sleepless nights when we were broken up, thinking about all the things I should have said to you when we were together.”
“A couple?” she repeats dubiously.
“Or a couple of hundred,” he says with a self-conscious laugh. An ache starts somewhere beneath his ribs at the memory, and he tries to push it away. He’s not alone anymore. He’s not going to be watching the clock count down towards his alarm in the small hours of the morning, regretting and regretting and regretting. “But who’s counting?”
“Tim,” she murmurs, and isn’t it funny how no one else can say his name like that, like it’s a full sentence. Like she’s sorry for how much he was hurting, even though it was entirely his own fault. Like she sees how he’s trying to brush it aside now and she’s not letting him, because his pain always means something to her, even when he deserves it. Maybe especially then.
“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to drag the past up, it’s just — it’s really important to me that you know the things I should have told you before. I don’t ever want you to have to feel insecure with me again.”
Her hand tightens on his bicep, and he’s starting to think he’s going to have a permanent imprint of her fingers there, but honestly, he wouldn’t mind. It would be a nice reminder, something to go with the neon sign.
“You know, sometimes I’m going to feel insecure for reasons that have nothing to do with you, right?” Her voice is gentle, but serious, and he practically swallows his tongue trying to correct himself.
“No, God, I know that, I would never — obviously, you have a life outside of me, and your feelings don’t all revolve around me, I’m not saying —”
“Tim.” She says his name on a laugh this time, which might just be the best sound in the world actually. “Chill. You don’t have to walk on eggshells with me. I’m not saying we brush the break-up under the rug and pretend it never happened, but I’m —” she takes a deep breath and closes her eyes for a second, then lets it out and opens them again with a smile so happy it might just fix him — “I’m in this. There will be things that trip me up, and sometimes it’ll be you, and sometimes, it’ll be something else. But whatever comes up, we’ll deal with it together, okay?”
Warmth ignites in that same spot under his ribs that had been aching a minute ago, and Tim can feel himself beaming at her. “Okay,” he whispers, and leans in to kiss her.
“Actually, wait.” She pulls back abruptly, her smile shifting into a grimace. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but um. While we’re communicating, can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” he says, keeping his voice steady, because they can do this now and he doesn’t have to be scared. What else has all that therapy been for?
“So, I know today had to be a lot for you.” Lucy takes another of those deep breaths and looks at him anxiously, like she’s about to walk into a minefield. “Grey stepping in and taking over like that, on your second day as watch commander — you handled it so, so well and I hope you know that I’m so proud of you. But I also hope you know you didn’t deserve that, right?”
Tim nods slowly, absorbing that. He hasn’t really had time to process the whole thing properly yet, but he knows that it stings, that he’s going to have to take that familiar sense of failure and sit with it, sort through it to sift out the jagged pieces before he cuts himself on them. Or worse, before Lucy does.
“I guess I know that on some surface level,” he says at last. “But whether that knowledge goes all the way down…” He trails off. He’d like to reassure her, tell her that it’s fine and so long as he has her, he’s going to shrug it off, no problem. But he knows himself better than that these days: the newfound self-awareness is a blessing and a curse all at once. “It might take me a while to figure that one out.”
“That’s okay,” she whispers. “We’ve got time. We’ll do it together.”
There’s another interruption as their next course is served, some salmon thing with whipped feta that he would never have agreed to try a year ago, but the all new, emotionally healthy Tim Bradford can do practically anything for Lucy Chen, including eating goat’s cheese. And, actually it’s good. He files it under his list of things she’s added to his life, along with Kojo and Top Chef and talking about his feelings.
“Um, so,” she says in a meaningful sort of way that suggests they’re not as done talking about today as he thought they were. “This may be kind of out of line, but uh, you’re already doing an amazing job at doing things differently and not giving your insecurities time to fester, so in the interests of doing my bit and getting it all out there — I — I might need you to reassure me that this setback you had today is not going to blow back on us.”
She can barely look him in the eye as she says it, and for a second, Tim is back there in the station carpark, looking at the best thing that’s ever happened to him and knowing he was about to blow it all up. It seems like the past won’t stay dead tonight for either of them, but he takes a deep breath and reminds himself that that’s okay. Just because it happened doesn’t mean it has to rule their lives forever. He moves slowly and deliberately so as not to startle her as he sets his fork down and pushes his plate away, giving himself the room to take Lucy’s hand in both of his.
“Do you remember what I promised you the morning I made you breakfast and you fell asleep?” he asks her quietly.
“Honestly, I’m still not sure how much of that morning was a dream,” she admits, her head dropping shyly and he chuckles.
“I promised you I would never hurt you like that again,” he says, squeezing her hand as though he might be able to transmit his earnestness through skin-on-skin contact, like body heat. “And I’ll do whatever it takes to keep that promise.”
“Yeah?” She lifts her eyes hopefully, and he’d do anything to keep that look on her face. Including talking about his feelings to a licensed professional.
“Yeah.” He releases her hand and sits back again, giving her a little space. “So I’ll try to book a therapy session sometime in the next few days. It’s been a while, and you’re right. This kind of thing is a trigger for me and I need to get ahead of it.”
Once again, his efforts to be emotionally mature seem to be back-firing, because Lucy’s bottom lip trembles. “Oh, Tim,” she says wetly, and this time, she fits whole paragraphs of meaning into that one syllable.
“Baby, you can’t keep crying on our third first date,” he says desperately. “You’re gonna give me a complex. Another one.”
She laughs and cries at the same time, which is the theme of the night so far. He really hopes dessert at this place is decent, because they could both do with a little lightness.
“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” she says, and swipes at her eyes with the napkin again, smearing her mascara a bit. Tim reaches out with his thumb to fix it, mostly for an excuse to touch her, because he really, really doesn’t care how her make-up looks. Lucy looks at him in a mixture of adoration and disbelief.
“I meant what I said earlier, you know,” she murmurs, and there’s her hand on his bicep again, right where it belongs. Tim pats it lightly, letting her know he appreciates the touch. “You really are the best guy I’ve ever known.”
Tim mentally makes one last addition to the neon sign: got the girl, she loves me, wants my babies, best guy she’s ever known. Yeah, everyone in the whole damn world wishes he was me.