Bonus Scene: Second Alarm - Copper Ridge Book 2

Bonus Chapter - Gemma

      Hanna Larsen walks into our apartment on a Saturday in August with a canvas grocery bag in one hand and her key in the other, because her new key is on her keyring now and she's using it. I'm in the shower, because I've been on a shift that ran long, and I didn't open the door for her.

     I hear the door open. I hear her say, "Ty?"

"In here."

"Okay. I’ve got groceries."

"Ten minutes." I call out.

"Take your time."

I take my time. The shower is hot, my knee hurts from kneeling on gravel on a call at two this morning, and I'm thirty-three and a half and I'm starting to take my time about some things in life, which is a new development. I’m starting to feel old. In the kitchen, I hear her unpacking groceries. The fridge opens and closes. A pot goes on the stove.

Ten minutes later I come out in sweats and a t-shirt, hair wet. Hanna is at the stove making what looks like pasta sauce. The kitchen smells like garlic and good olive oil. She's in cutoffs and a t-shirt of mine that she took at some point and has never given back, her hair up, feet bare, and she looks over her shoulder at me.

"Hi, sexy." I kiss the back of her head.

"Hi. How was the shift?"

"Long. Kitchen fire on the east side. Nobody hurt. I was on overhaul for three hours."

"Hm."

"What?"

"Nothing. I was going to make a joke."

"Make it."

"I was going to say I have a small fire that needs overhauling." She wiggles her butt as she stirs the pot on the stove.

"Hanna." Great restraint is in my voice.

"I know. I'm still working on the this-is-normal-now jokes. They come out badly. Give me time."

"You have all the time in the world."

"Stir this." She passes me the spoon.

I stir. She ducks under my arm, opens the fridge, pulls out a carton of tomatoes and a block of parmesan, and is apparently, on this particular Saturday, going to cook me dinner. I watch her set up the ingredients the way I've watched her do everything she does — brisk, no wasted motion, a small private look on her face I'm still, after all these months of seeing it, cataloguing.

"Hanna."

"Yeah?"

"Come here."

She comes over to me. I put my free hand on her waist. She leans against my arm. The sauce is simmering. There's nowhere else I’d rather be.

"You ate at Mom's?"

"Mom made me eat. I ate."

"Why are you cooking, then?"

"Because you got off shift hours ago, and by now you're hungry. Because I know you. No, stir."

I stir as ordered.

She kisses me on the jaw and goes back to her parmesan and shaves it on a little box grater at the counter, elbow going out and back. I watch her for thirty seconds because I can — because this is our kitchen and she's in it, and I'm in love with her elbow and every other part of her, and I don't, tonight, have anywhere else to be.

"Cal texted." 

She goes still over the grater. "What did he say."

"He said yes." I say as I’m watching her grate cheese.

She stops for a second then starts grating the cheese harder and faster.

"Hanna." I say softly.

"Yeah?" She turns.

"He said yes. This morning. He texted me an hour ago — 'I’m telling you ‘yes’. I'm done being a pain about it. That's the text. I have it on my phone. Do you want to read it?"

"I — "

"He said yes, Hanna."

I set the spoon down and look at her. She looks at me. Her eyes are wet. Mine are probably wet, too. There's pasta sauce on the stove that isn't being stirred.

"I know. I'm not asking you if I can do the whole thing right now. He told me, so I'm telling you. I didn't want to ask you before I knew you knew. That seemed unfair." I stand with my back to the stove and the unstirred pot of sauce. "I can do it the way I was going to do it."

"Take your time. I'm not in a hurry." She waves me off with the block of cheese.

I turn off the sauce and take the parmesan out of her hand, setting it on the counter.

"Come with me."

"My sauce — "

"The sauce will keep."

"Ty — "

"Come."

I take her hand and lead her down the hall.

My bedroom has the moved basil plant on one windowsill, a the tomato plant on the other, a lamp on the nightstand, a book face down on the nightstand, a bed I made this morning. The lamp is off. The light coming in the window is August evening light — blue-soft and late. The window is open. Somewhere down on the street a kid is riding a bike with a bell on it.

She stops in the middle of the room.

"This isn't how I — " I turn to her.

"I know." She smiles

"I had a plan. A big plan."

She only smiles at me.

"It have a ring."

"Show me later. Tonight. Show me later.” 

“Come here." I pull her into my arms.

She comes.

I put my hands on her face. She puts her hands on my wrists. She's looking up at me in the blue-soft light and her eyes are unbearable, which is how they've been forever. I've been having trouble not telling her every thought that passes through my head — because the trouble I used to have was talking at all, and the trouble I have now isn't that, and I take the new trouble tonight, because I prefer it.

"I'm going to ask you to marry me tomorrow."

"Okay."

"In the morning, with the ring. With the whole thing."

"Okay."

"Right now, I just want to be with you."

"Okay."

"And take off this shirt."

"Which one?" She's almost smiling.

"Mine."

"It's mine now."

"I know. Take it off anyway."

She takes it off.

I'm not going to say much about the next two hours in any way I could repeat in front of her mother, which is the test I've started using for how I talk about our private life, because our private life is my business and hers and not, specifically, for the crew or the Watershed or, very specifically, Derek's ledger. But I'll say the following.

I'll say that the August light in my bedroom on a Saturday evening has a specific gold-purple quality that makes Hanna's collarbone look like something carved out of warm stone.

I'll say that her hair, when she takes it down, falls exactly the way it fell when she was nineteen, and that this fact is a small mercy I don't deserve.

I'll say that we've done this enough times now that we're learning each other's new things the way we learned the old things all those years ago — that the specific spot under her left shoulder blade that makes her laugh now isn't the same spot that made her laugh then, because bodies change, because years in between happens, because we're paying attention.

I'll say that she knows my spots the same way. All of them. The new ones. The old ones. The ones only she's ever known, because only she's ever looked.

I'll say that at one point, when she's laughing at something I said that I won't repeat, I stop moving and I look at her and I say, "Hanna,"

"Yeah?"

"Do you remember the supply closet at the academy?" 

She says, "I remember every inch of the supply closet at the academy, Ty, what specifically are you asking me to remember," 

"Do you remember what you said to me the first time?"

She's quiet for a second. "I said, 'Don't tell Cal.'"

"Yeah."

"That was the first thing I said."

"Yep."

"We — "

"Yeah, Hanna."

"Oh my god."

"I know."

"That was — "

"I know."

"I said — right after we — "

"I know."

"Ty."

"Yeah?"

"I want to say something else now."

"Okay."

She leans down. Her hair falls around my face. She puts her mouth by my ear.

She whispers, "Cal knows."

I laugh.

I laugh the way I've been laughing for months — more than I laughed for the preceding ten years combined — and the laughing is everything, it makes her laugh, and the laugh makes her do the thing she does when she laughs in this specific context, and the specific thing she does when she laughs in this context is the thing that could have gotten us in trouble at the academy in the first place. I'm going to be in that trouble for the rest of my life.

I'm in favor of it.

The lamp is off. The window is open. The sauce is cold on the stove. I'm going to eat the cold sauce, because cold pasta sauce reheated is a specific pleasure I didn't know about before this August.

Hanna is on her side. Her hand is on my chest. My hand is on her hip.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"The ring thing — "

"Tomorrow," she says. "Is it pretty?"

"I think so. It's a Ty-thinks-it's-a-Hanna ring. I bought it weeks ago. Your mother helped."

"Mom helped?"

"Mom Larsen helped."

"Oh no."

"She said it was the one."

"Mom's taste is — "

"Mom Larsen has good taste."

"Mom's taste is — "

"Your mother isn't going to let me give you a bad ring."

"No." She breathes. "Okay. Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow."

"What time."

"Sunrise. And Hanna."

"Yeah?"

"According to my phone, sunrise is at six-oh-four."

"Ugh, Six-oh-four is early," she grumbles. "You want to do it at six-oh-four in the morning?"

"At the back porch of your mother's house. By the lilac bush. Your mother asked me where I was planning on asking. She said if I was going to do it, she had one request, and the request was by the lilac bush. Because your father planted it."

"Mom asked for the lilac bush? At six-oh-four?"

"Cal is going to be on the porch watching. He told me. He said, 'Brennan, I'm going to watch from the porch with coffee, and if I don't approve, I'm going to come over and punch you.'"

"Cal is never kidding about punching."

"I know."

"Did everyone in my family plan this with you."

"Your mother and your brother. Yes." A beat. "Riley knows. Derek is running a pool on the timing."

"Oh MY — "

"I promised Riley I'd text her after you say yes so she can cry." I brush some hair off her face. "After you say yes," 

"If I say yes," she says, and she's clearly lying about the if.

"Hanna."

"I'm going to say yes."

"Good."

"At six-oh-four in the morning, at the lilac bush, while my brother watches from the porch with coffee — I'm going to say yes." Her voice drops warm and certain.

"Okay."

"I'm also going to cry."

"Okay."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

She's laughing against my chest. I'm laughing, flat, against her hair. My hand is on her hip. Outside the window a neighbor has started a grill, and the whole alley smells like charcoal, and in the kitchen the sauce is cold, and on the windowsill the basil plant is thriving.

At six-oh-four tomorrow morning, I'm going to ask a woman in her mother's yard, at the lilac bush her father planted, if she'll marry me. She's going to say yes. Her brother is going to watch from the porch with coffee. Her mother is going to watch from the kitchen window. Riley is going to be waiting for a text. Big Jim is going to hear about it and shed a tear and blame allergies. Derek is going to update the ledger. Nora is going to raise an eyebrow and pretend she didn't know. 

I turn my face into her hair. "Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow."

"But tonight — "

"Tonight."

"Eat pasta with me. Make the pasta again — it got cold."

"I'll reheat it."

"I’ll bring the basil." I tip my head toward the windowsill. "Pick a tomato off the plant."

"Ty."

"Yeah?"

"Let's make the pasta."

We scramble up.

I put the basil on the cutting board. She chiffonades it with a paring knife. We eat the pasta on a Saturday night at the kitchen table in our apartment above the auto parts store on Third. The windows are open. The basil smells like basil. She's wearing one of my t-shirts, inside out. I don't mention the inside out. I don't need to.

Tomorrow, at six-oh-four in the morning, I'm going to ask her a question. A very important question.

But tonight, I eat her pasta, with the basil, and I watch her laugh at something on her phone, and I think about the academy, and the supply closet, and the twin bed I shared with her for three months in 2016, and the ten years afterward, and the weeks in a linen closet, and my best friend on his kitchen floor with kung pao under the couch, and her mother at the head of her mother's table, and my basil plant on the windowsill, and the life I didn't believe I was going to get.

I got it.