Aside from the fact that there isn’t much crime here in Riverside, my desk is situated far from the jail where people who have been apprehended are held to await bail.

“Okay, you’ve got to have enough in there for two people.” Colin jogs up next to me as I swing my car door shut.

He’s looking down at the brown paper bag from Adam’s, my fingers wrapped tight around the top of the bag. I loosen up, unaware that I was holding my breakfast in a death grip.

“Depends on how big your appetite is, officer,” I say, forcing some banter and a smile, but it’s too early on Monday morning for me to really feel into it.

Colin has his uniform on already, even though most officers opt to come to work in their regular civilian clothing and then change once they’ve arrived, in one of the locker rooms on the police campus.

I spent the whole weekend in my room, pretending to be sick to my mom and dad. It gave me a good excuse as to why I had to cut out of the party early, and it resulted in them leaving me alone to wallow in my own confusion - which is exactly what I wanted. The only human contact I had all weekend was a few texts with Sarah.

Colin knows why I left early, or at least he knows what I told him.

The day is gray and cold, and I push the collar of my coat up around my chin to break the wind against my skin. My eyes scan up from the front of the station where Colin and I go in together so many mornings to the tops of the trees rustling in the wind, reaching up around the building and hiding the station from the off-ramp of the interstate off to the east side of the building.

Taking a sip of my coffee, I try to forget that my purse is a little bit lighter today.

“Your hands are full.” Colin strides a few paces ahead of me and pulls open the door to the reception area of the police station, and we walk together in silence past the two rows of chair set up back-to-back in the middle of the cold brick and linoleum room. This is the view I have all day, where I sit just beyond a passcode-protected metal door, and all I can do to keep myself from falling asleep between checking in civilians looking to file police reports and telling people they’re in the wrong place if they want to pay a parking ticket, is stare at the local news TV station on one of the two flat-screens set up high on each wall across from the rows of seats.

Sometimes I’ll even watch one of the TVs, and then the other, as if they aren’t showing the same exact thing every single day. That, or I’ll read a book hidden on my lap under the the desk.

Colin and I pass the rows of seats, and they’re empty now and will remain empty for most of the day.

Of course I like that Riverside is basically free of crime, but I could use some excitement. Maybe a puppy went missing from a yard and I need to fetch one of the officers to go rescue it and bring it home safe and sound.

But instead, Colin and I go through the heavy metal door and I sit down behind the shatter-proof, bullet-proof glass protecting me from the bad guys, turning on my old computer and then getting up to hang up my purse and coat on the coat rack in the far corner of the room.

Colin lingers in the hallway leading to the back where he and the other officers have their desks, leaning against the wall a few few away from me. I busy myself with making sure my coat is hung up neatly, but it’s really because I don’t want anything more than just idle chit-chat with Colin. It’s not because I have a lot of work to do; it’s because I want to forget what happened at the gala, and I want even more to force myself to forget what happened after it.

“How was the rest of your weekend?” Colin tries, scratching his chin and putting a hand on his hip. He can already tell there’s no point in going down this line of conversation.

“It wasn’t so great,” I say, letting out a little cough that sounds as fake it is. “I was feeling a little under the weather at the party, and I spent the rest of the weekend in bed.”

“Oh,” Colin says, taking a step back into the hallway. “Right. Sorry to hear that.”

I pull my breakfast sandwich out of the beat-up paper bag and plop it down on my desk, peeling it out of its wax paper and tin foil wrappings. I take a bite of the deluxe lox bagel with cream cheese, onions, tomato and lettuce.

“Thanks,” I say, grabbing the half of the bagel I’m not working on, waving it at Colin. “Want?” I say between bites.

“Hm,” he says, waving his hands in front of him. “No thanks.”

“Oh,” I say, putting it back down on the wrapper. “Sorry. Right. Germs.”

We hear the front door open, and our dads come through the door in plain clothes, striding over to the door to the station as I push a button under the desk to let them in.

“I better get to it,” Colin says as the men come through the door. My dad gives me a warm smile and waves as he walks past, and Colin’s dad quietly tilts the tip of his Mets cap down at me.

I smile and wave as the three of them disappear down the hallway, and then turn my attention to the paperwork I have sitting at my desk, off to the side, next to my computer. There isn’t much. I have to enter some parking tickets into the bookkeeping software we use. It would be easier if they just streamlined the process and let me accept payments since I put them into the computer, but there’s a lot of bureaucratic procedures around here that are never going to change.

There’s something else underneath the parking ticket summonses that were issued over the weekend. I pull it out by its corner, careful not to send the rest of the paperwork spilling all over the desk, and I see that it’s paperwork for a release. I check the name on the top of the form, and it’s stares back at me as though it has a life of its own.

The knot that I’ve been trying to distract myself from feeling all weekend tightens up in my gut as I realize I need to process Travis Bloom’s probation paperwork.

For a minute, I consider just packing my stuff up, walking out, and calling my dad to tell him I need to take a sick day, but instead, I finish my bagel while watching the morning newscast from an overly bubbly man and woman in blue suit jackets and perfect teeth, sipping my coffee like nothing’s wrong.

I glance down at the paperwork and see that his probation officer works here in this building.

Of course she does. This is the only police station in the county. I wonder to myself whether my dad knew about this, whether he realized that Travis would be waltzing through this office complex twice a week for the next - I check the paperwork - six months, checking in with me at this desk while I issue him a visitor’s pass.

I groan, pinching the bridge of my nose and closing my eyes. Not only did he do something epically stupid a year ago, he left me alone here with no answers and only a million questions. It hurt to have to answer all of the questions from the people at the police station who wanted to know what pushed Travis to do what he did, but I had no answers for them. As far as they were all concerned, he and I were nothing more than friends. No one knew that I’d opened my heart to him, and it was all my fault. I was afraid to wear the ring he’d given me, but I carried it with me always.

I never figured out why I kept it - if it was because I never had a chance to give it back to him, or because it made me feel less like there was a Travis-shaped hole in my life. It filled some need, but I still don’t know what.

Giving it back when I saw him seemed like the right thing to do. I was never able to wear it a year ago, and I wouldn’t be able to wear it now.

Only fair to give it back to him.

And now, with him on probation and his imminent visits here, I’m going to be bombarded with more questions than I know what to do with.

We never dated openly in college or the summer after it when our relationship faltered and stalled when we found out his mom was sick. We never really had a chance to be together.

My dad warned me about him constantly. He called him the devil next door - not literally - but he knew that I was vulnerable to what he could give me.

Maybe he was right. I did get caught up in Travis, but it all ended before it even really started.

What did Travis really give me, aside from a childhood friendship and a messy breakup over a relationship that never really existed?

No, I could never tell my parents that Travis had proposed. I don’t even know why I said yes.

It was stupid.

Tears prick behind my eyes and my throat burns, a lump pressing into it. I take a sip of my coffee, but it does nothing to sooth me.

And there’s nothing I can do now except process Travis’ paperwork, and hope that I can act like I’m okay.