Charlie

I’m staring into my locker like it holds the meaning of life, instead of my smelly, black gym bag. We’ve just gone through hours of safe takedown procedures, including the arm bar hammerlock, my brother refusing to dismiss us until every recruit demonstrated the move to his satisfaction. Now the future protectors of the five boroughs are snapping towels at each other and deciding between Chinese or pizza for dinner, but I haven’t even changed out of my sweat-soaked clothes yet.

I’m not even sure what the fuck has me so baffled, but I’ve been in this weird, functioning coma since leaving Ever’s apartment. I don’t remember walking to the train or riding it back uptown, although I managed to pull together for this afternoon’s training session since my brother was running the drills. If I’d slacked off for a second, I would’ve been the recipient of one of Greer’s long-winded lectures.

Speaking of being in a coma.

Okay, let’s backtrack. Everything was fine when I walked into Ever’s place, right? Baking as usual. Dressed like a certified knockout. The sex was phenomenal, no getting around it. I’m actually starting to worry that we’ll never reach a plateau, and one day we’ll just bang ourselves into another dimension. Sex dimension. Actually, I think I might have entertained myself to porn with that title, if I’m not mistaken.

Focus, shithead.

Right. Nothing was off with Ever until she climbed off my lap. My cock springs to life in my gym shorts remembering the way she stood up, thong around one ankle, her ass red from slapping against my thighs. Christ-at-large. I can’t ask her to meet me twice in one day. Can I? This isn’t the first time I’ve kicked around the idea. More like, the four thousandth time. Since this afternoon.

I can’t shake this memory of how Ever looked at me today. When I asked her if I could fix something or help out. God, I think I might have actually spooked her. Look, I’m just as antirelationship as Ever, but that seems a little extreme. So this is where I’m getting caught up. Wanting to know why. And that’s against the rules. There’s no discussing pasts or futures. Just afternoon delight with an occasional Adam Levine meltdown. I don’t want to know where Ever’s fear of coupling up comes from, and she doesn’t want me fixing busted pipes.

End of story. Stop moping around like a fucking puppy.

The academy requires every ounce of my focus if I’m going to meet expectations. There’s no room for anything else. Not now. Not ever. Both men in my family are sans women. My mother left when I was in first grade, because she was treated as an afterthought in a house full of men with a sole ambition. She wasn’t treated right, so she left. There is no chance of me doing better when reaching the highest possible peak of law enforcement is my goal. I don’t remember a time in my life when accelerating to the top wasn’t drilled into my head as the most important thing life had to offer.

Jack straddles the bench beside me, tipping a water bottle to his lips. I can smell the vodka it contains. Everyone in our row can smell it. But no one says boo to Jack unless they want a busted lip. Unless you’re me and you’ve already taken the busted lip and given him one back. Like some asshole rite of passage that makes perfect sense unless you think about it too hard.

“What’s going on with you, Burns? You only beat everyone’s timed mile by a full minute today.” Another tip of the water bottle. “Everyone thinks I’m dragging you down with me.”

“Now, come on. That’s bullshit.” I finally drag my gym bag out of the locker. “I was at least a minute ten ahead of the next guy.”

That earns me a shove in the ribs. Fair enough.

“I guess the part about you dragging me down is also bullshit.” Since that was kind of a compliment, I peel the T-shirt over my head to avoid any bro-moment eye contact. “I would remind you that showing up without a hangover once in a while might shave a minute off your time, but that would be one less person making me look good.”

Jack snorts. Awkward moment averted. Well, mostly. Because he knows I’m not completely joking. Jack was raised in an illegal brothel in Hell’s Kitchen, where he learned quite a few handy tricks (just another reason I keep Ever away from my apartment). When his mother got too old to entertain, he got a job unloading cargo from ships on the West Side in order to support them. He understands hard work and could probably be a powerhouse if he put in some effort. I guess it’s going to take more than the promise of law-enforcement glory to motivate him. Time will tell.

“Come on, Burns,” Jack groans at the locker room ceiling. “Give up the goods. Your brother’s voice has taken away my will to live. I need something interesting to kick start my brain again.”

I pull on a fresh T-shirt with the academy logo on the pocket. Jack smirks when he notices, but I ignore him. “It’s probably nothing.”

“You ever heard the expression don’t bullshit a bullshitter?” Jack salutes me with his bottle. “Words to live by.”

“Yeah? Here’s two more words to live by. Fuck you,” I mutter. But now I kind of want to talk about what happened this afternoon. Why? There’s nothing to talk about. Is there? “I saw Ever today.”

“The girl with the golden—”

“You don’t want to finish that sentence.”

“I was going to say, ‘golden heart’,” my pirate asshole friend finishes.

“Sure, you were.” A locker slams extra-loudly behind us, and we both give the offender our best what the hell expression before going back to the conversation at hand. “She wasn’t . . . Ever today. Something was different.”

“I knew it.” Jack’s voice echoes off the lockers. “You have to hand it to the girl. She put on a good show, but they all break out their tap shoes eventually.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means she’s doing the relationship dance.”

My eyes narrow. “There was dancing . . .” Ah God, now I’m thinking about her climbing off my lap again. Don’t even think about calling her twice in one day. “But you’re wrong. She’s the one who made the rules. Nothing serious. Her exact words.”

“Right.” Jack throws both legs onto one side of the bench and stands, leaning against the locker beside mine. “I’ve heard tell of this strategy. She was lulling you into a false sense of security. Playing the long game.” He shivers. “She sounds ruthless, man. Glad I’m not in your shoes.”

All right. This is why I should limit my discussions with Jack to fantasy sports. “You’re way off. I’m telling you, she’s a fucking unicorn.” I shrug. “She probably just had a bad day or something.” My neck starts to itch at the idea of Ever being upset, but I scratch it and move on. I have to. There are boundaries between her and I. Crossing them would mean the end of this perfect thing we’ve got going.

A relationship isn’t an option for me. I’ve seen my father and brother, watching me train from the wings when they think I’m not aware of their presence. Their speculation on my progress. I’ve got some intimidating shoes to fill, and nothing is going to hold me back or turn me into a disappointment. When my mother left, being the best became a must. Otherwise she left for nothing.

A badge is something you earn and keep. It doesn’t disappear when things get rough—no, it shines brighter. It’s a sure thing. A lasting thing. The goal is to make sergeant within the first three years of graduation from the academy, then take the lieutenant exam. Pass it with flying colors, as I’ve been groomed to do. After that, there won’t be time for anything but keeping the streets safe. Living up to my legacy. Making my small, but powerful family proud.

Have faith. Tomorrow everything will be back to the way it was. Ever will be waiting for me with a smile. I’ll have my head back in the fucking game, training to fulfill my legacy with a clear mind, free of women and relationship worries. Everything will be exactly as it should be.

But when I get home later that night, I don’t even remember the walk.

Ever

We have a job tonight. Not a huge one. But not a small one, either. Nothing is small to our business—Hot Damn Caterers—right now. My roommate, Nina, and I were clueless when we started building the company. The first thing we did was design business cards. Red ones with white script and saucy clip art. When they showed up in the mail, we set them on our kitchen table, realized we were twats for wasting precious money and split a bottle of rum.

When the hangover passed, we got our asses in gear.

Nina’s grandfather owned a donut shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for thirty years, but was forced to close its doors when wine bars and designer cupcake shops moved in to accommodate the younger scene. However, he was left with the deed to an off-site bakery where the donuts were actually produced. Small in size though it is, the space is valuable, convenient and was quite generously bestowed on Nina—a top-notch pastry chef in her own right—when she turned twenty-one.

So what do I have to offer this amateur operation? In the beginning . . . not a hell of a lot. I could cook a mean cannelloni—oh yes, I could—for one person. Maybe two. But apart from an associate’s degree in women’s studies from Borough of Manhattan Community College, I had no education of which to boast. Especially of the culinary variety. So I learned and I learned fast.

I took night classes on the cheap from culinary school students looking to fulfill teaching credits. I cooked, failed and tried again until I could be useful. Food became my escape, my focus—each time I opened the oven, I accomplished something new. Now, almost two years later, Nina and I hire college students with waitressing experience to carry my creations around on trays at events, which comes with its own brand of drama, but works out for the most part.

Owning a catering company wasn’t a dream I had since childhood or even college. Manhattan is such a kaleidoscope of opportunities—fashion, finance, fedora sales—that it took me a while to catch up with the rest of my eager beaver generation and decide on one path. Once I did, it was as though culinary arts had been waiting patiently for me to discover it, before leaping into my arms like a long-lost friend.

Bottom line is, Hot Damn Caterers is something I’m proud of. Something unexpected and wonderful. It requires all of my energy, and I’m happy to give it. I’ve actually built something out of nothing. I never thought I’d be able to say that.

Lately, though? I’ve been experiencing this sort of . . . anticlimax. Not sure how else to explain the feeling of bursting at the seams to share a triumph with someone, looking around and finding myself alone. Nina is great. Nay, the greatest. I couldn’t ask for a better friend or business partner. Nina has a boyfriend, though, and I can’t even remember the last time she slept at the apartment. We see each other at the Williamsburg kitchen occasionally when Nina needs help with a large baking order, but I’ve taken on the administrative side of Hot Damn and that work is done here, in the apartment. Where the only person to celebrate a new contract with is the dust bunny beneath my bed.

There have been these moments recently with Charlie when I had the urge to tell him a story about the prior evening’s catering job. Or throw him into a chair and force my newest savory puff pastries down his throat so he can give me star ratings. Isn’t that ridiculous? Yes, it is! It’s ridiculous. The beauty of our nonrelationship is the lack of goo. We are antigoo. Charlie couldn’t be happier with the arrangement, either. He blazes a trail out of here that still smokes an hour later. The closest he’s come to tasting my cooking was licking chocolate off my ass yesterday.

It’s probably a phase. I’m twenty-two. Everyone I pass on the street is coupled up or dating online. It’s only natural that I should get the false sense something is missing. The phase will pass. Will it start when I break things off with Charlie? Over time, I think it might. Why that scares me even more, I’m not sure.

I’m piping cream cheese into these neat little phyllo dough puffs when I get a knock at the door. Huh. Nobody buzzed from downstairs. It’s too early for Charlie to show, and he never stops by without texting first. Another one of our unofficial rules. And it can’t be Nina, unless she lost her keys. Although, she’d be shouting Brooklynese at me through the door by now. Weird.

Piping bag in hand, I pad toward the door in my socks and check the peep-hole. A version of me, about twenty years older, stares back from the hallway. “Mother?”

“The one and only.”

I force myself to stop gaping and unlock the door, although I use the piping bag hand, which results in cream cheese squirting all over the ground. “Shit.” I’m in a flustered limbo, stuck between opening the damn door and trying to clean up the lake of cheese before my mother comes in and thinks I’m a slob. “Uhhh. Hold on.”

I use my shirt to clean up the cheese. Hold your applause, ladies and gentlemen.

When my mother walks into the apartment, she looks like a hummingbird deciding on which flower to land. Or maybe an adult version of the hokey pokey. She sets one foot in the kitchen, cocks a hip, backs out. Turns in a circle on the way into my living room, perches on the couch arm, stands again. Then she reaches out with toned, tastefully tanned arms. “Baby girl.”

“Hi.” I walk into her embrace, inhaling the familiar scent of Dolce & Gabbana Velvet Sublime. I step back, giving her outfit the same once over she’s giving mine. “You look amazing. What brings you to my neighborhood?”

“Oh, you know. This and that.”

This is when things get strange. My mother, who never settles, never stops chattering, gossiping or running her fingers over everything in the vicinity . . . she just winds down. And flops—flops—onto my couch. I’ve never seen her execute a move that fell short of elegant, but she’s literally slumping into the pillows, hand to her forehead. Someone has died. That’s the first conclusion I land on, but immediately dismiss it as absurd. We have no people. My father was never in the picture, my grandmother made for greener pastures a decade ago. There’s no one.

Unless. “Oh, God. Did Hula Hoop die?”

“No,” she cries, her spine shooting straight. “Why would you say that?”

Okay, so her half-blind poodle is still up and running. “I don’t know. You seem distraught.”

She holds up a hand as she visibly calms herself down. “Hula is fine. She’s downstairs waiting in my Uber.”

“I guess you’re not planning on staying long.” My throat aches as I say the words, but none of that comes across in my tone. The no commitment rule my mother taught me is a facet of our relationship, too. As a child, I remember her being somewhat warmer. Maternal with occasional flashes of bittersweet joy. She was the only Carmichael woman since my great-grandmother to disregard the three mistress rules—and she was rewarded with me in her belly. The summer she turned twenty-one, she interned at a retail buyer in the fashion district. She fell madly in love with her boss, only to arrive at work one day and find him in the back room with the lunch cart girl, rogering her against the copy machine.

The three rules cemented themselves once more for my mother after that. Not only did she come back from maternity leave and bust her ass until she usurped my father from his position as manager, she moved to a much higher level within the company, fired his ass and never relied on or trusted another man again. They are nothing more than one month’s worth of free entertainment to her and the more unavailable, the better.

Unfortunately, while my mother was out kicking ass and taking names, she wasn’t home very often as I grew up, leaving me with babysitters or interns. Whenever we spoke, it was almost always about the dangers of trusting the opposite sex. How to be independent. How to avoid entanglements.

“Are you headed out of town?” She still works for the same company in merchandising, sending her across the pond pretty frequently. “I lost track of the date . . . is it Paris fashion week or—”

“I’ve come here with something to say.” She stands and clicks over to the window on impractical high heels. “Something very important, Ever.”

At the rare use of my name, I fall back into my chair. Everything about this situation is rare, really. We don’t have heart-to-hearts, my mother and I. She informs me via e-mail or text message if she’s going out of town or relocating. That’s about it. So there’s a quickening in my pulse knowing she’s thought of me, planned a conversation for us to have. Together. “What is it, Mother?”

“Until last night, I was seeing a man. Married, yes. I know you don’t approve.” Her slim shoulders lift and fall on a breath. “He . . . ended things before the month was up. Decided to give things with his wife another try.”

“Oh.” I know better than to reach out and comfort her. Her associations with married men are a bone of contention between us, so I have to strike the right note of sympathy if I don’t want to sound like, them’s the breaks when you creep on another woman’s dude, Ma. “I’m sorry.”

She starts to wave off my apology with an impatient hand, but doesn’t follow through, her hand just . . . dropping. “Last night was the first time since your father . . . that a man ended things first. I’ve learned to choose my men very carefully, and I never failed to adhere to the one-month rule. But it had only been a week. A week.” She meets my gaze, but it flits away before cementing. “For so long, these short associations have been a constant in my life. I was guaranteed one month with no strings. But last night . . . I realized there are no guarantees in the rules we live by. Not anymore. Not even the single month I’ve gotten so used to relying on.” She smoothed a hand down her scarf. “It took being cut loose to realize something. The only thing I’ve guaranteed is my own loneliness.”

Numbness moves straight down to my toes. “Mother. I’m . . . what are you saying?”

“I haven’t been happy for a long time, Ever. After your father, I followed the rules because I was hurting. I needed to earn my self-respect back. Gain back the power I’d lost. And I don’t know when following the rules stopped being . . . fulfilling. But it’s been a while.” My mother turns, and with sunshine streaming in on either side of her face, she looks almost divine. Divine but so incredibly sad. “I’m a lonely woman, Ever. I don’t remember the last time I confided in another person. Or laughed. Actually laughed. And I think those opportunities with men have been right in front of me for the last twenty-three years, but I pushed them aside, because I was afraid of being hurt again.”

You could have laughed with me. We could have laughed together.

Those words stick in my throat as my mother comes toward where I’m super-glued to the chair. Since walking into my apartment, she has aged a decade, I would swear to it. She’s crumbling under the truth of her words, and it’s a tragedy playing out, right here in my apartment. Seeing it, hearing it, makes my stomach twist into a pretzel. “Ever, I’ve steered you down my path, telling you to stay free and committed to no one. But there’s still time to change.” She kneels in front of me—such an uncharacteristic action for my unflappable mother—and tears push, hot and full, behind my eyelids. “Find someone to grow old with, Ever. A man who’ll look you in the eye and respect you. A man who will care enough to argue with you. A man who can’t think of a better place to be than with you. Get off this path. It only leads to meals for one and no one to laugh with, baby girl.”

“But . . .” I haven’t cried in so long, my garbled voice jolts me. “You said a woman doesn’t need a committed man to make her happy. I can’t . . . how can I change when it’s all I’ve ever known?”

“Maybe it’s okay to need someone, so long as they need you back just as much.” My mother rises and lays a hand on my head. “Just promise me you’ll try. Really try, Ever.”

I’ve never been given the opportunity to make my mother proud before. My whole life, I’ve been heeding her advice, but we’ve never bonded over it. Our emotions have never collided in any way. Now I’m in the center of the impact, seeing the strongest woman I know fall down on her proverbial knees. For me. She’s humbling herself for me, so I don’t face the loneliness she’s experiencing. She’s trusting me with her advice, with her hurt, and I’m not going to squander this chance.

As a young girl, I used to yearn for my mother to come home from work and talk to me. Talk to me about anything but avoiding being tied down. It’s a long time coming, but her being here and opening up? I have a sense that it’s her unique way of apologizing. For all those times she didn’t hold me close. All those times she shut down conversations about boys, telling me to ignore them and stay smart. Be independent. She isn’t the type to come right out and issue apologies, but actions speak louder than words. And she is physically here, trying to save me from her mistakes.

If easing my mother’s concerns means dating—with the intent to become one-half of a relationship—so be it. I can do that for her. I can do that for us.

First step: end things with Charlie. My blood pumps heavily in my temples at the thought. I’m no longer abiding by the one-month rule, but that hardly matters now. He doesn’t want a serious relationship. Our whole association is founded on that fact. So . . . in order to move forward, giving up Charlie is a must. No big deal, right? Why am I thinking about it so hard?

Maybe because . . . lately, I’ve been wishing he wouldn’t run out so fast.

There. I admitted it. I’ve been secretly hoping he’ll ask to try one of my brownies. And feeling disappointed when he doesn’t text about something besides hooking up.

If I can feel the beginnings of more with Charlie . . . maybe there’s someone else out there who could inspire the same feelings. Sure, I’m skeptical, but I need to find out. Not to mention, she could be right. Letting go of my resolve to be alone could be the first step toward shaking what’s got me in a funk lately.

“Ever?”

I look up to find my mother paused at the door, hand on the knob. “Yes, Mother. I’ll try my best.”