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17
Annie
The end of school came and went. I wouldn't be undercover in the high schools until fall, though I thought I'd be able to go back. I'd lost weight on my sojourn and with my addiction. Some women look older when they lose.
I looked even younger. When I bought beer or wine, I got carded.
My CO said I'd be back undercover. My shrink said I was cleared for duty but I had to keep visiting. That was fair. I covered stuff about addiction with her, both of us talking in a way that never came out and said I was addicted and never came out and said this was how to get help.
It was satisfying and useless.
Life fell into a pattern. I went to work, I worked around cops, doing nothing of any importance. I went to the firing range. I went to the gym. I went home and hung out with Mark. He'd ask about the wedding. I'd tell him of course I was planning the wedding, which I kind of was, and I'd bring out my notebook where I was jotting down ideas on the left hand pages. He'd add his ideas on the right.
They never coincided. He wanted to explore parts of Mexico on our honeymoon. I wanted to first be certain I'd have the time for a honeymoon without jeopardizing my career.
I didn't say that part.
And second I wanted to be sure we'd both live through the honeymoon. That meant no Mexico.
I did say that.
We argued. A lot. We fixed up the apartment. We ate dinner together. We had sex that pleased neither of us.
Until the day my CO told me I'd be going back undercover by mid-September.
"I'd like to tell my fiancé that I'm going to be on assignment," I said, standing with my feet evenly spread and my hands behind me. Parade rest, really. I hadn't been invited to sit.
John looked up at me. He was a florid man with jowls but no other body fat. Kind of a mystery, or nature just really wanted to be unkind to him. "Sit down," he barked, and when I did, "Why wouldn't you tell him you're going undercover? Can't tell him any other goddamned thing, but what have you told him in the past?" The way he glared at me reminded me of the cartoons of Peter Parker's editor boss in Spider-Man, always glowering and chomping a cigar. John didn't have a cigar. Otherwise…
"Nothing," I said honestly.
He stared at me. "You just vanished?" He sounded appalled. He sounded angry, too, but John always did.
I tried not to shrug. "He knows what my job is."
"Jesus!" John said, managing to break the word into more syllables than it usually has. "He must have been out of his mind for you."
I didn't know if he meant with worry or that Mark was crazy about me and that's why he hadn't left.
"But he knows what I do," I said. Didn't other people do it this way?
John leaned forward, elbows on the desk. "This your longest relationship?"
This was my longest anywhere near personal conversation with my CO. "Yes." It came out almost a question. I'd had the same boyfriend all through high school, but between high school and Mark, there'd been more fly-by-night hookups than anything else.
It was easier.
"Uh huh." He nodded, still staring at me. "You love him?"
None of your business. "Yeah."
"Jesus. Look, at least give him warning it’s coming up. Leave him a note."
This wasn't his business. But it was the same thing the shrink had said. In a way, the same thing Dad had said.
The shrink had gone one step further. In one of our addiction talks where neither of us had said the word she'd asked, "Have you always run when the going gets tough?"
I'd bristled all over. I didn't run. I wasn't running now. I was sticking the therapy, for all the damn good it was doing. I hadn't run from Jesse. Or from the job. Or from my family when they were all being nasty about my job versus my responsibility to them.
