Cole in My Stocking Read Free

it turning into even more. However long it took, I’d whip that to-do list into submission and get home as soon as possible. Then I could forget the buzz of excitement that had taken me off guard upon seeing Cole again. I could forget Newburgh and all the insecurities that had come rushing back in the past hour.
    After some grunting and groaning, Cole got the old wheel off while the other officer looked on. Remembering I had the lug nuts in my coat pocket, I got out of the car as Cole slid the new tire into place. I held them out, the metal chilling on my palm.
    Cole took them one by one as he needed them. It made me happy he did it that way instead of grabbing them all at once, like he wanted to prolong our interaction or something. Delusional of me, I know. I was reading too much into it.
    Officer Busty looked on, leaning on the back of the beast. I felt her sneaking glances at me, but I had yet to catch her in the act. Did she know who I was? Did she know what I was, or rather what Newburgh claimed I was?
    She and Cole had been having a quiet conversation when I’d gotten out of the car, but with me standing nearby, they’d clammed up. All the lug nuts gone, I muttered a thank you to the rescue squad and returned to my seat warmer. The second my door closed, their conversation resumed.
    My cheeks got hot. I was suddenly in high school again, after the night Chief Tooley had picked me up for underage drinking. The arrest he’d threatened me with had never come to fruition, probably because my dad had talked him out of it—I’d never asked. Arrest or not, my reputation, which had already been on the sketchy end, took a hit anyway.
    My locker had occupied the coveted social real estate between Emily Knox’s and Freddie Calhoun’s lockers. Emily and Freddie were popular kids who ran in a better dressed, more law-abiding circle than I did, but they’d always been nice enough to me, and me to them. After that night, they’d started freezing me out. I would show up to change my books, and silence would descend on locker row. The second I’d slam the flimsy metal door and walk away, conversation would ramp up behind me. I’d catch whispered bits of condemnation as I hurried to class. “Drunk off her ass… You hear who she left with?... Three guys at once, older dudes… Lives with her alchie father next door to the dump…that’s where trash like her belongs.”
    It sucked being back home. I hadn’t even made it to the trailer yet, and I already felt about as welcome as a kid with lice at a sleepover.
    Officer Busty finally moved when Cole opened up the back of the beast to stow the jack and the flat. She got in her cruiser and took off with a perky honk and a wave he returned with a big old grin. Not that my eyes were glued to him in the rearview mirror or anything.
    I powered down my window when he came alongside my door. I meant to thank him again, but what came out instead was, “Friend of yours?”
    He lowered his eyebrows in question like he didn’t know who I was talking about.
    “Officer Busty,” I blurted. “She a friend of yours?”
    Cole’s eyes crinkled at the corners. His expression softened. It was as good as a confession of undying love. They were a thing. Officer Oakley and Officer Busty. Their children would be blessed with physical perfection and out-of-this-world coolness. They’d be riding their Fisher Price Harleys in an asphalt driveway with no weeds growing up through the cracks. White picket fence, the whole shebang.
    Envisioning their perfect life together shouldn’t have caused a sharp pain behind my breastbone, but it did. People felt irrational emotions when grieving. Dad’s death would likely skew my reactions to all kinds of things in the coming weeks. After six years of schooling resulting in a double master’s in public health and counseling psychology, I knew this. Unfortunately, knowing the pain was irrational didn’t make it any more bearable.
    “Her name’s Stacey,”