Page 3 of Just Desserts in Pelican Point
“Still lurking outside the bakery like a lovesick idiot?”
I glance to my right. Jose Delgado is leaning against his cruiser, sipping a coffee, and grinning like he caught me doing something embarrassing.
“Don’t you have work to do?” I grumble, walking over.
He shrugs. “Dispatch is quiet. Figured I’d make sure you weren’t about to set up a shrine to Julie’s muffins.”
“Danish and it’s not funny.”
He smirks. “A little bit funny. Admit it, you’ve got it bad for the bubbly lady.”
I shoot him a glare. “I like the danishes. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh. And you go every morning for the danishes that you could just as easily buy at the gas station on Main?” He takes another sip. “Face it, man. She’s cute. She’s sweet. And you’re as subtle as a freight train. You should ask her out.”
“I don’t date,” I say flatly.
Jose sobers. “Yeah. I know.”
The silence that follows isn’t uncomfortable, but it’s heavy. Jose and I served in the same division but in different units. We met during a joint training op stateside, then reconnected in Pelican Point when I moved here after everything went to hell. He’s one of the few people who knows the truth about what happened during my last deployment. About the ambush. The bodies. The one I couldn’t save.
“I’m just saying,” Jose adds after a beat, “maybe it wouldn’t kill you to talk to someone who smiles when she sees you.”
“She smiles at everyone.”
“Yeah, but she glows when she talks to you. You really haven’t noticed?”
I don’t answer. I have noticed. Too many times.
But what the hell would I do with someone like Julie Harper, anyway?
She’s light and laughter and has her own business dreams. I’m smoke and broken pieces, stitched together with silence and duty.
“She deserves someone who doesn’t wake up at 2 a.m. sweating through the sheets,” I mutter.
Jose sighs. “Man, we all wake up sweating sometimes. Doesn’t mean you can’t try.”
Before I can respond, the radio crackles on his belt.
Dispatch: “Unit Two-One, possible disturbance reported at Bayside Marina. Caller reported loud voices, possible argument.”
Jose keys his mic. “Copy that. Two-One responding.”
He tosses his coffee into the bin and opens his cruiser door. “Are you heading back to the station?”
“Yeah.”
He nods. “See you at the briefing.”
I watch him drive off, then glance at the bakery window.
Through the glass, I can see Julie chatting with a mother and her toddler. She squats to the kid’s level, smiling as she offers a sample cookie. The boy’s face lights up. So does hers.
Yeah. She deserves someone who makes her glow like that and I’m not that guy.
Not now. Probably not ever.
But I’ll still come back tomorrow morning.
