Cross Trail Middle School Chapter 15
After work, James had promised to bring Amelia to get her car in Providence. He could only imagine how much the garage cost was going to be after multiple nights, but he was also going to insist on covering it.
“Elizabeth texted me earlier to check in,” Amelia said as they got his car. “Apparently she and Jason didn’t know what happened until Riley came back in.”
“Did she also say Riley was wrong?”
“Yeah,” Amelia admitted.
“Elizabeth’s right too.”
Amelia nodded and looked out the window as James headed out of Leominster.
“So I will be home tonight,” she said a little later, after she’d asked James about the restaurant case and the Frederico case, then lightly said to let her know and she’d help out next time.
He wouldn’t, but he appreciated it.
“But?” James prompted.
“But Riley asked if we could talk.”
James resisted the urge to sigh, but apparently his opinion was obvious. “I know,” Amelia said quickly. “But she just asked to talk, that’s all. I don’t want to get back together with her. I really don’t. I’m…I guess I’m really mad at her. And you’ve all been right. But I feel like I owe it to her to talk.”
No, she absolutely did not, but James also knew he wasn’t going to win this argument. “Do you want me to wait in town?” he asked.
“Nah,” she said, waving him off. “But I guess send me a rescue call when you get home? In case I need to be like, oh no, my house is on fire, or something.”
“I can do that,” he said.
They were quiet for a few minutes. “I will miss going to Marcy’s,” Amelia said. “God, I love that place.”
“She doesn’t own it,” James said.
“Yeah, but she lives there.”
“So what? She owns Providence now?”
“Yeah, but she’s the one who brought me there for the first time,” Amelia argued. “So it feels like I should be the one who doesn’t go anymore.”
James shrugged. “Maybe I’ll start going to Protocol,” Amelia said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a dance night in Boston that’s pretty good, though I like Marcy’s better. Oh, it’s where I ended up seeing Bradley that night.”
That drunken midnight call from the two of them had been the highlight of James’s week. “Though I’m sure he’d love that,” Amelia said with a laugh. “With his whole ‘I have a life outside this place’ thing.”
“Do you think he wants to work here?”
The question was out before James quite realized it had been there at all. “What?” Amelia asked.
“Bradley,” James said with an automatic glance toward the center console, where there was no comms unit to be found because he wasn’t at work. “Do you think he’d go back to Essex County if he had the choice?”
From the corner of his eye, he could see Amelia frowning at him. “Why do you ask?” she said.
He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But he seems happier when he’s dealing with the Essex County team. And when I asked him why he ended up here, he said he never would have if Robin hadn’t lied to him about becoming a field agent. He was already pissed at me for other stuff when he said that, because what else is new? But he’d never mentioned the Robin thing before.”
“He’s mentioned it to me,” Amelia said.
“I don’t know,” James repeated. “But, you know, he goes out dancing with people from his old team and if we invite him out for a beer after work it’s like, how dare we? Even when he stayed with me, he tried to keep some distance. He was bad at it, but he did. And I just think, like, maybe he wants to go back, but can’t.”
“Would that bother you?”
Would it? “If he went back? I mean, yeah, I’d miss him,” James said. “I’d miss any of you if you left. Though don’t take that as a reason to stay if you really want to leave,” he added quickly.
“I wasn’t planning to, but okay,” Amelia said. “Is there any particular reason you were thinking about that?”
“Not really,” James said. “I just don’t want him to be, like, unhappy here, you know?”
“I mean, first of all, do you think the man in charge of dealing with administrative protocol doesn’t have access to all the job openings and the knowledge of how to apply for them?” Amelia asked. “And he rents a room in a crappy apartment, so there’s no huge investment keeping him here either. Plus, did you know you’re the first captain to willingly put him in the field? Robin only did it when he was desperate.”
James glanced at her, then back at the road. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, he told me that.”
“When?”
“Oh God, forever ago? I think like a month after you became captain. After we mutually shot him, believe it or not.”
James had been the one who tried to actually shoot Bradley, with real bullets, but he was getting over that. He felt better, a knot he hadn’t been aware of loosening a little. “I just don’t know what’s keeping him here if he’s got other opportunities, maybe closer to where he wants to be.”
“Yeah, I wonder what’s possibly keeping Bradley here.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged as James turned on his windshield wipers against the starting rain. “Nothing. It seems to me that he hates the job about the same amount that we all do. And if he hated us specifically, he wouldn’t have driven an hour to Providence to pick us up the other night. If he wanted to leave, he’d leave.”
They got to the garage forty minutes later, James pulling into the empty spot beside Amelia’s car. “Thank you so much,” Amelia said as she got out. “I’ll text you when I’m on my way home, I’m not planning to stay long.”
He somehow doubted that, but she looked alright as she got in her car.
***
When James got home, he sent a quick rescue text to Amelia before he was out of the car. Hopefully she was on her way back. Talking for a few minutes was fine, but if Riley had been as bad to her as everyone was saying, then he really didn’t want Amelia to get back together with her.
There wasn’t a chance that he could sit down and talk it out with her, though. They could talk on an equal level about other stuff, of course. They were close friends and literally lived together now, and she’d made it clear she still loved and respected him. But would she take him seriously if he tried to sit her down and give her dating advice after she’d literally had to strap him to a bed, delirious and screaming for the woman who was controlling him to save him?
He needed to stop. James forced himself not to shudder as he went in the front door, nodding to a woman who lived downstairs. She didn’t feel any different about him. None of them did. It had been almost six months, he had to be over it. He was over it.
He wished he had Matt’s number. Even if neither of them wanted what Amelia and Riley had been hoping for, James did like him. And that little while before he lost his mind had been really, really good. As good as it had been with Meredith.
And Matt had been really kind afterward. Maybe they could be friends?
James got up to the apartment and sat down on the couch, pulling off his gloves before taking out his phone and scrolling absently through his messages. He hadn’t gotten Matt’s number, but maybe Amelia had it. He could send him a text, that way Matt had the option to answer or not.
It was late and he was tired, but he didn’t want to go to bed before Amelia got back. Maybe he should distract himself with some cleaning. The living room felt empty and weirdly large without Graham’s enormous movie collection and TV. James had put his old, smaller TV out and there were still a lot of moving boxes stacked by the doorway. They were all Amelia’s things, so he didn’t feel right unpacking them now while she wasn’t here. So no cleaning, but maybe-
His phone buzzed in his hand and instead of Amelia like he expected, his text thread with Bradley glowed with a new message.
BRADLEY
Are you still in rhode island?
Weird.
JAMES
No, why?
Images of flames, dinosaurs, destruction raining down on St. Margaret’s Way filled his mind as he waited for a response. But his phone rang instead.
“The boy from the other night is here at headquarters,” Bradley said as James picked up.
“What?”
“Cody. The other kid who fucking conjured the ghost. He just showed up at headquarters. He said the ghost appeared at his house.”
James grabbed his gloves and was out the door before Bradley was done talking.
