Elliot Crane
Are you doing okay?
Seth Mays
Fine.
You?
I’m good.
What are you up to this weekend?
I still wasn’tsure how I felt about Elliot texting me. It was familiar—but at the same time, I recognized that it was our constant text exchanges that had gotten me into this mess in the first place. And yeah, okay, I was glad I’d moved out here, even if it didn’t end up with me and Elliot together, but it had also given me the gnawing ache under my sternum that I wasn’t particularly enjoying.
It was weird, if I were being honest. It felt like we’d broken up, but we’d never been together in the first place.
I was the one who had crossed the boundaries Elliot had set and I’d agreed to, but now that I was trying to actually uphold those boundaries, Elliot was the one who was texting me first.
I kept telling myself that I needed to stop hoping every time I got a message. To stop thinking of it as a what-if and just recognize that he was texting me the way a friend would. The way Quincy would. Or Hart.
Except no matter how many times I told myself to stop hoping, every time the little chime went off telling me I had a message, my heart beat a little faster, wondering if it was Elliot.
I sighed, then answered his question, because clearly I was terrible at learning my lessons.
I started a fire investigation course.
Like, arson investigation?
Yeah.
Is that something you’re interested in?
I am, yeah.
That’s good, then.
Congrats.
I didn’t explain that this was the first time I’d worked a fire scene. Richmond had its own arson investigation team who got called in to process fire scenes. So the burned-out car off highway 29 had been the first time I’d been at any sort of fire. The fact that it had been arson was coincidental. But now that I knew that was a possibility… Let’s just say that one of the coolest things about chemistry is that chemicals do really interesting things when you combine them with fire and heat. The waythings melt can tell you a lot about what they’re made of or what they aren’t made of, and so on.
I knew some of that from biochem, but I hadn’t gotten to use it very much—occasionally there would be evidence that someone had set fire to in a trash can or thrown into a fireplace, but that had been the extent of it. Being able to play with accelerants and test things like melting temperatures and interactions between different things just seemed like fun.
I had a moment of regret that I didn’t have my lab equipment here in Shawano.
I’d looked into a storage unit, and they were cheaper out here, but what I didn’t have was the amount of money it would take to move a whole bunch of expensive and precise lab equipment that would require very careful packing and/or specialist movers. I’d have to save up for a year or two before I’d be able to even think about affordingthat.
I deliberately closed the text app, forcing myself to finish getting dressed so that I could drive the hour or so it would take to get to the training site in Green Bay.
Then I changed my mind, opened it again, and sent a message to Quincy.I’m starting fire investigation training today!
It was early, so I didn’t figure she’d respond for a few hours yet, because when left to her own devices, Quincy was about as much of a morning person as Noah—which was to say not at all.
I was pouring coffee out of my new thrift store french press into my travel mug when my phone buzzed.
Jealous!Quincy had sent me.I’d rather be doing that right now. Instead, I’m staring down at another hit and run. Remember the faun from March?
I remembered.Yeah. Another faun?
