Infinite Loop Read online

  “Just forget I said anything, okay? I just—”

  Mel shushed the redhead, placing her fingers across pouty lips. “It’s okay.” Maybe I don’t want to be an asshole anymore. Not with her. “But I think we should stop for tonight, okay?”

  Regan gave her a defeated sigh. “I’m sorry. I really do want to spend the night with you, you know.” She gave a sad little chuckle, shaking her head before dropping it into her hands. “God, this alcohol is making me honest.”

  Mel climbed off her motorcycle and held out her hand to Regan. “I like honest. It’s refreshing.”

  Regan snorted but took her hand, standing up to clumsily dismount the bike. “Refreshing, huh?”

  As she stepped away from the bike, she stumbled a bit, and Mel caught her in an impromptu embrace that surprised both of them. “You’re very refreshing, Regan.”

  “So, do you want to come inside?”

  Mel gripped Regan’s elbows and stepped out of their embrace with a regretful smile. “No, I meant what I said. I think we should stop for tonight.”

  “Okay.” Her disappointment was plain.

  “Hey.” Mel reached forward to tilt Regan’s face up. “I said that we’d better stop for tonight, okay?” She paused, uncertain. “If this isn’t just going to be a one-night stand, we probably shouldn’t start it out like one.”

  Regan raised doubtful eyes.

  “I mean it,” Mel insisted. She wasn’t certain she meant anything. The only thing she knew for sure was that she couldn’t sleep with Regan now for reasons that eluded her. She wanted Regan so bad she could taste it, but here was her conscience deciding to introduce itself just in time to screw up the evening. She knew she’d felt something different with this woman tonight, but she hadn’t counted on this. But no matter how much her reactions unnerved her, something told her to take a chance—her feelings were too unfamiliar not to explore. Aware of the silence dragging out between them, she said, “Why don’t you give me your number? I’ll call you, we can go get dinner somewhere.”

  “Are you sure?” Regan gave her a serious look. “If you’re not interested, I’d really rather just—”

  “Regan, be quiet and get me your number, okay?”

  Regan broke into an awkward smile, then took a step back and adjusted her glasses. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

  Mel leaned against her bike and watched Regan open the side door of her house. A light appeared in the window moments after she disappeared inside, and Mel exhaled a shaky breath. Her mind was awhirl; she wanted to stay just as much as she wanted to leave, but she was afraid to make a mistake.

  Are you actually going to call her? She thought back over the evening, and especially about the unexpected tenderness, even protectiveness, she felt for Regan. Maybe she would call. Maybe she would do something different.

  After a couple minutes, the door opened and Regan approached. Mel shifted on her feet, covertly straightening her clothes and trying to maintain a neutral expression. She even managed a small smile, and felt the smile grow slightly when Regan returned it.

  “Here. I wrote my home number on the back.” Regan handed her a thick business card, the letters visible in the moonlight.

  Regan O’Riley, Software Developer. Mel grinned. “Regan O’Riley, huh?” She realized that she probably hadn’t known the last names of at least half the women she’d slept with. “That’s very cute.”

  “One crack about the blarney stone or leprechauns, and I’ll smack your mouth,” Regan said with a playful scowl. “I’ve heard it all.”

  Mel laughed out loud at Regan’s warning. She was so adorably non-threatening that Mel couldn’t help but lean over and, still chuckling, kiss the tip of her chin. “Thank you. It feels good to laugh like that.” She couldn’t remember the last time someone had really made her laugh.

  “You’re welcome,” Regan said. “I had a really good time tonight. For a straight bar, you know.”

  “I know. Me, too.”

  “Cool.” Regan planted a quick, shy kiss on Mel’s cheek. “Goodnight, then.”

  Mel slipped the card into her back pocket. “Goodnight.”

  With one last smile, Regan turned and ambled up to the side door, then disappeared inside, taking the brilliant promise of the evening with her.

  Deflated, Mel got back on her bike. This had been one fucked-up, surreal night, from beginning to end. She placed the palm of her hand flat against the cheek that still burned from that small kiss. Will I call her? She looked back over her shoulder at an illuminated window, wishing she could catch sight of the woman inside. I hope so.

  Chapter Two

  “Burning the midnight oil?”

  Adam’s question barely penetrated the wall of sound being pumped directly into Regan’s ears. She considered pretending that she hadn’t heard him, engrossed as she was in the crafting of a particularly vexing function. But if I don’t answer, he’ll just do that annoying flicking at my ear-thing until I do. Regan fumbled with her iPod to stop Pink Floyd, and removed the ear buds.

  She turned in her chair and looked up at him. “I just know there’s a good reason you’re interrupting my flow here.”

  “I thought you were almost finished with Thompson Automotive.” He propped himself against her desk with his arms folded. “You know, it’s not good for you to spend so many late nights slaving over the keyboard.”

  Regan snorted. “What are you talking about? How do you think I spent my college years?” Oh, hell, let’s be honest here. “Or my high school ones?”

  “And look where that got you.” Adam gave her a smug grin and made a sweeping gesture around their funky industrial office. “Come on, let’s go out and see a movie or something.”

  Regan sighed and leaned back in her chair. “That would mean dealing with people. I’m not really in the mood.”

  Adam migrated further onto her desk, sitting and swinging his legs back and forth in lazy rhythm. He looked around at the empty workstations, long since abandoned for the evening. “You work too much.”

  “What else is there to do?”

  “I don’t know. Go out, socialize.” Adam gave her a careful look. “Get laid.”

  Regan pulled off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Please don’t ask about Friday night. Now that Tuesday evening was here and she had yet to hear from Mel, she had decided to chalk the entire episode up as a humiliating example of why she shouldn’t drink anymore. Who said honesty was the best policy?

  “I’m fine,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to get a little lost in my code.”

  Adam’s heel banged against her desk. “As long as you find your way back to the real world every once in a while, no, there isn’t.”

  Regan lifted her eyes to his. “I’m not that bad.”

  He leaned over and clapped her on the back. “Regan, they’ve stopped banking your comp time. Paul knows that if you ever came collecting, we wouldn’t see you for six months.”

  Regan smirked at the thought of her project manager panicking if she ever took advantage of the fruits of all her overtime. “Dude, you know I spend plenty of time slacking off, playing video games. I’m not exactly a chronic workaholic.” She spun her chair back around to face her monitor and typed a fast line of instinctive code. “So you’re going off to your thrilling and exciting night, then?”

  “Hey, I never claimed that my night was going to be particularly thrilling. That was what you were supposed to provide by hanging out with me. The thrill.”

  Regan tilted her head to raise amused eyebrows at her tall friend. “I provide thrills for no man,” she told him.

  “Don’t be so sure of that.” Adam chuckled. “I was pretty thrilled by the concept of living vicariously through you Friday night.”

  Regan released a deep sigh. Great, he’s brought it up. “You give me way too much credit.”

  Adam’s grin faded. “So, it didn’t go well?”

  Regan shrugged. “Well, yeah. I mean, we didn’t—” She sig
hed again. “I don’t know. I guess not.”

  Adam answered with a soft groan. “I’m sorry. I should have taken the hint when you refused to talk about it yesterday.”

  “I think I fucked up.”

  “How?”

  “I thought it might be something more than it was.” She let her disappointment seep to the surface. “She was really amazing.”

  Adam rested his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Regan. Someday some woman out there is going to realize how cool you are, you know that?”

  Regan snorted. “You think?”

  “I know.” Adam slid off the desk and grabbed the backpack he’d set on the floor beside him, hefting it over his shoulder. “In the meantime, though, have fun with your code.”

  “I will.” She looked over at her glowing monitor, at the formatted lines of well-commented code. I always do.

  “Want me to lock the door on my way out?” Adam called out to her as he walked away.

  “Yes, please,” she called over her shoulder. To herself, she mumbled, “I might be here awhile.”

  Programming was the ultimate escape. Regan supposed she looked at writing code like most people probably looked at reading books; it was her opportunity to leave herself for a little while, to become absorbed in pure creation and problem-solving. It gave her great satisfaction, and somehow she was less lonely when she was banging away at her keyboard. Of course, the loneliness always came back when she returned from her self-imposed isolation.

  Regan took a break about a half hour after Adam left, eyes straining from her already full day of work. Sliding her glasses off, she pinched wearily at the bridge of her nose, then put them back on and looked around the empty office.

  “Time to get serious,” she said aloud, speaking just to hear a human voice.

  Regan had her late-night coding routine down pat. She rose to her feet, lifted her hands above her head, and rose up onto her toes. Twisting her torso slowly from side to side, she managed a soft groan, then dropped her hands to her sides. I need to learn to drink coffee, she mused as she retrieved her empty water bottle from her desk and refilled it at the company water cooler. She glanced at the coffee machine the rest of her co-workers could not live without. I’m not sure I’m a real programmer if I don’t worship caffeine. Too bad it tastes like hot garbage.

  She returned to her desk and set the bottle carefully beside her monitor. She’d been quite paranoid about that little maneuver ever since the infamous water-spilling-into-the-keyboard incident of September 2002. Adam and Dan hadn’t let her forget about that debacle for weeks.

  Regan dropped into her comfortable desk chair and set her feet squarely on the floor, swinging the chair this way and that. Then, after only a moment’s hesitation, she pushed off with her toes and propelled her chair into the open space away from her desk. Another moment, and she set herself spinning in mad circles. All part of the routine.

  The room blurred around her, objects blending into one another. She waited until she could feel her head whirling before she tried to catch up with the visual input surrounding her, then planted her feet hard.

  The ensuing head rush was ample inspiration to begin a marathon night of coding.

  *

  Officer Melanie Raines sat in the passenger seat of her patrol car and stared out the window at nothing. She was thinking about Regan O’Riley. Again. I should just call her, she told herself for the millionth time. She wanted to call her; every day that passed made her more certain that something important was slipping away. Why was it so hard?

  “If someone had asked me last week if it were possible for you to be any quieter, I’d have told them no way in hell,” a deep voice startled her. “Apparently, I’d have been wrong.”

  Mel blinked and turned her head. Her partner glanced at her with gentle brown eyes, and then turned back to look at the road.

  She managed a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” Peter Hansen said easily. “Just thought maybe you needed to talk about something. Or not.”

  Mel sighed. More than three years as partners and not once had she taken him up on that offer. Was he ever going to get the hint? Did she really want him to get the hint? She liked knowing that Hansen cared, even if she didn’t know quite how to respond to that caring. One day he would give up, and how would she feel then?

  She made a decision. “Damn, you’re persistent.”

  “I’m a cop. I’m supposed to be persistent.” Hansen eased their car to a stop at a red light and flicked a cautious glance at her. “You seem…darker than usual this week.”

  Mel studied the people crossing the street in front of them, the dreary, drizzling sky that hung over Woodward Avenue and their stopped car. Darker than usual. How dark was she most days?

  “Would you believe that I’ve spent more time with you, Hansen, in the past three years than I have with any one person for almost ten years now?” Mel surprised herself with the admission.

  “Sounds lonely.”

  “No, it hasn’t been. I mean, it never felt lonely.” She wondered if that was the truth.

  “But it does now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Why maybe?” Hansen sounded as if he were trying to approach a scared animal he feared would bolt at his presence.

  Amazed by the infinite patience he always seemed to have for her, Mel brought her fingers up to rub at her throbbing temple. Maybe the way to stop being so miserable was to try something different. She drew in a breath, then pushed forward before she lost her nerve. “I met a woman last weekend.”

  Hansen looked surprised. Not surprised that she was a lesbian, surely—she’d told him that two years ago, after unleashing barely controlled fury at a couple of fellow cops who had been making homophobic jokes about a mugging victim. Rather, he was surprised by the fact that she was saying anything at all. It wasn’t her style to bare her soul to anyone.

  Hansen laughed, a deep, sonorous rumble. “I should’ve guessed. Isn’t it always a woman?”

  Mel shot him a cautious grin, unsure of how to proceed, whether to keep talking or to shut the hell up already. But what did she have to lose, really? “See, that’s the thing.” She felt like she was about to reveal a dirty secret, and she tried to choose her words carefully. “It never really has been for me.”

  “No?”

  “What I mean is, I, uh…I don’t generally become preoccupied with women. I mean, a particular woman.” Mel wished she’d never started this. “The truth is, I’m not usually occupied with any woman for more than an evening or two.”

  “Ah,” Hansen said.

  Mel waited for a moment, then realized the older man wasn’t going to say anything more. She slouched a little further into her seat and stared out the window. So much for the heart-to-heart.

  “You know what my favorite thing is?” Hansen said after a long moment.

  “No.” It was the truth. She hardly knew anything about her partner outside their car and the precinct and the miserable uniform.

  “I like the way that my wife knows when I’ve had one of those days.” Hansen’s voice grew tight. “Like a couple weeks ago, with that Rogers kid.”

  Mel sucked in an uneasy breath, refusing to react to his words. She struggled to keep her face impassive as she was assailed with images from that day; the seventeen-year-old kid lying on the hot, cracked sidewalk in a pool of his own blood and urine, an honor student in the wrong place at the wrong time, two months from high school graduation and the promise of a full-ride scholarship to the University of Michigan. Nathan Rogers’s mother, shaking with hysterical sobs behind yellow police tape, there to watch her son being carried away with a sheet over his face because he was shot not thirty feet from the front door of his home.

  Mel couldn’t suppress the shudder that ran through her body at the memory of those cries, at the senseless loss of potential and her own feeling of empty impotence when all she could do was try to help clean up the m
ess.

  Yes, that had been a bad day.

  “Somehow she just knows.” Hansen was still talking. “I don’t know how, even if I don’t say a word. And she knows just what I need. To make me forget, to remind me of the good things. Even if it’s just a cold beer waiting for me, or a story about something Katie learned at school that day, or a hug…” he trailed off then, sounding a little embarrassed.

  “Yeah,” Mel said, totally out of her league with this touchy-feely stuff.

  “I guess all I’m trying to say is there’s nothing wrong with wanting that,” he continued. “I think everyone needs someone to remind them of the good things. Even you, Officer Hard-Ass.”

  Mel snorted at the nickname. She wanted to ask him what the good things were, but didn’t. She couldn’t admit to him that she didn’t know anymore. She stared out the passenger window again, arms folded over her stomach. Could Regan remind her of the good things? She’d felt pretty good when she was with her.

  “Maybe,” she murmured, as much to herself as to Hansen.

  She continued to look at the passing buildings, the foot traffic, anything but Hansen’s face. She was done talking, exhausted from the turbulence of her emotions and unwilling to lose her composure while on the job.

  Hansen must have sensed that the subject was closed because he fell quiet. The only sounds in their car were the low guitar melody coming from their radio and the hum of the city streets beneath their tires. After their uncharacteristically open conversation, the silence no longer felt comfortable, as it normally did, and instead bore down upon them, making Mel feel close and cramped within the confines of the vehicle.

  “So, you taking the detective test soon?” he asked after a few minutes. His voice was light, his attempt to change the subject pitifully obvious.

  From one shitty topic to another, she thought, and kept her answer brief and non-committal. “Not sure.”

  “I remember the twenty-two year old kid who couldn’t stop talking about making detective. When she talked, I mean.” She raised an eyebrow at him, and he added, “What’s stopping you? The Lieutenant has even started asking me about it.”