Falling for Sharona Fleming was as sudden as most things in Randy Disher's life. When he was a kid, for example, he wanted to drive a dump truck when he grew up. He didn't exactly know what that would mean, but he was sure that was what he wanted to do. Absolutely. One hundred percent.
Then one day on the way home from school he and his mother passed an arrest in progress, and he saw the swirling red lights and watched a man in blue putting handcuffs on another man and heard his mother explain that the police officer was doing his job—helping to keep people safe. And Randy knew. That's what he wanted to do with his life.
Okay, falling for Sharona wasn't that dramatic, but it did seem that sudden. One day she was insulting him and he was rolling his eyes and wishing she would just go away and never come back, and the next day he was purposely courting her attention—greeting her when she and Monk came to a crime scene, delivering all of the kicker bits of information to her, smiling eagerly whenever she dropped her exasperated expression for even a second. True, she was still insulting him, but...
When he went home that night, he found himself grinning, and when he thought about the reason, he realized that in his head he was replaying the one time she smiled back at him. Well…sort of. She was looking in his general direction, anyway. And Randy knew. He was going to marry her someday.
He had always been quick to jump to conclusions.
After that first day, he found himself looking for excuses to say her name. It used to be so grating, so obnoxious. Like her voice, really. Or like her voice used to be. Her voice was now what her name was: melodious. Melodious. That was really the only word for it. "Sharona," he would say, drawing it out a bit because the name felt good in his mouth. "Lieutenant," she would reply, those first weeks after everything changed, and he would swell up inside from a simultaneous sense of pride and of a strong desire to prove himself worthy, of the title and of her.
He also found himself dragging out the pauses in his delivery of crucial information. These moments had originally stemmed from his aversion to having Monk cut him off mid-sentence with the information it had taken Randy hours to dig up. If Monk knew the answer, Randy was going to pause to let him say it. He had grown to relish the times when the silences went unfilled. They were so…validating. After the sudden turnaround in his feelings for Sharona, he indulged in these dramatic silences even more frequently, just for the opportunity they provided to make and sustain eye contact with her.
But whenever he met her eyes during those silences, looking for a hint of affection somewhere deep within them, all he saw was incredulity that he could possibly be as dense as she thought he was. Or as he actually was. He wasn't sure which.
So he tried to get over her by dating other women. He even had a serious girlfriend for a while—Crystal. Then one night Crystal had found out that the only picture he had of her was one of her modeling shots. She had dragged him to one of those photo booths and paid to get a series of pictures of the two of them together. She told him that the pictures would prove to everybody that she really existed, that they could stop doubting him.
He should have been pleased, but the first thing that flashed into his mind was Sharona's reaction to the tie his last girlfriend bought for him, over a year ago now.
"It's a gift from my girlfriend," he had said.
"She has very good taste," Sharona had replied. Then she grinned and added, "In ties, not in men."
"Do I detect a hint of jealousy?" he asked.
"If you do, it's the only detecting you've ever done," she said.
Randy looked at the pictures he held in his hand. Pictures of him and this beautiful woman who wanted to be his girlfriend. Smiling—laughing—gazing into each other's eyes—kissing... He couldn't help but wonder. "The only detecting you've ever done." What did she mean by that?
That was the night he broke up with Crystal. Not that anybody believed him about that, either.
"Must be hard," Sharona said. "It's hard to come by an imaginary significant other. A good one, I mean."
He rolled his eyes and pretended not to notice the way she was smiling when she said it. But he saw. He was quick that way. He saw how she looked at him that day, and the next, and the day after that. And the times she didn't look. He saw those, too, and he knew what they meant. Or at least he sure hoped he did.
