Chapter 21

A stunning young woman with olive, tan skin and curly black hair had just walked into the bar and was looking around, scanning the crowd of people. Her presence caught the eye of more people than just us.

"Over here!" I called out to her and waved.

Zoe's tentative look was replaced by a big smile as she waved back and began making her way over to us. Her smile wavered slightly and became shy when she noticed all of our eyes glued on her. I shot a glance back at Kevin who's face was flushed in embarrassment.

I got up from my stool and greeted Zoe with a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek. "I'm so glad you made it! Everyone, this is Zoe, my best friend and the restaurant's most prized waitress. These are Kim, Adam, Vanessa, that big tomato back there is Kevin, and you've met Jay," I introduced everyone.

Her brows furrowed slightly in confusion at Kevin's introduction, but her big smile regained its full capacity when Jay reached out his hand.

"Hey, I'm Jay," he introduced himself politely.

"Zoe, nice to meet you properly this time."

I borrowed a stool from the neighbouring table and pulled it between mine and Kim's. Zoe shook hands with Kim too and waved hello to everyone else at the table, then sat down.

"Would you like something to drink?" Jay asked her.

"I'll have whatever you guys are having, thank you," she replied and gave me an impressed look as Jay headed to the bar.

I smiled at her, then turned my head to watch Jay. His attentiveness towards Zoe warmed my heart.

"So, you're all police?" I heard Zoe ask behind me while my eyes stayed fixed on Jay.

The women that had been by the entrance earlier, had found their way over to the firefighters at the bar. A few of the men seemed to enjoy the attention. One woman in a tight, baby pink dress was chatting with Stella when Jay walked over. They interrupted their conversation and converted their attention to Jay who placed his order. Stella moved a few feet away to get the drink ready while the woman said something to Jay that made him smile. She responded to his reply by grabbing his arm, throwing her head back, and laughing. I wondered if they knew each other.

Seeing their interaction sent an uneasy, uncomfortable feeling through my body. When I identified it as jealousy, I pushed it away and reject it immediately. I wasn't a jealous person and it annoyed me that this feeling had come forth at all.

What Jay and I had was special to me, and I wanted nothing and nobody to come between us, but feeling jealous simply because a woman was flirting with him, seemed foolish to me. I knew full well that Jay could talk to whomever he wanted and that their chat had no meaning to him, but I also couldn't help wondering what they were talking about.

Martha's words echoed in my mind, 'Feelings don't listen to reason'. I realised that this principle applies to all forms of feelings and that the only thing that matters is how you decide to deal with them once you have them.

The blonde woman was still holding on to Jay's arm as the two of them kept chatting. When Stella brought him the beer, he shook the woman off gently and excused himself with a charming smile. Her disappointed gaze followed him.

Our eyes met as he walked back to our table, and I raised one eyebrow questioningly with a half-smile on my lips.

"She seemed to like you," I commented.

Jay grinned. "Yeah, I think she's a little drunk. She asked for my number."

He sat down next to me and pushed the beer towards Zoe.

"I can't blame her, she's got good taste," I shrugged and rested my hand on his thigh.

He stared back at me, smiling, and we shared a long look between us.

"Hailey?" I heard someone ask and realised that I hadn't listened to the conversation that had gone on at the table for the last few minutes.

"Huh?" I turned to find everyone staring at me.

"Elias still hasn't reached out to you at all?" Vanessa repeated her question.

I shook my head. "Nope. Hasn't reached out, hasn't come to work, won't even answer or return my dad's phone calls."

"If I ever see him again, I'll give him a proper talking-to!" Zoe huffed. "And I'm an expert at those, I have five kid brothers."

Kevin's eyebrows shot up, "Five? I thought I had a lot on my plate when my two little siblings lived with me."

"Yeah, my mum and I have our hands full raising them. The youngest one is only seven. There's never a dull day in our house," Zoe chuckled. "Your siblings lived with you?" she asked Kevin and engaged in a casual conversation with him about raising kids.

"Hey, guys!" The man who I presumed was dating Stella based on their interaction I'd witnessed earlier stood at the end of our table. "I heard that you managed to get Gustavo Lopez off the streets?"

"Hey Severide, yeah that's right," Jay replied hesitantly.

"I wanted to thank you guys for that. Lopez caused a lot of trouble for the CFD by regularly burning down his rival's stash houses."

"Yeah, no problem. We know about that," Adam's brows drew together. "But how did you hear about the arrest? The case is still under wraps."

"I have my contacts," Severide grinned slyly.

He turned towards the bar. "Hey Herrmann, get these guys a round of shots on me!" he called out over the hum of the crowd and the music playing.

The man behind the bar nodded in recognition.

"Have a good night," Severide said and slapped Jay and Adam on the shoulders before leaving.

Jay turned towards Zoe and me, "You didn't hear any of this," he told us seriously. "Some of Lopez's associates don't know that he's been arrested, and the police in Wisconsin are still working on the case. This can't get out."

Zoe hadn't caught anything Severide had said anyway because she'd been absorbed in the conversation with Kevin, and I raised my hands innocently, "Heard what?"

Adam picked up the tray of shots from the bar and placed them on the table.

"What's the occasion?" Will asked as he emerged out of the growing crowd of people that had accumulated in the bar.

Everyone greeted him with big smiles.

"The end of the case," Jay explained. "Want me to get you a shot too?"

"No, thanks. I'm on-call, so no drinks for me tonight," he told his brother and sat on a stool that Adam pushed over to him.

I turned to Zoe, "That's Jay's brother," I whispered.

"Oh, that family really does have good genes," she murmured back with an impressed smile.

"This is Hailey's friend, Zoe," Jay introduced her to Will. "And this is my brother, Will."

They greeted each other with smiles and waves as I distributed the shots amongst everyone at the table.

We held our glasses up, then downed the shots. What followed were scrunched up faces and disgusted gasps. I choked on the burning and intensely bitter taste of my shot and started coughing. After everyone had recovered, they started laughing at the awful flavour of the shots while I still gasped for air.

Jay chuckled as he pulled my stool closer to him and patted my back softly. "You good?" he asked with a sympathetic grin on his face.

I nodded and coughed a few more times but started chuckling too. Jay wrapped his arm around my waist and placed a kiss on the side of my face.

"What was that?" Vanessa exclaimed and washed down the bitter taste of the shot with a mouthful of beer.

"Stella said something about Herrmann's homemade batch of Whisky," Adam said bemusedly. "Now I know why she had that apologetic look on her face."

"I'm glad I didn't have to go through that based on your reactions," Will joked with relief.

"Well I don't have any beer left to wash that taste away, so I'll go get another round. What do y'all want?" Kevin asked and got up from his stool.

As everyone placed their orders with him, Zoe leaned in close to me and whispered, "Is he single?"

"Who Will?"

"No, Kevin," she corrected with a cautious smile.

"Oh!" I grinned, "Yeah, he's single."

Pleased, Zoe straightened up, "Wait up, I'll help you," she called over to Kevin whose face was taken over by a sheepish smile.

He rubbed his nose bashfully to cover it up.

"Get me something with Tequila," I told Zoe since she had distracted Kevin, and as a result, he had forgotten to ask me what I wanted.

They walked off and Kim's expression caught my eye. She raised an eyebrow with a big smile on her face. I shrugged, grinning and rested my chin on Jay's shoulder as I watched Zoe and Kevin talk at the bar.

"That wasn't the original plan, but I like it," I murmured to Jay.

He glanced at them briefly and gave me a quick smile.

Will looked around the bar, completely oblivious to the fact that I had invited him and Zoe to the bar to set them up. "It doesn't happen too often that I see this many familiar faces around here," he reckoned.

"Yeah, you all seem to know each other," I noticed, "Who do you know here?" I asked no one in particular.

"Most of the guys at the bar as well as Herrmann and Stella are firefighters at firehouse 51. We talked to Lieutenant Severide earlier and the guy next to him is Sergeant Platt's husband, Mouch," Jay replied.

That sparked my interest, and I tried to catch a good look at the man who hadn't let Sergeant Platt's demeanour intimidate or scare him off and had married her instead.

"And the man and the woman sitting two tables down, are Doctor Charles the head of Psychiatry at Med and the Chief of Services, Sharon Goodwin," Will added. "I think I also saw a couple of nurses talking to Earl by the entrance earlier. He's a security guard at Med."

"The community of first responders here is like nothing else I've ever experienced. Since I joined the force six months ago, everyone has been incredibly welcoming to me," Vanessa told me. "I've never had such a good, tight-knit group of people around me before."

"Oh, they're coming back," Kim blurted out and hastily got up and raced around the table to sit down on Kevin's stool next to Vanessa before he and Zoe reached the table with the trays of drinks.

Kevin saw her do it and looked at her confused.

"I need to discuss something with Vanessa," Kim fibbed and winked at Kevin.

He shrugged and slid his tray onto the table, then took the tray Zoe was carrying off her hands and placed it down too before squeezing past Jay and me to the stool by the wall. Zoe returned to her old seat, now between me and Kevin.

Will's phone buzzed. "Already?" he exclaimed. "An entire night off despite being on-call would have been too good to be true. I have to go, guys," he excused himself.

Will waved goodbye to everyone and hugged his brother. He gave me a fist bump and a wink before he disappeared into the crowd.

"That's one thing I really like about my job," Zoe commented, "the structured and set working hours. Technically, you guys could get a call that you have to work at any time, right?"

"Yeah, that's true. That makes planning and managing our free time and personal life quite hard sometimes," Jay agreed.

"Sometimes it happens that we go home after a case and only get one or two hours of sleep before being called in again for the next one," Adam said followed by a long yawn which added emphasis to his statement.

Kevin laughed into his beer glass as he took a sip. "Last month, I was at the dentist when I got the call. I had to leave with just my top teeth cleaned," he recalled and got a chuckle out of everyone.

"Our working hours mean that we have to cancel plans quite a lot. I've lost a few friends because I've had to cancel on them a few too many times," Kim said wistfully.

Vanessa put her arm around Kim, "That's why it's so great that we all have each other," she said and Kim smiled at her. "We need to surround ourselves with people who know what the job entails and show understanding for it."

While she said that, Jay glanced at me. When I looked at him, he gave me a smile that conveyed a silent thank you and he intertwined my fingers with his and let his thumb run soothing circles over that back of my hand. I pressed a kiss onto the top of his shoulder, then leaned my head onto it.

"Well isn't this sweet," Adam joked and broke the moment of amicable appreciation between everyone at the table.

"Come on, Adam. You're included too," Vanessa teased and laid her other arm around his shoulders.

He leaned his head on her shoulder, playfully mirroring Jay's and my position, and I rolled my eyes and straightened up with a laugh.

Jay shifted in his seat. "Excuse me for a minute. I need to ask Severide something," he said and headed to the very end of the bar where Severide was talking to Stella and a blonde man.

Next to me, Zoe and Kevin had withdrawn from the group into a conversation of their own again. I sipped on my drink and listened in on a story Adam had begun telling about a time he had promised his sister he would babysit his nephew.

"...I arrived at her house. She was all dressed up and had put a lot of effort into her hair and makeup. It was supposed to be her first, real night out since my nephew was born and she was so excited to finally have a night out with a few friends again. She had just said goodbye and was heading out the door when Voight called with a case. You know the one with the body under the bridge?" he told Vanessa and Kim. "Anyway, my sister…"

I zoned out and didn't hear the rest of his story. My gaze wandered through the crowd of people chatting, drinking, and enjoying themselves and landed on the woman who had hit on Jay earlier. She and two of her friends were talking at the bar, but her eyes were locked in on Jay standing a few feet down from her.

I saw her watch Jay for a couple of minutes until he finished his conversation with the two men and began making his way back to our table. His path led him past the woman. She saw Jay coming, and when he was closest, she took a big step forward and knocked into him. The drink in her hand spilled onto her chest, soaking her baby pink dress and she let out a high-pitched shriek.

"That was so intentional!" Kim exclaimed, and I glanced over at her to see that she had witnessed the incident too.

"Oh, yes, it was," I mumbled irritated because there was no way that she hadn't noticed that Jay was here with me.

I couldn't make out what exactly they were saying, but Jay was apologising profusely and called something to Herrmann who handed him a stack of tissues over the heads of the people sitting at the bar. Jay tried to hand them to the woman, but she was busy fanning her hands towards the soaked and now see-through fabric of her dress, attracting as much attention as possible to her chest and her bra showing through.

The event had caught the eyes of a few bystanders. Feeling a mixture of sympathy for Jay, who looked thoroughly troubled, and annoyance at the woman, I got up from the table. As I walked over to them, she stopped fanning herself to take the napkins after all and started patting her dress dry with one hand and took hold of Jay's arm again with the other.

"Oh, that's alright," she chirped and flashed her prettiest smile at him as I came into earshot. "But you may have to buy me a new drink now!"

Jay looked a little lost for words and didn't know how to react. I came to stand next to him and grabbed his hand.

Getting onto my tiptoes, I whispered into his ear, "She did it on purpose."

While the realisation hit him, I turned to the woman. "Try warm water and white vinegar for that," I told her, pointing to the stain on her dress.

Before she could reply, I pulled Jay along with me to our table where we were welcomed back with grins and a few little cheers from our friends.

"I can't believe that I didn't see what she was doing," Jay chuckled. "I was mortified!"

After we'd sat back down again, I glimpsed back to see the woman still standing where we'd left her, gaping after us.

To make my relationship with Jay clear to her once and for all, I reached up and slid my hand behind his neck to pull him closer. "Come here for a second," I said softly and he leaned down so I could kiss him.

The little performance for the woman quickly evolved into something more. As Jay's hand moved into my hair behind my ear and his lips moved against mine, all bustling and sounds around me, the music, the people talking, faded away. My senses were entirely consumed by his presence and touch and every thought of the place we were in and the people who might be watching disappeared to the furthest depths of my mind.

When he pulled back, the lights came back on and I heard the music playing and the even murmur coming from the people in the room again. I didn't feel the need to look back to know if the woman had seen us. I didn't care anymore.

The kiss had the same effect on Jay and he read my mind. "Want to get out of here?" he whispered and gave me another quick kiss.

I nodded.

"My place?"