She'd been doing this for the better part of her life, had wedged herself into a routine and was comfortably solidified in it. The prospect of promotion, entailing a nice salary raise was certainly enticing, but truth be told, she wasn't sure she could drag herself away from this team, this work. How often, really -- of all the jobs you would ever work in your life -- were you put in a position like the one she was currently in?
The position, the place, where she counted on this reaction from Jack, that flaw in Samantha, the wisecrack from Danny and well-meaning mistake in Martin. She expected these things and...and counted on them to keep her life away from home meaningful. Without that familiarity and comfort of friendship, she supposed her work life would fall into this banality.
She knew them far better than they thought she did and sometimes, Jack especially, took that for granted. They could lie to her or rather, try to lie to her, but it would be feeble and worthless and she could see through the veils, see through it all.
Vivian saw what know one else thought she did. She saw the way Jack and Samantha were to each other, how they started with this innocent flirting and progressed, she supposed, to the consummation of that attraction. Then it must have ended, shortly before Barry Mashburn and she knew this because Jack seemed unusually conflicted, as though he were trying to prove to himself, more than anything, that he wasn't in love with her anymore.
At least, that's how Martin described it to her. And then there was Martin, the other factor Jack hadn't considered and still didn't suspect that Vivian knew about, but she could predict the moments it bothered him when they stood just a little too close.
But Martin and Samantha, though they'd grown closer, hadn't acted on anything because...there wasn't anything to act on. Anything of significance, that is.
Jack, she knew, was giving his marriage the last measure of loyalty before he jumped right off the gangplank. It was sinking, she knew, sinking hard and fast and there was Jack, still clinging to the top of the crow's nest looking for a safe harbor if only, she suspected, for the girls. To give them what he couldn't have: a family.
But what he didn't realize was that, while they might have a family, they wouldn't have a happy one. And where would Jack and Maria be when Hanna was 16?
Danny left for the night, Martin was packing up to go, Samantha was staring at the whiteboard, and Jack moved away from the table to make a phone call in his office.
His wife.
She wondered what lies he could come up with tonight.
And in knowing Jack Malone the way she did, she actually hoped he could find the happy ending his mother never had.
*
He couldn't feel the basic essence of time and so it was that he remained forever in the rawest state of pain, similar to the way a wound feels immediately after it's been made, exposing the tissue and blood and everything you tried to hide. It felt like being cut and bleeding.
It didn't help that Maria didn't seem interested either and they could never just sit and talk and work through their problems. They couldn't just do that because it was an effort to simply be alone together without the awkward feeling like something else needed to be added to the equation before they could even talk as husband and wife.
I'm sorry, he wanted to say, but...he didn't know how to anymore. He didn't even know who to say it to, really.
He needed to go home. He needed to see himself in that place and touch the walls with faded blue paint. If he could like it a little again, maybe he could like it a lot once more. Maybe he could. He could do it. He could do it for his kids.
Replacing the phone back into its cradle, deciding against finding another excuse not to go home, he shut off his lamp and stuffed his hands in his pockets, walked behind Samantha for the second time in the span of a day. Would it be okay if I just stayed here forever? he asked of no one.
"Samantha."
She brought the pencil to her chin, rested against the eraser and didn't feel like turning around.
"I'm going home."
Silence.
"Samantha, why don't I give you a ride, there's --"
"Don't. Don't play my protector, it's not your job. You do that with your wife, Jack, not me. Not me."
She brought the pencil down, rolled it around her fingers.
"Besides, I'm going to a bar, spend some time with my brother and his partner."
He bounced up on his feet for a moment like a little boy standing patiently in a room of bridge-playing middle-aged women who preferred tea to coffee and dinner mints with biscuits.
"That's good --"
"Right, look, I should go, " she said, standing up and pulling her coat around her, still not meeting his face.
And with that, she was gone, leaving the man who'd once been a boy and watched his mom cry when she thought no one was looking, to his demons.
Samantha, he said to a memory, you might be...you might be the one who can save me.
*
Some people, rich people perhaps, preferred bars with classy drinks like Cosmopolitans served up on fancy coasters with little or no music setting the mood. No smoking, save for cigars, and clothing had to be at least on the same caliber as their own, which meant everyone had to wear Prada, Gucci, or fashion from Saks Fifth Avenue.
Considering no one she knew, especially not her, was like that, Samantha and her colleagues chose a bar that played loud rock music, catered to pool players and heavy drinkers and chain smokers that filled the room with the kind of fog you see in movies.
This time, she was late and Alexis was already there. She slid in across from her friend and opted out of alcohol for tonight. Funny, some might think, considering the conflicts she'd been having with Jack lately. But she wanted to be aware of those things, if only to really feel more towards him, even if it was anger, than she'd felt in a long time.
"Matt's not here yet?" she asked.
"No, he'll be here in a few. This case is even starting to get to him, " she said around her second shot of whiskey.
It was obviously taking its toll on Alexis -- she never drank straight whiskey unless she had something she really wanted to forget for a few hours. But she held her liquor well. Two shots in and she was just as lucid as she'd been hours ago at the diner.
"Sam?" she asked, bending forward.
"What did it feel like when you were shot?"
Samantha's eyes widened for a moment and she folded her arms across the wooden table. The question came out of nowhere and she couldn't understand the purpose for it, but she answered anyway.
"It -- you know when you get a pain in a muscle sometimes and it starts out mild, but it builds and builds and it takes over your entire body, and the pain is so intense you can't breathe?"
Alexis nodded.
"That's how it felt, Lex."
It felt like dying.
Alexis was quiet for a moment before she spoke again.
"You gotta admire some people."
"How's that?" Samantha asked, picking up a few chips from the bowl on their plate and munching on them one by one.
"The ones who find someone to love, you know? I mean, you got that, there's not much more you need."
"You always get this deep with whiskey?"
"It's not the whiskey, I've just been doing some thinking is all."
"And...I think I'm not one of those people. Shit, I wouldn't know love if it came up and bit me on the ass, " she said, bitterly.
Samantha smiled sadly. She was wrong, of course. Alexis did know love. It came in all forms really, and she knew the love two partners had when they shared their lives completely, like her and Matt did. They had that kind of love, the one that remained sacred.
"I think you are one of those people, Lex. You are."
She took another sip of whiskey, tapped at the glass.
"What about you, Sam? You got someone to love?"
She hesitated, knew what she wanted to say, but couldn't, and was surprised when Alexis smiled knowingly.
"I see it."
"What?"
"Your sin."
"Lex --"
She waved her hands, pushed her glass aside.
"We've all -- we're all shit sometimes, I see it. I see the bad...and I see the good. And you're good, you and Danny and Martin and Matt and Vivian...and Jack. And maybe you make a mistake and you fall in love with a guy you can't have, but sometimes...I think the biggest sins are the ones we committ to ourselves."
"Such as?"
"Such as the one where you tell yourself you don't love him and you think you don't and spend the rest of your life smiling at his back in the dark. It's this -- this lightning waltz."
"What?"
"Like this dance -- a waltz, you know? I've seen you two together, I've seen him with his wife. You wanna know who makes him smile, Sam? It's you. But you push him away, he pulls you back, he pushes away, you pull him back. You waltz around each other in this lightning storm, both afraid you're gonna get hit -- get hurt and lose it all and...maybe you walk out into that storm and all you get is...is...sunshine."
"This is deep for Saturday night..."
"When are you gonna start living the rest of your life?"
"With him?"
She nodded.
"When he tells me I can love him again, " Samantha said.
The shrill ring of a cell phone broke the morose mood that had come over them and Alexis plugged her left ear to hear better as she responded to the voice on the other end. She flipped it closed and stood, grabbing her coat and laying a few bills on the table.
"Sorry to cut it short, but...God, we've got another body."
*
Matt made a circle around the victim, finally crouched down beside her and lifted a bruised arm with his gloved hand.
"Same markings, she was obviously tortured. She's got an 'o' carved in her chest."
"Looks like you were right about that message partner."
He itched his forehead awkwardly with his elbow.
"Well, we won't know that for sure until he actually completes his message, but hopefully we'll get him before he can do that."
Alexis knelt beside a CSU who took an array of photos from all angles. She made a gasping sound.
"What?" he asked.
She touched the hem of the victim's skirt.
"She was sexually assaulted, Matt."
*
"I made dinner, it's in the fridge, " Maria spoke as he came in.
She had an afghan pulled up to her chest, watched him in the half glow of the TV as he threw his keys on the table and sat in the nearest chair. He loosened his tie and pulled his collar away from his skin. He didn't much feel like eating.
"Hanna got an A on her Math test, she was so worried about it, so --"
"What are they studying?" he asked and felt ashamed that the question needed to be posed in the first place.
"Adding and subtracting fractions. You know...halves and wholes."
Somewhere, he thought, there was an irony in that remark and he wondered if it wasn't deliberate.
As though she could pull it up any further, she tugged at the afghan in...boredom, he surmised, and sighed.
"Jack, I cancelled our appointment for Monday."
"Why? I should have this case --"
"Jack. I -- I miss it."
He looked up from the ugly kitchen tile he'd been counting lines on.
"What?"
"Being...in love."
"Maria --"
She waved at him, pulled her arms out from under the blanket, and turned to face him.
"We've -- we've been doing this for all the wrong reasons."
"Such as?"
"Are we doing this for us, Jack, or the girls? Look at me and tell me you don't agree with me. At least give me that."
When he didn't respond, she had her answer.
"So where do we go from here?" he asked.
"Anywhere, " she replied, gesturing her hands apart.
He bowed his head again to the cold kitchen tile. He thought of Samantha and how right she felt, how warm she was compared to this cold, drafty house. She was the thing that made sense and...she was the thing that scared him.
He looked at his wife again and tried to remember what it felt like when he couldn't look at her without wanting to run his fingers through her brown hair, let the soft strands fall gracefully between his fingers and move around her skin in a quiet serenade.
He tried to remember a time when he felt like that and...it felt so long ago. Now, he looked at her and cared for her as this person who loved his children and did good things, but couldn't love her like...men were supposed to love their wives.
But...but you couldn't say they never tried.
Because they did.
They just...lost whatever it was that made them whole. And when that was gone, so was the memory of looking at her and wanting to be near her. Gone was the comfort of hope and faith embodied in one person. Gone was the reassurance of a life without loneliness.
Gone was the rest of his life.
How would he ever find it again?