Another Life

19

"Jay," I walk out of the kitchen and into the hall, just in time to catch him before he left the house. He had already said the goodbyes, but I wanted a moment alone with him while Macie was occupied with making a mess of the kitchen island.

He turns at his name and walks back into the house fully, shutting the slightly ajar door again and I trekked down the hall toward him, coming to a stop by his feet.

"Stop panicking." I tell him, moving my eyes across his front in search for his hands.

Jay attempts an amused chuckle, falsely telling me he wasn't worried, but it doesn't work and he knows I see right through it, so he doesn't bother with a verbal lie either. "I will stop worrying about it after it's done."

I meet his gaze and give him a smile. "You're gonna do great, I just know it," I say and it makes him nod his head quickly, I had noticed him doing that a lot the last few days, it was a way of convincing himself that what I was saying was true. "I'm really proud of you."

Jay's lips upturn and he returns the smile, a lot weaker than mine but I knew why. I stand on my toes and put my hand on the nape of his neck, putting my lips against his for a beat before pulling away.

"Now go, you're gonna be late." I tell him, running my hand that had previously been on the back of his head down his chest, then I lightly tap his shoulder. I watch him prepare to leave the house once again and just as he does I stop him one last time, laughing at the sharp inhale he takes when I say his name. I wait for him to look at me, only saying what I needed to when he does. "You're gonna be a sergeant."

He goes to argue but I put my finger up, cutting him off. "Nope, not going to hear the negativity. You're gonna do fine and you're gonna become a sergeant," I affirm before shooing him out of the house. "And go."

He jokes around as he leaves, appearing back at the door once or twice to check if I had anything else to say and eventually I have to shove him out and toward the truck, telling him once again to go. I wave to him as he drives off and then retreat back into the house enough so I can close the door.

The click rings through the hall but it's quickly replaced by the sound of Macie's loud footprints behind me, running down the hall from the kitchen.

She looks around the room before up at me with furrowed eyebrows. "Where's daddy?" She asks.

I run my hand over her still very messy bed-hair - it amazes me how bad her hair gets from the time we put her down to the time she wakes up, because she doesn't actually move a lot in her sleep - and start leading her toward the stairs. "I told you, daddy had to go early this morning because he had something important to do. You'll see him after school."

Macie nods and gets the message that I was taking her upstairs and takes off away from me, running the rest of the way up the stairs before twirling on her feet to watch me as I climbed up after her, granted not as fast. "Catch me!" She shouts and I can't help the snort of laughter.

"Oh I stopped being able to catch you a long time ago, you won't see me catching you anytime soon," I say, finally reaching the top, slightly out of breath from going up one set of stairs, and I guide Macie in the direction of her room. "Let's get you dressed for school."

************

It barely got to 11:30 before everyone in the bullpen started complaining about being hungry, myself included. It was one of the unit's especially slow days and I wasn't sure if everyone else just wanted to eat because they were bored, but I knew I was hungry by the grumbling in my stomach.

We all started looking around the room, pointing fingers as to who would go out and get the food, me pulling the pregnancy card a few times to try and get out of it because I always got at least one of the orders wrong but they were all just shrugging their shoulders, calling out how that didn't matter. However it was like some kind of brick hit all of us minus one around the head and we all looked to Adam.