10 Seconds to Midnight

Stephanie

I glanced at the clock in the conference room. 5 minutes to midnight. Happy people were milling around holding plastic champagne flutes and grinning. The crowd was mostly a sea of black, with the occasional splash of color from someone's date. The cake (who knew you could buy whole-wheat cake?) was half eaten, the letters randomly missing so it said ppy Ne ear 20. It's possible I ate all the corner pieces to get more icing. I looked at the clock again. 4 minutes.

"He'll be here, Beautiful." Lester said, watching me watch the clock. "There's always a lot of alarms going off on New Year's Eve. It's just drunk people pulling stunts or stumbling into doors. Nothing to worry about."

Two hours before Ranger had left the party when a client's alarm had gone off. He was one of the only people still sober enough to both drive and handle a gun. So he kissed me on the forehead, whispered he would be back soon, and left to take the call.

That was my boyfriend. Always on duty.

So I joked and chatted with Bobby, Lester, and Bobby's girlfriend Susan. And I kept one eye on the door of the conference room, willing it to open.

3 minutes to midnight.

Ranger

What had started as a routine automatic alarm had turned into an exercise in tedium. While nothing was damaged aside from a window, we still needed a police report for insurance purposes. And the cops were busy breaking up bar fights and catching drunk drivers. Eventually they had come, filled out a piece of paper for the client, and left, leaving me only 10 minutes to get back to Rangeman headquarters. My mood wasn't helped by the rain that had started right as I had gotten to the car, reducing visibility.

Normally I have good traffic karma. No idea why, it's not like I have good karma in my life as a whole. But tonight I kept hitting the lights wrong, and the pedestrians were scrambling to get out of the rain in the near-freezing weather. 2 minutes before midnight I finally saw the building up ahead. I swerved around the corner, and waved my fob at the sensor. I was under the garage door before it even had a chance to raise fully, and I was glad I was in the low-slung Porsche instead of the much taller pickup truck.

Stephanie

1 minute to midnight. The ball was dropping on the TV, and everyone was cheerfully counting down. "Been a hell of a year, ain't it Bomber?" Bobby said while slinging an arm over my shoulder.

"Yeah. Quite a year." And it had been. The chanting around me grew louder as people counted down.

"25, 24, 23, 22...."

Ranger

I could hear people counting down the seconds as I left the stairwell. I hadn't wanted to wait for the elevator.

"10"

I opened the door quietly. I saw her there, a blazing stroke of color on a canvass of black.

"9"

I was at her in 3 steps. She turned into me as my hand stretched the length of her back.

"8"

I tilted her head back. Her lips lifted to meet mine.

"7"

"Way to cut it close Cuz" Lester shouted, having turned his head from the screen to watch me. Jealous asshole.

"6"

"Shove it Santos, or you're on monitor duty for a week"

"5"

"Yes Sir!" Santos said, firing off a salute in an extremely sarcastic way.

"4"

"Ignore him." Stephanie said, her hands reaching up to pull my face down.

"3"

I stared into her eyes, those deep, endless blue eyes. Like the ocean or sky or some shit like that. I was a soldier, not a poet.

"2"

My hand entered her hair, reveling in the soft curls as my thumb stroked her forehead.

"1"

My lips closed over hers, gently parting them. Her tongue slipped out to greet mine, pulling me into her.

"Happy New Year!"

The crowd burst into song around us, and I gently pulled away. Staring into her eyes again. Someone shoved a glass of champagne into my hand and I took a sip, then passed it to Stephanie.

She smiled at me, her eyes playful and full of promise. "What do you say you and I go upstairs and celebrate some more?

Sounded like a wonderful idea. I slipped my hand into hers and we walked to the elevator.

Stephanie

When I finally looked at the clock again, it was 1:30 AM.

"So far the New Year has been going pretty well, don't you think?"

"I have to agree Babe. 2020 is going to be our year."