Want You to Stay || Chenford / The Rookie

Part 13

Everything is great.

But they've managed to make it through the cocktail hour and are now sitting down to dinner, so at least Tim can console himself with the knowledge that the night is half-over. Maybe he can convince Ashley to leave before the dancing starts so they can talk. He'll acknowledge that he was weird this morning, apologize, and tell her that he really cares about her too. Which he does. And if his feelings aren't quite as strong as hers yet, they will be soon. Right?

"Anyone bid on anything in the silent auction?" Tim hears Chris ask from across the table. "We put our name down for the Dodgers tickets."

"Oh, so did we," Ashley says next to him, taking a sip of her wine.

Grey lets out a loud chuckle. "Oh god, don't get these two into another competition over something," he laughs, pointing his fork back and forth between Tim and Lucy.

Chris glances at Lucy curiously, then at Tim. "Are you guys competitive at work?"

Angela, Nyla, and Nolan all let out various groans and snickers of amusement.

"Was this that whole riddle case that my dad told me about?" Ashley asks, turning to look at Tim.

"Yes," Grey answers, rolling his eyes. "And then when they couldn't agree on who won that bet, they had me create a whole new rematch for them."

"And there was the bet about short sleeves," Angela supplies with a smirk. Tim shoots her an aggravated glare, but she just laughs. "He's still mad about that one. Lucy was his only rookie who got out of wearing long sleeves early."

"Who won the last wager?" Chris asks. He's looking at Tim over the rim of his beer as he takes a long sip. Tim shifts his eyes down to his plate and spears a piece of steak with his fork.

"We, ah, we called it a draw," Lucy shrugs with a laugh. Tim wonders if it sounds strained to anyone else. Then she turns abruptly toward James and Nyla. "James, did I hear you're adopting a dog?"

Tim breathes a little sigh of relief at the subject change as James grins and pulls out his phone.

"I saw this little guy at the shelter and I just couldn't resist. He comes home with me tomorrow." James reaches across Nyla to show Lucy his phone screen.

"Oh my god!" Lucy squeals. "He's so sweet." She tilts the phone toward Chris, who leans in close to take a look.

"Yeah, that dog is 10 out of 10 cute," Chris nods.

"He's got a sister..." James teases, swiping his thumb across the screen to scroll down to the next photo.

"No, don't show me," Lucy laughs, pushing the phone away. "The last time I made a rash dog decision it was a disaster."

"You had a dog?" Chris asks.

Lucy's smile falters ever-so-slightly and her eyes dart to Tim just as he lifts his gaze from his plate to look at her.

"Ah, yeah. Briefly. But my apartment wasn't good for a dog..."

"Did you have to take it back to the shelter?" Chris asks, his mouth twisting in sympathy.

Lucy looks, for a moment, like she wants to crawl under the table before she answers, "No, um...Tim was nice enough to adopt him."

"Kojo?!" Ashley's eyebrows shoot up. She looks over at Tim in surprise. "You didn't tell me that."

"Didn't I?" Tim swallows down a bite of food and reaches for his whiskey on the rocks to take a long sip.

"It was a while ago — like a year," Lucy adds quickly. "He's completely Tim's dog now. I'm just like a weird aunt who buys him expensive chew toys sometimes." She turns back to James. "Which is why I do not need to be looking at any pictures of cute shelter puppies, so put your damn phone away before I do something stupid again."

Everyone chuckles as James puts up his hands in a mea culpa gesture and slides his phone back into his pocket.

"Oh I meant to ask, Tim," Nolan queries suddenly from across the table. "How's the renovation of your family's old house coming along?"

On one hand, Tim is grateful for another subject change. On the other hand, this dinner conversation is fucking cursed. But at least he had told Ashley about the house. He hadn't told her everything — he'd left out most of the details — but she knew, vaguely, that his childhood home held a lot of bad memories for him. And that that was part of the reason he had needed some time to himself back in December.

"It's good. Finished it up a couple of weeks ago and now we're getting ready to put it on the market." His tone is clipped, and he hopes Nolan can hear that he'd rather not dig into the topic.

"Oh, did you help out with that?" Ashley asks. Tim groans inwardly.

Nolan shakes his head. "I just gave a little advice," he says, and for a second Tim thinks maybe that will be the end of it. Maybe if he asks about little Jack Evers he can get the whole table talking about whatever cute baby thing he's done this week. But then Nolan adds, "But Lucy actually helped out with some of the heavy lifting, didn't she?" He nods toward Lucy with a grin, "All those hours of HGTV finally paid off, huh?"

Tim can see Ashley freeze out of the corner of his eye, her fork halfway between her mouth and plate.

"I just helped out on that first demo day," Lucy says with a hasty laugh. Tim is positive that everyone can hear how strained it sounds this time. "I haven't been to the house since, though," she continues, doing that fast-talking, rambling thing she does when she's feeling nervous. "I'd love to see how it all turned out if you have any pictures."

"That's nice. That you could help out," Ashley says quietly after a moment. Then she picks up her glass of wine and drains the last of it in one gulp. Lucy smiles tightly as she pushes her food around her plate, but she doesn't say anything else. Chris, meanwhile, is looking at Ashley with a contemplative expression, like he's trying to puzzle something out.

After a few long seconds of silence, Wes blurts out, "Did Angela show everyone the video of Jack crawling for the first time?"

Tim doesn't want to look at Ashley, and he definitely can't look at Lucy, so he just tilts his head up to the ceiling and lets out an almost imperceptible sigh as Angela starts passing her phone around the table.

Too little, too fucking late.