Page 19 of Tameron

He flew off the lounger and dove back into the bushes. I waited, but when he didn’t return, I figured he’d gotten distracted by something and leaned back, kicking my feet up. Dad took a lot longer than five minutes, but when he was done, he walked over and snagged his iced tea before plopping down beside me.

‘You have to stop drinking that garbage,’ I told him.

He gave me a shit-eating grin before taking a long drink. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Laundry.’

He burst into laughter. ‘Spoiled.’

‘She needs this,’ I insisted. ‘If I don’t let her do laundry, she’s going to come over and try to clean my kitchen, and she always rearranges.’

Dad snorted again, then set his cup down and signed. ‘Vee-vee!’ He pointed at the coop. Right at the edge of the fence, I could see his brown chicken with the biggest poof on her head digging at the ground with her feet. After a second of fruitless effort, she clucked loudly and stormed off. ‘Victory!’ My dad waved his hands in an ASL applause.

‘You think it’ll hold?’

‘Maybe. At least we don’t have foxes here,’ he said. He kicked his feet up on the lounger and turned his body toward me. ‘How’s work?’

I shrugged. ‘Nothing new. The crew is taking a while to warm up to me. One guy almost came out to me, I think. He’s really nervous. He caught me and Tony flirting?—’

His eyes widened and he dropped his legs over the side of the chair. ‘Flirting? Interesting.’

I shook my head. ‘Not real flirting. He’s in a relationship. But Orrin,’ I fingerspelled his name carefully since it was a little on the unusual side, ‘thought we were making a joke out of it.’

Dad’s face fell. ‘You told him about you?’

‘I did. I told him that’s not how I’m going to run the station and that everyone will always feel welcome there. I think it helped, but he had a hard time growing up.’

‘Like you.’

A little like me. I’d had a brief stint as a theater kid, played cello for a few years, and even tried my hand at choir, but I was a low baritone who couldn’t hold a note for more than tenseconds, so it didn’t work out. I’d been trying to find myself in high school, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that I hit my growth spurt during my sophomore year, it might have been a lot worse.

‘I just want my firefighters to feel good.’

‘They will. Be patient,’ he reminded me.

Sighing, I leaned back against the lounger and stared up at the sky. I could smell the ocean on the breeze and wished I was a little closer to the water. I could really do with a beach day soon.

“Ay,” Dad said aloud. I looked over at him as he waved his hand. ‘You seem upset.’

‘Not upset,’ I promised, and it wasn’t a lie. I wasn’t upset. But every time it got quiet, I thought about Tameron and the way he seemed to flip like a loose light switch. I’d swear we were making progress, and then suddenly, he’d accused me, once again, of something I hadn’t done.

I couldn’t understand why he was so eager to assume everyone was out to get him. Or maybe it was just me. His ASL teacher had absolutely graded his assignment unfairly, although part of me wondered if maybe he didn’t fully understand what his professor was looking for. If it was what Tameron said, it was too ambiguous.

But I also understood why his teacher got upset, especially if this Simon guy was Deaf.

‘Talk to me,’ Dad insisted.

I almost brushed him off, but then I realized the one person who might be able to understand better was my dad. I swung my legs down and leaned over my thighs. ‘Did you ever feel like you didn’t belong?’

‘Existentially?’ he fingerspelled.

I laughed. ‘No. In the Deaf community.’

His brows flew up. ‘Are you feeling insecure?—’

‘Not me.’ Not anymore. I was happy with my hearing ears and my Deaf heart, and I’d stopped giving a shit where otherpeople thought I belonged. ‘I met someone recently who went deaf from an accident. Army,’ I clarified.

Dad winced. ‘Recent?’

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