Page 4 of The Reading

True, this wasn’t our first Valentine’s Day together, but I was finding it harder and harder to hold my thoughts at bay and keep from making shit super uncomfortable. The longer that we worked together, the more I found myself wanting to ask her out and seeing where this could go.

“We could do room service, or we could drive around until we find something,” I suggested.

“Did you research the town when you booked our rooms?” she asked, and I just stared at her. “Okay, okay,” she huffed. “My bad.”

We were one town over from where the tornado had hit, but I always did research on the towns that we stayed in. No matter what, Vivian’s safety was a priority for me when we traveled. Even if I had to pay for our hotel rooms out of my own pocket to keep Krusade from sticking us in a Bates Motel, I did it. I made enough money to suffer the cost, but more importantly, she was worth it.

“We can do whatever you want, but-”

“You’d rather eat in, go over the initial damage reports, and prepare ourselves for tomorrow,” she interrupted, nearly rolling her eyes at my predictability.

“We can see the sights if you want to, Vivian,” I replied, knowing that she really didn’t want to. Vivian wasn’t a gracious flyer. I’d bet my paycheck that she was tired, hungry, and frustrated.

“Since when do we ever do what I want to do,” she grumbled. Still, before I could comment, she added, “We can order room service, but I’m going to take a shower first.”

Great.

Just the fucking image that I needed in my head right now.

Chapter 2

Cash~

Vivian was clicking her camera like a meth addict off a fresh hit, and I was firing notations off in my voice recorder with the same energy. No matter what could be said, it couldn’t be said that we didn’t work well together. No egos were involved when we were in the middle of recording the factual pinpoints of a case. She took pictures, so that there was no confusion on what we saw, and I recorded notations, so that there was no confusion on what those pictures were supposed to convey.

We were a fluid pair, working in our element, only we had a minor issue that we hadn’t foreseen. The client had chosen to meet us at the site of their former home, rather than meeting with us after we compiled our first initial assessment. Though it did happen, it didn’t happen often, and it was never a good thing when the client returned to the scene of the damage. They were usually an emotional mess, and that never helped anyone.

“It’s just…it’s more than just drywall and…and paint,” Susie Ramos sobbed quietly. “This was our home.”

So, here was where Vivian and I disagreed about our jobs. Sure, I lived in a state with the potential for some serious earthquakes, but we didn’t have earthquakeseason.We didn’t have mandatory earthquake home insurance. Depending on where you lived in the state, we had fires, but those fires were usually started by someone seriously fucking stupid, so that could happen anywhere because there were stupid people everywhere.

That being said, if I made the continuous decision to live in a region that had natural disasters on the regular, I couldn’t say that I’d keep putting up family pictures on the walls or shit like that. My house would be a house, not a home, and that would be okay.

Vivian didn’t see it that way. If a family lived in a house, then it was a home, regardless of whether there were pictures on the walls or not. Memories lived inside the walls of those houses, so that made them homes,not structures that housed your furniture.

God bless her.

“We understand,” Vivian automatically replied as she kept taking pictures. “We also understand that this is an extremely emotional ordeal, that’s why we always recommend that we don’t meet at the site.” I looked over as Vivian lowered her camera. “Is there someone that I can call for you? Maybe come sit with you while we finish up?”

“Oh, no,” Susie rushed out. “I…my husband is at work, and he’d…well, he told me not to come out here, so I don’t think that he’d be very happy at having to come out here.”

I mentally high-fived her husband.

“Well, maybe I can call a friend for you,” Vivian suggested. “Follow you home to make sure you get there safely.”

“I’m fine,” she lied as I kept having to talk louder into the voice recorded to drown her out. “I just…I wanted…I didn’t want you guys to come out here and just see…wood and concrete. I wanted…I wanted to show you that this was our home.”

I couldn’t take it anymore.

I just couldn’t, Vivian’s wrath be damned.

“Mrs. Ramos, we’ve been doing this a long time,” I told her. “We know what we’re doing, and I promise you that we’ve never walked onto a site without understanding the significance of what we’re looking at. We understand that this was your home, we really do. However, we have a job to do, and in order to do it correctly and efficiently, we need to be able to concentrate oneveryaspect of our assessment, not just the sentimentality of what we’re dealing with.”

See that?

That steam?

If not, it’s coming out of Vivian’s ears, but she’s doing her best not to burn me with it.

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