April 1989
I got my new assignment from Fuller in the morning. Tom and I were paired together to stop some drug dealers from Angelwood High School. This assignment was going to be handled a little differently than usual, Fuller thought it would be a good idea if I played a romantic role in the bust. I was assigned to be the main drug dealers girlfriend.
This assignment was a pretty long one because I had to earn the trust of Ritchie West, the main drug dealer of Angelwood High. He transferred his freshman year from New York, so I said I did too to develop the initial connection. Once we became official around the school, our plan could really get going. Ritchie recruited me to sell the drugs, so I would take the drugs that he gave me and turn them into Fuller. Fuller would give me a wad of cash to give to Ritchie, and that cycle kept going. This is all so he could trust me enough to introduce me to the supplier. That's when Tom and I could make our bust.
One day during school, I was talking with Tom in the main area of the building when Ritchie came marching up behind me. With no warning, he grabbed Tom by his brown leather jacket and started yelling at him.
Ritchie is very tall, with short clean-cut brown hair and a blue varsity jacket. He had a hot temper and very easy to anger, and he was captain of the wrestling team.
"Ritchie! What are you doing?!" I asked, interrupting him. People were stopping to watch and see if a fight was going to break out. But Tom is a professional, he would never throw a punch—especially to a student— while he is undercover.
"That's my girlfriend!" He yelled at Tom's face. Tom glared at him, and I could not tell if he was glaring as Tom Hanson or Tommy Cusack.
"He's just a friend," I said to Ritchie. I tugged at his arm and begged him to let Tom go.
He spat at me, "I don't care," then he turned to Tom and said, "you stay away from her."
"Loud and clear," Tom said.
"Come on, babe, let's go." He let go of Tom and wrapped his arm around me and we walked off. I looked back at Tom who looked frazzled, and I felt terrible about not being able to really do anything about it. We both had to keep our cover.
I didn't see Tom for the rest of the day. I got more drugs from Ritchie and took them back to Fuller after school to exchange for some cash. I didn't see Tom there either, but I hoped he was following his own leads.
The next day, I saw Tom at lunch. I was walking with Ritchie to the lunch table and I locked eyes with Tom. He was eating alone, and he raised his eyebrows when he saw me and looked down.
I half-smiled back at him, and kept walking with Ritchie as he sprouted off something about how his wrestling tournament that weekend was rigged because he didn't win.
We sat at a table and Ritchie kept trying to kiss me. He is eighteen, but he is still in high school. I didn't feel comfortable doing that, so I never let him move past my cheek. We sat with his wrestling buddies, who all had two trays worth of lunch to eat each, and were very loud. They would pound on the table with their fists excitedly and yell at each other as if they were at practice. Turns out, they are all football players too, but only in the fall.
When the last bell rang for the day, we were walking down the hallway when we passed Tom. Ritchie's arm was around me, with his hand on my waist. I had my books hugged to my chest, where I wore a brown long sleeve shirt layered over a white collared shirt that I paired with my dark plaid skirt and black high top converse. Ritchie snickered before he stuck out his leg and Tom tripped over it. He stumbled and fell on his face.
"Tom! Are you okay?" I asked, trying to get down to him. I felt horrible because for the duration of this entire assignment, Ritchie has been a complete asshole to him. He's been bugging him, making fun of him, bullying him, and tossing him around. And Tom couldn't do anything about it without risking the operation.
Ritchie gripped me tighter and pressed me to his side. Even when I gave him dead weight, he didn't let me go. "He's fine, babe. He's just a nerd."
"Come on," I whined, wiggling under his grasp and I even dropped my book. I stopped when Tom got back to his feet.
He stood up and brushed some of his hair back with his hand and turned around as he gingerly touched his lip and realized it was bleeding. He looked at Ritchie the way that bulls look at red capes and he lunged and tackled him to the ground.
"Oh my god," I blurted and spun out of the way as he and Ritchie fell to the floor. I backed up so I was out of their way, shocked at what I was witnessing. I had never seen Tom actively attack someone while being undercover before. Hell, I don't think I've ever seen him attack anyone ever.
"Guys!" I yelled at them as they were grunting and rolling around on the floor. I felt like I couldn't do anything without getting hurt myself, or my skirt flipping up in the shuffle. Tom eventually straddled Ritchie and gave him a quick punch to the nose.
Appalled, I bent down and grabbed at Tom's shoulders and ripped him off of Ritchie. Tom stumbled up to his feet, still staring at Ritchie like an angry bull.
"You broke my nose!" Ritchie shouted while nursing his bloody nose.
"Yeah, Ritchie. Sorry about your nose, Ritchie. Hope it heals crooked!" Tom shouted over my head, letting his sarcasm get the better of him while I pushed him back away from Ritchie. I threw him into a nearby janitors closet and quickly closed the door behind me.
We found the dim light switch and I began scolding him. "Will you take a chill pill?! What the hell is your problem? We are on a case that you probably just blew. We were on our way to meet the supplier. If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were jealous."
Tom took a breath and looked down. His silence was enough of an answer for me.
I paused before my face dropped. "Oh my god. You are jealous."
"Can you blame me?" He barked. "I don't exactly enjoy seeing my girlfriend rough-housed by some low-life drug dealer jock. Being kissed by him and telling him that you love him... for weeks!"
"I'm acting," I stated. I tried to reason with him, but I knew that if the roles were reversed and I had to watch him kiss a girl over and over for weeks, I'd be pissed too. "I told you a while ago that I trusted you infinitely. I need you to trust me now."
"If we told Fuller, he can give those assignments to Judy instead of you," Tom pointed out.
"Tom, we can't," I said with a heavy heart, "it's against the rules."
"Screw the rules," he said, taking a step closer to me. Goosebumps prickled over my arms and my heart started beating even faster.
"If we could, I would. I really like you, Tom, but we have to remember—"
"You are not a secret I want to hide. I want the good, the bad, and the ugly. I want your love—I want your everything. I'll leave Jump Street," he said.
"No, don't. I'll never be able to see you during the day," I said, "I'd miss you too much as a partner."
"But at least we will be together without having to hide anymore. Do you know how hard that is for me? I want to scream it from the rooftops!"
"Jump Street is where you belong, and Jump Street is where I belong."
"But you belong with me," he said.
"But Fuller—"
"Screw him. He is just an angry old man who hates joy."
"I won't be your girl anymore if you leave Jump Street because of me," I threatened. I was not going to be the reason that Tom left his career. I refused.
Tom opened his mouth to say something, but then he stopped and sighed. He finally gave up, "fine. I won't leave."
"Good," I said and took a breath. "Remember, it's just an assignment. You have to keep your cool. None of it is real."
"I know, you're right. You're right," he said. He blew a raspberry and shook his hands to get back in control.
"Good," I said softly. I finally opened the janitors closet to see Ritchie and a few of the other drug dealers in the hallway with some other guys I didn't recognize. But, I immediately realized that they were the suppliers that Ritchie and I were supposed to meet with.
"Where's the money?" One of them asked Ritchie, paying almost no attention to me and Tom as we peeked our heads out of the closet.
"The girl has it," he said.
That's when they all turned their heads to look at us. Tom and I slid out of the closet and closed the door behind us.
One of the dealers asked us, "seven minutes in heaven?"
"Screw you," I snapped.
"Oh-ho-ho," the supplier laughed, "feisty."
"You were with Tommy?!" Ritchie asked, clearly pissed.
No one had any weapons that we could see, so Tom and I stayed undercover. I said, "it's not what you think, Ritchie."
"I told you to stay away from her." Ritchie pointed his finger at Tom.
"Hey, get lost, A.L.F!" Tom exclaimed.
"Hey, hey!" One of the suppliers shouted. "We got a deal to do, or don't we?"
"As soon as I pound his skull to the ground," Ritchie shouted and started marching up to Tom. One of the dealers was pushed into him, and Ritchie spun around to clock him in the head. The kid fell back into someone else, which started a punching riot between all the guys.
Tom ran up to Ritchie during this fight and shouted, "why don't you and I go have a little talk?" But Ritchie gave the first punch, knocking Tom to the ground.
Tom was up within seconds and tackled Ritchie again, all the anger he had built up over the course of the assignment was coming out of his fists.
"Looks like this is what we're doing," I said to myself before I threw a punch at one of the dealers who was about to tackle me. I shook my hand out as I stepped out of his way as his momentum launched him head first into some lockers.
Fighting was never really something I was all that good at. Doug used to make me practice with him against the punching bag we have in the chapel when we both were fresh faces at the Jump Street program. Maybe I should start practicing with him again.
After a few minutes of fighting, one of the suppliers took out a knife and started pointing it at everyone. I decided it was time to blow our cover. I saw that Tom suffered one more punch and had just fallen to the floor. I ran to the supplier with the weapon and I grabbed his wrist and used a book to hit his fingers hard enough for him to drop his weapon. I dropped the heavy book to the floor and twisted his arm behind his back and pressed him face first into a desk that was out in the hallway. I grabbed my badge from my pocket and brandished it to the group, "police!"
Everyone stopped fighting to look at me in bewilderment. The grunting and the yelling ceased, and I didn't realize how loud we were all being until everyone quieted down. Tom took the opportunity to stand up and get his badge from his back pocket and ran up next to me.
He lifted his badge up for everyone to see, upside down. I grabbed the knife from the ground and put it in my pocket and stepped closer to Tom, just in case everyone decided to come together to attack us. His hair was in his face, and he was breathing hard.
I had told Fuller about how Ritchie and I were scheduled to meet with the suppliers at a certain time and address and he was supposed to meet us there with backup. We missed that appointment, and luckily Fuller figured it out and sent the patrols to the school instead. The dealers and suppliers were arrested, and Tom walked with me back to our cars.
Tom was grumbling to himself while looking down at his hand. I followed his gaze and noticed that his hand index finger was bruised and swelling. I asked, "are you okay?"
He looked at me and tried to laugh it off like it wasn't a big deal. "Yeah, I'm fine."
"Your finger looks broken," I told him.
"The guy had a jaw of steel," Tom said tightly.
"I think there's some splints in one of the drawers in the kitchen, Doug breaks his fingers all the time. And there's ice packs in the freezer."
"Thanks, I'll grab them when we get back to the chapel," Tom said.
"Good."
"I-I'm sorry about back there," he said in a low voice. Tom doesn't really apologize that often, but he rarely does anything wrong. "I think you're right, we shouldn't tell Fuller."
"We might have to tell him eventually," I said, trying not to admit that he might be right as well. "When we are ready we will."
"Right," he agreed. "When we are ready."
We got to our cars and I presented my cheek for his routine goodbye kiss. It had almost become habit. His lips always rushed the blood to my face. After his quick peck, he said, "I'll see you in a minute."
We got into our cars and drove off. We met at the chapel to tell Fuller what happened, Tom iced his broken finger, and then we shared the burden of filling out the reports.
I hope you this liked this one! Next chapter is a fun one, where they have to track down a student who is urinating throughout the school 😂
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