Lilli…
I got out of the sleek black towncar and the driver closed the door. I stared dubiously at the shingle hanging outside, above the door, like some old-fashioned inn. The sky was clear but the pavement wet from another harsh thunderstorm earlier in the day. I worried my bottom lip between my teeth, grateful I’d put on a lipstick that was like Teflon and that could withstand even my most nervous of habits.
Everything in me was screaming this was a massive mistake; that I shouldn’t have agreed to this, that I should get back in the car. The car that, of course, was pulling away from the curb right as I thought about retreating. I sighed and squared my shoulders as the door to the restaurant opened and the man himself stepped out, smiling.
“Hey,” he said, and I was struck by how handsome he was. Vastly different from Mark, for sure. He was over a foot taller than me, for one, where Mark had only been around eight to nine inches taller. He was also built much different: broader through the shoulders and powerfully-muscled. Where Mark was fit in a runner’s build sort of way, Backdraft was more built to work, which, as a firefighter, I’m sure he did. I looked him over and silently appreciated. He wore his leather biker jacket open over a soft-looking, broken-in gray Henley that hugged his chest. Over the jacket was the vest full of patches and I swallowed hard, unsure about that part, but a little late to go back now; he was walking towards me.
“Hi,” I murmured back as he came out to stand with me, thrusting his hands in his jeans pockets the way I had mine thrust into my coats.
“You found the place,” he said with a warm grin, and I do believe he was as nervous as I was, which honestly didn’t help me feel any less awkward. Not in the slightest. Damnit.
“Look, I, uh… I really am thinking that this might have been a bad idea. I’m sure you’re a very nice man, Backdraft. In fact, I know you’re a very nice man, giving me a ride home like that, but I just don’t know that I’m ready to do this, I mean, date, anyone.” I shifted on my feet, squirming under his gaze as his smile grew wider.
“Oh, you thought I was asking you on a date?”
I froze and felt my face set into stone, my natural reflex when I thought I was about to take a hit on an emotional level that I just wasn’t prepared for. He put up his hands as if to ward something off, and he cried, “No! Shit! Bad joke! That didn’t come out right at all. That totally didn’t come out like I meant it to, I’m seriously just trying to say I’m not ready to date either. Please don’t take that the way it sounded, I’m begging you. I’m serious, I just invited you out to get to know you better. I was hoping we could, literally, just be friends.”
I sucked in a deep breath and when I let it out, it plumed in the cooling air. I took my eyes off of him and turned my head to stare up the sidewalk, trying to decide if he were being genuine or not or if this was a setup for a laugh at the rich bitch’s expense.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I thought to myself. Five years ago, I would have said it was for a laugh at the poor girl’s expense. Truthfully, money didn’t change a whole hell of a lot.
“I really screwed that up, didn’t I?” he asked and he sounded genuinely rueful.
I looked back at him and sighed out. “No, I’m just having a really hard time trusting anyone right now.” I put a hand to my forehead and nearly drowned in my frustration and apprehension.
“Let’s try this again,” he suggested, walking our encounter back. “Hey, Lillian. Glad you could make it. This place has some really great food and I was hoping to get to know you better, you know, as just friends.” He even stuck out his hand, it was kind of adorable. I couldn’t help but smile.
I debated for several heartbeats and lowered my fingertips from my forehead where I’d looked at him past my hand. I took his offered hand, giving it a shake and said, “Hi, Backdraft, I’m glad I could make it, too.” I laughed nervously. “I could really use a glass of wine, do they have anything good here?”
He grinned broadly, his hazel eyes sparkling under the streetlight. He let go of my hand and turned, giving me the ‘after you’ gesture, hand palm-up in front of his body. I went to the door and he stepped up first, pushing it open for me. We stopped at the ‘Please Wait to Be Seated’ sign and he caught the bartender’s attention and held up two fingers. The bartender, a man in his fifties but still in good shape, with a thick head of salt-and-pepper hair and matching beard, craned his head on his neck to sweep the restaurant floor with his gaze. He held up seven fingers in return and Backdraft gave a nod.
He took me gently by the elbow and said, “Come on, this way.”
I followed him around to the other side of the ‘L’ shaped bar, behind the back wall of it that held the liquor. There was a row of booths behind that wall, and there was a narrow hall leading back to the bathrooms. Backdraft pulled me past him where he’d been leading the way, and I took a moment to examine the back of his leather jacket. A large silver shield was embroidered there, a knight’s chess piece in profile picked out in indigo thread. There was a white ribbon or banner over it with ‘Indigo Knights’ in the same dark blue thread as the chess piece and another that curved the opposite direction on the bottom proclaiming ‘Nomad.’
I was afraid I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I could always ask. It was probably a safe-enough topic to get a conversation going and might help me stave off the general question of ‘What do you do?’ that I knew was coming.
I stopped before sliding into the little two-person booth and unbuttoned my coat. Backdraft, apparently a gentleman, took the garment from me and hung it on the brass hook provided between our booth and the next one over. My purse, I kept a hold of, and set it on the seat before sliding in, trapping it between my hip and the wall.
He took off his jacket, but rather than hang it with mine, he did the same thing with it that I’d done with my purse, guarding it as if it were something of value, and maybe it was. I mean, it could very well be holding his wallet.
“You’re sure it’s all right to sit here? That we shouldn’t have waited for the hostess?” I asked.
“Ah, yeah. Bartender is Skids, he owns the place with Reflash. They’re the president and vice-president of the same club.” He gestured toward his coat and the colorful patch facing out.
“I really don’t want to sound rude or ignorant,” I said. “But aren’t all motorcycle gangs dangerous?”
He grinned and said, “Well, outlaw ones can be, sure. We aren’t a gang, though. We’re a club. The Indigo Knights was started by a bunch of cops, way back in the day. Gradually they started adopting a bunch of other first responders. Now we have not only cops, but firefighters, paramedics, and even a lawyer.”
“Oh,” I said. “You’re a firefighter, obviously,” I stammered, blushing. So dumb! I sounded so dumb!
“That I am,” he said with a broad grin. “Blaze, the other guy that was with me at your place, he’s one of the club, too. He’s not with my ladder, though. It was just a onetime thing that we partnered up that night.”
I nodded and was sort of at a loss for anything to say. I didn’t want to come off sounding any dumber than I’d already managed. Of course, that opened me up for the dreaded question.
“So, uh, what do you do?”
I licked my lips and rolled them together. The gloss layer of my lip-color felt tacky by now, but I had faith it still looked okay. This stuff really was bulletproof.
“Um, I write. I’m a writer,” I said, nodding, but I didn’t elaborate. Everyone who asked me anymore pretty much had to drag it out of me.
Backdraft smiled and laughed a little bit. “You must be a damn good one to afford a place like that in the Echelon.”
I nodded and said, breath held, “A lot of people seem to think so, but I don’t see it.”
“Well, you are your own worst critic.”
I felt myself smile. “I always say that, too.”
“Hey, look at that, something in common after all,” he teased lightly.
“Oh, I wasn’t always rich,” I said, waving the implied notion away.
“No?”
I shook my head. “It’s a relatively new thing and I’m afraid I’m not handling it super well. Everyone treats me so different and I just don’t really feel any different. You know? I mean, in some ways I’m less stressed, but in other ways, it’s more. It’s really like I just traded one type for another.”
He nodded and really seemed to be listening to me. Finally he said, “I could see that.”
“Yeah?” I asked skeptically.
“Yeah.”
The waitress came by and dropped a couple of menus saying, “Sorry Backdraft, it’s a little crazy in here. Do you know what you want to drink?”
I picked up the little wine menu at the edge of the table and gave it a quick sweep while he answered, “Yeah, Kristy. I’ll have a Coke.”
“And I’ll have a white Zinfandel, thank you,” I told her.
“No problem, I’ll be right back with those.”
She swept off in the direction of the bar and I asked, “So what’s good here?”
He grinned and said, “Everything, and I do mean everything. Reflash is a world-class cook.”
I smiled, my comfort level rising ever so slowly and asked, “Where do you get such interesting names?”
“Uh, they’re road names, given to you by the club when you get your colors.”
I raised my eyebrows over my menu and he smiled again heading me off saying, “That’s to say when you get the big center patch here on your vest." He pointed to the back of his coat and I nodded my understanding.
“Sounds very structured,” I said.
“It is, but a lot of guys gravitate to that sort of thing.”
“I can see it,” I remarked. He wasn’t even looking at his menu, just sitting, sleeves of his Henley rucked back over his muscular forearms, hands folded neatly on the table in front of him.
I made a selection of the crab-stuffed rockfish and set my menu down. He asked me what I liked to do when I wasn’t writing and I told him, and the conversation was easy for a moment, but of course, he circled back to what he didn’t know but was an easy thing for most people to talk about – my job.
“So what do you write?” he asked.
I felt myself blush and mumbled, “I always hate it when people ask me that.” Of course, I had grown to almost hate it more when they didn’t have to.
“Why?” he asked, and that smile of his was entirely too disarming and really, really nice to look at.
“I write romance novels,” I said and tried not to slouch. It was just such a mixed bag on how people responded to that bit of information.
“Huh, that’s cool. You write under your name or…?” he left the question hanging, but his reaction had me sighing inwardly with relief. There was no laughter, no judgment on his face or in the set of his shoulders.
“A pen name,” I said evenly, but I didn’t volunteer it. You pretty much had to be living under a rock to not know who Timber Philips was anymore. Please don’t push it, please don’t push it, please don’t push it… I silently begged.
“Which is…?” He smiled and I had to smile back, despite my inner voice saying, Crap.
“You have to promise to be cool,” I said because I really didn’t want any super uncomfortable displays of excitement drawing a whole bunch of unwanted attention.
“I promise,” he said and held up two fingers in a Scout's Honor.
“I write under the name ‘Timber Philips’,” I answered, and his first reaction was to frown.
“I know that name, but I’m really sorry, I can’t place it,” he said and he sounded genuinely apologetic.
I felt the tension in my shoulders and back ease some. The waitress was coming this way and I looked her direction and held up what I hoped was a subtle finger at him to beg a moment before I told him anything more. His mouth turned down and he gave a knowing look and nod. She set down our glasses and took our food orders, asked if we needed anything else in the meantime, and when we declined, left with a cheerful smile and nod.
“Um, one of my books, Hallowed Be Thy Light, was made into a movie. It’s supposed to premiere just before Halloween in New York.”
His head jerked back in surprise. He cocked it to one side and gave a nervous laugh.
“It’s all right if you don’t believe me,” I said with a smile. It wasn’t a common reaction but it wasn’t one I’d never had before. “You can take a second to look it up on your phone, if you’d like. The name might not be real but I can’t switch bodies so easily; my picture is all over the internet.” I gave a shrug.
He said, “You really wouldn’t mind if I looked it up right now, would you?” It was my turn to grin and give a little laugh.
“Why should I mind? I get it,” I shrugged. “It’s a pretty outlandish claim. It’s not a common reaction I get, but it’s still a legitimate one.”
He rooted through his coat and pulled out his phone, eyeing me carefully to make sure that I really didn’t mind. I sat stoically and waited patiently.
“Philips only has one ‘L’,” I said, helpfully.
He laughed a little and looked it up; when the page, or whatever rendered, he gave a low whistle.
“Holy shit, you’re pretty goddamned famous,” he said. I laughed and it felt good.
“Never quite had it put that way before, but I have to say, it’s kind of nice.”
“What is?” he asked.
“You, not making a big deal out of it.”
He shrugged and put his phone away, saying, “I get it, I guess. Being famous isn’t all it’s cracked up to be sometimes.”
“You know someone else famous?” I asked. His responses were curious to me.
“Sort of, not really. One of our guys, Youngblood, is a homicide detective‒ Wait, how long have you been in Indigo City?”
“A few months,” I confessed.
“Ah, so before your time, for sure. You probably missed it, so I’ll explain. Youngblood’s woman, Chrissy, was a defense attorney. Ever hear of Skip Maguire?”
“Vaguely, I would have to look him up.”
“Baseball legend here. Really popular guy. Apparently he liked to pop his wife when he’d been drinking.”
“Ah, that’s right. Didn’t his wife kill him in self-defense? I remember hearing something about it, even across the country.”
“Oh yeah? Where you from?”
“Oregon, originally.”
“Okay, and yeah, she killed him, but she ended up charged with his murder. Chrissy was her lawyer and got her off and his fan base went ape-shit. Next thing Youngblood knows, he’s being called over to her apartment for a double homicide. Someone had kicked in Chrissy’s front door, shot her and her best friend.”
“Oh, my god, that’s awful.” I was appalled but enthralled with his story.
“Well, not as awful as everyone first thought, turned out Chrissy wasn’t dead, but her friend was. She ended up first in the hospital and then in protective custody. Media about hounded her to death, which wouldn’t have been so bad except Skip’s douchebag following wasn’t about to give it up. It was a real shit-show and took forever for them to get it sorted out.”
“I’m glad she’s okay,” I said honestly. I watched how some of the real celebrities who played my characters on the silver screen were treated and was glad that type of scrutiny was almost never turned on the author. People could be animals and had no concept of privacy anymore. I hadn’t encountered even a tenth of what some of the actors and actresses attached to my work had, and I was grateful for it. Still, let me just say, I’d had some moments before.
“Yeah, she’s okay now,” Backdraft was saying. “Quit being a defense attorney and went over to the side of the angels. She works for the DA’s office now, moved out of her place and in with Youngblood. They’re good, but yeah, I was there for a taste of that bullshit, Youngblood’s my best friend, and just from that taste I can’t imagine living it twenty-four/seven.”
“It’s not so bad, really,” I said. “I mean, I’ve gotten pretty big and I have readers everywhere, but I still get to enjoy quite a bit of anonymity. I’m still not all the way used to being recognized when it happens, though. I’m pretty much an introvert, and so it’s always a little jarring and unexpected when it happens, you know?”
“I could see that,” he said affably.
“I don’t mind it,” I told him. “I love my readers to death. I mean, I wouldn’t be here without them. It just gets awkward sometimes. People can get incredibly bold! Like they think they know me and some of them do know all about me to the point it can get creepy. But, for the most part, my experiences have been good. I just have to be careful being in the public eye, you know? It’s like the world is just waiting for a scandal sometimes and when they don’t get it right away, they’re willing to make up just anything anymore to manufacture some drama.” I’d seen it with some of the poor actresses portraying my characters and thought regularly that if it ever happened to me, I wouldn’t be half so cool about it. They laughed it off; I would be a crying, anxiety-riddled mess.
He nodded and said, “Okay, so tell me something, creepiest fan experience so far?”
I twisted my lips. “You know, that’s really hard,” I said.
“First one that comes to mind.”
“The girl that showed up at my house when I first hit it big and didn’t know any better. I guess my address was on some people-finder site and I didn’t do as good a job as I should have protecting my given name. That one was definitely unnerving.”
“Well, um, you’re going to think I’m crazy, but I made her a cup of coffee and we talked about it and the poor thing was in absolute tears but I was really lucky. That was as far as things got. My publisher had me moved into a secured building by the next week.”
“Wow. I don’t know how I would have handled a fangirl just showing up at my house like that. You didn’t even think to call the cops?”
I blushed with embarrassment.
“I was probably exceptionally naïve at the time. You see, I didn’t go the direct traditional publishing route.”
“You didn’t?”
“No,” I said, laughing a little. I had been sipping on the crisp wine from time to time and I took another now. It was really good.
“Then how did you do it?”
“I uh, I self-published first. With the advent of e-readers, it kind of opened some doors. I treated it like an expensive hobby in the beginning.”
He frowned. “Okay now, explain that.”
He seemed genuinely interested and he was incredibly easy to talk to. So much so, that I found myself enthusiastically explaining.
“Well, when you’re on your own, you have to pay for things like your own editing and cover art and both of those things can get really expensive. Especially on a regular-joe salary.”
“How expensive?” he asked.
“Um, depending on manuscript size, most editors – at least for one of my books ‒ ran anywhere between seven hundred to a thousand dollars.”
“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed. I laughed.
“Yeah, well, cover art for me started at about a hundred dollars a cover, but when I started buying exclusive imagery, that went up to seven-hundred-and-seventy-five dollars apiece.”
“What! Why so expensive?” he asked.
The waitress set our plates in front of us and I took a moment to exclaim over how everything looked so good and to ask for a glass of ice water. I was feeling a touch flushed from the glass of wine and maybe needed to back off just a little bit. I confess to being a total lightweight, so much so that usually I had two glasses max and I was buzzed enough to want to be done.
Kristy went and got my water right away, and with an exchange of a few final words, it was just me and Backdraft again.
“Where was I?” I asked.
“Some seriously expensive-ass cover art.”
I laughed, “Oh, right!”
I explained about covers and their different components. About the difference between stock photos and exclusive photos through photographers, as well as the added cost of design. I tended to go with photo-manipulation for my covers, but I even went as far as to discuss the finer points of the varying types of other commissioned artwork authors sometimes used. The thing was, he was actually interested, absorbing everything I told him like a sponge. I couldn’t ever remember any other man doing that who wasn’t an author themselves.
“Wow,” he said, finally, our plates empty or nearly so in front of us. I was absolutely stuffed to the gills, and all of it had been amazing.
“Yeah, it’s a lot,” I agreed.
He let out a breath, blowing out his cheeks, and shook his head, eyes wide in that incredulous, mind-blown look.
“Don’t even get me started on marketing as an indie,” I joked.
“Shit, publishers do a lot of shit people take for granted, don’t they?”
I nodded slowly and said, “Yes, but they also take a way-bigger chunk of the proceeds, too. Nothing is free, it’s just a matter of whether you want to pay up front or on the back end.”
His head bobbed slowly as he processed all of the information I had dumped in his head. I ran a finger around the rim of my nearly-empty wineglass absently while I waited for him to say something.
Finally I had to ask, “So what’s it like being a fireman?”
“Probably eighty-five percent boring and the other fifteen percent shit-your-pants terrifying,” he said and winked.
I laughed and he grinned broadly.
“If it’s terrifying, then why do you do it?”
“Ahhhh.” He leaned back and rubbed his fingertips lightly over his chest, looking both full and considering. “For me? Because I’m an adrenaline junkie and I always wanted to be a real-life superhero.”
I felt my own face split into a stupid grin. That was both the most honest and, at the same time, adorable answer he could have given me.
He sighed and I felt it too, our evening was definitely winding down to an end. I was surprised to feel regret about that. I almost didn’t want it to end at all. I was enjoying Backdraft’s company immensely.
“I got a shift over the next four days,” he said.
“Four days?” I asked.
He nodded, “Four days on, three days off. That’s how we do it right now.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“What time are you off?” I asked out of curiosity.
“Naw, it’s not like that. It’s literally four days on staying at the station, then three days off at home.”
I felt my mouth drop open, “That sounds awful! I can’t imagine.”
He laughed a little and said, “Well, if it helps, I can’t imagine living the high-life walking from my bedroom in my boxers to the office across the hall and working whenever I want. That’s gotta be real nice.”
“It is,” I confessed, but now I was trying really, really hard to banish the image of this beautiful man in just his boxer shorts out of my brain. That was precisely how I let myself get into trouble with Mark in the first place, thinking with my libido rather than my brain.
“Let me give you a ride home?” he asked and I smiled and shook my head.
“I’ve already texted for a car,” I said and set my phone down on the table.
“Fair enough,” he said and flagged Kristy, our waitress, down.
“Oh, I’ve got it,” I said reaching for my purse.
“No way,” he said. “I asked you here, remember?”
I felt my mouth drop open and was about to protest but he handed Kristy his card. I waited until she walked away and said, “But I thought I was supposed to be thanking you for the night we met?”
He shook his head and smiled, “I just wanted you to talk to me. You said thank you several times that night. It was pretty sweet, actually, given what you were going through.”
“Fine, then at least let me get the tip.”
He nodded and said, “That’s fair enough, you know, on account of this isn’t a date and all.”
I bowed my head, smiling and blushing at our awkward exchange out front of the restaurant, and glad the ice had been broken enough that we could both laugh about it now.
I didn’t even bother asking how much the bill was. I waited until she returned and he’d signed the slip, and then handed Kristy some folded bills that I knew was way more than the total bill had even amounted to. I remembered what it was like to struggle, and again, I had more money than I knew what to do with and I didn’t often spend it. I was happy to pay my blessings forward.
My phone buzzed against the table and I looked.
“My car is here already, that was fast.” I didn’t bother keeping the disappointment out of my voice. His smile broadened and he got up, taking down my coat and holding it open for me so that I could shrug into it. I reached across the booth and grabbed my purse and snatched my phone off the table.
He grabbed his receipt and scribbled his number on the back and handed it to me saying, “Here’s my number. I’d really like to hang out more. I really enjoyed our talk. It was good to learn some new things.”
“I’d like that too,” I said, settling my purse across my chest. “I’ve got to go.”
“Really looking forward to hearing from you,” he said.
I smiled and said, “Goodnight, Backdraft. Thank you for a lovely meal.”
“You’re welcome, Lil, it was nice talking to you; I mean that.”
I left, reluctantly, and got into the back of the waiting towncar, trying to catch a glimpse of him through the front window. I immediately programmed his number into my phone so I wouldn’t lose it and shot him a text message.
Me: It’s Lilli, I wanted you to have my number, too. Thanks again.
He texted back a moment later.
Backdraft: Thanks Lil, shoot me another text to let me know you got home okay. Okay?
That was really sweet.
Me: I will.
I settled back for the rest of the car ride home and smiled like an idiot at the passing scenery thinking all the while: I made a new friend. Yay!