Backdraft…

“What up, Hose Boys?”

“Oh, you think your real damn funny, don’t you, Oz?” Ripley demanded.

I cracked up but was busy wrapping my wrist. Oz dropped his gym bag and said, “Oh, I know I am, I’m fuckin’ hilarious, just ask anybody.”

“How’s life at the ol’ gray bar motel?” the Captain called out from over by one of the trucks, checking off his inspection report.

“Same shit, different day.”

Oz dropped onto one of the weight benches and flipped open the top on his shaker bottle, taking a slug of his pre-workout. He swallowed and made a face, pulling back his head and letting out a belch.

“Dude, that’s disgusting,” Ripley complained.

“Pussy,” Oz said flatly, and I laughed again. His brand of humor took some getting used to, with the dry sarcasm, but he could be funny as hell.

“Speaking of,” Oz said by way of lead-in, “Who was the girl you was with at the 10-13 Saturday night?”

“How’d you know about that?” I asked.

“Psht, Kristy asked if I knew who she was.”

“Oh yeah, why?” I asked, taking a drink of my own pre-workout.

“She gave her like a four-hundred-dollar tip,” Oz said flatly, and I choked, pre-workout coming out of my nose.

“Jesus Christ, man! Y’okay?” Ripley pounded on my back while I coughed, eyes streaming. Oz threw me a towel to mop up my front and wipe down the garage’s cement floor.

“You’re mopping that up. Soap and bucket,” the Captain called, without even turning around to look.

“You fucking kidding me?” I demanded, ignoring him.

Oz looked amused. “Do I look like I’m fuckin’ joking?”

“Four hundred bucks. You’re sure?”

“Did I fuckin’ stutter, man? I told you, that’s what Kristy told me. Now she’s trying to figure out who your girlfriend is.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” I corrected immediately. “She’s just this girl I know, you remember the one.”

“If I did, now, I wouldn’t be asking you, would I?”

“She was the one I gave a ride home to from the 10-13, that one night.”

Oz was looking at me like I was nuts and I shook my head, muttering, “Just never mind.”

“Whatever, man, you keep your secrets for now. Headphones on, motherfuckers, let’s grind this out. I got other shit to do today.”

He sounded irritated as fuck but that was just Oz. He honestly didn’t care. It took a few years of knowing the guy to know the difference, though. We worked our backs and tri’s, and by the time we were done, the subject had gotten the hell off of Lil, which was a good thing. I kind of felt like if I told anybody who she was, it would be like I was diming her out. It was like the woman had a secret identity or some shit. I just didn’t feel right giving it away.

I thought about her some more in the shower, which probably wasn’t the wisest idea at the house where any of the other guys could walk in. She was a tiny thing, but curvy in all the right places. A real woman with an hourglass shape. Her eyes were deep and soulful and reminded me of the Chesapeake on a stormy day. An almost slate gray-blue with this darker ring of leaden sky at the outer edge of her irises that turned the whole of her eyes stunning. Honey-wheat-blonde hair fell to the middle of her back and I knew that from the first time I’d met her. The night we’d had our dinner, though, she’d kept it neatly pinned up with a clip. Not fancy, but still elegant.

She was beautiful, and didn’t it suck that I’d automatically friend-zoned myself just a little bit? Well, a lot a bit, but it made sense. I mean, I wasn’t more than three months out of a relationship with Torrid, and Lil’s escape was even closer from the douchebag that’d dropped her like yesterday’s garbage.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I thought to myself and it was true.

She’d texted that she was safely home and I texted back a short good deal and goodnight, letting things go. I was playing it cool, but it’d been a couple of days of fighting myself not to text her. I didn’t want to seem too eager, but I was. I wanted to spend more time in her company. She seemed smart and driven for all that she was shy and had a tough time trusting, and who could blame her for that?

“Yo, Calder!” one of the guys called out and I yelled back, “Yeah, what?”

“You coming to the store, man?”

Shit, it was my night to cook. I stuck my head under the spray and shook my face back and forth in it to rinse off.

“Yeah!” I shouted back after a second, and whoever it was, I think it was Barnaby, yelled back, “Well, then, hurry your ass up!”

“Yeah, yeah, keep your panties on,” I grumbled.

“I heard that!”

I smirked and shut off the water, mind still on Lil and as far away as it could get from what the hell I was supposed to cook tonight.

We took the rig like we always did in case we got a call while at the store. I wasn’t really there with the guys, letting myself be distracted, replaying bits of conversation in my head from last Saturday, fists buried in the dark blue pockets of my uniform pants as a bunch of the guys horsed around in the aisles, tossing snacks into the cart.

We did our customary stop in the magazine aisle but I found myself drifting more towards the books. Sure enough, there was a copy of one of hers on the rack. Pretty prominently displayed, too. Hallowed Be Thy Light emblazoned in gold foil low on the cover, a gold seal proclaiming Soon To Be a Major Motion Picture off to one side. I studied the cover and recognized the actors on it as these young up-and-comings, surprised that one of them had gotten the time away from that big fantasy-epic series of his to shoot for Lil’s project.

I shook my head, still in disbelief that I’d asked a world-renowned author to dinner. I mean, things just didn’t happen like that in real life, did they? Wasn’t she supposed to have body guards or some shit? Like an entire security detail? I guess not, when it came to day-to-day life. Maybe at events, though. Kind of boggled my mind a little that as a romance writer she got rooked by that guy. I mean, wasn’t that kind of thing part and parcel for the trade or whatever?

I guess not, the more I thought about it.

“Dude, seriously? You lookin’ at romance novels now? You must be really bored.”

I snapped out of my daze and said, “Nah, man, I’m like a million miles away, wasn’t really looking at what I was staring at. Got a lot on my mind.”

“Oh, yeah, like what?” Brody demanded, arcing a loaf of bread through the air and into the cart like he was the next Kobe Bryant or some shit.

“None ya business,” I declared.

“You sure about that?” Ripley asked. “You’ve been distracted all morning.”

He had a right to be worried. We all did when a dude was off-kilter. That was bad juju on a call and we reserved the right to check in with each other if a guy was acting too far off his base, considering it was all our asses on the line.

“Yeah, just thinking about this girl I met.”

“Oh God,” Brody said rolling his eyes. “Please tell me she’s not like Tori.”

I laughed a little and said, “Actually, she’s nothing like Tori. It’s also not like that, we’re just friends.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s what they all say, right up ‘til the two-am booty calls start.” Ripley said, flipping through a copy of Guns & Ammo. I shook my head.

“No, really. She just got out of a bad relationship, I’m not exactly a prize winner on that front, either; we’re keeping it ‘just friends’.”

“Shit yeah, you won the prize!” Barnaby called. “There were an Olympics for bad ideas, you took the fuckin’ gold with Tori.”

I flipped him off, but he wasn’t exactly wrong. I wasn’t missing the two-am phone calls and the screaming matches. I’d tried to forgive her when I’d caught her cheating the first time. Heard her out, agreed that yeah, maybe it was my fault. That I hadn’t been ‘present’ enough with how the city was working us all like dogs through this hiring freeze, but when the guys had come to me and ratted her out and come to find out she was fucking a guy in my house, on my shift? Yeah, no. She was done. I was done and had no more interest in any of her bullshit excuses or playing her blame game.

“Seriously,” I said, eyes drifting back over the cover of Lil’s book. “Just friends.”

“Whatever you say, man. Just get her off the brain if shit gets real.” I looked over at Brody and frowned.

“I said I’m cool.”

“All right, all right,” Captain Walden said coming up the aisle to dump some produce into the cart. “Both you girls are pretty, stop pickin’ on each other.”

Brody put up his hands and walked backwards up the aisle, turning at the end and disappearing. I shook my head and when the rest of the boys weren’t looking, picked up Lil’s book.

Of course, I chickened out and set it down on a different random aisle when I realized there was no fucking way I would get through checkout without one of the guys seeing. I would get shit for days if they caught me with it and I just plain didn’t want to explain or deal with it.

On the ride back to the house, I pulled out my phone and shot her a text.

Me: Hey.

Lil: Hey, you. :) I was wondering when I would hear from you again.

Nice. She’d been thinking about me, too. I kind of felt stupid all of a sudden for not texting sooner. Wasn’t like I didn’t have a whole lot of free time. It’d been the ‘Q’ word around the house the last couple of days.

Me: Yeah, it’s been busy on my end. I wanted to see if you were up for a local adventure this weekend.

It took a minute or two for her reply to come back and when it did, I had to smile.

Lil: An adventure, huh? Okay, you have me intrigued. What kind of adventure?

Me: The Saturday Market at Bayside Park? It’s in Old Town a few blocks from the 10-13.

Lil: What, like a Farmer’s Market?

Me: Yeah. Is that dumb? That’s a dumb idea, isn’t it?

Lil: LOL no, not at all. I actually love those kinds of things. I didn’t know the city had one.

Me: Sure does. Can I pick you up? Say around 7:30?

Lil: Oh, gee, from when to when does it run? I’ve been up late nights lately and that’s a little early.

I started typing another message but another text came through before I could finish.

Lil: You know what, how about I just meet you there around 8:00?

I deleted everything I’d typed and hit her back.

Me: That sounds great. I’ll see you there, Bayside Park at eight o’clock. I’ll even have a hot cup of coffee waiting for you. What do you like?

Lil: LOL, you don’t have to do that.

Me: Least I can do for disrupting your nocturnal ways.

There was a long pause, the indicator that she was typing back crawling across the screen for what seemed like forever.

Lil: I like White Mochas or Caramel Macchiatos (sp?)

Me: What’s (sp?)?

Lil: Oh, that means I’m not sure if I got the spelling right on the word I messaged just before I put (sp?) there. Maybe that’s just a writer or a west coast thing.

Me: Always the writer, huh?

She sent a blushing little emoji and sent back: Sorry, just habit I guess.

Me: You don’t ever have to apologize for that. Look at you! Teaching me yet another something new. I like it. I’ll try to remember it. Seems pretty useful.

She sent back a smiley and then: Sorry, I’ve got to go, my publicist is supposed to call me about the HBTL premier. I both love and loathe the premiers in equal measure.

Me: Oh, I’m going to have to know why that is.

Lil: Love to see the finished movie made out of my book, it never gets old. Hate the social aspect of it. They’re exhausting for an introvert like me.

Me: Makes sense. I’ll let you get back to it. See you on Saturday.

Lil: See you then!

Rock on. I would get to see her again. That was awesome. I went through the rest of my day on cloud nine. If there were a cloud higher, I would have hit that too, after we pulled off saving a mom and her kid from a car fire on the Ellis St. on-ramp.

Just a day in the life of Indigo City’s true finest. The ICFD.