CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE | DUKE
“...and then I took her back to my place and she rode me like I was a bucking bull at the Houston Rodeo!”
Walker Wright concluded his sordid account of last night’s date with a proud whistle as he strutted across the firehouse kitchen and cracked open the fridge, adding: “That’s what I like to call the cowboy experience.”
“The cowboy experience?” I glanced up from the sink full of dirty dishes that I was scrubbing. “What does that mean? Picking her up on horseback and keeping your boots on when you take her to bed?”
“Very funny,” Walker muttered behind the refrigerator door. Then he emerged with a cup of strawberry Yoplait and added: “For your information, I know how to properly wine and dine a woman.”
“I’m sure you do,” I teased. “If by ‘wine and dine’ you mean homemade moonshine and dinner at the Texas Roadhouse.”
“You can make all the jokes you want, Williams,” Walker shrugged his shoulders indifferently as he peeled back the foil lid on his plastic yogurt cup. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about northern women, it’s that they love a southern gentleman…”
He swiped his tongue suggestively over the yogurt lid and I rolled my eyes. Walker’s Texas drawl and cowboy demeanor might have made him an exotic novelty north of the Mason-Dixon, but all the southern charm in the world wasn’t going to turn a New England woman into a rodeo queen.
“Speaking of gentlemen,” Walker was still practicing that cowboy-style cunnilingus on the foil yogurt lid as he crossed the kitchen and leaned back on the stretch of countertop next to the sink, “You’ve been acting awfully domesticated lately…”
“What are you talking about?”
“Since when does Diva Duke wash the dishes?” he nodded at the sink, and I glanced down at the dirty plate that I was scrubbing.
“Someone’s gotta do it,” I shrugged.
“I know that,” Walker whistled in amusement. “But I never thought I’d see they day when that someone was Duke Williams.”
He cocked his head to one side and watched me with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“You know, it seems like that new roommate of yours has had a good influence on you,” he said sincerely. Then he grinned as he slapped me on the back and added jokingly: “Or maybe she just cracks a sharp whip!”
My head started slipping back to Beck. I could only imagine what Walker would say if he knew about our upcoming weekend getaway to the Hamptons…
Before my mind could wander too far, I was suddenly startled by the sound of Logan Ford’s shrill voice barking through the firehouse intercom system:
“ATTENTION, ALL FIREHOUSE 56 PERSONNEL!”
I immediately jerked my head up from the sink, and my eyes shot towards the intercom speaker that was mounted on the brick kitchen wall.
“REQUESTING BACKUP FOR A 10-89 IN THE VEHICLE BAY. I REPEAT, A 10-89 IN THE VEHICLE BAY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL!”
“10-89,” I glanced at Walker, “Isn’t that code for a bomb threat?”
“You’re damn right it is!”
In all my time at Firehouse 56, I had never responded to a code 10-89. I had also never responded to a call that came via the station’s private in-house intercom system, but neither of those things crossed my mind as Walker and I both bolted for the stairs that led down to the firehouse vehicle bay.
We had no idea what to expect, but we definitely weren’t prepared for the scene that awaited us at the bottom of the stairs:
Troy Hart and Logan Ford were both standing in the vehicle bay, fully attired in turnout gear from head to toe. Troy was standing with his back to us, but I could see that he was holding something in his outstretched arms.
Logan was approaching Troy cautiously, armed with an aerosol can of Febreze. He had the spray can pointed directly at whatever Troy was holding, and he had his gloved finger resting on the trigger.
“What’s going on?” I asked urgently.
Startled, Logan jerked up and aimed the can towards me. His finger pressed down on the trigger, and I was blasted with a stream of lavender-scented Febreze.
“Fuck!” I choked as the sticky room spray flooded my lungs. “What the hell was that for?!” I waved my hand through the air to fan away the cloud of sticky room spray that surrounded me.
“Hey!” Troy glanced over his shoulder. His voice was muffled behind the faceplate of his helmet, but his tone was stern: “Don’t say ‘fuck’ in front of the baby!”
Then he spun around, and I saw that the ‘bomb’ he was holding in his outstretched arms was actually a squirming baby.
“What the--” I sputtered through the Febreze residue that coated my lips, then I craned my neck forward to get a better look at the baby that Troy was clutching in his leather gloved hands. “Is that Thomas?!”
I immediately recognized Josh Hudson’s son. As if to confirm my suspicions, baby Thomas stretched his mouth into a giant toothless grin and made a gurgled chuckle.
I took a step towards the baby but Logan intercepted me, waving the can of Febreze in my face.
“It’s not safe!” he insisted. “Don’t come any closer until you’ve geared up.”
Before I could ask what he meant, I was hit by the pungent stench of baby shit. I felt my eyes start to water as I gripped the neck of my t-shirt and pulled it over my nose.
Thomas just giggled.
“Jesus,” I grunted through my shirt as I glared at the baby. “What’s he doing here, anyways?!”
“Josh had some errands to run, so he asked us to babysit,” Troy explained through his mask.
“It was just supposed to be for an hour, maybe two at most,” Logan corroborated with a nod. “The kid was knocked out cold in his car seat. Josh said he’d probably sleep the whole time… and then the bomb went off.”
“I thought something had died. Then we realized the smell was coming from his diaper,” Troy muttered. Even through his mask, I could see the horror in his eyes as he glared down at the baby in his outstretched arms.
“He didn’t even wake up,” Logan reported grimly. “He slept right through it…”
“A sleeper shit,” I nodded solemnly, recalling the term that Josh had used to describe the phenomenon.
I felt my phone vibrate, and I reached for it in the back pocket of my jeans. The screen was lit up with a text message from Brie Wallace:
‘Hey stranger...’
I was still reading the words when, almost instantly, the phone vibrated in my palm and a second text message appeared on the screen:
‘Surprise! I’m here. In the parking lot.’
Fuck. A lump formed in the back of my throat, and I forced it down with a dry swallow.
“Hey guys,” I glanced up, “I need to step outside for a sec…”
Walker had been prodding at the baby’s diaper with a pair of grill tongs while Logan stomped around the vehicle bay shooting clouds of Febreeze into the air, but they immediately stopped what they were doing and turned to glare at me.
“What?! Are you kidding?!”
“You can’t just leave at a time like this!”
But I was already making my way towards the rear exit door at the back of the vehicle bay.
I pushed through the door and stepped out into the gravel parking lot behind the firehouse. Brie’s bright white Lincoln SUV was idling at the back of the lot.
Deep down, I knew that this conversation was long overdue.
I hadn’t spoken to Brie since that night at my apartment, but the truth was that we had been drifting apart for awhile now.
While it wasn’t unusual for us to drift apart or go weeks -- even months -- without speaking, things just felt different this time.
I had always known that our unspoken ‘friends with benefits’ arrangement wouldn’t last forever, but I hadn’t contemplated how or when things would end until we ran into each other at the Fairy Godmother Beauty Salon grand opening. Brie’s words had stuck with me, and being called a ‘bad habit’ had opened my eyes.
Even though all the pieces were there, it had still taken me awhile to make sense of everything.
Then Beck had come along.
What had happened between Beck and I had been crazy and unexpected, but it had also been a moment of clarity. Everything had fallen into place and made perfect sense…
I knew what I had to do.
Brie popped the locks when she saw me coming, and I opened the passenger side door and slid into the SUV. I was immediately greeted by the arctic A/C blasting from the air vents, and the overpowering aroma wafting from a New Car air freshener that dangled over the dash.
“What the hell happened to your face?” Brie wanted to know, blinking at me from behind a pair of oversized Marc Jacobs sunglasses.
“Bar fight.”
I glanced up at the car’s rear-view mirror and inspected the purple splotchy bruise that circled my eye. Then I added: “This is actually an improvement. You should have seen it a few days ago--”
“Maybe I would have, if you had returned my calls,” Brie snapped, cutting straight to the chase. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were avoiding me.”
“I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately, and I’ve been--”
“It’s fine, I forgive you,” Brie snapped. “I don’t have time for chit-chat. I have to meet a client at 1:30, so hurry up and pull your pants down--”
“What?! Brie, I’m not having sex with you!”
Her manicured eyebrows shot up over the rims of her sunglasses in shock, then she rolled her eyes and slunk back into the driver’s seat.
“Oh my God,” she groaned. “You’re still hung up on that joke I made, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been thinking about a lot of things--”
“It was a joke!” she rolled her eyes. “Stop being so melodramatic about it.”
“I’m glad you said it,” I told her honestly. “Otherwise, I might have never seen what was right in front of me this whole time.”
Brie pursed her lips into a duckbill and shook her head.
“I know what this is really about,” she decided smugly. “You’ve got a crush on your new roommate, don’t you? I saw the way you two looked at each other--”
“Leave Beck out of this.”
“Does she know that she’s just the flavor of the week?” Brie demanded. “Does she know that as soon as you fuck her, you’ll get bored and move onto the next pretty little thing with blonde hair and a pulse?”
“It’s not like that!”
“Of course it is! You haven’t changed a bit, Duke. The only person you’re capable of loving is yourself.”
“I know that,” I admitted. “I know that I’m a piece of shit, but I want to change. Beck makes me want to be a better person.”
“Jesus, Duke. How original. Which Hallmark card did you pull that line out of?”
“It’s the truth,” I insisted. “I don’t want to be that guy anymore. I want to be better.”
“Have fun with that,” she rolled her eyes. “I’m sure I’ll be hearing from you next week, when you realize that the only thing you have to offer a woman is a pile of false promises and a ten-inch dick.”
There were so many things that I could have said in that moment, but I realized that there was only one thing that actually mattered:
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what? You were nothing more than a bad habit.”
I popped open the door of the SUV and stepped out onto the gravel. I had made it halfway back to the firehouse when I heard Brie’s SUV roll over the gravel as she punched the gas gunned it out of the parking lot, leaving me in a cloud of exhaust.