Chapter Eight

Simon

I watched the door close as I tried to process what had just happened.

I knew she had been at the house when I had parked my truck but I’d just assumed that she’d be locked away in Alex’s room all night since the kids weren’t home. When she’d appeared in the doorway to the living room just fifteen minutes after I’d sat down, I considered getting up and walking down to my room but decided against it. Even though I’d been avoiding her, I wasn’t about to be obviously rude. Then she’d sat down and asked if she could watch it with me, really not giving me a choice, but I was glad she had.

Megan’s laughter was contagious. When she’d crack up at a scene, I couldn’t help but laugh along with her. I liked that she’d asked questions during the movie and hadn’t just pretended to understand all of the baseball references. I knew the movie almost word-for-word but that had been one of my favorite memories of actually watching it. Of course I’d spent a bit of time watching her, too. The smile on her face had been gorgeous and almost better than the movie.

After that night, I stopped trying to get over my attraction and decided to attempt to live with it instead. A life with Megan as just a friend was better than a life without her. I started joining them for dinner more often and actively stopped avoiding conversation with her. In return, Megan stopped looking at me with pity and became more relaxed when she was there.

My brother was one of those people who went to bed early. While I could run on fumes, Alex needed a solid night of sleep to be a productive member of society. That had only gotten worse once he’d become a single dad, full-time employee, and full-time student. He’d sometimes go to bed right after dinner or, if the kids were home, as soon as they were in bed. It was usually too early for Megan, though.

As she started spending more time at our place, my favorite time of the day became the late evenings. Megan wouldn’t always go to bed with Alex and sometimes we’d hang out in the living room watching TV. Even on the nights when she did join my little brother at bedtime, she’d usually come back out to the living room sometime later and state she wasn’t tired. I’d tricked myself into believing that maybe she was tired but that she just said she wasn’t so we could spend some time together alone.

The Tonight Show had turned into ours to watch together. I set it up to record on the DVR and we’d watched at least one episode when she was over. I refused to watch any of the recordings without her. Jimmy Fallon wasn’t as funny if Megan wasn’t watching him with me.

Even though the TV was always on, neither of us would just sit and watch quietly. I learned a lot about Megan during those few precious hours a week. She told me about her parents’ amazing relationship and how her little sister was constantly on a quest to find one of her own. Kelly had been in a lot of relationships and each one sounded worse than the last. The stories Megan told me about the men were either laughable or horrifying.

I told Megan about my own parents and how my father had been a firefighter, too. He’d been killed on the job when I was twelve after a floor had given up beneath him during a house fire. My mom had fallen apart and I’d done the best I could to pick up the pieces. My stepfather, Phil, was an amazing man who’d been my father’s best friend. He stayed in our lives and helped us figure out how to live without my father. He and my mother eventually fell in love. He’d always treated Alex and me like his own sons but in a way that honored our father. Most importantly, though, he loved our mother. Phil was a police officer and between him and my father, Alex and I were destined to go into public service.

Megan had been surprised to learn that I had a business degree and I hadn’t actually planned to follow in my father’s footsteps. After losing him to the fire, I didn’t think I’d ever want to pursue that as a career. I only intended to follow the firefighter route until I was done with school and figured out what I wanted to do forever. I’d fallen in love with the job, however, and I was coming up on ten years of service.

“Do you ever get scared?” Megan had asked me one night out of the blue. I turned to look at her but her attention was on the TV.

I stared at her profile for a moment before I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t let myself think about it. I focus on getting the flames out and making sure my company gets back safe.”

Her eyes flashed to mine briefly and she nodded without saying anything else.

Megan was her own type of hero. I hadn’t realized but she and Kelly were so close in age that they were in the same grade in school. I had no idea if I could have handled that if Alex and I had been in the same situation. But they’d spent kindergarten through college together and Megan had said that it was hard but that she wouldn’t change it for anything. She attributed the constant support they’d given one another to the reason she and Kelly were so close. Megan adored her baby sister and I knew she’d kill a man to ensure her happiness and safety.

I found out little things about Megan, too. She told me about how rodents and insects turned her into a crazy person who stood on a chair and screamed. I heard about the time she’d almost died when she’d been stung by a bee, which she and Kelly were both extremely allergic to and now carried epi pens for. She confessed that she’d always wanted to get a tattoo but didn’t have one yet because she wasn’t attached to an image enough to ink it on permanently. I even found out that she hadn’t lost her virginity until she was eighteen because she had been so shy in high school.

In return, I told her about how I’d played baseball all though high school and how everyone had expected me to keep it up in college but I had no desire to. I loved playing for fun but not as a career. When she asked me if I was still any good, I had just shrugged and said she’d just have to come to more games to see. At some point, I’d promised her that I would hit a homerun in her honor if she did.

I informed her of my allergy to onions, which Megan immediately called me out on and claimed not liking them didn’t make me allergic. I also admitted that I went on a spring break cruise in college and ended up spending the whole week vomiting from sea sickness and not from epic alcohol exploits.

I needed that time I got with Megan at night. I’d stay up even when I was exhausted beyond words just to have the chance to watch TV with her. If she was at our place, we got that time together. The times when she’d come back down after originally going up with Alex were hard. Knowing that they were having sex made me irrationally angry but that anger was soothed by the knowledge that, even though I couldn’t physically have Megan, I was getting her on another level.

And that line of thinking scared me.