First Impressions (Hero Hearts: Firefighter)

by Hayley Wescott

  “Dan lives in Radcliffe, but he’s here visiting his brother,” said Melissa. “His brother and Brad are both in the same men’s group.”

  “Wow, uh, that’s great,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. Melissa was trying to do something nice for me. And truthfully, Dan was pretty good-looking, in a normal and wholesome way, not in a Mr. July kind of way. He seemed nice. If I hadn’t just had the Blake fiasco, I probably would have been more excited. He chatted to Melissa and me for a few minutes, and I was able to talk to him without making a fool out of myself, which was more than I’d ever been able to manage with Blake. This was a good sign, but my stomach was flipping the whole time.

  At some point in the conversation Melissa drifted away, and Dan and I continued chatting about the real estate market in Radcliffe for several minutes before he asked for my number. I shouldn’t have given it to him. I was focusing on myself this summer. I was going to take a cooking class with Annalise. But I’d already broken that rule once with Blake anyway, so the cows were already out of the barn. What could it hurt? I pulled out my phone to enter his number.

  As I went back in to my contacts list, the popup box was still there, asking if I was sure I wanted to delete Blake’s number. I hesitated for a second, then I decided. No. I might as well hang on to it, just in case. What if I needed help getting my cat out of a tree?

  12

  Blake

  I was confused. I thought we had a good time. For the past several days, I’d gone over every detail of our date in my head. I played out every single moment trying to figure out what would have kept her from answering my texts.

  Did I do or say something that might have offended her? Maybe I wasn’t attentive enough? Should I have said or done more?

  She seemed to enjoy herself. I saw her relax. Perhaps I was having a good time and I projected that she was too. No, I know she did. She laughed with me the whole night. Then why was she avoiding me now?

  Maybe she was playing hard to get. I didn’t think so, though. I was pretty good at reading people, and I hadn’t gotten that vibe from her. If she was into those kinds of games, then she wasn’t who I thought she was. I was too old to waste my time playing games.

  But I had a feeling that wasn’t it. She didn’t seem at all the type to play games. I remembered what she had said about having her heart broken, and how deeply it had affected her. She wasn’t the type to turn around and do the same thing to someone else. I’d sent her texts, even called and left a voicemail. But I hadn’t gotten any response. Zip.

  Normally, if I had sent a couple texts and called someone with no reply back after a couple of days, I would take it as a clear indicator they weren’t interested and move on. But something just wasn’t sitting right with me.

  Sammie and I had had a great time on our date the other night. We had, hadn’t we? Gosh. Why was I still asking myself this question? Of course we had. I could still remember the look of delight on her face on the Ferris wheel, when she looked up at the stars and her fear of heights disappeared as we looked up together. Her shy smile was genuine and so was her joyful laughter that came out as we spent the evening together.

  Then her serious face when she mentioned the heartaches in her past. Something told me that her staying away had more to do with her fears than changing her mind about liking me. Maybe it was self-centred of me to think that, but I didn’t care. I wanted to make it clear to her where I stood.

  * * *

  The sky was a perfect clear blue, dotted with white cotton clouds. I pulled up and sat in the parking lot of Pine Ridge Elementary, trying to decide whether or not I was about to make a mistake. Should I go inside and try to talk to her, or should I just accept her silence as evidence she didn’t want to see me again?

  I hadn’t told anybody what I was going to do. Joe knew that I’d texted her and hadn’t heard back yet, but I hadn’t said anything about my plan to go and talk to her. I was afraid he would think I was crazy. Who knows? Maybe I was. Maybe she was a good actress and she had hated the date the other night. Maybe I’d been dumb to push her on to the Ferris wheel when she said she didn’t want to. I just thought that if I could see her again, she’d see that I wasn’t going to break her heart.

  Logically, the plan made sense, but in my head I was riddled with fear that she would reject me. I got out of my truck and shut the door. I straightened my shirt and walked toward the school. The fact that I was so nervous told me that I was already emotionally invested in Sammie. More than I wanted to admit. We hadn’t even had a chance to get into any deep conversations, but I knew she had a story to share. And I knew that I wanted to hear every word of it.

  I opened the double doors that led inside the school. Inside the doors was a long hallway. I remembered from the other day that to get to the library, I needed to walk all the way down and take a right.

  “Excuse me, sir. Are you a visitor here?”

  I stopped in my tracks and turned to look at the woman who had spoken. “Am I a visitor?”

  She smiled at me in a pleasant but no-nonsense way. “All visitors need to report to the front office and sign in to get a visitor’s badge.”

  “Oh right, sorry. Thanks for your help.” I headed in the direction she had pointed, to the large front desk where the school secretary sat. When I’d been here the other day, I’d just gone straight to the library, but of course that had been under different circumstances. In this day and age, strangers couldn’t wander around elementary schools and that was a good thing.

  The secretary at the front desk showed me the visitor log and handed me a badge. “And who are you here to see today?” she asked.

  “Samantha Rowell,” I told her.

  She blinked. “Ms. Rowell? Oh, I assumed you were here to pick up your child.”

  “Nope, no kids for me.”

  “All right then.” She looked at me over the top of her glasses. “Do you know the way to the library?”

  “Down that hallway and on the left?”

  The secretary nodded, and so I pinned my badge to my shirt and headed off down the hallway. With every step I took, I felt more and more nervous. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe I shouldn’t have come. It wasn’t too late to turn back.

  And then, suddenly, I was there in front of the library door. There was a window on the top half of it, and I peeked inside to see if she was sitting there at her desk. There was no one there. I’d thought that if I could see her first I could get my bearings, draw up enough courage, and walk right up to her. Would she be happy to see me or would she be angry?

  I held my breath, opened the doors, and walked through them. As I approached the counter, I saw her return from the back room heading my way. My head lifted and her eyes met mine. An initial smile on her lips faded and she seemed suddenly cold.

  “Well, fancy meeting you here.” I tried to keep my tone light and joking, but she didn’t smile back at me.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked bluntly.

  “I thought I’d come and see what you were up to,” I said. Out loud, my words sounded lame. “I was just driving by and thought about you, so I stopped. I sent you a text the other day, but I know, life gets busy, we don’t always have the time to reply.” I was talking too fast, afraid of giving her a chance to stop me and tell me to go away.

  “I got your texts,” said Sammie. “I, um, yeah. I’ve been busy. I was at my sister’s.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, okay. How’s the rest of your week looking?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Are you free later on in the week? I’d love to meet you for dinner. Thursday? Friday, even?”

  Sammie’s eyes darted nervously left and right, like she was looking for a place to hide. I waited for her answer. “I’m pretty busy,” she said finally. “I’m doing a cooking class with a friend later on.”

  “Well, I meant, whenever you’re free. Thursday or Friday were just suggestions. I could always trade a shift at the firehouse.”

  �
�I just don’t think I’ll have time. I’m pretty busy,” said Sammie quietly.

  I’d never been so embarrassed before in my life. Obviously, I’d completely misjudged the situation. “Right,” I said. “Okay then. It was nice meeting you.”

  “You too,” I heard Sammie say softly behind me, as I fled the school under a cloud of humiliation.

  13

  Sammie

  “So he just showed up?” asked Annalise, as we wandered through the hallway of the community college. “Randomly, at your work in the middle of the day?”

  “Yes,” I said. I shuddered as I remembered walking out of the storage closet, and seeing him standing there. He looked so good. So, so good. And he was so polite. How sweet that he had been driving by the school and had thought of me, and had stopped to ask me out to dinner. I’d almost said yes. He was so charming in person, it had taken every ounce of my self control to tell him I was busy. Because he has a son, I reminded myself. He had lied to me and who knows if he’s married to the boy’s mother. If so, he’s not the nice guy he seems to be.

  I was a terrible liar myself, so after I’d fibbed to him about having plans I’d ducked back in to the storage closet and called Annalise, begging her to come up with some plan for the two of us tonight. I didn’t want to risk Blake stopping by to surprise me at home and finding me hiding there alone, watching TV. So Annalise had called around and found two spots in a cake decorating class at the community college tonight, and here we were.

  “I think it’s back this way,” said Annalise, looking down at her phone for the directions she’d gotten. “Yep, we walked past the hallway.”

  I followed her obediently as we traced back over our steps and down a smaller hallway that we’d passed earlier. Sure enough, there was a small sign that we’d somehow missed, and we could soon hear the low hum of conversation coming from a classroom.

  Inside the room, about half a dozen other adults were standing around long tables covered in an assortment of cake decorating tools. We quickly joined them, apologizing for being late.

  “Not late at all,” said the teacher. “We’re just getting started. Pick up an apron and I’ll quickly run through some of the techniques we’re going to learn today.”

  When I had made this plan with Annalise, I’d envisioned us discussing my run-in with Blake while we ate cake. I hadn’t thought it through at all. Not only were the other students and the teacher all able to overhear anything we discussed, but we were so busy learning how to make perfect rosettes that we didn’t have any time to talk about something else. It was good to have a distraction from my disastrous dating life. And even though we were only practicing decorating sheets of cardboard, I was surprised to realize that I was actually enjoying myself. I was a little disappointed when the two-hour class drew to an end.

  “If you’re interested in further developing your decorating skills, there’s an intermediate class being held next week,” the teacher announced, as we were finishing up.

  “Where’s the class for eating these cakes that we decorate? I think I’d like to sign up for that one,” Annalise joked.

  “Maybe you should check out our pastry class, then,” said the teacher, deadpan.

  Annalise and I looked at each other and giggled.

  Finding our way out was much easier than finding our way in. As we reached the parking lot, I hesitated for a minute.

  Annalise knew something was up. “You okay, Sammie? What did you think of the class?”

  “I actually liked it a lot,” I admitted. “And I know it was a joke, but a pastry class sounds fun too. I, um, I did kind of want to talk to you, though. I thought we could talk in the class, but it was harder than I thought.”

  “You know what,” said Annalise, “making all those icing rosettes made me hungry for actual cake. Let’s go find somewhere to get dessert, okay? You know I’m dying to hear what you’ve got to say. He just showed up at school? Yeah, we definitely need to talk about that.”

  There was a small cafe down the street from the college, so we walked down, found a table, and ordered two pieces of cake. When it arrived I took a big forkful, closed my eyes, and chewed.

  “Mmm. This is amazing.”

  “Definitely,” Annalise agreed. “So what did you say when Blake just showed up?”

  I put down my fork. “I was so awkward. I mean, I know I’m always awkward, but this time it seemed worse than usual. I don’t know. I’m such a chicken. I should have replied to his texts, just said something about not being able to see him again. He said he was just driving by the school and thought about me, so he thought he’d come and see if I was just too busy to reply.”

  Annalise burst out laughing. “A likely story.”

  I gave her a sideways look. “What do you mean?”

  “Just driving by?” She used air quotes to go with her sarcastic tone.

  “He could have been,” I said defensively. “I don’t know where he lives. Maybe the school is on his way to work. Anyway, he asked me if I wanted to have dinner with him. I said I had plans. Then I called you, and we made plans.”

  “No second chance, huh?” she asked. “Not even for a guy who makes up a cute and completely see-through excuse to come see you after you give him the cold shoulder?”

  “Haven’t we beaten this topic to death?”

  “I’m just saying. If he had a kid, and lived in the neighborhood, wouldn’t his kid go to your school?”

  I paused, mid-bite, to think about what she had said. “Well, not necessarily. Maybe he doesn’t live in the neighborhood, maybe he lives in that new development on the east side of town and just drives past my school to get to his fire house. Maybe his son lives with his mother most of the time because of his odd schedule and goes to school in her neighborhood and Blake only gets him weekends. There are hundreds of explanations. Maybe he’s too young for school. I thought he looked around six or so, but he could be a year younger and hasn’t started kindergarten yet. Or maybe—”

  “Okay, okay.” Annalise held up a hand to stop me. “I get it. You’ve given this a lot of thought, obviously.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” I was feeling defensive.

  “Nothing.” Annalise held up her hands in defense. “As long as you feel like you’re making the right decision.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I just want you to be sure that you’re not making a mistake. Things like this don’t happen every day, you know.”

  “You don’t trust me to make a sound decision about my own life?” I felt the anger wash over me. It was easier to let Annalise take the heat since she was sitting right in front of me and bold enough to speak her mind. “You don’t trust me to decide who should and shouldn’t be in my life. I’ve already fooled by a man who turned out to be someone other than who I thought he was. I’m not ready to go through that again. I doubt I ever will be. Why are you so invested in this guy anyway? You’ve been pushing him on me since day one.”

  “I haven’t been pushing him on you,” Annalise protested, but I was already upset and it was too late to talk sense to me.

  “Really? You gave me that calendar.”

  “How was I supposed to know that he would show up to a fire alarm call at your school a few days later!” Her voice rose as she was starting to get as upset with me as I was with her.

  “And you were the one who convinced me to call him back and go on the date after all. And now you’re making excuses for him. I was happy before, Anna. Call me boring all you want—"

  “I’ve never called you boring,” she interrupted.

  I kept on going like I’d never heard her. “Call me boring all you want, but I was happy before. I had a job I loved and I had a best friend and I was starting to have a really good relationship with my sister. It might be a simple life, but I was happy. I didn’t need the complications that this guy seems to be bringing to my life.”

  “I just didn’t want you to have regrets,” said Annalise. She l
ooked abashed, sitting hunched over slightly in her chair in a way I’d never seen her before. “Sammie, I know what that’s like, and I think you deserve better than that. You owe yourself more.”

  “I’m not in the mood for this,” I said shortly. I grabbed a ten dollar bill out of my purse, slapped it on the table next to my plate, and stood up and walked outside. I needed to cool myself down. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  And with that, I left her sitting at the table watching me walk away.

  14

  Blake

  I hadn’t actually thought she’d accept my invitation to dinner right there on the spot for that same night. That’s why I offered other options. A part of me must have been holding out hope, because even though I was used to cooking dinner for just one person, that night it seemed unbearably depressing to cook for only myself and eat alone. I wasn’t a great cook, but I could do the basics, although most nights it seemed like too much effort just for myself.

  If Camille and Clay were visiting then I enjoyed cooking for them, but when it was just me, I too often ended up eating a microwave dinner on the couch, in front of the TV. Camille lived in Radcliffe, but I saw her as much as I could. We were bonded, the two of us. And Clay was a joy. I loved him with all my heart.

  My microwave beeped, and I took my dinner out. Champ and I took up our usual spots on the couch, and I picked up the remote and began flicking around the channels. It looked like I’d be flipping back and forth between the Braves game and crime drama reruns again tonight. Since I ate dinner by myself more often than not when I was off duty, I’d gotten strangely attached to Law & Order. It was comforting, in a way. The world could be ending and there would still be Law & Order reruns on some channel somewhere.

  I put up my feet on the coffee table, ate my microwaved lasagna, and tried to shut my brain off. I didn’t want to think about today’s incident. I laughed at my choice of words. Incident. Like it was a major thing or something. I wasn’t one for drama, but this rejection and embarrassment and disappointment did feel a step up from a mere occurrence.