by A. J. Downey
“Oh! Um, me too…”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I don’t think I ever properly thanked you… I’m sorry if I didn’t. I mean, I don’t remember saying ‘Thank you’.”
I took the opportunity that presented itself and said, “You can, you know… Thank me.”
She looked startled and I laughed, I hadn’t meant it that way, but she’d suddenly turned me into some kind of awkward teenage boy that didn’t know what to say about anything. I swallowed and tried to backpedal.
“I didn’t mean for that to come out near as creepy as it just did. I only meant that I’d um, I’d really like to take you out to dinner, or for a drink, or something.”
She smiled bravely and looked me up and down before saying, “As long as you promise that you don’t have a wife or a girlfriend… I, um… I could stand to get out of the apartment for a while.”
I looked behind her and said, “I always kind of wondered what a place like this would rent for.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head, “I just called it an apartment again, didn’t I?”
“Ah, this one of the condos?”
“Yeah, I um, I bought it before the building was even finished.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” She blushed and named off a figure.
I gave a long, low whistle. “Wow.”
And I’d just asked her out. Go me. This woman was way out of my league… Except she’d said yes… what does that mean?
Well, not like I would know until I got to know her, and the only way to get to know her would be to take her out, so...
She was looking at me as if she was trying to decide something, and I gave a shrug and asked, “Did you ever get to try the food at the Ten-Thirteen?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Oh, shit, no, I’m sorry. The Cormorant. The place where we met the first time. We call it the 10-13.”
“Oh. No.” She shook her head. “Why do you call it that?”
“It’s a nickname, a couple of reasons for it.” I didn’t back down. “Would love to tell you over some food or a drink there, say on Saturday night?” I knew I was pushing it, but I really, really wanted her to say ‘Yes’ already.
She bit her bottom lip slightly and finally nodded, asking, “What time?”
“Around six?”
“Okay, I’ll meet you there at six.”
I smiled, “Sure you don’t want me to pick you up?”
She smiled back and it made her go from beautiful to stunning. She said, “I’ll take a car, no big deal.”
“Okay, The Cormorant on Saturday at six.”
“I’ll be there,” she said softly as Blaze had come back out of her bathroom and was coming up the hall of her condo towards us. She stepped aside and let him by.
“Have a good night, Ms. Banks,” I said with a wink and Blaze smiled.
“Yes, thank you so much for letting me use your restroom.”
She smiled graciously and said, “You’re welcome. I’ll, uh, see you then, Backdraft,” before closing the door.
We stepped off, walking a little bit up the corridor before he said, “Well? ‘See you then?’ Come on, man, don’t make me beg for it.”
“Saturday at six at the Ten-Thirteen.”
“Nice!” he hissed and held out a fist.
“Yeah, well, you know… we’ll see.” I knocked my fist into his and sighed, and we kept moving.
I couldn’t stop thinking about those gorgeous, stormy eyes of hers. She’d probably been tipsy to agree to go out with me, but for some reason I would take it. I was curious. I saw a matched pain in her that I still felt pretty keenly. I didn’t think I was looking for a relationship right now, but a friendship? Sure.
Okay, to be honest, I was kicking myself and demanding to know what the fuck I’d been thinking. I was nervous, which was completely goddamn ridiculous. I tried to thrust every thought of her out of my head as we finished our assigned floors, but at the same time, I was suddenly grateful that I’d drawn the short straw of having been on tonight.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t wondered, hadn’t hoped against hope, that’d I’d be the one lucky enough to knock on her door. Apartment 4403. Well, condo… but they were the same damn thing really.
Lillian Banks.
It felt good to have a full name, too. Now, I just had to hope again. Hope that she wouldn’t stand me up and that I would get the chance to learn more.
“Bro, get your head off the girl, and back in the game. I don’t want to pay out to those two assclowns.” We’d bet we’d get our floors done before Cowan and Rizzo from Blaze’s house.
I looked up and grinned at Blaze, “Yeah, sorry.”
He laughed, “Don’t blame you. She’s hot, seems nice…” he trailed off and I nodded some.
“Different from Torrid, that’s for sure.” I said it so he didn’t have to.
“Yeah. You need that,” he said, sounding relieved. I figured he was dying to make the observation.
“Yeah,” I agreed, my thoughts far away and back on the woman. I thought Lillian maybe needed different, too. The sadness in those eyes of hers was still kind of haunting me.
4
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 sigh
ing 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.”
