by A. J. Downey
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.
6
Lilli…
The fall day was crisp as I got out of the towncar at the curb by Bayside Park. I thanked the driver and handed him a decent tip. He tipped his smart-looking uniform cap that I had no name for and said, “Always a pleasure, Ms. Banks. Just give us a call or text if and when you need picked up.”
I smiled warmly and said, “Thank you, Antonio.”
He smiled tightly and gave a nod, and went back around to the driver’s side. He pulled away from the curb, leaving me to scan the park. I stood at the top of some broad stone steps that led down into
a wide, flat cement courtyard of sorts. The park was built out into an observation platform that doubled as a jetty. The Chesapeake Bay lapped at the stone platform it was built out over.
In the center of this cement expanse was a fountain, a bronze statue of Poseidon and his trident in the center, mermaids and fish carved into the stone comprising the fountain basin.
There were aisles and rows of pop-up tents off to my left, and beyond them the roofs of food trucks and a bunch of tables set up for people to eat. Past that were the park’s trails and grass; trees with falling leaves dotted it here and there, while people meandered.
I scanned the people milling around the fountain for Backdraft and laughed when I saw him approaching with a cup of coffee in each hand. I descended the steps and reached out for the one he held out to me.
“Right on time,” he said. “I like it.”
“I hate being late. I’m the kind of person who will show up an hour early for something and wait around just so I’m never late. I swear to God, it’s almost a phobia.”
He laughed. “I don’t know that I’m quite that bad, but yeah. On-time is just polite; don’t be wasting people’s time.”
I smiled and took a tentative sip of the coffee, it was good and sweet, just the way I liked it, and the perfect drinking temperature. I felt my lips curl in pleasure around the plastic lid and Backdraft smiled at me around his.
“Shall we?” he asked and jerked his head in the direction of the tents.
“Absolutely, we shall,” I said laughing and was surprised at just how giddy I was feeling, how excited I was to see him.
We moved in that direction and he asked “So, how’d your week go?”
I said, “Okay. Busier than I’d like. I didn’t get much writing done when all I wanted to do was write. There’s a lot going on with the back end of things. They want to option a few more of my books for film and the screenwriters have been in touch. They’re surprisingly really great at asking for my input now. They don’t always take what I have to say into consideration, but they always explain the ‘why’ of it, you know? Like why it won’t work, or why it has to be the way they want to do it, so that’s nice. I was really surprised about that, especially after the first movie.” I rolled my eyes and he laughed.
“Yeah, the way it comes across sometimes, it’s like once you sell the rights for something like that, it’s theirs to do whatever the hell they want to do with it.”
I perked up and felt another surge of excitement, “That’s exactly what I thought, too, for the first one and I was like ‘Oh, hell no!’ With how much of a bear it was in the contractual stage to get me in as a consult, I was very surprised that they were so willing to have me there when it came to the writing. Still was really hard for me for the first film. Honestly, what I’ve found, is that a lot gets filmed and everything is fine right up until the editors get a hold of it.” I made a face. “That’s where things can really go sideways. I’ve seen a full-on screaming match between a director and a film’s editors. It was pretty wild and uncomfortable.”
“Wow, sounds like,” he said and took a drink. “Uncomfortable because a bunch of grown-ass adults acting like toddlers or...?”
“Ah, you caught that, huh?” I asked. “No, it was mostly because the director was freaking out about them ruining quote unquote ‘his vision’ all the while I’m standing there thinking to myself, Really? I mean, really?” I gave Backdraft a cross-eyed look and he laughed.
“It was a movie out of your book!”
“Oh, my god, right? That’s what I thought, but apparently, this guy was like once he took it on it was all his, and I didn’t matter anymore. Working on that project was the worst. So stressful. We went back and drove some even harder bargains when the studio wanted to pick up more of my books. It was hard, too. There’s so many good books and stories out there waiting to be told that they could have easily at any time been like ‘Um, no’ and dropped us like a hot potato but lucky for us, that didn’t happen; they were just as over that director as we were.”
He laughed and said, “Good deal, good deal. Sounds like maybe you and your team or whatever got a bit of firefighter in you, too.”
I laughed and blushed, suddenly embarrassed about being such a chatterbox but this was the first time I’d gone out since our dinner and had interaction with another adult. The kids down at the pool in my building didn’t count.
He’d provided me the perfect segue, though, and I took it, asking, “What about you? How did your week go?”
“Ahhh, I try to leave work back at work,” he said. “It was a pretty good week, though. We won more than we lost, so there’s that.”
I nodded and pressed my lips together, bowing my head some as my heart went out to him. I think I was one of the few that even though I didn’t walk the walk, I could talk the talk, so to speak. I couldn’t imagine doing his job, but at the same time, I could. Imagination was sort of my job, so there was that.
I said, “I imagine it’s a tough thing, more than any of you guys let on, you know, when you lose some.” I took in a cleansing breath and let it out. “I want to say I couldn’t imagine what you do, but it’s kind of my thing.” I wrinkled my nose a little and he smiled big.
“Yeah, I guess that’s a good way of looking at it. I guess it’s like you get it without ever getting the full brunt of it. That’s a mixed bag for sure.” I smiled faintly and swallowed a bit of my coffee as we slow-walked.
“Thanks for that,” I said shyly, cautiously.
“For what?” he asked, his forehead wrinkling.
“For not just blowing me off and saying how I can’t possibly get it. You’d be surprised at how often I get that from people.”
“Wow, yeah, condescending much?” he asked.
I wrinkled my nose and murmured, “Welcome to basically what it is to be a romance author to like half to three-quarters of the population. Especially to men.”
“Again,” he said nodding. “I could see it. I mean, we were out at the grocery store the other day and some of the guys gave me a ration of shit for even looking at one of your books on the shelf. Can’t imagine what they’d say if they actually saw me with it in my hand.”
I looked at him and said, “Why didn’t you just tell them you knew me?” I asked. “I bet that would have shut them up.”
He kind of frowned a little and said, “I didn’t want to. After our conversation the other night, it kind of felt like I’d be diming you out, you know? Like I’d be blowing your cover or something. I didn’t want to do that to you.”
I stopped in my tracks and stared at him, a little wide-eyed. That was quite possibly the sweetest and most considerate thing anyone had ever done for, or said to me.
I said as much. “That’s really very sweet of you, Backdraft, but I honestly don’t hide it at all. I just typically don’t go around shouting it from the rooftops. If it would save you some grief, you’re more than welcome to impart that information.”
He’d stopped with me and smiled that brilliant and disarming smile that made my heart trip in my chest. I smiled back, suffused more with warmth from that smile of his than I was from the coffee I held in my hand.
“I’ll keep that in mind, Lil. I’ll keep that in mind,” he said and we resumed our walk, reaching the edge of the tents. “Where do you want to start?” he asked.
“Um, how about this end?” I pointed the way of the produce and he gave a nod.
It was a beautiful fall day, the sun high in the wide blue sky despite the weather report calling for afternoon rain.
We perused the stalls slowly, and I ran my gaze over every color and just tried to absorb every sight, sound, and interaction between people like a sponge. Eventually, Backdraft asked about the night we met, but surprisingly, it didn’t hurt or sting like I expected it to. Likewise, I expected to feel overwhelmed with humiliation or embarrassment, but neither of those really reared their ugly heads, either.
I sighed uncertainly, I didn’t really
want to tell the story but I supposed it needed telling so I said, “I met Mark the day I moved in to the Echelon.”
I told him about that first night and how things went over the next few months, and the humiliation started to creep in the further along in the story I got. How did I account for ignoring the warning signs? The missed dates, the quick phone calls that were far quicker than they should have been if he were really as into me as he said he was? The answer was, now that I looked back on it, that I couldn’t and that was, more than anything, the source for my embarrassment now.
Backdraft nodded, “You’re not the only one,” he confessed. “Happens to the best of us; it really does. My ex, Torrid, suckered me but good. Was even doing one of the guys in my own firehouse.”
He shook his head and tossed his empty coffee into one of the trash cans at the intersection of one of the next squares of pop-ups in the Market’s grid. He held out a hand for mine and gave me a questioning look to ask if I was done. I drained the last sweet dregs in a big mouthful and handed my cup over. He tossed it for me.
I felt my forehead wrinkle and asked him, “What kind of name is Torrid?”
“Ah, that would be her road name. Her real name is Victoria or Tori for short.”
“Sounds like she was maybe a bit of a wild child?” I hazarded a guess.
He laughed, “Was? Yeah no, try is. None of my brothers really liked her, either. My dumping her ass isn’t about to slow her down.” He sighed and shook his head and my heart echoed the look of hurt that flickered through his eyes and mirrored the disappointment on his face. We were two of a kind, so it seemed, when it came to cheaters and broken hearts.
“Brothers as in the firehouse or the motorcycle club?” I asked, as much for clarification as to steer towards a change of subject.
He laughed again and said, “Both sets of bros, actually. Well, except for Ackley, who was the assclown on my shift that was boning her behind my back.”
I winced and said, “That’s almost worse, her cheating with someone you worked with and that person knowing and hiding it from you. I mean, ugh! Just ugh.”
