Firefighter's Virgin

by Claire Adams

  He hadn’t even waited a day to call and tell me that I didn’t get the job; had it even been two hours? I took a deep breath and then forced myself up. I got a glass from the cupboard and had some water.

  You didn’t get the job.

  No one is ever going to hire you.

  You shouldn’t have left the hair salon.

  Except, I hadn’t left Shear Genius—I’d been fired. And what had Rosie, the manager that I’d turned in for embezzling, said to me? That I’d never get hired anywhere again?

  Something along those lines.

  I went into the living room, which looked out onto Locust Street. My apartment building was right on the corner of Locust and Pine, Pine being the busier of the two roads. I looked out the window and saw a maroon Rav4 parked on Locust. The glare was hitting the driver’s side window just right so I couldn’t make out who was sitting there, but I knew anyway: Noah. I took a deep breath as I felt my heart rate accelerate, and not in a good way. It was fairly warm out, but my arms were suddenly covered in goosebumps. I hurried out of the living room and grabbed my phone and my purse and left through the front entrance on Pine, hoping that I could make it to my car and drive out of there before he saw me.

  I went to my best friend’s apartment. Caroline lived on the top floor, so there was no chance of anyone peeking into her windows, five stories up. We’d been best friends for years, and had seen each other through some pretty bad breakups. Well, she’d been the one doing most of the dating; I’d been on a few dates that had been disastrous, and now this, with Noah—we hadn’t even dated, yet he was acting as though I’d scorned him.

  All we’d done, in fact, was get a smoothie at the gym’s café one afternoon. We’d seen each other around the gym for a while, and he seemed perfectly nice. Quiet, maybe, but then again, I could seem quiet, too. I had just been coming out of a spin class, probably five weeks ago, now, and he caught up with me and asked if I’d like to go to the café with him. I could tell he was nervous and that it had probably taken a lot for him to work up the courage to ask me, so of course I agreed. He wasn’t awful looking, but he wasn’t the sort of person that you’d probably look twice at, were you to pass them on the street. Not like some of the guys Caroline had dated, certainly not like Ian, but I liked to think I wasn’t so superficial. That just because someone wasn’t a ten on the hotness scale didn’t mean I couldn’t give them a chance.

  It had been pretty awful, though. Not at first. For the first couple of minutes, we were able to talk about topical things, like how our workout had been, how long we’d been coming to the gym for, what classes there we liked. But then the conversation seemed to stall, or we’d start talking at the same time. We just didn’t gel, there was no coalescing, and it became clear after ten minutes that we really didn’t have anything in common. He worked from home as a freelance web designer; the whole reason he’d signed up at the gym was because he spent most of his day sitting in front of his computer. When our smoothies were finally finished (I’d made the mistake of allowing him to pay for mine, but only because the cashier had rung them up together) I said thank you and good-bye and figured that we’d both breathe a sigh of relief that we wouldn’t have to do that again.

  Oh, how wrong I had been.

  He caught up with me the next time I was at the gym, a happy smile on his face, saying that he’d had such a great time and we should do it again, and what was my phone number? I gave it to him, only because he caught me so off guard. He wanted to know what I was doing after my workout that day, and if I would let him take me out to lunch, at a real restaurant this time, not just some lame café. I lied and said I had plans with Caroline. I realize now that I should have been clear right then, that I should have just told him I wasn’t interested and perhaps that wouldn’t have led him on. But maybe not. Maybe he’d be doing this anyway, regardless of what I said.

  “I think Noah was hanging around again,” I said when Caroline opened the door. “I caught sight of him outside the living room window. He was sitting in his car. Well, I’m pretty sure it was him.”

  She peered over my shoulder and then ushered me inside. “What a creep,” she said. “You really should go to the cops. I mean, there’s got to be some sort of law against that kind of thing, right?”

  “He hasn’t done anything yet. He’s technically not trespassing; the worst that’s happened is I thought I saw him looking into one of my windows one night. But I wasn’t even sure it was him.”

  “Of course it was him. Who else would it be?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, and it probably was him. But I’d need proof, wouldn’t I? I can’t just go to the police and say that there’s this guy who I think is stalking me. I guess that’s what I get for living on the ground floor. And he hasn’t tried to break into my apartment. I don’t want to piss him off. I’m hoping he’ll just eventually lose interest.”

  “Ugh.” Caroline rolled her eyes. “He’s so gross. This is what you get for being nice to someone. Let this be a lesson: Don’t start up a friendly conversation with a psycho guy at the gym. Come on, let’s have some wine.”

  I followed her into the kitchen and then sat at the breakfast bar on one of the high stools.

  “How did the job interview go?” she asked as she poured me a glass.

  “I didn’t get it.” I slid the glass across the container and took a big gulp. Part of me still couldn’t believe it.

  “Come on now, Daisy. Don’t be so negative. I bet you did really good on the interview. You’re just being too hard on yourself.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I’m not. I know I didn’t get the job because he called me and told me so.”

  She tilted her head to the side slightly, brow furrowed. “He called you today? Already? But you just had the job interview, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “So that means he didn’t even need time to think it over or anything. Is that like some sort of world record or something? For fastest decision ever made about a job interview? He just knew that I wasn’t the right person for it. Do I exude some sort of vibe that says I’m completely incompetent? I should never have told Amanda what Rosie was doing. I should’ve just kept quiet about it.” I took another gulp of my wine and then stared straight ahead, willing myself not to cry. People lost their jobs all the time, and things turned out okay. Unless they didn’t. There were some people who got fired and were never able to recover from it; they went crazy, they never got another job, they ended up moving back in with their parents or living on the streets, panhandling or having to eat food from the trash.

  “I don’t want to have to eat food from the garbage!” I said, realizing too late that I was actually speaking these words out loud.

  Instead of looking at me like I was insane, though, Caroline just reached over and patted my arm. “You’ll find a job,” she said. “And don’t think for a second that you shouldn’t have said something about what Rosie was doing. It was messed up that Amanda fired you, too. She shouldn’t have done that.”

  Of course, I wanted to believe that I had done the right thing, and up until the moment that Amanda had told me she was letting me go, too, I believed that I had. Rosie had been managing the salon for almost as long as Amanda had owned it, and I was just a glorified receptionist who had taken on more of Rosie’s responsibilities when I realized that things weren’t getting handled the way they should have been. I wasn’t doing it to be a brownnoser or even because I was trying to get a raise; I just wanted things to run smoothly, and part of that meant making sure things were done properly. Like the money in the drawer being counted and reconciled at the end of each day. Maybe Rosie had just gotten bored; maybe she thought she’d been at Shear Genius for so long that she was untouchable; maybe she didn’t think that someone like me would dare turn in someone like her. She was glamorous and beautiful, outgoing and charismatic. In other words, all the things I was not.

  When I figured out what she was doing, how she’d write up slips f
or a haircut when the client actually got something far more expensive, like color put in, and then she’d take the difference, I thought at first that I was the one who was misunderstanding. I just couldn’t believe that she’d do something like that. She was also taking tips from the stylists. Some clients would hand the cash themselves to the stylist after they were done, but most of them would leave the tip when they settled their bill up front with me, and put the tip in these little manila envelopes we had. If the client didn’t write the stylist’s name on the envelope, I would, and then I’d put the little envelopes underneath the cash drawer in the register, and the stylists would collect them at the end of each day. Rosie was smart enough to never take all the envelopes, but she’d help herself to four or five of them, and because we were such a busy salon, most of the stylists didn’t even notice.

  Maybe I should have gone to Rosie first. Maybe I should have told her that I knew what she was doing, and that it was totally wrong and she needed to stop. If I could do it all over again, perhaps that’s what I’d do, but there was no way to go back in time. I had gone straight to Amanda, who didn’t believe me at first. Almost fired me on the spot, in fact, but then she reconsidered, saying that she had noticed there seemed to be a significant drop in the number of more expensive services that the salon provided, and a hike in just the basic wash and cuts. She ended up having a camera installed, and she got video of Rosie taking the tips envelopes from the drawer. I didn’t feel good about Rosie getting fired, but I had been completely unprepared for the fact that I would be let go, too.

  “We need a fresh start,” Amanda had told me, almost two weeks ago now, while I’d done my best to hold it together and not burst into tears in her office. “If you need to file for unemployment, I won’t dispute it, but I just feel totally burned by this whole thing.”

  She had no idea about Noah, or the fact that I was trying to move. I didn’t have much in savings—rents in Boston were astronomical—but I’d been doing what I could to squirrel away any extra, so I could have enough for first, last, and security for a new place. I’d already had to dip into my savings to cover some bills and groceries, and I’d need to pay rent soon. While he hadn’t guaranteed me the job, Jonathan had made me feel as though it was a pretty good bet that I’d get it. I felt relieved after he’d told me that, even though I hadn’t been on the interview yet. Now it just seemed foolish.

  “Am I doing something wrong?” I asked now, looking at Caroline. “I thought that I was doing okay in life, that I was being responsible and going to work and making sure my bills were paid, but it just seems like I’m missing something that everyone else has.”

  “You’re one of the most together people I know,” Caroline said. “We’re only twenty-four. That’s young. We’re supposed to be out there, having a good time, figuring out what it is we want to do with the rest of our lives.”

  “Yeah, well, you might be out there having a good time; I’m out there and agreeing to get smoothies with guys who end up being psychos. That’s what I’m talking about—why couldn’t I have agreed to get a smoothie with a normal guy? Why did I have to get fired from my job, too, even though I wasn’t doing anything wrong? Why did I think for a second that everything was going to turn out all right because this other nice guy I knew from the gym said he’d be able to get me an interview at his work and that I’d most likely get the position? I just seem to have really bad luck.”

  “You need more wine.” Caroline refilled my glass and then poured some more in her own. “Listen, Daisy. You can’t let this derail you. I know it sucks. And I’ll help you out however I can, okay? I can ask around and see if anyone knows of any openings. Or . . . maybe you should go to grad school. Now might be a good time.”

  “I’m not going to enroll in an MFA program now,” I said. “That would be a huge waste of money that I don’t even have. I mean, so was four years of college to get a creative writing degree. I should have listened to my mother.”

  It had been a while since my mother and I last talked, mostly because I’d chosen to study creative writing, with a minor in English. She wanted me to do something practical; she didn’t want to spend the money on something that may or may not pan out in the end. And since I hadn’t yet written the Great American Novel and made millions of dollars, clearly getting a degree in creative writing had been a waste of money. My mother had her Ph.D. in psychology and was a professor at Boston University. I knew that at the very least, she thought I should get a teaching position, even if the pay for a public school teacher was pretty terrible.

  “There’s probably not going to be a totally perfect time to go back to school, you know,” Caroline said. “There’s always going to be some sort of challenge. And so maybe you have to take out some loans. Most of us do.”

  “I’d consider it if it was for something a little more concrete. If I go get an MFA, the most I could reliably hope for is some teaching position, but then again, who knows since I’ve only published a few short stories in completely obscure literary journals?”

  Caroline frowned, trying to come up with something to dispute me with. She started to say something but then stopped, took a sip of her wine.

  I could hear my phone ringing. I was tempted to ignore it, but decided at the last second to at least look and see who was calling. It was a number, not a name, that appeared on the screen, but I recognized the number: Ian’s. It was the number he had just called me on.

  “It’s Ian,” I said.

  “Pick it up,” Caroline said immediately.

  I hesitated as the phone continued to ring in my hand.

  “Pick it up!” Caroline said again. “Before it goes to voicemail.”

  I didn’t want to pick it up, though. I’d felt bad enough talking to him the first time; I didn’t want to have to talk to him again. There was something unnerving about the way he had of looking at you. Jonathan had prepped me before the interview: Ian’s a great guy. He can be a little intimidating if you’ve never dealt with him before, but he’s a really good guy. And since Annie left the office has been a mess, so we REALLY need someone. You’ll be perfect. The way he’d said it made me feel like I’d been a shoe-in for the job, yet obviously, that wasn’t the case.

  What I hadn’t been prepared for was how good-looking he was; Jonathan hadn’t mentioned that part. Though I suppose he wouldn’t have. Guys probably didn’t talk about that sort of thing the way girls did. So I had felt totally nervous and was probably talking a little too much to try to cover up my nervousness, but his looks and the way he had of gazing at you did not make me feel entirely comfortable.

  “It’s good news,” Caroline said, reaching over to snatch the phone out of my hand. She answered. “Hello, this is Caroline. Did you want to talk to Daisy? Hold on one sec.”

  She held the phone out to me. Caroline could be kind of psychic sometimes—though not all the time; she had encouraged me to go to Amanda and tell her what Rosie had been doing, saying that everything was going to work out if I did, she just knew it. Reluctantly, I took the phone from her and put it up to my ear.

  “Hello?” I said. “This is Daisy.”

  “Daisy, it’s Ian Roubideaux again. Sorry for the bombardment of calls. Listen, I’d like to offer you the job if you’re still interested. If not, I understand.”

  “Of course I’m still interested,” I said, and Caroline’s eyebrows shot up and she grinned, giving me a thumb’s up. “But . . . what happened? Did the other person not work out?”

  “Something like that,” he said. I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. “So, if you’d like to pick a time in the next couple of days to come in, that’d be great. I’ve been the one manning the office for the time being, so things are a bit chaotic. Which is where you come in. And I did like what you had to say about organization. I think you’ll be a good fit here.”

  “Well . . . thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Is tomorrow okay? I can come in tomorrow.”

  “You’re a go-
getter, aren’t you?” he said. I couldn’t tell if it was meant to be a compliment or not.

  “Um . . . yes,” I said. “I can be. Is eight o’clock good?”

  He coughed, or maybe he was trying not to laugh. “Eight? No. If you come down here at eight, you’ll be waiting around for a while. We don’t get things started in the office until nine, nine-thirty. Why don’t we say ten o’clock, just to be on the safe side.”

  “Ten,” I repeated. “Sure. I’ll be there at ten.”

  When I got off the phone, Caroline was looking at me, a big grin on her face. “Was I right?” she finally said. “That sounded good! That sounded like you’ve got a job!”

  “You were right.” I nodded and looked at the phone, wanting to feel as excited as Caroline was. She held her wine glass up to me.

  “Well, cheer up then, buttercup! You’ve got a job! That’s fanfuckingtastic!”

  I forced a big smile, because she was a right—this had been a rather unexpected turn of events, and for once, it was good. I should be happy about it. I held up my own glass and we clinked them together.

  “Cheers,” Caroline said. “I knew this would work out for you.”

  I took a sip of my wine. I hoped she was right.

  I was up early the next morning before the alarm even went off. Way earlier than I normally was, but I hadn’t really been able to sleep the night before. I was too nervous. Ian had changed his mind. But why? What had happened? I couldn’t get that thought out of my head, and all the possibilities that went along with it. I knew I just needed to focus on doing a good job and handling my responsibilities, but the way everything had gone done, I was already doubting myself.

  I got up out of bed when it became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to fall back asleep. I kept the light off and went over to the window and peeked out. No Rav4, no person lurking in the doorway across the street. I exhaled and stretched, then went out to the kitchen to make coffee. I’d poured the water into the machine but then remembered I was out of coffee filters. I could go out now and get one, or I could just stop on my way into work. I decided I’d just get one on the way in; I didn’t want to leave the apartment now and then come back to get ready.