by Abby Jimenez
We pulled up to a tired apartment complex. When we got inside, I was right. More bullshit. A lady pretending to be unconscious after a fight with her husband. She wanted him to think he’d given her a heart attack. A nice little guilt trip.
These theatrics seemed to be a relatively common affliction here. I’d gone on five calls like this since I’d gotten to California. Someone pretending to have a medical emergency to get attention. A waste of time and resources.
We didn’t get calls like this in small-town South Dakota. We got a fraction of the calls they did here, but when we did get them, they were legitimate. People didn’t call 911 unless they needed to fucking call. They didn’t use us as props for their dramas. Small-town people had pride.
I couldn’t wait to tell Kristen about this shit. She loved hearing about my calls. It was the first thing we caught up on when I would come back over after a shift. She’d have something hilarious to say for sure. Last week I’d single-handedly wrangled three drunks into the back of an ambulance, and she’d called me the Idiot Whisperer.
On the way back to the engine with the crew, I spoke low to Brandon. “How do you stay so fucking patient with these people?”
Brandon shrugged. “It’s just the job. You do your best to educate them when you can.”
“Does it work?”
“No,” Shawn said with a laugh, and Javier chuckled behind him.
I shook my head. “You know, I considered the Forest Service before the move. I’m starting to think I should have looked more into that.”
Shawn snickered. “What? You wanna be a fucking gardener?”
“The Forest Service isn’t that bad,” Brandon said, loading his gear back into the engine.
“Not having to deal with people?” I said. “Being outside, in nature? What’s not to like?”
Shawn climbed into the engine. “You’re just fucking clearing brush. Smokey the Bear shit.”
“And that’s worse than this?” I asked. “We just revived a woman who wasn’t unconscious. At least I’d be actually accomplishing something.”
I climbed back into my seat and put on my headset. Javier had snagged someone from the complex about the trash in front of the fire hydrant, so we all sat and waited.
Fuck. What was I doing with my life? Did I really want to do this shit for the next twenty years? I didn’t know if I had the patience. Sure, I got to go on some cool calls sometimes. I delivered a baby last week, and I put out a car fire. But most of it was crap like this. And the probation made it worse.
I could have applied for the Forest Service. Maybe tried Northern California. Lived near wine country and the redwoods where I could have hunted and owned some land.
But then there was Kristen.
If I’d moved somewhere else and come here for Brandon’s wedding and met Kristen then, I would have wished I lived here by the time the night was done. I knew I would. She was special. She wasn’t just some girl. I think I’d known that the day I met her.
I pulled out my cell phone and scrolled to her name, looking at the blinking line, waiting for me to type a text. And tell her what? She wouldn’t even let me kiss her goodbye this morning. Why would she want to hear from me?
My whole life was one big probationary period at the moment. I was in limbo, waiting to see if things got better.
There was only one way to get through it. Put my head down. Do a good job. And do what I’d been told.
I’d just have to bide my time.
SIXTEEN
Kristen
Josh’s forty-eight-hour shift gave me withdrawals. I felt like some sort of addiction had started, and now I craved him. I needed to see him like a fix. I actually got in the car to drive past the fire station like a stalker, and I had to talk myself down.
I debated texting him but decided against it because why? So we could be closer? Get to know each other better? If anything, I should have been figuring out ways to see him less. Looking for another carpenter, maybe even breaking off this booty-call thing altogether before I was in so deep I’d never get out.
Ugh. What have I done?
I texted Sloan to see if we could have lunch, but her stepmom was throwing her a small bridal shower at her dad’s house in San Diego, and she was going to be gone both days of Josh’s shift. I didn’t want to drop the whole “I banged Josh” thing on her over the phone. So I sat through my two days without him, alone, watching the clock and missing him as I scoured my house from top to bottom.
When his shift at the fire station was done and he finally headed back over to work on the orders I had for him, I waited for the sound of the garage door opening like a dog waiting for his master to come home.
I’d done my hair and makeup and dressed in normal clothes for once. Nothing too cute—leggings and an off-the-shoulder shirt. I didn’t want to send the wrong message. The message that broadcasted how I really felt.
Once I knew he was here, I scampered back to the living room sofa and put my laptop onto my lap so he wouldn’t know I’d been waiting like some kind of fangirl.
It was so lame.
“Hey,” he said, coming into the doorway with a smile. Stuntman bounced at his feet wearing his I’M LITTLE AND I HATE EVERYONE shirt. Josh crouched and petted him. “I brought you a breakfast burrito.”
Oh God.
How had he managed to get more attractive in the past forty-eight hours? He looked so cute in his jeans and gray T-shirt with that messy hair and the fucking dimples I loved, and the man had a damn burrito for me on top of everything.
Not to mention now I could picture him naked.
My heart thudded just looking at him. I wanted to run to him and jump on him, wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him.
“Hey,” I mumbled, looking back to my screen.
He set the food down on the coffee table, his cologne and the smell of sausage teasing me.
“Thanks,” I said, pretending to write an email.
He waited for a long moment as I tapped at my keys. “Well, I guess I’ll get to work…”
I didn’t breathe until I heard the laundry room door close.
Then he spent the day in the garage. I didn’t hang out with him like I usually did. He asked me if I wanted to get lunch. Of course I said no.
And of course I totally wanted to.
He didn’t try to touch me or kiss me. He was trying to follow my rules.
I hated my fucking rules.
At 4:00, he came back inside and sat next to me on the sofa.
“I’m on my period, so…”
He snorted. “Good to know. Thanks for the info.” He opened a Coke with a pith. “So what’re we watching?”
I stifled a smile. “I’m just returning emails. I wasn’t really paying attention.” I closed my laptop and slid a hand across his thigh. “You know, we can do other stuff…”
I was used to getting creative with my sex life. Three-week-long periods didn’t give me much choice, and I didn’t see why my partner had to abstain in the meantime. And I really wanted to touch him. Even if it was just sex. I just wanted to be close to him.
But when I reached for his belt buckle, he stopped me. “No. If you’re not having fun, neither am I.”
“Who says I won’t be having fun?” I smirked, trying to get my hand free.
He held it firm. “Kristen, no. That’s not why I’m here.”
I looked at him. “Then why are you here?”
He gazed at me with those deep-brown eyes. “To hang out with you. You said we’re friends with benefits, right? This is the friends part. I want to spend time with you.”
My heart tugged.
He has to go.
“Well, I have plans tonight. So I can’t hang out with you,” I said, sitting back into the sofa.
The corners of his lips went down a fraction of an inch. “Okay. When are you leaving? Want to get some dinner? Or watch something before you go?”
I got up. “I’m leaving now, actually.”
; The light drained from his eyes, and I instantly wanted to throw my arms around him and take it all back, ask him to stay and snuggle with me on the sofa and eat Chinese food out of takeout boxes and be my boyfriend.
But I couldn’t.
This. Could not. Be. A. Relationship.
He pushed up from the sofa. “All right. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” He didn’t look at me before he left.
I buried my face in my hands. What the fuck was I doing? I had to cut him loose. This was torture.
This was ridiculous.
I just wanted to be normal with him. I wanted to treat him the way he made me feel. Give him all my attention and kiss him and hug him.
Tell him I’m in love with him.
But that would be me luring him into a dead-end attachment that would be a waste of everyone’s time. Or worse, him rejecting me once he knew the truth about my health issues. And neither of those was acceptable.
With Josh, I could have a sex-only arrangement with strict boundaries…or I could have nothing.
I grabbed Stuntman, got in the car, and went to Sloan and Brandon’s house. She opened the door wearing her painting shirt, her hair piled on her head in a messy blond bun. “Oh, hey.”
She went back to her stool in front of her easel in the living room. She was an artist. This painting was of a little girl in a poppy field.
“Where’s Brandon?” I asked.
She pointed the remote to the TV and muted her crime show. “He’s in the garage.”
“I slept with Josh.”
She whirled on me, eyes flying wide. “What?! ”
“Yeah.” I dropped onto the sofa, clutching my dog. “Tyler and I broke up. I slept with Josh. It was fucking incredible. His penis is glorious. I’m dick whipped and in love with him, and I don’t know what to do. I think I fucked up.”
She looked absolutely horrified. The color drained right from her face. She didn’t know what to do with “dick whipped,” I think. She’d never had a one-night stand or even slept with someone who wasn’t her boyfriend.
I gave her a minute. I knew she’d catch up.
Once she rallied, she sat down next to me. “And you think you fucked up—why?”
I put my face into my hands. “I like him so much. So much, Sloan. And he’s all sweet and wants to hang out with me. He asked me if we could be exclusive. I told him no, that it’s purely a sex thing for me, which it’s totally not. But what else can it be?”
I looked at her, and I could feel the desperation practically seeping from my pores. “I mean, if he actually likes me, I have to shut this thing down. We can’t be together. He won’t be with someone who can’t give him kids. I’d rather die than tell him I’m about to have my uterus taken out. And I’m not in the business of leading men on, right? So I should end it, shouldn’t I? Right?”
She stared at me like I’d gone mad. “God, I’ve never seen you like this,” she breathed.
Maybe I had gone a little crazy. This was not my normal MO. Guys didn’t get me worked up. Ever. Sloan was in virgin territory with me on this.
“You know what he did the other day?” I went on. “I went to FedEx to drop off some boxes. And when I came back, he was in the kitchen with Stuntman. I guess he knocked over a soda and Stuntman walked through it, so he needed a bath. So Josh washed him, and I come into the kitchen and he’s standing there, no shirt, with Stuntman wrapped in a towel, and he’s cuddling my wet dog. I swear to fucking God, Sloan, I’ve never seen anything sexier in my entire life. The man is literally perfect. How is it possible that I’ve managed to find the perfect man and I can’t have him?”
She rubbed my back, looking at a loss for what to do.
I put my forehead into my hand. “I hate my uterus so much. Sex makes me bleed. I’ve been spotting for two days. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I had to tell him to ignore my swollen stomach. It was fucking humiliating.”
She looked sympathetic. “Well, what did he say?”
I scoffed. “Nothing. He didn’t give a shit. The dude was about to get laid. He probably wouldn’t even have noticed it, but I felt like I had to explain it anyway in case he did, and found himself wondering if he was boning a pregnant chick.”
The beginnings of tears tickled the back of my throat. I got up and went to the bathroom for a tissue. I blew my nose and flushed it down the toilet, and the toilet handle came off in my hand. I came out and held it up. Sloan rolled her eyes and got off the sofa.
Her house was a fixer-upper. Brandon was doing the repairs. He did a good job, but the place broke as fast as he could fix it.
She took the handle from me, and we stood there in the hallway, flanked by framed photos on the walls, having a silent exchange. We could practically read each other’s minds. She hated this was happening to me. She wished she could take it away, make it better. But she couldn’t, and she didn’t know how to even start.
“So what are you going to do about him?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “You know what’s so messed up?” My eyes started to sting. “He fits. Like, the first time I met you and we just clicked, you know? That’s Josh. He clicks. And I was okay with this until him. I was at peace with my decision. And now…”
The unfamiliar lump that accompanied tears swelled in my throat. That tightness that I so rarely experienced because I was seldom moved to cry.
“The universe is laughing at me, Sloan. As soon as I think this can’t get worse, it’s like, ‘Hold my beer.’ At every turn the kid thing keeps coming up, just in case I forget how much it matters to him. These constant little reminders that I don’t have what he needs.”
My mind went to Josh holding Stuntman in the towel. Then I thought of him holding a baby there instead. But it wouldn’t ever be mine. That wouldn’t be my husband giving our baby a bath in the kitchen sink. He’d only get that moment with someone else.
That did it. The sobbing burst out of me. Sloan had me in her arms in an instant.
I wasn’t an emotional person. In the course of our friendship, Sloan had only seen me cry once after a cramp-induced trip to the ER, and that was more from pain and frustration than despondency. This was a violent shift in our dynamic, the moment when Dad breaks down and wide-eyed Mom has to comfort him. Sloan’s maternal instincts kicked into crisis mode, and she clutched me to her, shushing me and whispering in my ear, the way my own mom would never do.
I’d borne the decision for this hysterectomy with stoic practicality. But I couldn’t do that with Josh. I just couldn’t. There was absolutely nothing practical about the way that man made me feel. I let myself just fucking cry. And it made me feel out of control and hopeless.
Someone knocked on the wall. We turned to the sound to see Brandon poking his head around the door into the hallway.
“Oh. Uh, sorry to interrupt. Josh is here. Is it cool if he stays for dinner?”
Josh came up behind Brandon, holding Stuntman. My dog was licking his cheek. “Hey, Sloan. Kristen.” His smile fell the second he saw my face.
I swiped at my tears, fled to the bathroom, and closed the door.
SEVENTEEN
Josh
The crying caught me by surprise. It never occurred to me she might be that upset about breaking up with Tyler. I just thought—
Stupid.
Of course she was upset. I don’t even know why I’d been confused about this. She’d dated him for two fucking years. He was supposed to move in with her, for God’s sake, and he’d reenlisted without talking to her and broke up with her in a damn voicemail.
Shit, no wonder she didn’t want anything serious with me. She was probably so messed up over Tyler she couldn’t even think straight. I was probably just some rebound thing for her.
Shawn was right. I was a dick in a jar.
I felt like an asshole, asking her to be exclusive. I’d thought we’d had something, for a moment. That maybe she was into me too. But now I felt like I’d imagined the whole thing. Misinterpret
ed every signal. I should have listened to what she was saying instead of trying to grasp at things that didn’t exist. She told me before any of this happened that I needed to be able to handle a sex-only situation, and this was clearly why.
And then I showed up here, the day after Tyler was supposed to come home, when it was probably really starting to hit her and she was trying to cry about it to her best friend.
I should just give her space. I should leave.
“I’m gonna go,” I said to Brandon, putting down Stuntman Mike.
I didn’t intend to intrude on her night. I didn’t know she was at Brandon’s until I pulled up and saw her car in the driveway. And if I was being honest, after seeing her with makeup on and her hair done when I’d gone to her house, I was relieved to know that her plans had been with Sloan and not some other guy. Especially after everything Shawn said.
But that wasn’t the only reason I was happy to see she was here—I was just happy to fucking see her.
I’d thought about her the whole time I was at work, and then when I finally came back over, it was such a disappointment.
Before, I could sit with her on the couch and bullshit with her. And now, I guess I needed a reason just to hang out with her in the living room. Now we had rules and everything felt stiff.
For a brief moment I wished we’d never hooked up. That we’d stayed friends until she was over this joker, and then maybe I would’ve had a shot with her, free and clear. Because right now I felt like I’d lost that thing between us, that easy friendship that was there before we crossed that line. Sure, I’d gotten sex out of it, but I wasn’t sure it was worth the trade-off. Not like this.
Sloan came around the corner into the living room. She looked weary. “Babe, the handle to the toilet broke off.” She put a metal piece in Brandon’s hand.
“I’ll fix it as soon as Kristen comes out,” he said.
Sloan looked over at me as I pulled my keys from my pocket. “Are you leaving?”
“Yeah, I’m just gonna head out.”
She glanced back at the bathroom and then looked at me full on. “Josh, stay.” She spoke low. “Stay for dinner.”