“I’m sorry.”
He looked down. “She was twenty-three. I was twenty-two. Irish twins.”
I let out a slow breath.
“Amy was my sister’s best friend when we were growing up, and when I ran into her one night a year or so after Jeannie died, we felt this instant connection and started going out right away. We were both living in Boston, and it was all easy. But it turned out to be kind of like when an old song comes on the radio, and you think, ‘I love this song!’ but then as you keep listening, you remember you never really loved it—you were just excited for a second because you recognized it. That’s how it was for me with Amy. But by the time I figured it out, my mother was already planning the wedding.”
“You stayed with Amy because you didn’t want to disappoint your mother?”
He gave a little shrug. “In a way. But, yeah—I think everybody in my family thought that if I married Amy, it would be the next best thing to getting Jeannie back.”
“You do a lot of overly nice things for your family,” I said.
He nodded, like he’d never noticed that. “I guess I do.”
“That’s some pressure.”
“You know that feeling you get about people sometimes when it’s like they’re on some important edge—and even the tiniest breeze could tip them over?”
I nodded.
“That’s my mom, ever since my sister died. She acts all bossy and practical with us, but then she goes back into the kitchen and her hands are shaking.”
I got that.
“We all want to go easy on her. But no way was I marrying Amy. I didn’t feel…” He paused. “I wasn’t in love with her. I liked her. It just wasn’t—the kind of feeling you marry someone for.”
“So you broke it off?”
“Just as I was gearing up to end it, my dad had the heart attack.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. Exactly. So I got busy with my dad, and Amy and I hung on a little longer, and it was fine. But then one night Amy sat me down and gave me the shit-or-get-off-the-pot ultimatum. She wanted to get married.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said, ‘I just don’t think I can marry you, Amy.’ And she said, ‘Ever? Or right now?’ And I said, ‘Ever.’”
“That was it?”
He nodded. “She left. That was six months ago. I haven’t seen her since. She was pretty pissed.”
“I bet.”
He shook his head. “And then I just never told my parents. They thought we were dating long distance, with her still in Boston. It turned out to be so easy to just never bring it up.”
The rookie took a deep breath and then sped through the rest. “Anyway, my sister Shannon called last night and told me our mom is expecting me to bring Amy to the party, and she’s even hoping that all the romance of the lights and the flowers might inspire me to propose. Which of course I won’t do because not only did we break up, she moved to California. And Shannon thinks it’s too late to come clean to my parents, but that I also can’t show up at their party alone, and that my only option for not ruining their thirty-fifth anniversary at this point is to find another female I can bring to distract my mom and cushion the blow, but the problem is, I don’t really know very many females right now. I’m in a phase of my life that’s kind of female-free.”
I waited.
And so did he.
Finally, I asked, “What’s the favor?”
“So I don’t want to piss off my sister Shannon—’cause, trust me, you never want to piss off Shannon,” he said. “And I’m scrolling through my phone trying to think of somebody to ask to this thing when something shocking occurs to me.”
“What?”
“You’re a female.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yes. Yes, you are.”
I put my hands out like I was trying to soothe an unpredictable animal. “I am a female, that’s true. But I’m not that kind of female.”
“What kind?”
The kind who gets dressed up. The kind who goes on dates. “The kind who’d say yes to that.”
“We wouldn’t have to stay very long. Just long enough to distract my mom.”
“There’s no way I can go with you. That party will be lousy with firefighters.”
“But all from Boston. Not from Lillian. My dad doesn’t know these guys.”
“He knows Captain Murphy.”
“True,” the rookie conceded. “But Captain Murphy already RSVP’d no.”
I shook my head. “It would be all kinds of suicide—career, personal, emotional…”
“We wouldn’t tell anybody who you are. You’d just be a mystery girl I brought with me.”
“We’d get caught.”
“I’d make sure that didn’t happen.”
“Rookie,” I said, shaking my head, “don’t ask me.”
“You can say no if you want to,” he said. “But I have to ask.”
“Don’t do it, man,” I said.
He did it anyway.
He turned to me with that heartbreaking face of his and settled his eyes right on mine and leaned in just a little, with his voice something close to a whisper, like he was letting me in on some terrific secret opportunity, and he said, “Cassie, I’m begging you. Please. Will you come with me to my parents’ anniversary party?”
The only possible answer was no.
But it was already too late.
Against every single ounce of all my better judgment, I met his eyes and said, “Yes.”
Sixteen
SAYING YES CHANGED everything.
When you are all about saying no, one yes is a big deal. It paves the way for other yesses to follow. Yes to dessert. Yes to a late-afternoon nap. The next time Diana and Josie invited me to crochet club, in fact, I said yes.
“Do I have to crochet?” I asked, wrinkling my nose, all judgy.
“Yes,” Josie said, just as Diana said, “No.”
I’d been avoiding them the whole time. Declining all their invitations for coffee, and tea, and fish tacos. Scurrying up the stairs as soon as they got themselves settled with their yarn and started cajoling me to join them—but then listening from my room at the pleasant murmur of their voices down in the living room, and the rhythm of conversation punctuated with bursts of laughter.
I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but it was a very small house. Honestly, the conversations they had were probably more unguarded and forthcoming without me there than they would have been with me in the room. Without meaning to, I’d learned a lot about both of them.
Josie, for example, was married to a guy who traveled so much, Diana had decided he was a spy. I think his name was Marcus, but Diana only ever called him Double Oh Seven. Diana, for her part, had a little crush on a twenty-seven-year-old guy who worked in the meat department of the grocery store. They called him the Butcher. Josie was indeed pregnant, as I’d suspected, and as happy as that was, it was stressful, too, because it turned out she’d been trying to have a baby for over six years—and she’d had three miscarriages, all of them late, at least midway through. So now, even though she was past her first trimester—well into her second, and starting to show for real—each passing week made her more nervous.
They talked about that a lot: how not to be nervous about being nervous.
Through it all, they cracked a lot of jokes. The sounds of them laughing rose up the staircase like bubbles. They had a great time. Which made me resent them in a way, because it made my retreat to my room seem not just practical, but sad.
I’d been trying to keep myself safe. I’d been trying to take long runs, and eat healthy, and learn parkour, and apply for grants for my firehouse. I had a whole strategy for restabilizing my life.
Then I went and said yes to the rookie.
Which blew my whole strategy apart.
Now, not only had I said yes to going with the rookie to that party—so all rules were off—even worse, I was going to have to actually go.
<
br /> I really, really needed someone to talk to.
The anniversary party was happening. Soon. And it was more than I could handle alone.
So one night I broke my boycott of crochet club, and I shuffled downstairs in my socks—which felt like both a great defeat and a delightful victory all at once. I felt shy approaching them, like I’d rejected them for so long that they might hold a grudge. But of course they didn’t. They made me warm tea, and huddled around me to get the whole scoop, and I wound up telling them everything—and even, in the end, taking them to the Lillian FD website to show them the rookie’s picture.
Which didn’t really capture him.
So I joined crochet club. Sheer panic can really move things along. I went from full avoidance to full disclosure in a day. If Diana and Josie found the shift surprising, you’d never know. They jumped in whole hog, like we always sat around gabbing about boys.
“You didn’t!” my mom and Josie said at the same time when I told them I’d said yes.
I sighed. “I did. And then we slept together.”
“You what?” Diana shrieked.
“Actually slept,” I clarified. “For warmth. Because it was cold up there.”
“Like, he held you in his arms?” Josie asked.
I shook my head. “Like, we leaned against a super-uncomfortable brick wall, side by side, and dozed off sitting up.”
“So romantic,” Diana said.
I frowned. “Kind of the opposite. But I did wind up using his shoulder for a pillow.” Technically, you could probably argue that we’d snuggled.
“And now you’re going on a date,” Josie said.
I put my hands over my eyes. “Let’s not call it ‘a date.’ Let’s call it ‘a coworker assisting another coworker with a family issue.’”
“Sounds like a date to me,” Josie said, and then they slapped a high five.
I pressed my head into a sofa pillow. “I think I just ruined my life,” I said, all muffled.
“It can’t be as terrible as all that,” Diana said.
I sat up. “If the guys in the house find out about this, it will be the end of everything.”
“I think it’s very kind of you to help out your friend,” Diana said. “He can’t help it that he’s so dreamy. That’s not his fault.”
I shook my head. “What was I thinking?”
“I just don’t see what the big deal is,” Josie said. “Who cares who you like?”
“It’s breaking the rules. As a girl, you’ve got two choices. You’re either a virgin or a whore. And guess what sleeping with guys you work with makes you?”
They refused to answer that on principle.
“Not a virgin,” I finally said.
“Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can’t you just be a normal, complex human being?”
“Irrelevant. Those are the rules.”
“But you’re not sleeping with him,” Josie protested.
“But I want to!” I said. And then I slapped my hand over my mouth.
They stared at me. I stared at them.
Then I whispered, “Did I just say that out loud?”
“Who wouldn’t want to sleep with him?” Diana demanded. “He’s like human candy.”
Josie nodded and we all took another gander at his photo on my phone. “Irresistible.”
The way we were joking around about this was comforting in a way. We kept things light. We didn’t talk about the real risk that I was taking to do this—or why, knowing everything I knew, I would have even considered saying yes in the first place.
Something to ponder.
Going to this party could very well cost me my job. And yet I’d agreed to go.
That “yes” had just burbled up out of me.
Why? I’d stayed up half the night on that roof, wrestling with that question. The rookie thanked me at least twenty times before he fell asleep, and promised that no one would ever find out. Ever.
But I knew better. The fire department wasn’t a job, it was a small town. Everybody found out everything eventually.
It’s possible, deep down, there was some self-sabotage involved—some unexamined belief that I didn’t deserve to be happy. Or maybe I was looking for a reason to fail.
Or maybe I just really, really liked the rookie. Legitimately.
The more I overthought it, the more the answer seemed frustratingly simple. Why had I agreed to go? Because I wanted to.
I just wanted to.
I knew the risks. But part of me truly didn’t care. Part of me really, really longed to be near him. At any cost. Apparently.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Diana said, refusing to let me beat myself up. “Sometimes we meet people we just click with. That’s a good thing. That’s a gift from the universe.”
“Unless it gets you fired.”
“It’s not going to get you fired.”
“I’m serious,” I said. “I already have one strike against me in Austin. I can’t be playing around.”
As soon as Diana tilted her head and said, “You do?” I remembered I hadn’t told her.
I took a breath. “I had an interpersonal conflict,” I said.
She decided not to pursue it. This was the first time I’d come to crochet club, and I suspected she didn’t want to scare me off. “Well,” she said, staunchly taking my side, “this is the opposite of an interpersonal conflict.”
“Not sure the fire department will see it that way,” I said.
“We’ll just have to make sure you don’t get caught,” Josie said.
“Easy,” Diana said then. “Just wear your hair down and clothes that are not your usual style.”
What was my usual style? Work pants. Work shirt. Work boots.
“What’s the dress for the party?” Josie asked.
I shrugged. “Fancy? Ish?”
Diana looked me over. “Do you have anything fancy?”
I shook my head.
“Do you even own a dress?”
I shook my head again.
“I’ve got dresses,” Josie said then, raising her eyebrows at me. “I’ve got a whole closet full—going to waste.” She patted her belly.
Next thing I knew, the crochet was abandoned, and we were making our way next door and then upstairs to Josie’s closet—both of us helping Diana with pavement cracks and stairs to move things along. Then I was standing in front of Josie’s full-length mirror while the two ladies pulled out dress after dress, holding them up in front of me, then tossing them in rejection piles on the bed.
Too purple, they’d decide. Or: Too bright. Too dark. Too flashy. Too plain. Too stiff. Too floppy. Too many pleats. Too teenagery. Too old-lady. Too much cleavage. Not enough cleavage. And on and on.
“This is overwhelming,” I said.
“Close your eyes,” Josie said. “We’ll do all the work.”
“I’m just not really a clothes person, you know?”
“We know,” they both said in unison, not pausing.
Then my mother added, “You can’t go to this thing in your bunker gear.”
At last, after what felt like hours, they narrowed the whole closet down to one singular, perfect, life-changing dress. Baby blue, midthigh, with spaghetti straps and a fluttery ruffle across the boobs.
“Really?” I said. It looked a little flimsy.
“Hush,” Diana said, touching her lips, like, Shhh. “Go put it on.”
I hesitated. I didn’t trust their judgment. It didn’t seem to have enough material. And what material there was seemed highly flammable. “It’s not even a dress!” I protested, as they steered me toward the spare room. “It’s a handkerchief!”
“Go!” Diana said.
“She’s such a tomboy,” Josie said, after I shut the door.
Was I? I just thought of myself as me. I certainly wasn’t girly. My dad had hardly sat around on weekends braiding my hair. This stuff was all pretty foreign to me. Not bad, exactly, just unfamiliar.
I slippe
d the dress on over my head, but the spaghetti straps did not even begin to cover my racerback sports bra. “Do I take off my sports bra?” I called through the door.
“Yes!” they both called back.
I started over. This time when the dress settled over me, it looked more right.
But also like someone else was wearing it.
“So what kind of a bra do I wear with this thing?” I called through the door.
“No bra!” Josie called back.
“None at all?” That seemed a little extreme.
“You could do a strapless,” Josie said, “but you don’t need it, and the ruffle over your boobs gives them enough, you know, coverage.”
The ruffle did provide coverage. On sight, no one would know there wasn’t a strapless bra under there.
Except me.
It was the strangest, most untethered feeling.
It’s important to note that this was not a makeover moment like some teen movie where the homely girl becomes a swan. I wasn’t homely before this moment, and I wouldn’t be homely later, when I clamped myself back into my oxen-harness sports bra and Dickies utility pants. This wasn’t a better version of me I was seeing in the mirror—just a different one.
It was like I was meeting an unknown part of myself for the first time.
The flouncy part.
The soft, fluffy, vulnerable, exposed, half-naked, braless part.
If you go look up the definition of “vulnerable,” in fact, it’s a picture of me in that blue hanky dress.
I felt like a mollusk without its shell.
I’m not going to say that “vulnerable” is a bad thing. Still, for a person who’s spent her whole adult life trying to be the opposite, it’s certainly a change.
It made me keenly aware of every sensation around me—the nubby rug under my bare feet, the silky fabric grazing my thighs, the air moving in and out of my lungs. Not to mention my boobs—unharnessed, with barely a millimeter’s worth of fabric between them and the wider world.
“I don’t hear any movement in there,” Josie called after a minute.
“I’m just getting my bearings,” the stranger in the mirror said.
“Come show us!” Diana called, and so I did.
They both gasped at the reveal when I opened the door.
Things You Save in a Fire Page 14