The Single Dad - A Standalone Romance (A Single Dad Firefighter Romance)

by Claire Adams

  I started in on my salad first, eating it as fast as I could to stop the gnawing hunger in my stomach. I wasn’t model-thin, but I was fit, and when I had asked my doctor how to keep from gaining weight, she had offered me the practical advice that if I ate a fairly lean salad before I started in on my entrée, I’d fill my stomach up faster and take in fewer calories. It had worked so far, and at least I liked salads. While I ate, I thought about the class I had just left, and the one I had later in the day. Grant had signed me up for all of the access I needed as a new member of the campus newspaper, and I had started poring through the message board threads. I had needed something to throw myself into after the debacle with Zack, while I was trying to figure out just how I felt about it. Researching and getting to understand the way the newspaper worked was a good distraction from the troubling feelings I was trying to avoid thinking about.

  I was still doing well in all of my classes, and I had managed to keep my head on straight for the American History essay test that I had just taken, in spite of the fact that my stomach had started to rumble about halfway through. I had Stats later in the day, and despite Jess’s tutoring, I wasn’t sure I’d entirely be able to keep up with the material. But I would have to do my best. We were starting to get into deeper topics in Statistics, and I felt like I was swimming out of my depth until Jess explained things to me in terms so simple anyone could understand them. I knew that after midterms we would get into the part of things that I was actually good at: interpreting information, instead of compiling it. Drawing conclusions from data was something I was halfway capable of, even if I didn’t entirely know how to explain how I’d come to the conclusion. If I could ace the midterm, I would be set.

  I finished my salad and set the plate aside, moving to start in on the minestrone soup I’d gotten next. I realized that I had forgotten to grab a spoon and groaned at my stupidity. Well, I’d had a lot on my mind, I thought, trying not to be angry at myself. Ever since I’d had sex with Zack, I’d been a jumble of different emotions, and every little thing I did wrong seemed to be huge instead of tiny. I had gotten frustrated at myself for marking something in my journalism text book with a green instead of a pink highlighter—it didn’t even entirely matter, once I reviewed the material later I would know that it was a quote instead of a citation—but in the moment it had seemed so incredibly stupid and amateur.

  I knew the reason I’d been so hard on myself was that I hadn’t done anything about the situation with Zack. After I’d run away from the frat house that night, I’d gone back to my dorm and tried to bury myself in an episode of Bones. I’d been thinking about him the whole time; I couldn’t even remember the story to save my life. At least, I thought ruefully, that would make it more fun to re-watch later. But I had wondered about the fact that he had sought me out, the fact that we’d gone from zero to a hundred miles an hour in a matter of maybe thirty minutes; he had offered me a ride home, and then I was at the frat house, and then we were kissing, and then we were having sex, right there where anyone could have walked in on us. I didn’t like the idea that Zack’s mere presence could take me so far away from my usual habits. It made me uncomfortable.

  Zack and I had broken up just when my mom had started getting sicker. She had passed away from the cancer she had been fighting throughout our relationship a couple of months before I started college, only a few weeks after watching me graduate. I’d thrown myself into work, taking extra shifts and saving up my money as much as possible. With her death, it was even harder for dad to afford my college—there were all the bills, and even though they’d had a life insurance policy starting from before she’d been diagnosed with cancer, everything had been so expensive that there just wasn’t anything much to spare for my education.

  I couldn’t blame Zack for breaking up with me when he had; he had his own life to lead, and I had told myself more than once that I would rather deal with the heartache of a breakup than to find out that he had given into temptation at college and cheated on me. One of my other friends in high school had gone through that, and that would have hurt much more than just him breaking up with me. But it would have been nice to have even a few more months of emotional support to deal with the fact that we all knew my mom only had a little while longer—that in spite of the fact that she was fighting tooth and nail to outlive her cancer, there was only so much that medicine could do for her.

  I stood up, leaving my books and tray behind at the table I had taken. When I went back to the entrance of the dining hall to get into the serving area, where the silverware was, I looked around to see if Jess had come in yet. I flashed my ID card—I didn’t have to scan it, not when I’d already done that. The person at the entry had seen me go through before and waved me into the line. It annoyed me, a little, that I had to get back in line even though I didn’t want to get more food; but it was fair, I supposed. I considered grabbing a small dessert—maybe a brownie or a cookie—while I was up anyway. Even if the soup and sandwich filled me up, it would be a good snack later while I was studying. They didn’t restrict what you could take out of the dining hall very much—we weren’t supposed to take any plates, cups, or silverware, but I knew that several people in the dorms had quite the collection of dining hall crockery that they slipped back into circulation rather than washing themselves, putting it on their trays and pushing it into the dish chute on the other end of the hall.

  As I looked around, hoping I would see Jess, I instead spotted Zack. My heart pounded in my chest. I hadn’t been avoiding him precisely, but the school was big enough that I didn’t really have to try not to run into him. The next moment my stomach gave a lurch; he had his arm around a girl. I didn’t know her, and I didn’t need to. It had only been three days—he was already moving on? My stomach twisted itself in knots and then I felt a hot rush of anger. I hadn’t spoken to him, but it wasn’t like I’d told him I never wanted to see him again. It also wasn’t as though he had no idea how to get in touch with me if he had wanted to. I pressed my lips together, feeling my face burn, feeling the fire working its way through my bones. I grabbed a spoon and took deep breaths, trying to decide how to deal with the situation. I didn’t want to cut in line; I didn’t want to cause a huge scene. I moved along with the line, keeping an eye on Zack a few people ahead of me, talking to and laughing with the girl his arm was wrapped around. They certainly looked chummy.

  The girl grabbed the food she wanted and broke away from Zack, and I spotted my chance. He was getting out of the line too, moving to grab a drink before he went into the dining area proper. His tray was loaded down and he had to set it on the ledge to fill his cup. No one could accuse me of cutting the line with nothing but a spoon in my hands. I walked over to Zack and called out his name, trying to keep my tone as neutral as possible. Zack looked up and his eyes widened in recognition—but no sign of guilt or shame.

  “Hey, what’s up?” I asked him. I couldn’t keep my anger out of my voice and I knew it; I was feeling it too strongly.

  “What do you mean, what’s up?” Zack filled his cup and put it on his tray. I took a deep breath as quietly as possible.

  “I mean, who’s that? And why was your arm all around her like that?”

  Zack shrugged, looking at me as if I was crazy. “It’s just a friend of mine,” he said, starting to look around. I knew we were on the edge of creating a scene, but I didn’t care in the moment.

  “Just a friend? Come on, Zack, I’m not an idiot.” I crossed my arms over my chest, gripping the spoon tightly. I swallowed against the lump that was forming in my throat, glancing around quickly. The people closest to us were watching avidly. I heard someone say to a friend that it was another blow up with Zack, and my face burned.

  “She’s just a friend, Evie—come on! We have a philosophy class together.” He rolled his eyes. “I don’t see why you’re acting like some kind of jealous bitch.”

  I inhaled sharply. “Jealous bitch?”

  “Jealous girlfriend, do you lik
e that better?”

  I clenched my teeth. “What do you mean, you can’t see why I’m acting jealous?”

  Zack looked around and a haughty look came over his face.

  “I mean, it’s not like there’s anything between us. It was just sex, Evie—no big deal.” The words hit me like ice water. In my mind I heard Zack’s drunken frat brother saying he’d found his piece of ass. I hadn’t exactly sought him out to talk to him about what had happened, but Zack and I had history; it wasn’t like we were strangers who had hooked up. I had dated him for two years before he had gone off to college—I had lost my virginity to him.

  “Just sex? Just sex?” I shook my head. My anger was mounting, I felt it getting hotter and hotter inside of me. In spite of how hungry I had been when I first came into the dining hall, my stomach was roiling now—the smell of food all around me made me feel a little nauseated. Zack shrugged. I looked around; we were the subject of intense interest in the serving area, and I caught a few people laughing, some others smiling at the spectacle. My face burned hotter. Without even thinking about it, I grabbed the cup off of Zack’s tray. I threw the contents into his face and let the cup drop back onto the tray before I snatched up a piece of cake he had grabbed from the dessert station, dripping with icing. I threw that in his face too, wanting to scream. Instead I turned on my heel and charged through the entryway into the dining area as everyone in the serving area started to laugh at Zack. I grabbed up my books and didn’t even bother with my tray; I normally tried to be considerate of the people who worked in the dining hall, but I was so angry—so humiliated—that I didn’t care. I got out of the dining hall quickly as I could and didn’t even look back as I walked as fast as my legs would move back to the dorms.

  SLAMMED #2

  CHAPTER ONE

  I told myself that I shouldn’t be surprised. Just because Zack had been my first, real boyfriend, and I had lost my virginity to him, didn’t make him any different from any other guy. I curled up on the dorm room couch, watching TV instead of studying, alternating between wanting to cry and wanting to track Zack down again and scream in his face. I wished—useless as it was—that my mom was around, that I could call her and tell her how awful I felt. The thought of my mom plunged me into a deeper sadness; I missed her. I had thought I was finished grieving for her loss after a year, but every time something big happened in my life—when I graduated, when I moved into the dorms, and now, the situation with Zack—I thought about her, and wondered what she would say.

  “Sweetie, some guys are just jerks.”

  Mom had told me that more than once when I’d come to her—after Zack and I had broken up and I had started dating other guys; guys who hadn’t been as loveable as Zack had been when we were both in high school. I could hear her voice in my head telling me that; I could feel her weak hand stroking my hair.

  “You shouldn’t take any guy too seriously until he’s proven he’s worth your time.”

  My eyes stung and burned and I buried my face against a throw pillow, sniffling. I had thought that Zack had proven he was worth my time in high school; I had never thought he’d turn out to be like the other guys I had dated. I tried to think back to what he had been like. When mom had first started getting sick, he’d seemed so supportive—showing up in the middle of the night to comfort me, or grabbing my lunch from the cafeteria so I could spend the whole break studying to make up for what I hadn’t been able to do during mom’s appointments.

  It was hard not to think about the last, bad months of my mom’s fight with cancer whenever I tried to think of her advice. It had been horrifying for her, I knew; she had lost her hair and she thought she was hideous. As she wasted away, I had frantically tried to tear myself in two, to do twice the living—rushing through my assignments so I could spend just a few more minutes with her. She had been so strong right up until the end, she had kept giving me advice and love, and I had felt so incredibly helpless as Dad and I watched her not get better but instead get worse. I had missed Zack, but in the face of my mom’s declining health and long descent into death, it seemed not to matter at all. My mom had always been my biggest cheerleader, the person I could turn to with anything—and the biggest problem in my life, that she was dying, gave me no one to talk to about it. I couldn’t tell her how horrible I felt, how much pain it gave me to see her hurting, fighting and struggling against the disease that would claim her life—it wouldn’t be fair to her. She was dealing with so much already.

  I knew that she was worried about how I was taking the breakup with Zack, but I couldn’t even bring myself to talk to her about that—it seemed so trivial in comparison. I put a cheerful face on and tried to stay as positive as possible whenever I was in the room with her, telling her about how my English teacher wanted me to try publishing some of the stories I’d written, and how the high school newspaper had featured me in the Superlatives section as Most Likely to Win a Pulitzer. I sneaked her favorite foods into the hospital in spite of the rules against it, even though she had almost no appetite. She managed to eat a few bites here and there, and I would devour the snacks with her more to keep her from feeling guilty for not being able to eat than because I wanted them.

  “Sweetheart, you have a kind and loving heart,” she told me once, close to the end. “It’s a good companion for your active brain. Let them work together—don’t ever let one take over completely. Use your sense and use your compassion. I know you’re going to have a good life, and I’ll be watching you always.”

  Normally the show on the TV would have completely taken up my attention, but as I lay there on the couch, I found myself thinking more and more about Zack. Had he really changed, or had he always been a jerk? It was hard for me to say. The guys I had dated after Zack and I broke up had made me start to largely distrust men in general; Mom’s advice to me whenever I would come to her depressed or frustrated with someone I was dating had made me think that I just shouldn’t trust any guy I hadn’t already vetted, who I didn’t already have experience with. But I had experience with Zack. He was nothing like Braden, the guy I’d dated a couple of weeks after Zack and I had broken up, who had just been using me to get to my friend Lisa—and who had called me a frigid bitch when I wouldn’t “put out.” He wasn’t anything like Tony either; Tony had been dating a girl at another school the entire time we saw each other, and I didn’t find out until someone told me they had seen him at the other school’s dance.

  Zack had been so sweet when we had been together in high school. Even the first time we had had sex, he had been so careful, so gentle, making sure that I was ready for it, making sure that there wasn’t too much pain. I didn’t even bleed—we’d made out and teased each other until I was soaking wet. The fact that the sex itself had been a little disappointing had nothing to do with Zack being a bad guy; I’d kept having sex with him after that not because of any pressure from him, but because I kept hoping that we’d have that magic moment when everything came together and it felt amazing, the way I’d read about in books that I kept hidden from my parents. It didn’t become that way, but at least Zack had never tried to force me; and to the best of my knowledge, he’d never cheated on me.

  The sex I’d had with him the other night was totally different. I felt myself burning up from the inside as I remembered it—how good Zack had been at touching me, at getting me off. How good he had felt inside of me. It had been like night and day compared to our high school years, and I had to assume that the reason why he was so much better at sex was that he had been with other women in between. Had he broken up with me purely so he’d be free to sleep around? I wanted to know and dreaded the possibility at the same time. I wavered between wanting to be mad at him again for possibly breaking up with me right before I would have to deal with the most difficult thing in my life—losing my mom—and thinking about how incredibly hot our tryst together had been.

  “It was just sex,” I heard him saying in my mind, blowing me off as if we had no history, as if I was j
ust another freshman girl who’d gone to a party and ended up with him in bed. I heard his frat brother in my mind referring to me as Zack’s “piece of ass” for the night.

  I writhed and squirmed on the couch, thinking that my reaction had painted me firmly as the naïve freshman girl who thought that sleeping with someone meant something—the insecure, hyper-sensitive girl who was probably a virgin. I wanted to go back to the dining hall and tell everyone who had seen me dumping Zack’s food on him that I wasn’t a virgin—that I wasn’t naïve, or a dumb, freshman girl. That the reason I had thought it meant something was that Zack and I had a history. But that would only make it worse. I buried my face in the throw pillow and groaned, picking my head up and letting it fall over and over again. It was so stupid to think about Zack. I should have just let it go and never thought of him again.

  I had no idea if the girl Zack had been talking to was his girlfriend, or some other girl he was sleeping with, or even just a friend as he claimed. He had seemed pretty close to her; he had seemed comfortable with her. It grated on my nerves that Zack could have had sex with me for the first time since we’d broken up and just consider it regular sex while I was completely and totally hung up on him without even knowing if he was really single.

  I heard the dorm room door open and close and looked up to see Jess, her face dancing with amusement, her eyes practically sparkling. “Evie! Baby girl! Is it true what I heard?”

  I groaned and sat up. “That depends,” I replied, rubbing at my face to get rid of the last traces of tears I had shed over my own stupidity. “What did you hear?”

  Jess laughed and sat down. “I heard you humiliated Zack in the dining hall. Someone said you dumped his lunch over his head.”

  My cheeks burned and I buried my face in my hands. “Ugh, please tell me that only a handful of people saw that. I feel like such an idiot for doing it.”