But only for a second. Maybe one more second. Three more seconds, tops.
She pulled into the grocery market parking lot, choosing a spot near the cart return instead of the door. Not that she planned to get an entire cartload of ice cream. Nobody ever planned to get an entire cartload of ice cream. Sometimes these things simply happened.
She grabbed a dog-hair-covered hoodie from the back seat, shook it out, and pulled it over her head. Catching the reflection of her post-workout hair situation in the car window made her laugh. Good thing she wasn’t on the hunt because this look was unlikely to impress anyone.
Propelling the cart in front of her, she headed straight for the freezer section. On a more self-respecting day, she’d at least pick up some fruit first. Or put a cut-flower arrangement in the top of the basket. But this wasn’t that kind of day. This was the day she’d had to face her past. In the form of Fletcher Gates. Bigger than life. Smelling like pine woods after a rainstorm.
Hadley gave herself a mental slap. “Snap out of it,” she commanded herself. Parked in front of the ice cream freezer, she wondered if there was some place on the internet that would analyze her ice cream choices.
She could picture it.
An online quiz: Which of the following best describes your current state of mind?
(a) Chaotic
(b) Depressed
(c) Overstretched
(d) Conflicted because your former boyfriend showed up in your hometown and nobody bothered to warn you that this was coming and you can’t stand the guy, but somehow you also can’t actually take your eyes off him when you accidentally run into him (literally) twice in one day
Key: If you answered a, your ice cream should be fruity. If b, chocolate. The more chocolate, the better. A c answer requires handheld ice cream: something with “bites” in the title because spoons are simply more than you need in your life right now. If you chose d, honey, that’s all of the above. Fill that cart.
Hadley tossed a few pints into the basket. “One for Ben, one for Jerry, one for me,” she said. And then again. And again.
A voice behind her said, “Do you know how to convert pints to gallons? Because I think you’d save a lot of money, not to mention significant packaging waste, if you went for the jumbo container.”
Hadley felt her face heat up.
“Seriously?” she asked the universe, or at least the flickering flourescent light tubes above her head. She turned to see Fletcher, damp from his run, standing beside her cart. The cart filled with an impressive amount of ice cream.
“Do you actually think I need your help to buy ice cream?” Taking a small step toward him, she poked a finger at his arm. “Do you really think that I don’t know that it’s cheaper to buy in bulk? Did it ever occur to you that there are other considerations? And that I might have enough brains to think of them?” Her face flamed.
He smiled as if she’d said something charming. “Hello, Hadley.”
“Goodbye, Fletcher.”
She spun the cart so it headed toward the registers, which in her mind had been a slick operation but in reality involved more lumbering than she liked. As she trundled away, she heard a sound that could have been a laugh.
Great. First, she fell on her backside in front of him. Then she knocked him flat while appearing to be wasted. Now she ran away, sweaty, frazzled, covered in dog hair and pushing a cart loaded with several thousand calories worth of junk food.
Impressive. Always impressive.
Chapter 3
How had he ever been in love with that woman? Every time Fletcher treated her politely, she made him regret it.
Had she always acted like this? Had she always been so dismissive? If she’d acted this way—spiteful, angry—all the years they were together and he hadn’t noticed, then he was grateful for the distance, both in time and in location, that had separated them and allowed him to see her clearly.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t get the sight of her out of his head. When he closed his eyes, there was Hadley’s face. When he turned every corner, she appeared. Literally. Inside the fire station. On the street. At the market.
Stop thinking about her, he told himself. Groceries. Remember why you’ve come.
He shook his head and tossed a bag of frozen tortellini into his cart. The deal he’d made with his mom was that he’d return to Greensburg and help her out during the course of her treatments, only she’d have to let him cook on dialysis days. It was a sign of how sick she felt that she hadn’t argued with him at all. He still had to take on the fight about having his turn scrubbing bathrooms and doing laundry, but it could wait.
His mom had never questioned the likelihood that he’d get hired at the station. Turned out that she was right: someone who had a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and wildland fire science followed by a stint at Great Basin Smokejumpers and a few years on BLM crews was a good bet.
Chief Grantham had been ready and willing to give him a place. Eager, even. Fletcher knew much of that was due to the memory of his father, a lifer with the Greensburg station. But the fact that his dad fought fires in Greensburg didn’t guarantee Fletcher a place there. He knew he’d earned his spot on the crew, and after only one afternoon in the station, he felt that it was a great fit for him.
Red had asked Fletcher about settling back into an urban station after years of wildland work. Fletcher had attempted to answer him while constantly looking over his shoulder in case Hadley reappeared in the truck bay. She never did, but he’d kept looking.
Unlikely to take Fletcher’s distraction as anything other than first day nerves, Red had let Fletcher off the hook, suggesting that they catch up the next day as soon as Fletcher was ready to immerse himself in the daily details of station life. He’d shown Fletcher to his locker and told him to call it a day.
Fletcher pulled together ingredients for a salad from the produce section, and at the checkout stand he picked up a package of wrapped flowers for his mom. The woman who rang up his groceries flirted harmlessly, telling him he’d have to come back next week and try the store-made lasagna that would be on sale.
“Oh, you bet I’ll be back,” Fletcher said, and watched the woman smile to herself. A perfect volley—low-stakes return flirting, but no overt gestures from either side. Fletcher sighed in relief, realizing, as he did, that he’d been worried about reentering not only Greensburg life, but populated areas in general.
Years of living in barracks like a soldier and parachuting out of planes and helicopters into forest fires had dulled his social edge. To put it bluntly, Fletcher was no longer certain that he had game. His truly awful interactions with Hadley today, not to mention the utter disdain he’d received from Savanna at the station, had only highlighted his awkwardness. But he could still flirt with strangers he would probably never see again.
“Way to aim high,” he told himself as he drove the four blocks back to his parents’ home. His mom’s house.
In none of his plans for adult life had he allowed for the possibility of moving back to his hometown. He was pretty sure that wasn’t his mom’s plan for him, either. But neither was her illness.
Fletcher was self-aware enough to understand that there was an appeal to his sense of heroism in this move. His mom was the strongest woman he knew, but she needed him. And Fletcher loved to be needed. Nobody became a fireman because he didn’t want to rescue people.
Tonight, he’d rescue his mom with a dish of tortellini alfredo.
And he’d attempt to forget that he’d managed to injure, annoy, or offend Hadley Booth three times in one day.
“As if I didn’t see her enough today, now she’s moving into my head,” he said to himself, pulling his truck into his mom’s driveway.
He let himself in the garage door, and from the mudroom he could see his mom curled up on the couch, covered with a blanket.
“Mom?” he whispered.
She didn’t answer, so he came in quietly and boiled water for the pasta. He place
d the flowers in a glass vase and set them on the table where his mom would see them when she got up. After putting the meal together and placing hers on a plate in the fridge, he checked again to see that she was still sleeping. Seeing that she was, he wolfed down his dinner.
A few minutes later, he slipped out the door, got back in the truck, and drove around town for a while, checking out the expansion on the west side, where forests had been left to grow wild all through his growing-up years.
Now, only pockets of trees remained between blocks of lookalike houses on square-grid roads. The difference between these new cookie-cutter neighborhoods and his parents’ charming, winding, treelined street made him wonder if the city planner had any regrets.
Surprised to find himself mourning the loss of his woods, the woods where he used to ride his bike, where he played adventure games with his buddies, where he camped in a leaky tent, where he kissed Hadley for the first time.… He hadn’t thought about that in years. But now that it had entered his mind, it was tough to erase the images.
October of their sophomore year in high school, walking through the woods, he’d finally been brave enough to hold her hand. She wore a puffy coat that made a swishing sound as her arm swung with his. Curls escaping from the confines of her green beanie, she’d looked like some kind of mystical fantasy creature. A fairy. A pixie. A figment of his imagination.
She’d walked and talked about everything and nothing, swinging his hand as if she did this every day. He could still remember the dreamlike way he kept sneaking glances at her face to see if she was real. When she’d stopped him and stood on the stump of a fallen tree, beckoning him to stand in front of her, he couldn’t believe she’d given him such an easy excuse to stare directly at her face.
“Did your boys give you a bad time?” she’d asked, her hand on the shoulder of his jacket. The closeness evaporated any eloquence he might have been able to muster at fifteen.
“Huh?”
She grabbed a handful of the fabric of his jacket. “You know,” she said. “I heard Sebastian and Joey in history yesterday. They said they made bets that you’d chicken out of kissing me last night after the football game.”
He remembered perfectly the combination of his feelings in that moment. ‘I’m going to kill those idiots’ battled with ‘She is so close to me and she is smiling.’ And flowing around and through it all was the feeling that he had to defend himself. If he’d never felt a good old-fashioned dose of machismo before, he’d felt it right then.
“I didn’t chicken out.” How he’d wished his voice had come out sounding more solid, more deep. Not quite so squeaky.
She’d laughed, loud and free with her head thrown back. Crooking her finger at him, she motioned him to come closer before he had a chance to become offended. He could still feel how his heart had pounded from his temples to the pit of his stomach. “Yeah,” she whispered, her mouth crooking into a perfect smile, “maybe you didn’t chicken out exactly, but you didn’t kiss me, either.” Her words came out with tiny puffs of steam from her breath in the cold, evening air.
Before he knew it, both her arms were around his neck. Over the next few years, they’d talked (okay, argued) about who instigated that first kiss, but in the moment, all Fletcher had cared about was that her lips felt so warm, even though her nose was so cold. The smooth tree stump she stood on held her at the perfect height for his arms to wrap around her back. His need to get a little closer had battled with his desire to pull back and just look at her for a few more seconds.
She was a miracle. A force of nature. A whirlwind.
That first kiss had led to hundreds more over the years. They became a power couple at Hillside High, and when they left home for college, they left together. And stayed together, right up until they didn’t anymore.
Uninterested in thinking too hard about that, Fletcher drove to the edge of the new housing development and turned his truck around. Promising himself he would think of something other than Hadley as he drove back through the neighborhood that had once been their forest, he saw his phone light up with a text. When he pulled over to check if it was the station, he found the message was from Nick.
Come play ball at the rec center?
He thumbed a reply.
When?
Busy now?
Was he busy now? Driving through the depressing remnants of what used to be a place full of mystique, trying (and failing) to forget what had made it so perfect?
Give me 10 minutes.
His gym bag was always in the truck, but he needed to check on his mom. He dialed her number, not expecting an answer, so he was pleasantly surprised when she did pick up. Her voice was groggy, but the fact she had answered was a good sign. When he told her about Nick’s text, she insisted he go play basketball instead of hovering over her while she ate tortellini and watched TV. So he headed to the rec instead of home and went inside to lace up his court shoes. By the time Nick arrived, Fletcher was warming up, making three shots out of every four.
Nick’s warmup seemed unnecessary. He never missed a shot. Fletcher complimented a few particularly great baskets. Nick had been so friendly and welcoming, but there was something weird there. It was more than a little weird to be welcomed into his hometown by someone who hadn’t always lived there. But when he thought about it, Fletcher knew the truth actually had to do with Hadley; it seemed strange to become friends with a guy who was so clearly into her. And that was just dumb. Despite the warmth of the memories he’d been reliving on his drive, Hadley meant nothing to Fletcher now.
At least, she shouldn’t mean anything.
And if Nick was interested in dating her, Fletcher wasn’t going to stand in their way.
He should say something. But what? Hey, I used to date Hadley, but you should definitely go for it? Not a chance.
Finally, he settled on, “Dude. Nice,” when Nick’s third three-pointer in a row swished in.
Nick grinned.
They played one-on-one for an hour, after which Fletcher was thoroughly wiped out. He lay down on the bleacher bench at the edge of the court and watched Nick, who seemed not to feel it at all.
“You know, fire training’s good for more than I would have thought,” Nick said, tossing the ball against the backboard and catching it on the rebound. “Not that I need to tell you that.”
Several times during their games, Nick had made comments like this, just random thoughts he tossed out when he checked the ball in. Fletcher wasn’t used to small talk between firefighters. The guys on his smokejumper crew were more typically the strong, silent types. But Nick seemed unconcerned with fulfilling any stereotypes.
“You mean like to keep you healthy?” Fletcher asked, swigging half his water bottle.
Nick shrugged and sunk a lay-up. “I guess. But more than that.”
“My dad always said his training made him a well-rounded man,” Fletcher said. “I don’t really know what he was talking about.” He lowered his voice. “I’m just glad I can have a burger and fries every day and not look like that guy.” Fletcher gestured with his head to a middle-aged man pushing a double stroller around the track. Poor guy looked like the stroller was holding him up.
“Not just physically, though,” Nick said. “Relationships, too.”
“Are we going to have a heart-to-heart?” Fletcher asked, sitting up on the metal bench and loosening the laces on his shoes.
This got no response. “I’m thinking about direct and indirect attack strategies,” Nick said, landing a left-handed lay-up. “You know, like when you’re putting out a fire. But not. Attacking an impossible situation, maybe.” Nick executed a flawless fall-away jump shot.
“I’m trying to decide if one—direct or indirect—is better than the other.” Looking at Fletcher, he said, “You know. With women.”
Fletcher had no idea how to respond to that. Talking about theoretical comparisons of fires to women was not something he was used to. Nick missed a shot and the ball bounced toward
Fletcher. He tossed it back with a shake of his head.
Nick took another shot and did a hamstring stretch. “The direct attack can leave you in dangerous territory. Indirect sometimes causes you to miss the target.”
“We’re not talking about fire at all anymore, are we?” Fletcher asked.
Nick laughed. “I guess not.”
Fletcher jumped back up off the bench as he realized that Nick must know about his history with Hadley. But was Nick asking if Fletcher minded if he asked Hadley out? Fletcher was not interested in having a conversation about Nick’s apparent crush on Hadley, particularly when he had no idea how Hadley might feel about Nick. She hadn’t seemed terribly interested earlier.
But then, how could Fletcher know what kind of signals Hadley had been giving Nick before today? For months? Years? Fletcher had no way to gauge her apparent interest in any guy these days. It had been years since he’d seen Hadley into a guy. And, well, before, it had always been him.
Not that it mattered, he reminded himself. Hadley could fall for anyone she pleased.
He glanced at Nick again as he passed the ball, waiting for some glaring flaw to appear: a third arm, maybe, or some sign of a disgusting personal habit.
Nothing obvious. Hadley was welcome to him.
Except that when Fletcher thought of Hadley wrapped in Nick’s arms, he wanted to hit Nick directly in the nose.
Huh.
That wasn’t a reaction Fletcher generally had to a good game of basketball. He tossed up a free throw and missed.
“So,” Fletcher said, clearing his throat. “It’s been a while since I lived here. What do the guys on the crew do for fun?” If Nick mentioned getting together with Hadley now, it would be innocent—just an answer to a friendly question.
Nick held his arms out as if to introduce Fletcher to the wonders of the rec center. “You’re basically doing it right now. Most of the guys on the team are married,” he said, laughing and rolling his eyes to show how he felt about the crew’s collective marital status getting in the way of his social life. “Which means, as far as the party aspect of the Greensburg City Fire Station goes, you’re looking at it.”
Falling for a Former Flame: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love) Page 3