The Fireman I Loved to Hate

by Jenna Gunn

  I get out of my truck and pull my keys from my pocket, heading for the back door. I insisted that Alyssa give me a copy of the store key; if something happens, I want to be able to get inside without a problem.

  I unlock the door and push it open slowly so I don’t startle anyone behind it before entering the kitchen. A few employees are stationed at the counters, kneading dough with an efficiency I could never hope to achieve. One girl glances over her shoulder at me; I recognize her as Savannah, who’s almost always here.

  “She’s up front,” she says, raising her voice above the whirr of ever-moving mixers and the loud hums of various appliances.

  “Thanks,” I reply. “Busy day?” I add as I pick my way carefully through the kitchen.

  Her lips press into a line. I don’t ask her any more questions.

  I exit the kitchen into the small hallway that will take me toward the front. To my right is Alyssa’s office; the door is ajar, and I can see her therapy dog, Cocoa, curled up on her dog bed in a pile of curly brown fur.

  I open the door that spits me out into the lobby and find myself behind the counter; Alyssa Marks, her brown hair cropped short, reaches her gloved hands into glass cases to pull out a cupcake for a customer and smiles with a mouth shaped just like mine. Dan works the cash register beside her. He moves so fast his movements are almost blurry; his long, blonde hair is tied up in a messy bun.

  Alyssa glances sideways at me; her smile widens. “Alex!” she says happily.

  “Hey,” I reply with a grin.

  “Grab a cup of coffee and chill in my office for a bit, okay?” Alyssa says, shaking out a paper bag. She reaches for a pastry with her other hand. “Also, steer clear of Savannah. She’s in a mood.”

  “I noticed.”

  “When this rush dies down I’ll come visit with you.”

  I do as she says; I make myself a cup of black coffee from the machine behind the counter and head toward her office.

  Cocoa lifts her head as I walk in and wags her tail, standing up. “Hey,” I say softly, leaning down to pet her. The fur around her muzzle is starting to get a little light. I scratch behind her ears. She follows me around Alyssa’s desk and sits by me when I sit down.

  I lean back and pet her idly with one hand, using my other to scroll through my phone. For some reason, I find myself checking my texts. Do I hope that Raina texted me?

  With a start, I realize I never gave Raina my phone number. I don’t have hers, either. Should I look her up on social media? I tap the screen with my thumb. No. That would be creepy, wouldn’t it?

  I’m saved from this train of thought by the office door swinging open. It’s not Alyssa who walks through, but Grant - her husband, my brother-in-law - carrying two-year-old Clara.

  Grant pauses, surprised to see me, then breaks into a grin.

  “Klex!” Clara yells, waving her chubby arms toward me.

  I smile when I see her and stand up; Cocoa runs from behind the desk to sniff eagerly at Clara’s tiny shoes. She’s been trying to say “Uncle Alex” as two separate words for a while now, but it always just comes out as Klex.

  “Hey, man,” Grant says as I shuffle around Alyssa’s desk. “I didn’t know you were coming for a visit.”

  “I didn’t either,” I tell him honestly, reaching for Clara. Grant transfers his baby into my arms, and Clara clings to my neck, which is what she considers a hug.

  “I have an unexpected meeting, so I was bringing Clara by to see if Alyssa wanted to watch her.” Grant puts his hands in his pockets and turns toward the office door with a frown. “But it looks like she’s busy.”

  I hide my smile by kissing the side of Clara’s head. Grant is absolutely filthy rich. He has a custom-built sailboat and a few different houses. He could easily afford a babysitter, or a brand new Ferrari; he has neither.

  “I’ll watch her,” I volunteer.

  Grant raises his eyebrows as he looks over at me. “You sure?”

  “Sure about what?” Alyssa smiles at us as she breezes into her office. She gives Grant a kiss before turning to Clara, who squeals and flaps her arm at her mommy. I tip her out of my grasp and into Alyssa’s.

  “I’ve got an emergency meeting,” Grant sighs irritably. He gives Alyssa the run-down while Clara reaches up to try to grasp Alyssa’s hair. I sit back down behind Alyssa’s desk and sip at my coffee.

  After everyone’s up to speed and settled, Grant asks again if I’m sure I can watch Clara; I assure him that it’s no trouble at least fifteen times before he leaves. Alyssa walks him out and returns with another cup of coffee and two cupcakes.

  She sets the coffee in front of me and plops down in the chair across from me. “Penny for your thoughts,” she says, sliding me a cupcake.

  I smile and take it. Both Clara and Cocoa begin begging for it as I peel off the paper cup. “Only a penny?”

  Alyssa shrugs; she starts cutting her cupcake with a knife and feeding small pieces to Clara, who happily runs over to her on chubby legs. “It’s about what your brain is worth, I reckon.”

  I ball up my cupcake wrapper and throw it at her.

  She bats it away easily. “Seriously, though. You look...I don’t know. Not yourself.”

  “There’s a girl,” I tell her.

  She freezes and looks at me, her eyes sparkling. The corners of her mouth twitch upward.

  I’ve made a mistake.

  “A girl?” she asks.

  “A gull?” Clara echoes.

  “Clara, Uncle Alex has a girlfriend,” Alyssa says smugly, scooping Clara up and plopping her on her lap.

  “Klex gull-friend!”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” I say hastily. “We just…” I glance at Clara’s baby face smeared in pink frosting. “We’ve known each other. In the biblical sense,” I add, looking meaningfully at Alyssa.

  She smirks back at me. “Scandalous.”

  “It’s - it’s a weird situation.” Using innuendo as much as possible so I don’t say anything inappropriate in front of Clara, I tell Alyssa about Raina. About her cat, the tree, the neighbors. I tell her about Carmen.

  I tell her about the breakfast the other day - “So that’s why you bought all that stuff!” she exclaims - and about Raina’s repeated refusals, and her insistence that I’m “too modern”.

  Alyssa grabs some wet wipes from her desk and begins wiping frosting off Clara’s little cheeks. “So you’ve…” She glances down at her daughter. “Known this woman...what, twice now?”

  I feel my cheeks heat up. “Yeah,” I mumble.

  “She wants someone romantic, chivalrous. You literally saved her neighbor from a fire.”

  I shrug. “That’s my job.”

  “Yeah. Your whole job is being chivalrous. If there was a modern version of the kind of guy she says she wants, it’s you.”

  I fidget and look down at my feet.

  “Either she’s leading you on or she’s way too confused about what she actually wants,” Alyssa says matter-of-factly. “Either way, it’s probably bad news.”

  I feel my shoulders slump. That’s definitely not what I wanted to hear.

  “Or,” she says, and I perk up. “Maybe you could convince her. Grant won me over with a big, romantic gesture.” She adjusts Clara in her lap with one hand and reaches out to pet Cocoa with the other.

  I roll my eyes. “Sure, but I’m not made of money like Grant is. I can’t just donate a million bucks to a cat charity or whatever, or take her out on a date on a private sailboat.”

  Alyssa laughs, sounding very much like my memories of our mother. “A cat charity. So you like cats now, huh? You, Mr. Alex ‘I Hate Cats’ Whitmore?”

  “Clara, your mom’s being mean to me.”

  “Mama!” Clara says with as much shock and indignation as a disapproving nun. Alyssa and I both dissolve into laughter, leaving Clara with such a perplexed expression that we can’t stop.

  After a long while, I’m finally able to recover, gasping for breath and wiping
tears from my eyes. Alyssa still giggles as she plants a kiss on her daughter’s head.

  Dan pushes through the office door, his expression flat. “Hate to break up the family reunion,” he says frostily.

  “Well hey there to you too, Dan.” I grin at him.

  He manages to crack a wry smile at me before turning to Alyssa. “Honey, we’ve gotta move. People are comin’ in faster than green grass through a goose.”

  “Duty calls!” Alyssa says brightly, standing up. I stand as well and take Clara from her arms.

  “Wanna go on a walk?” I ask her as Alyssa and Dan rush out to the front.

  “Walk!” Clara agrees.

  “Well okay then.” I carry her through the front lobby, leaving Cocoa behind in case Alyssa needs her.

  I push past the crowd and get outside, where twilight is on its way in, and put Clara up on my shoulders as I stride down the sidewalk to the nearest park. She seizes my ears and giggles.

  Clara points out several interesting things to me - some flowers, almost every crack in the sidewalk, a woman across the street wearing a hat - and I respond with what she takes for utter fascination. I want to stop and buy her ice cream, but I know she just ate a cupcake.

  It’s easy to talk to a toddler and think about something else. Inevitably, my thoughts turn to Raina. I keep thinking I see her in random people; a flash of blonde hair in a car as it zips past, a petite woman standing by the drug store window, a tinkling laugh drifting out of a bar. I keep a firm grip on Clara’s knees as I cross the street toward the small playground ahead. Alyssa thinks I could win Raina over with some big romantic gesture. But I’ve saved Raina’s cat several times, brought her a kitten that I nursed as a newborn, and even saved her neighbor from a house fire.

  If those things haven’t won her over, what in the world will?

  Chapter 19

  I squint at my phone screen, trying to ignore Monroe meowing indignantly up at me. I haven’t fed him any of the cheese from the bag in my hand, and this is, apparently, a great injustice.

  He continues to meow as I toss the bag onto the counter and head over to my potatoes. I’ve made casserole before, but this is a new recipe - and it’s for the Logans, so I don’t want to mess it up.

  I pull my phone over to my cutting board and continue reading the recipe as I cut the potatoes into chunks. I wanted to make a torte, but I’ve never been much of a baker; I’d be better off going all the way to Charleston and getting one from Alex’s twin’s bakery.

  There I go again, thinking about Alex for no reason. My thoughts keep circling him like water around a drain, swirling and dancing, and I’m doing everything I can to keep from plunging straight into him.

  Why did I have to choose a new recipe for this? Why didn’t I just make something my mom always used to, something I’m familiar with? I angrily press the knife into another potato.

  Trisha was terse with me last time I saw her. She scolded me for not giving Alex a chance. She called me stupid. Trisha has called me stupid before - our friendship, like any good and stable one, subsists mostly on insult humor - but this was the first time it sounded as though she meant it.

  My thoughts balance precariously on the edge of thinking of Alex as I finish chopping potatoes. My mind goes to memories of my hands running down his muscles, of his skin in the moonlight; his rough hands against my body, his breath in my ear. I think of his patience as he guides Monroe down from a tree, a roof. I imagine his eyes as he bottle-feeds Carmen.

  One of Monroe’s meows snaps me back to the present, and I’m almost startled to see the casserole in the oven. I glance at the timer; it’s counting down. When did I get that done? How did I do that? Was I so lost in my own tumultuous thoughts that I absentmindedly performed the tasks necessary? My own hands and mind betray me, for I cannot stop thinking of him.

  I snatch a sticky note off the pile on the counter and hurriedly write that down. I may be confused by my own feelings, but at least this is giving me great material for my next book.

  I realize I could have stopped by Alex’s twin’s bakery. The Logans are staying in Charleston.

  “Too late now,” I mumble to myself, glancing at the foil-covered casserole dish on my passenger’s seat. They’ll probably appreciate this gesture more than anything I could buy, anyway; it’s Wednesday, after all. This is normally casserole day.

  My phone’s GPS guides me to the extended-stay hotel where Ms. Lynn and Mr. Jimmy are staying until their house gets fixed. I’ve taken pictures of the progress - and firmly resolved to not mention how disruptive all the noise is to my writing.

  The casserole dish is still warm to the touch when I pick it up to take it inside. I head through the hotel’s main doors and breeze through the lobby, nodding at the man behind the front desk in greeting. He replies with a bright smile.

  I stand stupidly next to the elevator doors, hoping that Ms. Lynn got my text - the elevator won’t go past the second floor without a room key, so I can’t go up on my own. I shuffle a bit on my own feet and almost reach into my pocket to grab my phone when the elevator dings, and I hear it start moving in the shaft.

  I shuffle out of the way of the doors and watch the digital panel above my head counting down the floors - four, three, two...ding!

  “Well honey, you know you didn’t have to come all the way out here,” Ms. Lynn says, grabbing my arm and pulling me both into the elevator and a hug.

  “Why do you think I asked for the address, then?” I laugh. She lets me go as the doors slide shut, and I take a step back to look at her. She looks good, almost the same - it hasn’t quite been a month, so I wasn’t expecting her to change that much; but I’m glad to see she looks healthy, all the same.

  “What’s that you’ve got?” she asks, jabbing a finger at the dish I’m holding with both hands.

  “Cheesy potato casserole.”

  “Smells awfully good,” she sighs. “Why’d you go and bring us that?”

  I shrug. “It’s Wednesday.”

  She grins and turns toward the doors as they slide open again. “Come on, we’re down this way.”

  She leads me down a hallway just like every other hotel hallway; grey carpet, white walls, rows and rows of identical doors. We turn a corner and pass a vending machine. Finally, we arrive at the plain white door of Ms. Lynn’s room, and she inserts the keycard into the handle. With a small beep, the handle turns, and she pushes open the door.

  Mr. Jimmy looks up from his newspaper as we walk into the room. “Raina,” he says by way of greeting before looking back at his paper.

  “She’s brought us a casserole,” Ms. Lynn crows happily, plucking it from my hands and practically skipping toward him.

  I slide my jacket off my shoulders and look around the room. It’s cute, in a temporary sort of way. There’s a bed, a dresser, a TV. They have a small kitchen with a stove and everything. Mr. Jimmy sits in a stiff-looking armchair next to a too-shiny table.

  “Wow. It’s like an apartment,” I say in wonder, hanging my jacket up on a hook.

  “Sure is,” Ms. Lynn pipes up. “A bit small, but we’re managing just fine.”

  I nod and move awkwardly toward a dining chair across the shiny table from Mr. Jimmy. He glances at me again over his rectangular reading glasses.

  “Something wrong?” he asks.

  “No,” I say quickly.

  He grunts and looks back at his paper. “Lynn. Something’s wrong with the girl.”

  “No there isn’t!” I hear the stress edge into my voice as I look quickly at Ms. Lynn, who turns from the small kitchen counter to look at me with raised eyebrows.

  Ms. Lynn doesn’t break eye contact with me as she uses a big serving spoon to dish up a helping of casserole and plop it onto a styrofoam plate. It’s too much to bear; I look away toward the nearby window, where I get a nice, scenic view of the parking lot.

  She chuckles softly. “Well, now. What’s going on, hon?”

  I shake my head. “Look, it’s noth
ing,” I sigh.

  She presses her lips into a disbelieving thin line and puts servings onto two more plates. “Doesn’t sound like it.”

  “You’ve got enough going on. My problems are just...petty.”

  “Petty or not,” Mr. Jimmy grumbles, folding up his paper, “we’re bored. We wanna hear some good gossip.”

  “Not all of our church friends can make it up to Charleston, and some are too busy to call.” Ms. Lynn sighs as heavily and dramatically as a lovelorn girl in one of my own books. “We don’t get enough gossip.” She brings the plates over and plops them down, one for each of us. “So get talkin’.”

  I pick up the plastic fork she tosses onto my plate and poke at the potatoes, too weary to protest being served a casserole I made specifically for them. “It’s Alex.”

  “Who?” Mr. Jimmy asks at the same time Ms. Lynn gasps, “The firefighter?”

  I nod. “The firefighter who rescued Monroe the day we met.”

  Ms. Lynn elbows Mr. Jimmy. “I told her to bring him around to thank him after that second time.”

  “And I did,” I agree. “We...well, we’ve...been involved.”

  “Involved?” Ms. Lynn asks eagerly. Mr. Jimmy silently shovels casserole into his mouth.

  “...yeah,” I reply weakly.

  “Involved how, hon? Y’all seein’ each other often?”

  “Not exactly.” My voice comes out just above a whisper.

  Ms. Lynn raises her eyebrows. “Oh. So y’all are that kind of involved, huh?”

  I blush and look down at the table.

  “So how many times have you involved yourself with him, then?”

  I hesitate. “Twice.”

  Ms. Lynn squeals and slaps Mr. Jimmy’s shoulder; he just guides another forkful to his open mouth.

  “And I...kind of think I might like him,” I say hurriedly, my words coming out in a jumble. I pause as Mrs. Lynn squeals again, then start explaining the whole complicated fiasco - the “modern man” problem, chivalry, the whole nine yards - and finish with a weak, “It’s...complicated.”