I'd like that.
The three little dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again. I realized I was holding my breath.
Jimmy
Good. Because I'd really like to see you again. Soon.
Me too.
I put my phone away and finally drove home, but my mind kept drifting as I navigated the familiar streets. A text from my mother popped up at a red light:
Carmen
Hope you're having a good day off, mija. Call me this week?
The message brought back her voice from our last conversation:You need to find someone nice, Izzy. Someone who can take care of you for once.
Take care of me. Like I was some fragile thing that needed protecting.
But Jimmy... Jimmy hadn't tried to protect me from anything. He'd just seen me — really seen me — and decided I was worth the effort. Worth impressing.
I started the truck and pulled into traffic, my mind drifting to the last time someone had tried to "take care" of me.
THREE YEARS AGO
"You're never here anymore," Derek had said, his voice tight with accusation as I walked through my apartment door at 7a.m. after a particularly brutal 48-hour shift. "I feel like I'm dating a ghost."
I'd been too tired to fight, too wrung out from two days of back-to-back calls to do anything but shower and collapse into bed. But Derek had other plans.
"We need to talk about this, Izzy. About us. About your priorities."
"My priorities?" I'd turned from the bathroom doorway, still in my smoky duty uniform. "Derek, I just spent two days pulling people out of burning buildings. I'm exhausted."
"And that's the problem." He'd been sitting on my couch like he owned the place, arms crossed, jaw set in that stubborn line I'd once found attractive. "This job is consuming you. You're becoming someone I don't recognize."
The irony was that the job had made me exactly who I was supposed to be. Confident, capable, strong. But Derek had fallen for the off-duty version of me — the one who wore sundresses to barbecues and laughed at his jokes about women drivers. He'd loved the idea of dating a firefighter until he realized what that actually meant.
"You knew what I did when we started dating," I'd said, leaning against the doorframe because I was too tired to stand without support.
"I thought it was temporary. A phase." Derek had stood up, started pacing around my living room like a caged animal. "But you're talking about taking the Lieutenant's exam, Izzy. You want to make this your whole life."
"It is my whole life."
"And where does that leave me? Leave us?"
I'd stared at him, this man I'd been dating for eight months, and realized he'd never understood me at all. He'd wanted the firefighter fantasy — the calendar girl in turnouts — not the reality of someone who came home smelling like smoke and chemicals, who got called out in the middle ofdinner, who had nightmares about the people she couldn't save.
"I don't know," I'd said honestly.
"Well, I do." Derek had grabbed his jacket from the back of my chair, his movements sharp with anger. "You need to choose, Izzy. The job or me. Because I'm not going to sit around waiting for you to decide I'm worth coming home to."
The ultimatum had hung in the air between us like smoke from a structure fire — toxic and impossible to ignore.
"Then I guess you have your answer," I'd said quietly.
He'd looked shocked, like he'd expected me to fold. To choose him over the career I'd built, the crew that depended on me, the calling that had saved me after my father died. Like he'd expected me to choose being comfortable over being myself.
"You'll regret this," he'd said on his way to the door. "You can't marry the job, Izzy. It'll never love you back."
