“I have a few hours before I have to report for my two day stretch at the firehouse. I thought a coffee might be a nice way to kick it off.” I give her my best smirk and try not to let my eyes fall below her neck. The amount of bare flesh she’s exposing right now is enough to make a sane man fall to his knees and beg. And the way she makes me feel is anythingbutsane.
“And you thought you’d, what,runto my apartment and see if I’d get a coffee with you?” She raises a brow and looks at me skeptically. She leans into the hand she’s hanging onto the door with and pops her hip out to one side.
“Well I didn’t start off my run to come here. I was on my run and you came to mind and then I just kinda…ended up here,” I explain as nonchalantly as I can.
She sighs. “I can’t date my patient, Miles. Yesterdaywas…” She squeezes her eyes closed and shakes her head, unsure. “I don’t know what yesterday was but I know I can’t date you.”
“Well then it’s a good thing I’m not asking you out on a date. I’m asking you to getcoffee. And I’m not even asking you to get coffee as a patient, I’m asking you as a friend. That’s what you said we were yesterday, friends. Remember?”
Pursing her lips at me, I can see her trying to calculate what to say next. When she brushes a piece of hair out of her face and presses her glasses up her nose, I know I’ve got her.
“You’re lucky my dad canceled on me this morning. Normally I’d be out walking with him by now.” She takes a step back to let me inside. When I do, I smile to myself when I see her coffee pot is on and warm and there’s a freshly poured mug half empty sitting next to it.
“You and your dad walk on Saturday mornings?” I confirm, remembering what she told me the last time I was here when she was sick. I’m careful not to sit or touch anything since I’m still sweaty from my run.
“Mhhm,” she responds, walking towards her bedroom. “Every Saturday morning. Stay there, let me change real quick.”
Lingering awkwardly in her living room and kitchen space, I walk around and remember all the details from the last time I was here. The pictures of her and her parents and the small little tchotchkes she has littered around. Walking over to a shelf she has sitting under a window, I squat down and look at all the crocheted things that are sitting on it. A few plants, a couple of random items like a book or coffee cup, but mostly animals. I chuckle when I spot thebunny she finally finished only to see that she never did fully figure out its ears.
“What are you laughing at?”
I turn to look at her and nearly fall face first into the shelf. In less than ten minutes she’s gone from ‘just rolled out of bed’ to ‘ready for her close up.’ She’s slipped into a soft purple dress with a long sleeved turtle neck underneath. To keep her warm in the December chill, she has on a pair of tights matched with knee high socks that carry your eye straight up her legs and to the hemline of her dress. She’s wearing the same loafers she had on yesterday and has tied her hair back with another bandana. I blink hard a few times and push myself to my feet.
“It’s, uhh, nothing, just your bunny,” I stammer through my explanation. “It turned out really great.”
“Pssh, yeah right.” She rolls her eyes and grabs her purse from where it lives on a chair. “The ears are still wrong and I redid them at least four times. Sometimes life isn’t perfect though and we just have to learn to live with it.”
I smile because she’s right. “That’s a lesson I think more people need to learn.”
“It’s one of the reasons I’ll always be gainfully employed,” she jokes, holding her hands out in front of her with a curtsey. “You ready to go?”
“After you.” I wave a hand in front of me and bow for her to go ahead of me.
“Always such a gentleman,” she mumbles at me with a smirk.
Only for people I really like.
“So what doyou do at the station while you wait for a call to come in?” she looks up at me and asks, pulling the coffee cup to her lips to take a sip. I watch in envy as it gets to know the feeling of her lips wrapped around it. Swallowing hard, I take a drink of my own coffee before answering.
“Well, when shift starts we all get our assignments for the day so we know what our role is for when we get a call. Then, depending on what our assignment is for our shift, we do equipment checks to make sure everything is prepared and ready to go in case a call comes in. This also includes checking the engines, trucks, and emergency supplies in the trucks.” She nods along, looking genuinely interested in what I’m telling her. “Once that’s all good to go, if we still don’t have a call, we might train in the gym or go grocery shopping for the firehouse.”
“I’m sure that’s always fun, shopping for an entire firehouse full of people.” When she smiles at me I can’t stop myself from reciprocating the smile.
“It’s a big job and one of the most important ones behind, you know, actually saving people’s lives. Nothing’s worse than a firehouse full of hungry firefighters. Carter alone is enough to drive you crazy when he’s hungry. It’s like he reverts back to being nine years old again.” I roll my eyes and chuckle. “Then it’s meals and any sort of public education event we might host. Other than that, it’s a lot of waiting around. You hope there aren’t any calls because calls mean danger and chaos. But a shift with no calls is usually pretty boring.” I shrug my shoulders and take another drink.
“But you love it,” she comments with a half smirk. “I can see it in your eyes. You love what you do.”
“More than most things. I was in the Marines for abetter portion of my twenties and did a lot of growing up while I was gone. When I came home, I kind of floundered for a bit. I didn’t know where I wanted to end up but I knew it wasn’t in a regular nine to five. At the same time, Carter was transitioning from EMS to Fire and so I decided to go through training with him. The rest is history.”
“What’s that like, working with your brother?”
“It’s never boring, that’s for sure.” We both laugh. “He keeps me on my toes, keeps me young. He likes to sing along to the radio and watch old black and white cartoons.”
“You can’t beat the classics sometimes,” she argues with a shrug and a smile.
Pausing, I look at her and take in her image. She has a softness to her that is undeniable. One that I want to pull close into my chest and protect with everything I am. I want to never let anything bad or hard reach her, and at the same time I want to get down on my knees for her and bark on her command.
“What about you? Have any siblings?”
