Page 20 of Faking the Heat

He grins. “Same thing, man. Same exact thing.”

He stands, stretches, and lets the shake dangle from his hand. “Look, I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but if you ever decide to, you know, admit to yourself that you might actually want her, you should probably do it before she moves on and finds some other guy with a better dry erase calendar.”

He leaves, and the locker room is suddenly empty, except for the distant sound of the bay radio and the wet mark where my boots were resting on the tile.

I sit there for a few seconds longer, staring at the logbook, and then at the closed door.

I have been on hundreds of calls. I have triaged wounds, kicked in doors, carried grown men down three flights of smoke-filled stairs. I have never, not once, come across a problem I could not solve with the right mix of tools and timing.

But right now, I am completely out of tools.

I lace my boots, stand, and leave the log on the bench. Someone else can worry about the hydraulic fluid today.

I’ve got a more urgent situation to triage.

When I get back to the kitchen, Jake’s already there, stirring sugar into a mug the size of a paint can. The lights are still off except for the under-cabinet strip, which means he’s waiting for me to finish what I started, or maybe for the room to stop spinning. He doesn’t turn around when I enter, but I know he’s listening.

I lean against the doorframe and look at the coffee machine, which is both ancient and finicky. If you want a decent cup, you have to punch the “brew” button exactly three times and then threaten it with physical violence. I watch the display flicker from “CLEANING MODE” to “READY” and think about how many appliances in my life only respond to direct confrontation.

Jake doesn’t say anything. He’s left a second mug on the counter, a silent invitation.

It’s stupid, but that’s what does it.

“I can’t do this,” I say.

Jake keeps stirring, slow and even.

“Can’t do what, beat her at Mario Kart?” he asks, as if there are a million things I might have meant.

I shake my head and he smirks, knowing that we aren’t talking about video games. I press my hands flat on the counter, cold laminate grounding me. “I can’t keep pretending she’s just a roommate. That it’s all the same. That it’s not…” I lose the word.

Jake stops stirring. “Not what?”

I exhale, hard. “Not everything. It’s not everything.”

He pours the coffee into the other mug, slides it towards me, and waits.

“She was on the couch,” I say, “yesterday morning. Wearing my shirt, like, actually my shirt, not a cute version of my shirt, just the wrinkled, slept, in one from the night before. Her hair was in this…” I gesture vaguely at the side of my own head, “thing. And she was eating Cheerios out of a coffee mug and sketching something on her iPad, and she looked up at me, and my brain just… full stop. Hard reboot.”

Jake grins, “You’re a man of simple tastes.”

“No, it’s,” I falter. “It wasn’t like that. I mean, sure, she looked good, like really good, but that’s not what I’m talking about. It just felt… right.”

Jake lifts his mug in a salute. “Captain Save-a-hoe finally meets his match. I’m proud of you.”

I groan. “Don’t start.”

He sips, then sets the mug down. “I’m serious. You sound like a guy who just figured out he’s been playing checkers on a chessboard.”

I shake my head, “If I’m playing chess, I’m at least six moves behind.”

Jake’s grin softens. “That’s okay. So’s she.”

We sit in a silence that isn’t uncomfortable, but feels like the air is getting rearranged at a molecular level.

“There was this thing when she first got here,” I say. “I went to the pet store, right? Because her cat was there. So, I got a bunch of cat stuff. And then I got home, and she was in the kitchen, and she just… hugged me. Out of nowhere. Like I’d just come back from war.”

Jake raises a brow. “You said you didn’t want this?”