Besides, this was about her. “How are you, Anne?”
Chavez had always been a good guy, and the gentle way he looked at her was everything she remembered about him. He was also still the tall, dark, and handsome firefighter hero who belonged in a centerfold calendar of guys in turnout bottoms holding long hoses—and yet he’d never been her type. Nope, back in the day, she’d never managed to look past Danny Maguire.
What was the question?
“I’m good.” She smiled brightly, and then hit the dimmer switch so she didn’t come across as desperate. “I’m great.”
After the collapse in that warehouse house, Emilio had come by the rehab hospital once, and the resolute way he’d focused on her face and not her arm had made her rush through the visit. He’d seemed relieved at the excuse she’d given him to leave, and she hadn’t faulted him. As he’d stood awkwardly next to her hospital bed, no doubt he’d been glad that he hadn’t been hurt—and he was decent enough of a guy to feel bad about that understandable relief.
“How’s you?’ she asked. Because she had to.
“Ah, great. I’m great. Yeah, thanks.”
He smiled, but then lost the expression. When he resolutely put the lift back on his lips, she wanted to tell him not to bother.
Anne rubbed her sweaty palm on the seat of her legging again. “I’m glad. That’s good.”
“Yeah, it’s . . . it’s good.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Looks like we’re moving. Good to see you, Anne—later, Dannyboy.”
“Great to see you,” she said too loudly. “Really great.”
Chris came over. “I didn’t know you’re friends with the EMS guys.”
“I’m not. I mean, I was. I used to be—” She shook her head. “Listen, I’ve got to say it again. I feel really badly about all this. I shouldn’t have been showboating.”
“That kid’s been trouble since he joined. At least now we have an excuse to cancel his membership. And he signed the standard release, so hopefully we won’t get sued.”
Danny stepped in. “If you need us to make statements, you know where to find us.”
“You have my number,” she corrected. “Let me know if I can help. I feel responsible.”
Chris smiled. “You’re the best, Anne. Chilli and I appreciate you.”
“Nice to meet you,” Danny said as he barged in and stuck his hand out like it was a sword pointed at the other man’s gut.
There was an awkward pause before Chris shook what was put out there, and then Anne headed for the door before Danny broke the poor guy over his knee and threw the two halves into the street.
Outside, it was dark as midnight, and Moose was closing up the back of the ambulance. The flashing red bubbler on the cab took her back to the job again, the rhythmic pulses of light so familiar and yet so foreign, now.
Sadness, insidious and castrating, stole her breath.
“So,” Moose said as he looked back and forth between them.
His smile was slow and suggested Danny was going to get a boatload of shit back at the firehouse. And all she knew was that if Maguire tried to put his arm around her shoulder or insinuate anything, he was going to learn firsthand what it was like to be in her situation.
’Cuz she’d rip his damn limb off.
“Don’t you have a patient to take care of,” Danny muttered.
Moose shrugged. “Chavez is taking a medical history.”
“Which can be done in transit.”
“Mom asked us to wait so she could bring her car around. She wants to follow.”
Anne was tempted to walk off, but then Danny wouldn’t have a ride, and no doubt that would come up in conversation.
“So.” Moose rocked on the heels of his boots. “Nice weather we’re having—”
Danny glanced at her. “Come on, let’s go.”
Damn it.
“Hey,” Moose said, “we should do dinner this Saturday. Come to our place—Deandra is taking a cooking class and she loves to show off.”
As a tense silence bloomed like a bad smell, Anne threw some words out to fill the void. “I thought she was going to be a hairdresser.”
“Well, that’s just the first tier of her lifestyle business. She wants to be into hair, makeup, skin care, fashion, home decor, healthy eating. She’s going all the way. I’m very proud of my wife.”
When the guy gave Danny a look, Anne lost her patience—and was rescued by Mom tooling up in a minivan that had led a very hard life. The thing had a ding on the front bumper, scratches down the side, and a side-view mirror that was hanging by its proverbial optic nerve.
Made you wonder whether the apple didn’t fall far from the tree—either that or it just stole the car keys a lot.
Moose clapped his hands. “Gotta go! See you Saturday—Anne, I’ll give Deandra your number so she can text you with instructions.”
Instructions? And how the hell did she yell out, Please don’t, without being offensive? The last person she wanted to get to know better was that wife of his. She’d been through the wedding, and that had been more than enough contact.
The ambulance left sweet diesel fumes in its wake as Moose piloted it off in the direction of University of New Brunswick Hospital, the beaten-up minivan a sad-sack wind sock following its path.
Anne looked at Danny. “I’m not going to dinner with them. Or you. It’s not appropriate.”
“Not worth the time, is more like it.”
They stepped off the curb at the same moment, and the fact that they fell into stride together as they headed for her car was the kind of thing she deliberately messed up with a hop and a skip. The good news was that as they got in, he seemed uncharacteristically quiet. At least he wasn’t spewing a bunch of it’ll-be-great rhetoric about the never-happening, in-Moose’s-dreams Saturday dinner from hell.
Out on the road, as Anne went through the series of stoplights and bunch of turns that she could do in her sleep, she found her palm getting sweaty again. Matter of fact, her body felt like it was under a heat lamp. As she came up to a red light, she peeled her fleece off over her head and tossed it into the back.
“How did you get to my house?” she asked. “I didn’t see your car.”
“I walked.”
She glanced over. “Five miles?”
“I needed to clear my head.” As his hand dipped into his windbreaker, he cursed and took it back out. “Yes, I know. No smoking in your car.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Already said I know,” he shot back.
At the next light, she noted the way his knee was bouncing up and down like the left half of him was running a hypothetical sprint.
Like being in step across the parking lot, she knew the feeling. Her heart was beating about as fast as that foot of his was tapping in that wheel well, and she wasn’t stupid. They were both rattled, the past and present colliding and leaving shattered pieces of “normal,” “forever,” and “never going to happen to me” in the street.
That was the thing about life. Habit and routine made things feel permanent, but that was all an illusion based on the very flimsy foundation of repetition. Change and chaos was a far better bet to put your faith in.
At least you would never be surprised when things went tits up.
“I’ll take you home then,” she announced.
“I can walk.”
“I know you can.”
“It’s fine—”
“It’s cold—”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Anne locked her molars. It was either that, or this—whatever it was—was going to uncap into a whole lot of yelling over nothing.
And meanwhile, the pressure was building. In her. In him. Until she was damn sure they were within two psi of blowing the safety glass out of the Subaru’s doors and windshield.
When she got to his house, she pulled into the short drive, went around back, and hit the brakes. She could tell he was rank pissed at her reroute, but guess what. She didn’t care.
She wanted him angry at her.
It was safer that way. Somewhere along the ride to his apartment, frustration and pain had kindled into energy of a different kind. Heat of a different kind. Urgency . . . of a dangerous kind.
Abruptly, the confines of the car’s interior shrunk down on her. On them.