Chapter 3 #3
Now, my first official shift as a firefighter instead of a probie is in two days. Where I’ll meet my new fire family at Station Nine.
I’m stoked.
And since failure isn’t an option, I hope I can live up to all expectations of the new house.
“Look, boys, I know tonight was about celebrating, bu—”
“Please go get that pussy,” Tyson says, drawing out the word ‘please’ and holding up his hands in prayer. “Please, man.”
“Yeah, we can always do this again. Or fuck, meet at 10-42 for some beers one night,” Ethan interjects, pushing his hand through the top of his dark hair. “You can tell us all about your new crew.”
“Who you’re going to love,” Tyson says. Nothing they haven’t already told me. “Nate is the best.”
Nate owns 10-42, a local bar the whole crew talks about. I’ve never been. It seems like every time the guys make plans, I end up on mandatory overtime because someone calls in sick or something else happens. As the new kid on the block, I was eager for the hours. Ready to prove myself.
“Did I ever tell you I hit on his woman when she first started working there?” Tyson adds, looking at Ethan.
“I was there, numb nuts. I watched the whole thing,” Ethan says, shaking his head.
Tyson’s face goes slack for a moment, and I can see the wheels turning as he pulls up the memory. Then he nods in agreement. “That’s right. You were. Whatever man. She’s a smoke show. That lucky dog.”
The irony of Tyson calling some other guy a dog.
“Alright, this has been fun, but I’m gonna…” I say, throwing a thumb over my shoulder.
“If we don’t see you again tonight, let us know how first shift goes,” Ethan says, going in for another slap on the back.
Tyson follows suit, clapping me an extra time for luck. “And don’t be a stranger.”
“Your mom’s cooking is way too good to be a stranger.”
Tyson’s family invited me for Christmas dinner when I didn’t have a chance to go home for the holidays a few months ago.
It was almost as good as my mom’s cooking, which was great because his mom invited me back anytime.
An invitation I’ve taken up more than a few times since that first dinner.
Tyson might be a crude womanizer, but he loves his family.
He ends up at home at least once a week for a meal and to help his parents around the house.
There is never a fully free meal when it comes to going to the Saxe’s for dinner.
When Tyson realized how handy I am, he was even more inclined to bring me along.
The two of us always find something to fix.
Leaving them at the bar, I head back across the dance floor, but the further I get, eyes sweeping across tables and chairs, the more my brow furrows. There’s no sign of Bryn. Or Savanna and Jordan.
Fuck.
Did they take off on me? Did I read the situation wrong?
No. There’s no way.
Reaching the table where they all sat no more than ten minutes ago, I look around. Two couples stand close to the table, semi-using it, but mostly just drunkenly leaning on the chairs. I glance towards the bathroom, my eyes scanning all the heads, but there’s no sign of her. No sign of any of them.
Then, like someone calls my name, I abruptly twist towards the main exit.
And fate, the dirty bitch that it is, has opened up the massive crowd in the club to give me a direct line of sight to her.
She’s stopped, looking right at me, her friends fading behind her.
She gestures over her shoulder, shaking her head, and even though it’s dark and we’re what feels like miles from each other, I swear I see her mouth, “I’m sorry. ”
Then she’s gone, hurrying to catch up with her friends, and the room swallows her whole. Like what I witnessed was some figment of my imagination. Or maybe the entire night was.
“No. No, no, no. I didn’t even get her number.”
I’m racing then. Pushing through the crowd, bumping into people, moving them out of my way as kindly and quickly as I can. If I have an ounce of luck on my side, she’ll be in the parking lot. I’ll make it before she leaves. I have to make it before she leaves.
That woman was going to get more than three dates.
Less than a whole evening spent in her company and I knew she was getting as many dates as she’d give me.
I can’t explain it, wouldn’t know where to start even if I did, but sometimes a guy just knows.
And I know I need to get to her before she’s gone.
It takes me five hundred years, and countless apologies, to get through the crowd, but I’m finally crashing through the doors to the bar into the warm June air. The bouncers jump back, startled by me hurling through them, and then they start to reach for me.
I’m past them before they can make contact, looking towards the curb where a cab in the shape of a van is pulling onto the street. And there she is. On the passenger side, in the very back, her forehead pressed against a window.
We catch each other’s eye for the briefest second, and hers widen. Her head lifts, and her hand comes up, but then the cab is gone.
Out of sight.
Out of my life.