Chapter 5
ALEX
IndexEcho: How’s the head this morning, sunshine?
DrunkenPoet: Broken. How did you know I was drinking?
IndexEcho: Late-night haiku about waffles. Hard agree about syrup geometry, BTW.
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“Don’t do it,” my sister warned, pointing her cocktail straw at me across the bar.
I emptied the rest of my cosmo and held up my glass to toast. “Shall I compare thee to a winter’s night? Thou art more frosty and more full of spite. Rough codes do shake the darling buds of May, and firemen’s breath doth blow special effects permits away.”
My voice was soft and slurry, which perfectly matched the warm numbness moving sluggishly through my veins.
“You did it,” Ella said in disgust. “Don’t we have a rule about this, Alex? You quote poetry, you owe me a shot.”
“Uh, no. That rule only applies if I quote lyrics from transformative modern poet Taylor Swift,” I said smugly. “I don’t make the rules. Mattie does.” After a pause, I added, “All you are is mean.”
“Goddammit,” Ella muttered. “He’s throwing it back to the Speak Now era. I’m calling Mattie.”
Tavo took another sip of his Shirley Temple and giggled as if he’d had any alcohol at all. “I think it’s cute. Alex’s poetry thing.”
Ella shook her head while she held her phone out in her palm, the ringing loud on speaker mode. “Not cute. Pathetic. When Anders Creighton broke up with Alex sophomore year in college, he was on a Fireball shots and e.e. cummings kick. It was not pretty.”
Ohhh, e.e. cummings. Love me some e.e.…
I sucked in a breath and gave it a shot. “chief kincaid… (if that is your… real name)…your eyes are… two blue… extinguishers… that put out… my spark…”
Ella clapped a hand over my mouth. “No. Be done.”
I blew out a breath and slumped. “Anders wouldn’t have written me up for a faulty—”
My sister Mattie’s voice came over the speaker so loudly I jumped and knocked over my new napkin holder.
“What the fuck, sister-from-hell, I’m asleep.”
“You made me knock over the new napkins!” I shouted.
“Oh Jesus,” Mattie groaned. “Is he drunk? Is that why you’re—fuck, is he spouting poetry?”
“Swiftian poetry,” Ella agreed grimly. “Among others.”
Tavo giggled louder. “Oh my gosh, this is amazing.”
“Don’t worry,” Ella added, reaching for the napkins that had spilled across the bar. “Timber’s closed. We were having a few drinks to celebrate the Fourth, and your brother got carried away.”
“He’s your brother when he’s like this,” Mattie muttered.
I heard a man’s voice in the background and leaned in to say hi to my future brother-in-law. Before I could say anything, Mattie continued. “Why’re you drunk, Alexander the Grape? Is this about your sex life? Ella and I think your dry spell has gone on way too long. You need some stress relief.”
I blinked at the phone. “You and Ella were talking about my sex life? Ew.”
“No shit, ew,” Ella said. “But we’re right. When was the last time you got laid?”
Never. Thankfully, I wasn’t drunk enough to say that out loud.
“’S been a while,” I said instead. “Looooong while,” I added with a giggle and hiccup. That much was true.
Tavo leaned forward on his stool, flashing a big smile. “I heard there’s a new class up at the rescue academy. They’re, like, medics and helicopter pilots and wilderness emergency people.” He fanned himself with long, slender fingers. “They say the instructors are even hotter than the students.”
“Ew, no,” Ella said. “Our cousin Tommy is one of those instructors this summer.”
I shook my head. “And no adrenaline junkies, thank you very much.”
Been there, done that. I’d fallen for a guy who was stationed somewhere in the Middle East. Worrying about him had been bad enough, but when he’d suddenly gone silent, fear had eaten away at me piece by piece.
Had he ghosted or died? There was no way to know.
I hadn’t even learned his name, which meant his disappearance would forever remain a mystery.
“Whose name, Alex?” Tavo asked.
I shook my head at him. “Huh?”
“You said you didn’t even have his name. Whose name?”
Fuck. I was drunker than I’d thought if I’d said that out loud.
My sisters both made a sound of understanding, and Ella jumped up. “Time for bed. You’re cut off, and we’re going upstairs right now.”
Tavo offered to finish turning off all the lights while Ella dragged my drunk ass upstairs.
When she stood behind me in the bathroom doorway, making sure I was brushing my teeth like I’d promised, she asked, “Do you think that’s why you’re giving this fire chief such a hard time? Because of your online guy?”
IndexEcho.
“It’s not the same thing. Index is… was a specialist in ARFF equipment and techniques.
Aircraft rescue and firefighting in the military is a big fucking deal.
They’re the ones who put out like… giant military plane fires and explosions and…
” I couldn’t bear even thinking about it.
“Chief Kincaid puts out sparklers,” I said, sounding bitter even to my own ears. “Not at all the same thing.”
“Still, maybe the chief is bringing up some shit from that time, you know? Might be worth talking to someone about.”
She meant my therapist. But I’d already therapied this shit to death. “I’m fine. He just needs to get his nose out of my business and mind his own.”
But Ella’s idea had merit. Maybe I wasn’t giving the new fire chief enough credit. Instead of assuming he was an overly picky asshole, maybe I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt.
What if he was just trying to impress the town until his reputation as a competent, safety-conscious fire chief was well established? For all I knew, he was this much of a stickler for everyone.
In the morning, I’d start asking around.
In the morning, I wanted to die. Unfortunately, I’d agreed to meet my cousins for breakfast at the Pinecone.
“Let’s go,” Ella said, bustling into my space and throwing the blackout curtains open. “Tavo said everything is fine at Timber, and Juni’s in a good mood today. That means we have at least an hour for family breakfast.”
I grumbled and groaned until she mentioned our cousin Tommy would be coming. At least the genders would be balanced a little.
Fifteen minutes later, I was showered, dressed, and grumbling my way into Legacy’s most popular breakfast spot.
As soon as Tommy saw me, he winced. “You need hydration and electrolytes, my friend.”
Technically, Tommy was a doctor and probably knew better than I did, but that didn’t stop me from arguing. “I need a few more hours in my bed, is what I need.”
My cousin Lennon grunted and shoved a menu at me. “Spinach and banana smoothie, maybe. Eggs and toast if you can handle it.”
Sadie hustled over with coffee, already made creamy as fuck but not too sweet. “Juni called and told me to get you an IV of this started ASAP.”
The unusually thoughtful gesture by my moody head chef was much appreciated. “Doesn’t sound like her,” I said.
“She also said not to bother coming back unless you have a healthy to-go serving of my maple bacon and banana nut bread.”
I nodded. “There it is.”
As my sister and cousins chattered around me, I slumped down and slurped my coffee, allowing the caffeine to hit and the energy of the crowded diner to perk me up.
Sadie came back with more coffee and Tommy’s orange juice before asking what we wanted to eat. After she wrote everything down, I reached out and touched her arm. “Hey, have you by any chance had any interactions with the new fire chief?”
“Kincaid? Sure. Nice guy. Handsome, too. He comes in here with the other firefighters.”
I shook my head, which was a mistake. Nausea rolled through my gut. “No, I mean… have you had inspections or been cited for any code violations?”
Sadie’s face crinkled in thought. “Don’t think we have one due for another few months. Health inspector was out about four months ago, though. Why?”
Before I could come up with an answer that didn’t reveal my current situation on Kincaid’s naughty list, Sadie was called over to help another customer. When she passed by a minute later, she asked if I was doing a food truck at the Slingshot Showdown.
“Oh fuck!” I breathed. “I forgot to apply for my permits. I was in the middle of filling all that stuff out a few weeks ago when Uncle Dante called about Tavo.”
“How is Tavo?” Ella asked. “I didn’t want to ask him last night and ruin everyone’s good mood.”
“Fine, I guess. He’s been helping out in the kitchen, and when he’s not there, he spends time creating these flint and steel kits to sell at the farmer’s market. I told him to check with Maddox Sullivan to see if he might want to carry them at the hardware store.”
My sister narrowed her eyes at me. “I meant, how’s he holding up? Emotionally?”
Our cousin Tommy looked around the table as if missing something. “Who’s Tavo?”
Lennon spoke in a low voice so no one could overhear. “Kid from Marian House,” he said, referring to the LGBTQ+ teen shelter our uncles ran in San Francisco. “He’s hiding out for a while. Staying with Alex.”
Tommy waited expectantly for more, but Lennon went back to his coffee.
Ella turned to Tommy. “He fell for the wrong sugar daddy. Found out the guy was married and tried to get out of it. Unfortunately, the guy’s obsessed. Doesn’t think he should have to give Tavo up regardless of the whole ‘wife’ thing.”
I sighed. “And worse? He’s a powerful judge with money and influence.”
Tommy’s eyes widened in surprise. “How old is this kid?”
“Twenty,” I explained. “So legally, he’s not a kid anymore. But he ended up at Marian House a few years ago after his parents found him with another boy and kicked him out. His family wound up moving back to Mexico because they blamed American culture for Tavo’s sexuality.”
“He was at Marian House long enough to finish high school,” Ella continued. “Then got a job as a barback at a trendy place in SoMa.”