Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
HAILEY
14 years old
I reach for my phone on the nightstand and dial his number. I keep telling myself he’s busy, that I’m the only lonely one on a Friday night, when he picks up on the final ring.
“Hey, Hayes. What’s up?”
I sit up a little taller, hoping it elevates my mood. “Hey! Karen’s picking up Grenaldough’s. Want to come over for dinner?”
A voice I don’t recognize lets out a whiney “Stoooop” in the background.
“If you’re busy don’t worry.” My traitorous voice cracks on the last word, and I clear my throat to cover it up. But nothing gets by Dean.
“Hayes, I’ll be there in ten minutes, okay?”
“Are you sure? You really don’t have to come.”
“I want to,” he says, and that phrase sweeps me back to our sixth-grade bus stop. The day I met Dean McCafferty.
I was the laughingstock of the Four Eyes Committee as I boarded the bus in my first pair of glasses. Everything far away was clear, but up close, things melted together like honey. I’d already fallen behind in reading and avoided it at all costs, which meant I didn’t do much of it at home either. Of course, my dad never saw me read. But it took Aunt Karen a while to catch on too.
It wasn’t her fault. She was doing the best she could as the caretaker in my life. And even though I’m comfortable opening up to her, I’m always afraid that saying or doing the wrong thing will scare her away. Who wants to take care of a kid struggling in school when they’re not yours? I’d be left without anybody if it came down to that. I didn’t have room for error. So, I lied. For a long time.
Dean was new to my… community? It was less of a neighborhood in the sense that you weren’t walking two feet from your front steps to borrow a cup of sugar. I imagine moving cities in the middle of a school year is nerve-racking enough. But if Dean was intimidated, he never showed it.
Middle schoolers can be harsh. Mine? They waited until I was trapped in a leather booth surrounded on all sides. I tried to ignore it. I fused my eyes to the bus window and kicked myself for not asking Aunt Karen to drive me to school.
“Boys don’t make passes at girls that wear glasses,” a girl named Molly chanted over the seat behind us.
She was even more of a “neighbor” than Dean was. The fact that we’d been in the same class since kindergarten, yet she still treated me like that… it made me hate her even more.
She was right though. No boy was ever going to like a girl with bangs and glasses.
But it didn’t keep me from barking, “Shut up, Molly!”
It wasn’t my finest moment, but I was humiliated. I shrank in my seat, ducking my chin inside my coat so my face was half covered.
Dean acted unbothered. He shuffled through the front pocket of his backpack, and I peeked over the hem of my hood lining. From what I could see of the top layer—a washer and screw, a button, a couple scraps of ripped-up paper, a rainbow loom bracelet, and a handful of paperclips—it was filled with random junk he found off the street.
For the rest of the bus ride, he tinkered with the paperclips, stretching the kinky wires to their longest lengths. I wanted someone to talk to but resigned myself to the fact he didn’t have time for a four-eyed girl like me.
When the bus parked in front of the school, I turned to face Dean. He was grinning at me in a pair of paperclip glasses that sat crooked on the bridge of his nose. When the other kids caught on, I found out their teasing didn’t stop at me.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said to him when we were the last kids left.
“I wanted to,” he said back, and wore them anyway.
I never forgot that day. Since then, he’s always shown up for me in moments when he didn’t know how much I needed someone.
Present Day
You can do this. Just break the ice, tell him you took the job, and everything can move forward how you’ve always wanted it to. You can finally give him a good reason to be close to you. One that you’ve spent the last several years working toward.
Who knows… maybe he’ll be happy for me. After all, he fell in love with a woman in this profession. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to him that I might consider it too.
I take a deep breath when I spot him between the living room and the kitchen. His feet are firmly planted on the ground in front of a guy being told what to do. A new guy, I decide, considering he’s wearing freshly laundered clothing .
I slow my steps so I don’t have to wait awkwardly for my turn to speak to him. But it doesn’t matter. He’s glancing up and ending their conversation. Dismissing the other guy and pushing past him.
I put on my brightest smile like it’s a layer of makeup I forgot. I don’t wear much makeup in the first place, so maybe it’s too much with the way he’s scrutinizing me. I try to come up with something to say as he eats up the ground between us.
“Hi, Jack,” is what I decide on. I gave up calling him dad a long time ago.
“I thought I said you didn’t need to come,” he reminds me, and I blink. Not the unintentional kind when your eyes get dry—which they are from the desert heat that’s permeated the walls of this building—but the kind that’s a lot like a swallow. A reset for your emotions.
I don’t need to see his face to know he wouldn’t be excited to see me here. He never did like me visiting him at work. His text message only confirmed it. I prepared myself for this. Already got my freak-out over with on the plane. I’m twenty-three years old and ready to handle him like the grown woman that I am. But something about him towering over me with his hands planted firmly on his hips makes me feel like I’m that small child who asked too many questions about her mom at bedtime. The one who was too eager and selfish to know he didn’t want to talk about those things and pushed him away instead.
I must have rehearsed what I was going to say at least three dozen times. Convinced myself he’d be happy about this part of my plan. But the news comes out of my mouth with a wobbly delivery.
“I’m your new EMT.”
His eyes bulge. Not a good sign.
“You’re what ?” he gasps. His voice bounces off the ceiling. My face flushes as the guy he dismissed seconds earlier turns his head and takes this already anxiety-riddled moment to a whole new level.
Reed Morgan is here.
In the barracks.
With my dad and ex-best friend.
I circle back to everything we talked about on the plane. Not once did he mention his career to me. But judging by the sparkle in his eyes, he’s pleasantly surprised to see me. This was not part of the plan.
Jack clasps my arm. “Since when did you get an EMT license?”
My blood simmers beneath my skin. He’s not happy about it. I recoil from him.
“Since I moved to Utah. I tried to tell you a dozen different times, but you never pick up your phone,” I argue. A pointless dispute to bring up with a man married to his job.
“Karen never said?—”
“Anything, I know,” I finish for him.
I didn’t realize he talked to Aunt Karen about me all that much. I mean, he used to. When he brought me home from the hospital, alone, she moved in to help take care of me. He’d leave me with her for long periods of time while pursuing his career. When it came to parent/teacher conferences and annual checkups, she became the emergency contact. My full-time not-legal guardian.
“I told her not to,” I continue. “I wanted to be the one to tell you. I thought…” I push out an awkward laugh-breath and then shake it away. “Anyway, I can see now this was a very bad idea. I need to go unpack my things.”
I turn away and he does nothing to stop me.
I knew it was a risk coming here. One that I was willing to take, right up until a moment ago when he treated me like I was just another member of his crew, bossing me around about all of my life decisions.
What did I expect? A “Congratulations”? An “I’m proud of you”? He didn’t do that when I graduated high school.
But there’s no turning back now. He’ll have to get used to having me here, and I’ll have to get used to his constant state of disappointment.
“How’s the antiseptic stash looking?” Ben, my new coworker, says as I stare out the back window.
The EMT quarters face a wall of ponderosa pines. But that’s not what caught my eye three minutes ago. I’m gawking at the newest recruit of Iron Summit. He’s in a deep squat with his palms planted on his knees, and I get a full view of Reed Morgan’s backside pointed in my direction. If I thought the shirt he wore on the plane was tight around his biceps, these pants fuse to him.
“Hailey?” Ben repeats.
He’s the supervising paramedic I met when I arrived, and if it weren’t for needing to speak to my father, I would have stuck around and let him finish the tour he was giving me. Now I’ve been tasked with replenishing the medical supplies for the next fire, and I’m not making a very good first impression with the pace at which I’m accomplishing things. I don’t have a clue where anything is.
“Oh, uh…” I mumble, dropping my attention. I count three cans and report it to Ben.
“Huh, that’s funny. Because it looks to me like there are six,” he says, leaning over me and inspecting the case I’m holding. The center folds up like a kaboodle and— he’s right . There are three more cans I missed underneath.
I study my hands before looking up at his green eyes. “Sorry.”
Ben is good-looking. With dark-brown hair and a full five-o’clock shadow, there’s nothing unappealing about his face. But he’s also not squat-and-stretch-for-a-mile-long-hike attractive. And with that, I’m back to staring out the window.
“Who’s the guy?” Ben says, and takes a seat on the chair next to me, ready to organize a pile of gauze.
I still when I see Reed elbowing someone else. I’ve been spending so much time preparing to confront my father that I hadn’t considered Dean McCafferty. At this rate, it won’t be long before our paths cross and I’ll have to face my childhood best friend.
I pry my gaze away from the window and back to my hands. “Just someone I met once,” I say to Ben.
“What’s his secret?”
I look up at him, confused. “I’m sorry?”
He blushes slightly. “To get you to smile like that. What did he do?”
Am I smiling? My fingers brush my lips, and sure enough, they’re lifted up at the corners.
What is it about Reed Morgan? I grinned like a little girl the entire way from the airport to the Ridley’s Family Market bus stop in McCall, the sound of his voice saying Remember me, Red running on a chronic loop in my head. I shake it to clear the fog that descends over my thoughts even now.
“He doesn’t take life very seriously. Which is entertaining to be around.”
I let my gaze drift to the window once more. He’s picked up a shovel-like hand tool and is swinging it in the air like a lightsaber in front of Dean’s chest .
I didn’t realize how much I admired that about Reed when we met this morning. The fact that he’s so playful. All I could focus on was my skepticism of his intentions like I do with most guys these days.
But then he sang for me.
Something I know he did to get a laugh out of me and lighten my burden.
The same thing he’s trying to do for his squad leader right now. But it doesn’t look like Dean McCafferty thinks Star Wars reenactments are very funny.
“I didn’t take you as the type of girl who liked the class clown,” Ben says, like he knows me intimately and we didn’t just meet for the first time two hours ago.
“I never said I liked him. I said I met him once, and he was entertaining to be around. I like stability,” I tell him, like I’m reminding myself.
He smiles at that, but I don’t acknowledge it. I have zero intentions of leading a guy to believe I’m open to anything. Especially not one I work with. Not even if he’s attractive and has a quarter-sized dimple in his smile.
“Is it often this quiet around here?” I ask, needing a subject change.
He chuckles. “Are you bored already?”
“I guess I’m just used to… busier. I worked for the University of Utah’s Emergency Department before this.” On average, we treated anywhere from eighty to a hundred patients in a single twelve-hour shift.
He nods and tosses the gauze into a box at his side. “Fire is unpredictable,” he says. “Some days are slammed. Others are a waiting game. But this right here is what we want.” He waves his arm around the empty room, pointing to the two vacant beds and lack of wounded patients in them.
“Right. ”
I panic on the inside. How will I ever keep busy enough to avoid my two biggest problems in this place: a father who isn’t speaking to me and a deceitful friend.
But then a six-foot-something frame dodges past my window. He makes his way over to an opening in the pine trees, and my attention paves the trail he’s walking.
On second thought… make that three.