It’s Extremely Romantic, and I Won’t Hear Otherwise #3
"That is an accurate description of the job."
"And you've done this three hundred times."
Stevens, from behind her, mouthed give or take. I gave him a look. He stopped mouthing.
"Three hundred times," I confirmed.
She was quiet. Her knuckles were white. Then she took a long breath, released it, and released the doorframe.
"Okay," she said. "Show me the harness."
I talked her through the Class III, the chest and leg loops, the dorsal ring, the locking carabiner. Stevens demonstrated the figure-eight descender with the pride of a man who had recently passed certification and wanted credit for it.
"You control descent speed with your brake hand," he explained. "Squeeze tight, you slow down. Release, you go faster."
"What stops you from going too fast?"
"Training," I said. "You build the muscle memory on the tower until it's reflex."
She absorbed this. Then she looked at me directly. "You inspect the rope. And then you go down first."
"Yes."
"So if there's anything wrong—"
"It happens to me before anyone else."
She held very still for a specific moment. "I understand why you do that." She let out a breath. "I reserve the right to find it terrifying."
"Reserved."
"I'm adding it to the catalog. Under things that are terrifying and also completely right about the person I'm with." She looked at me, in the crew chief's seat, in the open door, the Arizona sky enormous behind her. "It's a growing category."
"I'm honored to be in it."
"You're the only entry."
Stevens, who had been quiet for approximately forty-five consecutive seconds—a personal record—said, "This is the most romantic thing I've ever witnessed at an active fire station."
"Stevens."
"I'm just saying—"
"You're doing the earnest thing again."
"It's my personality. She said so." He pointed at Vera.
"He's right," Vera told me. "Let him have it."
"Don't encourage him."
"Too late. The encouragement ship has sailed." She patted my arm. "Show me the tail rotor."
Miller walked her around the tail assembly. Explained rotor function, the stabilizer bar, and engine exhaust ports. She asked questions that made him stop twice before answering.
Stevens appeared at my shoulder. "She's passing the Miller test," he said, barely containing himself. "He explained the stabilizer bar. He never explains the stabilizer bar."
Rodriguez appeared beside me, arms crossed, watching. "She's good," he said.
"She's something else."
"Same thing." He was quiet. "She doesn't pretend not to be worried."
"No."
"Most of them either pretend it's fine, or make it your problem when it isn't."
"She's learning it," I said. "So it's hers to carry too."
He watched Miller speak to Vera without dumbing anything down, and she followed all of it, her head tilted slightly, asking a follow-up. "Good woman," Rodriguez said.
"Yeah."
He looked at me. "Don't screw it up."
"Sir—"
"That's an order, Alves."
"Yes, sir," I said, and filed that sentence in the same internal pocket where I kept the Post-its.
Jackson deployed the cookies strategically, waiting until everyone had been standing in a parking lot examining helicopter components for an hour—devotion, not enthusiasm, being the goal.
Vera had brought two dozen. They disappeared in minutes.
Stevens held a fourth cookie up with genuine admiration. "What's in these?"
"Brown butter. Takes an extra ten minutes, but it changes everything."
"Can you teach me?"
"I could teach anyone in this room."
A room full of firefighters processed this offer in silence.
"Baking afternoon," Jackson said out of nowhere. "Day off. Your place."
"Absolutely not," I said immediately.
"Alves." Rodriguez.
"You want my entire crew at her apartment."
"Please?" Stevens.
"I think it builds team cohesion," Jackson said, straight-faced.
"I think it would be fun," Vera said. She was perched on the edge of the apparatus bay table with a snickerdoodle, the picture of a woman who had already decided this was happening and was watching me arrive at the same conclusion.
"It would be fun," Miller said.
Every head turned.
Miller did not endorse optional social activities.
"Miller," I said.
He shrugged. "Brown butter's how my grandmother made them. Her mother's recipe. Everybody thought she was wrong."
"People always think the extra step isn't worth it," Vera said.
"They're not paying attention."
"Exactly." She held his gaze. "What was her name?"
Miller didn't talk about personal things. Miller was a sealed container. "Anna," he said. "Mostly in her handwriting. Hard to read."
"I work with old handwriting constantly," Vera said. "Bring it in sometime. I'll help you transcribe it."
He looked at her for a long moment and nodded. Then he reached out and took a fourth snickerdoodle.
I sat back in my chair and watched my crew.
Stevens texting Vera the adjusted ratios for chocolate chip brown butter before she'd even finished her cookie.
Jackson deep in a third-book dispute about the crime series they'd apparently both been reading.
Rodriguez discussing municipal library funding with an expression I'd never seen on him at a budget meeting.
Miller eating his snickerdoodle and watching Vera the way someone watched something they hadn't expected to find themselves grateful for.
I didn't have a word for what I was feeling. Pride was part of it. Something warmer and harder to name was the rest. The knowledge that the person you'd chosen had walked into the center of your life and fit there, without effort, without pretense, like she'd always been meant for that exact space.
When it was time to leave, the crew said goodbye to Vera the way they said goodbye to someone who had always been coming.
Stevens extracted a promise she'd return. Jackson sent a calendar invite for the baking afternoon before she'd finished agreeing. Rodriguez shook her hand at the bay door—a different grip than the first one, something settled in it now.
"Take care of her," he said to me.
"Yes, sir."
He looked at Vera. "And you take care of our Alves. She doesn't let many people in. Don't waste that."
Vera met his eyes without flinching. "I don't intend to."
He nodded, satisfied, and went back inside.
Then Miller appeared at the bay door. He held out his personal mug—the specific, labeled mug that no one touched, a fact made clear to every new crew member in their first week—and pointed her toward the coffee station.
"Top shelf," he said. "The good beans."
Vera poured a cup, took a sip. Her eyes went wide. "This is extraordinary."
"Single origin. A ranch in Oaxaca." He took the mug back. "Rodriguez keeps buying the cheap stuff."
"I'll bring you a bag of something good next time I come."
Miller looked at her for a moment. "Okay," he said, and I was almost certain there was something in his tone that qualified as warmth.
We walked to the parking lot together, Vera's hand in mine, the afternoon heat golden and settling over the scrubland. The Bell 212 gleamed on the helipad.
Vera stopped and looked at her one last time.
"La Jefa," she said.
"The Boss."
"I like her." She squeezed my hand. "I still find the whole thing terrifying."
"I know."
"But I like her." She turned to look at me. "What did Rodriguez actually say to you? When you were by the engine."
"He told me not to screw it up. Said it was an order."
She laughed, real and deep, her eyes crinkling in the afternoon light. "I like him so much."
"He invited you into the municipal budget conversation. He's never done that with anyone."
"He's worried about discretionary spending under the new administration. It's a legitimate concern." She started walking, pulling me with her. "Come on, firefighter. Take me home. I want to sit on your motorcycle in the parking lot and have you teach me things."
"About the engine," I said.
"About the engine." She glanced back at me. "Probably, anyway."
I shook my head. She grinned. The desert stretched out hot and golden in every direction, and behind us, through the open bay door, Stevens was telling Jackson he was absolutely going to the baking afternoon.
I was also going to the baking afternoon. There was no version of my life in which I wasn't.
Later that evening, she found me in the parking lot wiping down the motorcycle.
"Teaching moment?" She came up beside me, shoulder nudging mine.
"You want to learn?"
"I want to learn everything about you." She picked up the rag I'd set down. "Even the greasy part."
I grinned and moved behind her, my hands covering hers, guiding them over the engine. "This is the oil cap. You check it regularly. Especially before long rides."
"How do I know if it's low?"
"Dipstick. Like this." I guided her through the motion. "See? Right in the middle. Good."
"And if it's not?"
"You add more." My mouth was near her ear. "Simple."
She leaned back into me, very slightly. "You know a lot about this."
"Couldn't afford a mechanic when I first got the Harley."
"Practical and hot," she said. "My favorite combination."
I laughed, pressing a kiss to her neck. She turned in my arms, her oil-smudged hands resting on my chest.
"You planning on me riding Cinder alone someday?" she asked.
The thought of it—her on Cinder, without me, completely unprotected—scared the shit out of me. "No," I said. "But I'm planning on you being with me for as long as you'll have me."
The words hung in the warm evening air, heavier than I'd intended.
Vera looked at me for a long moment. Then she stepped up onto her toes and kissed me in the parking lot, in the fading Arizona light, her oil-smudged hands on my jaw, and the future was somewhere out in the desert beyond us, enormous and uncertain and completely full of possibility.
"Good," she said against my mouth. "Because I'm not going anywhere."
She left oil smudges on my shirt. Neither of us mentioned it.
"Shower?" she said, with that specific look.
"Race you upstairs."
We barely made it through the door.