Chapter 2
Shane
Three months ago, I woke up next to a woman whose name I couldn't remember, in an apartment I didn't recognize, with a hangover pounding behind my eyes and the sudden, crystal-clear realization that I had no idea how I'd gotten here.
Any of it. Not just last night. The last three years.
She was beautiful. Long dark hair spilled across the pillow, one bare shoulder visible above the sheets, features so perfect they felt unreal in the pale morning light. The kind of woman who turned heads everywhere she went, who'd probably never been told no in her life.
They were always beautiful. That was part of the pattern.
That was the thing about being the guy from the calendar, the guy from the viral video, the guy whose face had been plastered across every news station in the city for three weeks straight.
Beautiful women threw themselves at you.
They laughed at jokes that weren't funny, touched your arm at bars, slipped their numbers into your pocket without being asked.
And I'd let them. Over and over. Because it was easy, and I was empty, and filling that emptiness with strangers felt better than sitting alone with it.
I eased out of bed, careful not to wake her. Found my jeans crumpled on the floor, my shirt draped over a chair I didn't remember sitting in.
The apartment was nice. Exposed brick, big windows, the kind of minimalist furniture that cost more than it looked. She had good taste. She probably had a good job, a good life, friends who cared about her.
I let myself out without leaving a note. The hallway was quiet, morning light slanting through a window at the end of the corridor. I checked my phone. 6:47 AM. A dozen notifications I didn't want to read.
Outside, Queens was waking up. Delivery trucks double-parked on the avenue. A woman walking her dog, coffee in hand. The guy from the bodega on the corner hosing down the sidewalk, same as he did every morning, same as he'd done for the twenty years I'd been walking these streets.
I started the long walk home, yesterday's clothes rumpled and stale, my head throbbing with every step. Caught my reflection in a shop window and stopped.
I didn't recognize the man staring back: bloodshot eyes, stubble that had crossed from intentional to neglected, the face of a man who'd stopped taking care of himself and hoped no one would notice.
He looked tired. Hollowed out. Like someone had scooped out everything that mattered and left just the shell, the smile, the performance.
When did this happen? When did I become this guy?
I knew the answer. I just didn't want to look at it.
Three years ago, I'd pulled three kids from a collapsing brownstone in Brooklyn.
The building came down thirty seconds after I got the last one out.
Someone had filmed it. The video went viral.
Suddenly, I wasn't just a firefighter anymore.
I was a hero. A headline. A face people recognized on the street.
The guys at the station gave me hell for it, the way they gave everyone hell for everything. But underneath the jokes, something shifted. The brass started putting me in front of cameras. Community events. School visits. The face of Engine 295, whether I wanted to be or not.
Then came the calendar.
The charity photoshoot that was supposed to be a joke, a one-time thing, the guys from Engine 295 raising money for the burn unit. Except my photo ended up everywhere. Shirtless, holding a Dalmatian puppy, looking at the camera like I knew exactly what I was doing.
I hadn't known anything. I'd just been following directions.
But the internet didn't care about that. They saw what they wanted to see. And what they wanted to see was a hero they could thirst over, a fantasy they could project onto, a man who existed for their entertainment.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped correcting people. Long before I realized what that made me. Because it was easier than explaining that I was just a guy who got lucky, who happened to be in the right place at the right time, who still woke up some nights dreaming about the ones he didn't save.
My apartment was cold when I got home. Empty. The bed was unmade. The dishes I'd left in the sink three days ago were still there.
I stood in the doorway and let the silence settle over me.
This was what I'd built. A life that looked impressive from the outside and felt like nothing from within.
I was thirty-two years old, and I had no idea who I was anymore.
Engine 295 was the only place that still felt real.
The firehouse sat on a corner in Woodside, red brick and white trim, two engines and a ladder company sharing the same apparatus floor. The building was sixty years old and smelled like it: diesel and old coffee, rubber and sweat, the ghost of a thousand meals cooked in the kitchen upstairs.
I'd been assigned here eight years ago, fresh out of the academy, convinced I knew everything and terrified I knew nothing.
The older guys had hazed me relentlessly.
They made me clean the bathroom with a toothbrush, sent me to the supply closet to look for a "left-handed smoke shifter," and laughed when I fell for it.
But they'd also taught me everything: how to read a fire, how to trust your crew, how to carry the weight of the job without letting it crush you.
This was where I'd become a firefighter, where I'd found the brothers I'd never had.
"Briggs! You look like death warmed over."
Brian Torres stood at the coffee station, pouring something that looked like motor oil into a chipped mug.
He was a few years younger than me, built like a linebacker, with an easy grin that hid a sharp mind.
We'd come up through the academy together, survived our probie years side by side, and somewhere along the way, he'd become the closest thing I had to family.
"Thanks. Did you make that coffee yourself?"
"Family recipe. Guaranteed to either wake you up or kill you."
"Comforting."
I grabbed my own mug and filled it, grimacing at the first sip.
Across the apparatus floor, Garrett Stone sat in the corner with a stack of files, reviewing incident reports with the same intense focus he brought to everything.
Quiet, analytical, the kind of guy who noticed things other people missed.
He'd joined 295 four years ago and fit in like he'd always been here.
The morning routine unfolded around me. Gear checks. Truck maintenance. The familiar rhythm of a 24-hour shift began. Captain Rodriguez emerged from his office to run the morning briefing, with the same steady authority he'd carried for fifteen years.
This was what I loved about the job. Not the hero stuff, not the headlines. This. The structure. The purpose. The knowledge that when the tones dropped, we moved as one unit, every man trusting the others with his life.
Out here, I wasn't the guy from the calendar. I was just Briggs. One of the crew.
Around noon, the side door opened, and two small bodies came hurtling across the apparatus floor.
"Daddy! Daddy!"
Captain Rodriguez's kids, Lucia and Marco, launched themselves at their father like tiny missiles. He caught them both, one in each arm, his weathered face splitting into a grin I rarely saw on shift.
His wife Maria followed, carrying a cooler. She was small and dark-haired. They had been married for twenty years and ran their household with the same no-nonsense efficiency he ran the station. She crossed to him, stood on her toes, and kissed his cheek.
The look they exchanged lasted maybe two seconds, but I saw it: the whole conversation that happened without words, the way she touched his arm, the way he leaned into her, just slightly, like she was the fixed point he oriented himself around.
Twenty years, and they still looked at each other like that.
Something cracked in my chest.
I turned away and busied myself with equipment that didn't need checking.
This was what life could look like, if you got it right. A woman who showed up with lunch and kisses. Kids who screamed your name like you were their whole world. Someone was waiting when the shift ended. A home that wasn't empty.
I thought about the apartment I'd woken up in this morning, the woman whose name I couldn't remember, the silence of my own place, the hollow where a life should be.
Lucia shrieked with laughter as he tickled her. Marco clung to his neck, refusing to let go.
I wanted that.
The realization hit me like a fist to the chest.
I wanted to be the man someone waited for at the end of the day.
I stopped bringing women home, stopped answering numbers I didn't recognize, and started spending my off days at the gym, or visiting my mom in Astoria, or just sitting in my apartment learning to tolerate the silence.
It wasn't comfortable. But it was honest.
Three months in, my phone buzzed for the dozenth time that hour.
I glanced at the screen. Natalie. Again.
Natalie
Hey stranger, been thinking about you.
And then a photo I didn't open.
"You gonna answer that?" Brian asked from across the table. We were in the kitchen, killing time between calls, playing a card game that neither of us was paying attention to.
"Nope."
"She's persistent."
"She's bored." I set the phone face-down.
Brian raised an eyebrow. "Three months ago, you would've texted back before she finished typing."
"Three months ago, I was an idiot."
He studied me for a long moment.
"Something changed," he said. Not a question.
I shrugged, reaching for my coffee instead of an answer, and let the deflection sit there between us.
"Come on." Brian leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. "This is me. What's going on?"
"Nothing's going on."
"You've turned down three numbers this week. You keep staring into space like you're solving world hunger. And you just voluntarily skipped looking at what I'm guessing was a very friendly photo." He tilted his head. "That's not nothing."