Chapter 4
Maya
The apartment was too quiet.
Millie had left an hour ago, after making me promise twice that I'd call if I needed anything. Zoe had retreated to her room. I could hear her moving around in there, the creak of her bed, the muffled sound of a video playing on her phone.
I sat on the couch with an ice pack pressed to my temple and tried to make sense of the day.
The cabinet door. The fall. Waking up in Shane’s arms. Mrs. Patterson's cruel laughter and the silence that followed after he’d pretended we had a date planned.
‘Are we still on for dinner tonight at seven, Ms. Cummins?’
Who does that? Who lies to an entire room of people to defend a woman he's never met?
Millie's question was still hanging in the air, unanswered. Who was that guy? I'd deflected with "just someone who helped me," which was technically true but felt like a lie by omission.
I picked up my phone and typed his name into the search bar: Shane Briggs firefighter
The results exploded across my screen.
NYC Firefighter Pulls Three Children from Collapsing Brownstone.
A news article with a photo of him covered in soot, a toddler clutched against his chest. The video had gone viral three years ago. Millions of views. Comments calling him a hero, an angel, the kind of man who restored your faith in humanity.
I scrolled down.
FDNY's Hottest Heroes: The Calendar That Broke the Internet.
I clicked before I could stop myself. And there he was. Shirtless, holding a Dalmatian puppy, looking directly at the camera with an expression that made my face heat up.
The comments were... a lot.
I would let this man rescue me any day.
Forget the puppy, I want HIM.
Is it hot in here or is it just Shane Briggs?
Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Women from all over the country, all over the world, were losing their minds over this man.
This man, who had spent six hours in a hospital waiting room pretending to be my boyfriend.
I closed the browser and set my phone face down on the cushion beside me.
Of course. Of course, he was famous. Of course, he was NYC's hottest hero with a viral video and a calendar spread and an army of women who would kill to have him look at them the way he'd looked at me in that teacher's lounge.
The dinner comment wasn't real. It was a kindness. A good man doing a good deed for a woman who’d fainted in front of her coworkers and gotten publicly humiliated.
Famous firefighters don’t date exhausted teachers juggling work and single motherhood in Queens.
I pressed the ice pack harder against my temple and told myself to stop thinking about it.
It didn't work. I lay there in the dark living room, the glow of the city filtering through the blinds, my mind circling back to the same impossible question: why had he done it?
My phone buzzed.
I glanced at the screen. Unknown number.
Unknown Number
Hey, it's Shane. The firefighter, not a stalker. Just checking. How's the head?
I stared at the message for a full thirty seconds.
He actually texted.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard. I typed out three different responses, deleted all of them, and finally settled on something that didn't make me sound completely unhinged.
Maya
Still attached. So that's a win.
His reply came almost immediately.
Shane
Glad to hear it. Any dizziness? Nausea? Sudden urge to fight cabinet doors?
Maya
No, no, and I'm considering it.
Shane
Understandable. That cabinet had it coming.
I smiled despite myself. Then caught myself smiling and put the phone down.
This was nothing. A follow-up text from a first responder? He probably did this for everyone he helped. Standard procedure. That’s all.
The phone buzzed again.
Shane
That teacher who hit you with the cabinet. Is she always that charming?
I laughed out loud, then winced because laughing still hurt.
Maya
You have no idea.
Shane
I have some idea. The "closest she's been to a man" comment was pretty memorable.
Heat flooded my face. He remembered. Of course, he remembered. Everyone in that room remembered.
Maya
She's... a lot.
Shane
She's something. Not sure "a lot" is the word I'd use.
I typed back before I could overthink it.
Maya
What word would you use?
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Shane
I'm a gentleman. I'll keep it to myself.
I was smiling again. That unfamiliar pull of muscles, the lightness in my chest that had no business being there.
This is nothing, I reminded myself. He's just being nice.
But I saved his number anyway.
I showed up to work the next morning with concealer, doing nothing to hide the purple bruise blooming at my temple.
I'd considered calling in sick for about thirty seconds before dismissing the idea. The only times I'd ever missed work were when Zoe was sick and needed me home. A bruise on my face didn't qualify.
I wasn't going to start now because of a cabinet door and some gossip.
"Ms. Cummins, what happened to your face?"
My students noticed immediately.
"Whoa, that's so purple!"
"Did you get in a fight?"
Fourth graders were always brutal in their honesty.
No polite avoidance, no pretending not to see. They just said exactly what they were thinking, loudly, with zero filter.
But they were also surprisingly tender.
Marcus left a folded piece of paper on my desk while I was helping another student. I opened it later: a crayon drawing of a purple flower with the words "feel better" written in shaky handwriting.
Destiny appointed herself my personal assistant for the day, fetching things so I "didn't have to move my head too much." She brought me a cup of water from the fountain three separate times, whether I needed it or not.
And James, who usually ducked his head and avoided attention, looked at my bruise with wide eyes and declared, "You look like a warrior, Ms. Cummins. Like you fought somebody and won."
I told them I'd had an accident. A door hit me. They accepted it with the easy trust of children. No math. No calculations. No judgment.
They just saw their teacher, hurt, and wanted to help.
For a few hours, surrounded by their noise and their kindness and their complete lack of awareness about adult drama, I almost forgot about the lounge. About Shane Briggs. About the way my whole life had become gossip fodder in the span of ten seconds.
Then the lunch bell rang.
I considered eating at my desk.
I'd done it before. Plenty of times, when grading piled up, or I just couldn't face the politics of the lounge. It would be easy. Safe. No one would blame me for avoiding the scene of yesterday's humiliation.
But hiding felt like losing. And I was tired of letting Mrs. Patterson dictate where I could and couldn't exist in this building.
So I grabbed my lunch bag and walked in.
The room went quiet. The particular hush of people who'd been talking about you and stopped just a beat too late.
Mrs. Patterson was stationed in her usual spot, surrounded by her usual audience, but her eyes slid away when I entered. No snide comments today. No casual cruelty. Just a tight smile and a sudden intense interest in her salad.
The other teachers were less subtle.
Linda from second grade caught me at the coffee machine, her voice bright and hungry. "So... Shane Briggs, huh? I didn't know you two were dating."
"We're not."
"But he said—"
"He was being nice." I poured my coffee and kept my voice flat. "I hit my head. He helped. That's it."
Linda's expression softened, just a little. "Well, that was decent of him. Especially after what Patterson said." She glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. "Everyone heard it, you know. What she said to you. It was awful."
I didn't know what to do with that. Linda and I had never been close. We exchanged pleasantries in the hallway, nodded at each other during staff meetings, but that was the extent of it. I couldn’t tell if this was genuine sympathy or just a more polite way of getting information.
"Thanks," I said finally. "I should go sit down."
I ate my lunch at the same table where I'd fainted yesterday.
The stain from my dropped empanada was still there, a grease mark on the laminate that no one had bothered to clean.
No one sat with me, but everyone watched.
I could feel it. The weight of their attention, their speculation, their judgment.
Shane Briggs. I heard his name whispered three times before I finished my sandwich.
By the time the bell rang, the ache behind my eyes had returned in full force.
The apartment was quiet when I got home.
Zoe wouldn't be back for another hour. Chess club on Thursdays. One of the few extracurriculars she'd actually stuck with, mostly because she liked crushing the boys who underestimated her.
I dropped my bag by the door, collapsed onto the couch, and let the silence wash over me.
My phone buzzed inside my bag. I fished it out. It was a text from Shane. I'd saved his number last night, after staring at our text thread for way too long. His name glowed on the screen now.
Shane
Survived day one?
Maya
Barely. My students think I look like a warrior.
Shane
They're not wrong.
I smiled before I could stop myself, put the phone down, and picked it up again.
This was ridiculous. He was being nice. That's all.
The calendar photos flashed through my mind. Shirtless. Confident. That look in his eyes that said he knew exactly what effect he had.
Thousands of women would do anything to have him text them.
And he was texting me.
I set the phone aside and started on dinner. Millie arrived around five to check on us, and I insisted she stay to eat. The three of us sat around the small kitchen table, and for once, Zoe actually talked.
She told us about the chess club, about a boy named Derek who was "not annoying anymore, just weird," and about her English teacher assigning a project she thought was stupid.
I listened, surprised. Zoe usually gave me one-word answers and grunts.
Maybe the injury had scared her more than she wanted to admit.
After Millie left and Zoe retreated to her room, I sat alone on the couch. The apartment hummed with refrigerator noise and the muffled bass of whatever she was listening to through her headphones.
A notification slid across my screen.
I told myself not to look.
Lasted about three seconds.
Shane
Random question. What's your take on pineapple on pizza?
I stared at the screen.
Another message appeared.
Shane
I need to know before this goes any further.
I laughed. Actually laughed at my phone, alone on my couch.
Maya
Define "any further?"
His response came immediately:
Shane
My paramedic follow-up protocol, obviously. I can't in good conscience provide aftercare to someone with questionable pizza opinions.
I grinned at my phone like an idiot.
Maya
Pineapple is acceptable in controlled circumstances.
Shane
That's a politician's answer.
Maya
I'm a teacher. We're trained in diplomacy.
Shane
Ah. So you're a yes but you don't want to admit it.
Maya
I'm a "depends on my mood and who's paying" and I stand by that.
Shane
Respect. A woman of nuance.
And somehow it was an hour later. Zoe's light had been off for twenty minutes. I was still on the couch, phone warm in my hand, smiling at a screen like someone I didn't recognize.
This is a bad idea, the voice in my head whispered. I tried to remind myself that famous firefighters don't date exhausted single mom teachers from Queens. This is a kindness. Maybe boredom. A slow night and a phone in his hand.
Some people got fairy tales. They got the meet-cute and the grand gesture and the happy ending wrapped up in a bow.
I got reality. A bruised temple, a stack of ungraded papers, and a daughter who needed me to stop dreaming and start functioning.
I'd learned a long time ago not to want things I couldn't have. Not to hope for things that weren't meant for people like me.
Shane Briggs was kind. He was charming. He was a good man who'd done a good deed.
That was all this was. That was all it could be.
I turned off the lights and went to bed.