11. Lori
Lori
He asks me over dishes on a Wednesday, casual as anything, hands in the sink, suds to his elbows.
“The Station is throwing its Christmas party this Saturday. Truck bay, whole crew, wives and kids." He scrubs a plate vigorously, even when there is no more grease. "Potluck situation. You should come."
It is my sixth week and the question should not feel like a grenade, but it does.
Instead of saying no, I ask the more important question. "Come as what?"
He glances over his shoulder. Water drips off his wrist onto the floor. "As Lori. Just Lori."
No label. Not as a plus-one. Not as the woman sleeping down the hall whose toothbrush resides in his bathroom. Just Lori. A name with no footnotes required, at a party full of people who will absolutely form opinions of their own.
"Okay, sure, Carson," I say, and it's out before my walls catch up with my voice. “I’ll come.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. "Okay. Junie and Cadie will come, too.”
He turns back to the sink.
Tina finds out about this development somehow.
She shows up Thursday afternoon with a garment bag over one arm and an expression that has never once in sixty years been argued with.
She hangs the bag on the guest room door, unzips it, and pulls out a burgundy dress.
Scoop-necked. Simple. Fabric that falls instead of clings.
It looks like real money from twenty years ago, aged into something quieter and better.
"Try it," she says.
"Tina —"
"Try it."
That expression leaves no room for argument, so I try it on.
The zipper catches once at my ribs, then slides.
The waist cinches perfectly. The neckline shows my collarbones without giving me anything to tug at all night.
In the mirror above Carson's guest room dresser, I look like a girlfriend meeting her boyfriend's family for the first time.
Tina stands behind me, arms crossed, her mouth pressed into a thin satisfied line. "Honey. That's the dress."
I smooth my hands over the skirt. The fabric smells faintly of cedar and something floral, decades of closet life in the stitching. "I can't take your —"
"You're not taking it. You're borrowing it. I wear that dress to the same party in Bill's first year on the crew." She adjusts the sleeve at my shoulder. "It's been waiting for somebody else to wear it."
I don't say anything to that.
On Saturday afternoon, Cadie presents herself in the living room in a green velvet party dress dragged from the far end of her closet, rainbow cowgirl boots, and two braids Carson attempts and I quietly redo while he pretends not to notice.
"I look amazing," Cadie announces.
"You do look amazing," I confirm.
And because I am who I am, I bake a fish casserole nobody asks me to bring. My admission price. You show up with something in your hands, nobody can say you take more than you give. I recognize the reflex.
We drive to the station with the windows cracked, the heater running too hot against the sharp December air.
Junie is asleep in her car seat. Cadie is narrating exactly what she plans to say to every person at this party, which is everything, to everyone.
The truck smells like fish casserole and the pine air freshener shaped like Texas that dangles from the mirror since my first night in this cab.
I am wearing Tina's burgundy dress with my worn Justin boots, and Carson's coat is off the hook because the sleeves hang past my wrists and the collar smells like him.
The truck bay is open and lit. String lights zigzag between the fluorescent panels.
Both engines are pulled forward to make room, chrome polished, red paint catching the light.
Folding tables run the length of the space covered in foil pans, slow-cooker liners, and a lopsided sheet cake that says MERRY CHRISTMAS STATION 9 in icing that is being held together by sheer effort.
Carson comes around to my side and opens the door.
He is in his white button-down, sleeves rolled to his forearms, fitted jeans and good boots.
No hat for once. His hair is clean, damp and pushed back.
He's freshly shaved for what might be the first time in a month, and he looks like a man who tried tonight.
Deep down, I know he doesn’t even have to try for me.
He reaches for the casserole. Our fingers overlap on the warm glass. He takes in the dress, the boots, my hair pinned up in its low bun, and doesn't say a word. He just looks at me, and I feel every second of it on my skin.
Cadie grabs his free hand. I carry Junie in her car seat carrier. We walk in together, and the truck bay goes quiet.
Twenty, maybe thirty people, and every one of them notices us at the same time.
The wives look at me. The crew looks at Carson.
A guy at the folding table elbows the man beside him with zero subtlety, as if I cannot see him doing it from ten feet away.
Carson notices the room’s attention. The corner of his mouth tips up.
He is not unhappy about being seen with me, and I am not going to pretend that look isn't worth the borrowed dress, because it is.
The captain finds us before we make it ten feet. Early fifties, thick mustache, wife on his arm.
"So you're Lori." He shakes my free hand. "I keep hearing ‘hell of a thing, Captain’, ‘soft in all the right places, tough on the inside’, ‘she’s perfect’. Those are his words."
Carson goes a shade of red I use against him for a very long time. “Captain! Help me out here!”
“I just did, Son! You’ll thank me later.”
The captain's wife, a small woman with gray hair pinned back and reading glasses on a chain, takes my hand in both of hers.
"Honey, I watch women throw themselves at this boy now that he becomes a bachelor again.
He only ever has eyes for his daughter. Whatever you do, and you do not have to tell me what, keep on doing it.
I never see that boy look at anything in his life the way he looks at you tonight.
" She releases my hand. "And that includes his ex-wife. "
Laughter goes around us, awkward and affectionate and meant entirely as a compliment. She does not wait for an answer. She takes the casserole from Carson with the authority of a woman who has been running the food table for decades, and disappears into the crowd.
I put the carrier aside and take Junie in my arms.
The wives drift over the next half hour, one by one.
A tall Diane. A younger Beth who keeps touching her belly.
A redhead named LeAnn who refills my cider without being asked and tells me her husband is on Carson's crew since the academy.
Every one of them knows my name. Every one of them looks at Carson, then back at me, and the look says the same thing: about time.
LeAnn, passing close: "You two clean up like a magazine, hon. Tell me you know that."
I do not see myself that way in a long time. But I smile, and she takes it, and moves on.
A woman finds me at the drink table while I perform the advanced juggling act of cider and a baby. Mid-thirties, dark curls pulled back, brown skin, comfortable in her own body in a way that doesn't need to announce itself.
"Marisol." She offers her hand. "Danny's wife. The EMT with the bad mustache. Don't tell him I said that."
"Lori."
"Oh, I know. I hear a lot about you." She grins and lowers her voice. "We call you the effortlessly pretty girl from Jason's who gets snatched up soon at the station for six weeks. Carson hates it."
Before I can respond, she lifts Junie off my arms with confident hands. Junie stirs, blinks, settles against Marisol's chest without a sound. "Go dance with Cadie. I've got her. I want a baby in my arms forever and Danny keeps saying next year like a coward."
My arms are empty for the first time all night. I turn to find Cadie.
She's at the cake table, mid-slice. I take her for a dance and she giggles every time I make her spin around.
When the music ends, Cadie takes my left hand and drags me around the bay, introducing me to every firefighter she knows since diapers. This is Lori, she lives with us. Nobody corrects her. Nobody tells her we know, sweetie, or that they have introduced themselves to me earlier.
Then her attention drifts toward the other kids at the party.
So I turn around to look for Carson.
He's against the back wall. A blonde. Late twenties.
She has hair that knows what it is doing, and a dress that knows what it is doing louder.
She has one hand on his forearm and she is leaning in with the tilt of a woman who has never been told no.
Carson's weight is shifted back. His smile is the public one.
The easy grin. The one that has nothing behind it.
I see enough of the real one by now to know the difference.
He sees me from across the bay.
He steps back from the woman, picks her hand off his arm, sets it down between them like he is returning a dish he did not order. "I will catch you later."
He turns toward me and finds me already walking to him.
We meet in the middle. A slow grin pulls at his mouth before he can stop it.
"Well, well." He tips his head, taking me in, his hand finding the small of my back like it lives there. He leans down a fraction. "You're wearing burgundy, but I gotta say green looks real good on you, Jones."
I smack his arm.
He flexes the bicep under my hand, once, on purpose, and gives me the full terrible grin. The same one he uses on me at the diner counter the night we meet. The one that should not work and absolutely does.
"Do you just march across this entire truck bay because another woman is touching my arm?"
"I am going for the punch bowl."
"Punch’s the other way around."
Damn it. It is.
"You know what I think?" He is enjoying this enormously. I can see him enjoying it. I want to be annoyed about it and I am not. "I think you're jealous."
"I am not jealous."
"You're a little jealous."
"Carson."