Chapter 10
Beck
"Good," I say. "Someone else do it."
"Beck." His grin gets wider. "Buddy. My guy."
"No."
"You're the captain."
"So are you."
"C-shift captain," Aiden says, unbothered. "Different shift, different jurisdiction. Today you're the talent."
"Which means I assign tasks. Not perform them."
"Which means," he counters, unaffected, "that when Chief Rodriguez personally suggests that the new captain's face would be great for community outreach, you smile and say yes, because she's our boss and she runs a very tight ship and you have been here long enough to know that."
I stare at him.
He stares back, still smiling.
The man has no self-preservation instincts whatsoever.
"Who put you up to this?" I ask.
"Nobody. I volunteered you. Spontaneously. Out of the goodness of my heart."
"Aiden."
"Also Derek has a ring light in his truck and he's very excited, so I'd consider the window for objecting to be mostly closed."
Derek appears around the back of the engine at that exact moment, carrying what can only be described as an aggressively cheerful quantity of filming equipment.
He's got a tripod over one shoulder, a ring light that could guide ships through fog, and an expression of pure, uncut creative energy that I find threatening.
"Cap!" he announces. "We're making content."
The word content lands in the apparatus bay and dies a quiet death.
"We are not," I say.
"We very much are." Derek sets the ring light down and begins unfolding the tripod. "Chief's orders. Fire safety TikTok. Three takes max, I've already written the script."
"There's a script?"
"Loose outline. Very organic."
"Derek."
"Just stand there and look—" He pauses, appearing to search for a diplomatic word. "—authoritative. You're a natural."
Aiden nods. "You've got incredible resting authority face."
"That's not a compliment."
"It one hundred percent is."
Twenty minutes later, I'm in full turnout gear in the apparatus bay in front of a ring light powerful enough to interrogate a war criminal, while Derek adjusts his phone angle and Aiden offers what he refers to as "creative direction," which consists of telling me to look less like I've been subpoenaed.
"Can you maybe relax your jaw?" Derek suggests.
"My jaw is relaxed."
"It's really not, Cap."
"Shoulders down," Aiden adds. "You look like you're bracing for impact."
"I am bracing for impact."
Derek hits record. "Okay! Take one. Cap, just introduce yourself, tell people one fire safety tip, and then we'll—"
"I feel like an idiot," I say.
"Cut," says Derek. "That was good energy though."
"That was not good energy. That was a statement of fact."
"The energy behind it was great." Derek is already resetting. "Take two. Just be natural. You're Beck Delano, fire captain, you're good at your job, you know a lot about fire. Just talk about fire."
I talk about fire. For fifteen seconds, in a flat, monotone delivery that Aiden later describes as "haunted but educational," before Derek calls cut and he and Aiden have a brief conference in lowered voices that they think I can't hear, because Aiden says "he looks like he's about to announce a fatality" and Derek says "it's fine, it's a vibe" and Aiden says "it is not a vibe. "
Take three, I try to appear more approachable. According to Derek's viewing of the footage afterward, the result is that I appear to be experiencing moderate gastrointestinal discomfort while delivering a public service announcement.
"Maybe try a thumbs up at the end?" Derek offers.
"No."
"Just a small one. Casual thumbs up. Like you're saying, hey, fire safety, we're in this together."
"I'm not doing a thumbs up."
"Beck." Aiden walks over and, without any warning, picks up my arm by the wrist and repositions it into a thumbs-up. "There. That's it. That's the shot."
I stare at my own hand, now making a gesture that I have not made since my tenth birthday. "Put my arm down."
"Just leave it there for the last second of take four. That's all I'm asking."
"Aiden."
"For the community," Derek says solemnly.
Take four happens. I stand in full turnout gear, expressionless, recite twenty seconds of fire safety information in a tone that conveys zero warmth or joy, and at the very end raise one thumb in a gesture so reluctant it looks like I'm asking permission from someone off-camera.
Derek reviews it. His face goes through several expressions.
"This is going to do incredible numbers," he says.
"Burn it," I say, and walk away.
The video goes up while I'm in my office running through maintenance reports. I know this because Aiden texts me a link with no accompanying message, which is somehow more ominous than any amount of words.
Leaving my phone face-down on my desk is not a long-term plan. It gets me through half a gear inspection and a conversation with Webb about the new ventilation protocols before the buzzing starts.
The group chat. It takes four seconds to understand what's happening.
The first message is from Aiden: a fire emoji.
Then Derek: three fire emojis.
Then Johnson, who barely speaks during actual shift: five fire emojis, no words.
Martinez: a string of fire emojis that takes up most of the screen, followed by a screenshot of the comments section, followed by Cap im dying.
I look at the screenshot against my better judgment.
The view count is a number I'm not going to read twice.
The comments are not about fire safety.
Who is the grumpy one
I need him to explain fire extinguishers to me specifically
The other two are so funny but I cannot stop looking at the grumpy one
He looks like he was summoned here against his will and I respect it deeply
I am going to need the grumpy one's name and general location please and thank you
He gave the most reluctant thumbs up in human history and I've never felt more seen
I set my phone face-down on the desk and go back to the maintenance reports.
The call comes in the middle of the afternoon, while I'm running a training scenario in the back lot. Vanessa. I step away from the crew and answer it.
She sounds good — warm, unhurried, like someone who has figured out the shape of her own life and settled into it. "Hey. Is this an okay time?"
"Give me a second." I walk to the edge of the lot, gravel crunching underfoot, putting enough distance between myself and the noise. "Yeah. What's up?"
"Theo and I are taking Ivy to Disneyland," she says. "Then Seattle for a few days after. Ten days total. It fits with our custody schedule — I checked before I started planning — but I wanted to talk to you before I said anything to her."
Ten days. My chest does something complicated. "When?"
"Next week, if that works for you. I can adjust by a few days if you need."
Disneyland. Ivy is going to lose her mind. She's been asking about it since she saw a commercial last spring, with the specific intensity she applies to all things she wants — sustained, documented, brought up in conversation on a reliable rotating schedule, like a well-managed agenda item.
"It's good," I say. "She'll love it."
"I think so too." A pause, warm and uncomplicated. "She's going to want to meet every character. I'm building in extra time for that."
"She'll have notes about the dinosaur ones. Detailed ones."
Vanessa laughs. "She always has notes."
"Yeah." My throat is doing something I don't have time for. "She does."
"I'll send you the full itinerary. You can call whenever you want, obviously."
"Thanks, Vanessa."
"Take care of yourself, Beck."
She hangs up. More than a decade of marriage, and the call lasts three minutes. Efficient. Friendly. That's what we've gotten good at.
Ten days.
Ivy will have the time of her life. She will come home with a stuffed dinosaur she'll name on the spot and love with the fierceness she applies to everything she loves.
She'll have stories that she tells in the wrong order at maximum volume, interrupting herself to add details she forgot to mention.
She'll be fine. She'll be better than fine.
But will I?
Shift ends. The drive home is quiet.
Ivy's at a sleepover at Emma's, so the house is mine and too large for one person.
Her drawings are still on the refrigerator — a stegosaurus she insisted had "rainbow stripes because why not" — and her dinosaur pajamas are folded on the couch because she can never quite make it to her room with them.
A juice cup, half-empty, on the coffee table.
I should clean up. I don't.
Instead, I take a beer I don't want out to the back porch and sit down and look at nothing.
The evening is cool. The mountains are doing their thing against the darkening sky — purple going to charcoal, the first smear of stars above the ridge. Somewhere down the block, a dog is barking about something it's decided is urgent. Crickets. A car passing on the main road.
The beer is cold in my hand. I don't drink it.
Ten days. The house will be like this. Quiet and too large and full of her things without her in it, and I'll move through it carefully, the way you move through a space that belongs to someone else.
I was supposed to be better at alone by now. I've had practice.
The light in Gemma's suite has been on since I got home. Acoustic guitar from whatever playlist she keeps on in the evenings drifts through the shared wall, soft and unhurried.
She's home.
I stare at the mountain ridge and drink none of my beer.
Her door opens.
She crosses the porch — barefoot, by the sound of it — and sets a beer on the railing beside me. Doesn't say anything about it, doesn't wait for acknowledgment. Just drops into the other chair and leans back.
She doesn't fill the silence or apologize for it. Just sits like staying put is the most natural thing she's done all day.
The guitar from her playlist drifts out through her still-open door. The dog down the block has given up on whatever emergency it invented. The first real stars are out now, sharp and close in the mountain dark.
I pick up the beer she brought me. It's cold. I actually drink some of this one.
"Ivy's going to Disneyland," I say.
"Disneyland." Gemma lets out a low breath. "That's enormous for a six-year-old."
"Ten days."
She doesn't say that's great or she'll have so much fun or any of the efficient, optimistic things she's capable of saying. She just nods slowly, like she actually heard me.
The air smells like pine and coming cold. The mountains go dark in increments.
"She's going to talk about it for a year when she gets back," I say.
"At least."
"In the wrong order. With interruptions."
The corner of Gemma's mouth moves. "The best stories are always told in the wrong order."
"Says the woman who told me about the burst pipe in four separate non-chronological installments."
"And you followed every single one of them," she points out.
This is true. I don't dispute it.
We sit with that. The second beer is better than the first. Or maybe I just needed someone to sit beside me before it tasted like anything.
Gemma tips her head back against the chair and closes her eyes. Nothing performative about it — no arrangement for my benefit, no careful posture. She's just here. Her hand rests on the arm of the chair, loose, fingers curled slightly. I look away.
Somewhere between the calibrated coffee timing and the way she sits here tonight and doesn't say a single wrong thing — I already have a word for it. I just kept refusing to use it.
Down the block, the dog starts barking again — apparently the emergency wasn't resolved after all. Gemma opens one eye, glances toward the sound, then closes it again.