Chapter Three Andrea and Gordon #2
I’m happy she’s going to stay for the summer, I suppose, but that won’t help the kids who’ll have to get another teacher next year, probably a string of substitutes until they find someone who doesn’t notice that something is just a little “off” about this place.
It doesn’t help the town, my adopted home, which I owe so much to.
If there were just someone I knew, someone really sweet and charming, a really fun, lovable human guy who could make her fall in love with the town—and maybe even with him. That would be something useful.
“Do you know? If they have any coming up, I mean?”
“What?” I ask, feeling like I’m learning a new game that has way too many hidden rules. Firefighters aren’t supposed to interact with people like this at work. Save the day. Leave. That’s all I’m supposed to do.
Now, I’m holding the plate of cookies Andrea just pushed into my arms, and this beautiful woman is smiling up at me with nervous eyes. Probably because I haven’t answered yet, and I keep speaking in one-word sentences. Humans don’t like that sometimes.
“Speed dating? Or something else!”
“Oh! Oh, I don’t know. I don’t buy coffee at The Pine Loft too often. It’s free here in the kitchen.”
“Ah.” Andrea’s face falls. “Well, thank you so much again. If I go there, I’ll check it out and see if there’s anything that might help me stop from going into a boredom coma.”
“If you need help, give us a call. Not with the coma. Or, yes, with the coma, if it’s not from boredom.” I wave. Andrea waves and walks away slowly, eyes roving all the trucks and equipment that are in this section of the station.
When she clears the building, Captain Sunderland is suddenly behind me. “Gordon?” he says in the voice that usually means something catastrophic is coming.
“Who died?” I demand.
I’m surprised as hell when my captain reaches out with his copy of the paper, takes a little leap, and bops me on the head with it. “What?” I sputter. “Huh, why?”
“That girl likes you! She wanted you to ask her out, or at least to go do something with her. That stupid speed date thing!”
“She did? No, she didn’t. She couldn’t have.”
“My God, boy, what is wrong with you? You’re built like a gosh dang superhero, you’re a fucking fireman, you saved her cat, and she brought you cookies!” Sunderland is turning a pale plum color.
“Sir. Drink water.”
“No!” Another swing with his paper. He doesn’t leap this time, so it catches me under the chin, and I growl a little.
That doesn’t scare Sunderland.
“I will not drink water! You go ask her out. Now! March!”
“But... But she doesn’t want me to! She’s just bored.”
“And do you know what makes a girl a whole lot less bored? Having a strong, strapping real-life goddamn hero buy her ice cream and take her to the movies. And she’s cute!
She’s cute, and she’s talented, and she has brains, a job, and she’s good with kids.
” Another frantic swing with the paper, this time as if he’s brandishing a sword, fighting back a swashbuckling pirate.
“Go. After. That. Girl! That’s an order!
” Each word earns a slap, and the final command is accompanied by a whole flurry of newspaper fisticuffs.
“I’m on duty!” I dodge. Easily.
“I’ll cover!”
“But you’ve already worked all day! I just got here an hour ago!” I don’t want to strike a human, even though his display of aggression makes me growl and clench my fists.
Sunderland suddenly changes tactics. He clutches his left arm dramatically. “Ohhh. Ah! My arm. Radiating pains. Left side.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’ll go out on medical leave. I have high cholesterol. I’ll tell Carolyn you gave me an episode.”
I blink and back farther away. “You wouldn’t.
” Carolyn Sunderland is built along the lines of Andrea, but plump and graying.
She looks so sweet when she helps out at the Fireman’s Breakfast, serving up pancakes, but piss her off, and she’ll backhand you with a hot spatula faster than I can slide down a pole.
“You wouldn’t.”
“I will. Unless you go after that girl and ask her to get a coffee. Or bowl. Make pottery. Be creative, damn it!”
I cannot be creative. I can barely pretend to be human. Or non-threatening.
But Carolyn Sunderland scares me, and I still don’t like the chief’s color. “I’m going. She’s going to say no.”
“Bet you a pizza.”
“You should not eat pizza. You have high cholesterol,” I mutter and stomp off.
Andrea is getting into her car, and I know I shouldn’t stare, but I do.
She is short, compared to me, even compared to other women that I know, yet she has long, long legs.
She is suddenly fifty percent to seventy percent legs.
This shouldn’t be fascinating, but it is.
Her legs look slender and tapered. Spindly. Little. Weak.
One could never call a troll female’s legs spindly. Humans look so very breakable, which is one reason it feels nice to be a firefighter, so I can protect them—and it’s amazing to join in their society and see how even the most fragile fight to save each other.
“Wait.”
Andrea turns, startled, car door hanging open.
It occurs to me that “wait” isn’t the best greeting, and it isn’t the greatest opening line into asking a beautiful, delicate human woman if she would like to go out with an oversized, grunting dude with an overbite. Knowing she is going to say no takes some of the pressure off.
“Do you want to bowl?”
Andrea unfolds herself from the car, and when she stands, she looks much more proportionate.
Much more beautiful.
She’s kind though, so I’m sure she’ll let me down gently, probably with a lovely smile. “Bowling, with you?”
“Yes. Tonight.”
To my utter consternation, her face lights up.
That’s terrible. She’s far, far too pretty when she’s smiling up at me. My stomach hurts, like hunger pangs, but they’re in the middle of my chest.
I don’t think high cholesterol is contagious, at least not just by word of mouth...
Andrea gasps out, “I’d love that! Thank you.
But... Is this a pity offer? Because I was moaning about being on my own and missing my vacation?
” She gives me a half-nervous smile, twirling her long dark hair around one finger.
As if she realizes she’s doing it, she drops her hands guiltily and clutches them tightly at her waist.
“It’s not pity. You are new in town. You need to see it to appreciate it. It is less lonely with someone. So, I’m offering.” Please say no now.
“So, not a date?”
Wait, why does she sound disappointed? I don’t want her to be disappointed. If she’s sad, she’s going to leave town faster—and for all I know, Sunderland is listening in, ready to aim something heavier than a newspaper, like the truck manual for Big Red, at my head.
“No. It is like a date. But you can say no, now,” I say firmly, nodding to show I expect her to.
“Oh, no. I w-wouldn’t say no. I’d be... I mean, I’d love to. I’d love to go bowling. I haven’t been bowling in months, not since there was a school event.”
I nod again, mainly because I can’t talk. My mouth doesn’t know what to do. I was prepared for her kind rejection, not her delighted acceptance, and now all I can do is bobble my head like the annoying little plastic baseball players on Sunderland’s desk.
“Uh. What time?”
“Seven.” That’s after the dinner hour. I’ll be done with my shift.
“Seven sounds great. Meet you there?”
“Yes.” How else do humans do this? Troll courtship is not like dating. Trolls bring kills, and if the female accepts them, he can try to carry her off to his cave. If she fights him off, he brings more kills the next night, and so on, and so on, until she comes with him without severe injuries.
Imagining anyone trying to drag Andrea anywhere causes a different kind of pain, not in my chest, but behind my eyes.
“Maybe we could go to the Night Market after?” Andrea suggests, voice happy and somehow shy, bashful.
Why? She is a gorgeous, smart, talented woman. She should have the confidence of an empress. If she should be bashful about anything, one would think it would be sobbing in the grass with a can of tuna. We’ve already done that.
“I will see you at seven. Bowling, first. Market, second. I have to get back inside. My captain needs to go home, and I’m on duty.”
“Oh! Right. Okay, then. I’ll see you tonight!” Andrea beams, inserts herself back into the car, showing off those long, smooth legs, and shuts her door. She drives off with a wave.
I stalk back into the station, trying to ignore the captain’s smug face. “She say yes?”
“Mhm.”
“Where you going?”
“Bowling. Night Market.”
“Get her some fudge.”
“But she just gave me cookies. If she wanted sweets—”
“Those are thank-you cookies. The fudge will be ‘set the mood’ sweets.”
“Candy sets the mood? What mood?”
“Hell, boy, don’t play dumb just because you think I’m old. I know all about the third date rule you young people have. Fudge, flowers, then—”
The word that Sunderland ends with makes me dizzy. My mouth dries out while my palms turn into sprinkler systems.
If that is the case, I will make absolutely sure I do not get to the third date with Andrea—even if a little part of me wonders if we’re both lonely enough to see each other just for activities that do not start with F and rhyme with duck.
No. Not firetruck.