What the ever-loving fuck was going on?
And fast. Holy fuckballs, fast. I never, ever, ever had any interest in anyone after less than a day. Yes, I’d taken guys off a dance floor and fucked them in a bathroom many times in my life, but this was not that. This was…. I had no idea what this was.
I tried to drag air into my lungs, but my skin felt hot under my clothes even as I shivered in the heated air blowing from the car’s vents.
“Maybe we should pull over in case you gotta throw up,” April said calmly before leaning over to pat my knee.
“I’m not sick,” I grumbled, scowling at her.
She didn’t look convinced.
At the diner, we had to wait, and as we sat there, April beside me with Olivia on my lap, people came by and said good job at the soccer field or good job helping Jenny Rubio or how wonderful I was for helping out Emery, as he’d been alone for so long.
A man and woman sat across from me with their three kids, and out of the blue, the man just struck up a conversation about life in Ursa.
“Don’t mind him,” his wife said, smiling kindly at me. “When you’re the fire chief, these PSAs sort of come naturally.”
It was funny, but I’d had some ideas about Montana before I got there, and the diversity I was seeing wasn’t part of it. The man I was talking to at the moment was black, his wife white; there was Captain Noguchi and Sergeant Tavares, from earlier, and all the little girls at the karate school, who’d been a mix of skin colors and ethnicities. And while it was nice, I wondered if it was the norm, because that would go a long way to making me feel comfortable.
Ever since the Navy, I’d been surrounded by people in every size, shape, and color and found that I functioned best with diversity. It was just another reason why I liked Chicago—lots of different kinds of folks walking around. It was interesting, but the more I was in Ursa, the more I liked it.
“What’s your most regular call?” I asked Chief Parkinson, who had introduced himself and his wife, Carla, to me.
He sighed deeply. “Cats in trees.”
“You’re serious?”
He grunted. “What I wouldn’t give for a nice warehouse fire.”
Carla elbowed him in the ribs, and he leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I’m kidding,” he qualified and then looked at me and shook his head. So not kidding. I liked him already.
At the booth, I realized the menu was under the glass on the table and when our waitress showed up, on roller skates, I asked her about the special.
“Pot roast,” she said with a smile, “but don’t get it.”
“No good, huh?”
She shook her head. “Have a sandwich or the chicken pot pie or the meatloaf. The meatloaf is great, and so is the gravy.”
“I’ll have that and a huge iced tea,” I replied, turning to April. “Whatcha gonna have?”
“I can have anything?”
I scowled at her. “Within reason.”
“Define reason.”
“Maybe not a chili cheese dog with chili cheese fries, huh?”
“Why?” she asked, grinning up at me.
“Lots of gas,” I explained, grinning back. “Think of all the farting.”
She dissolved into giggling, as did Olivia.
The girls had shakes—April chocolate and Olivia strawberry—and Olivia ordered a cheeseburger that I was amazed at the size of. April got a pastrami sandwich that was bigger than her head. I had to help her clean up the pastrami, and I broke down and had a root beer float, and then we were all miserable on the ride home. To help, we took Winston for a walk, and once we were in, I sent them to take showers while I turned on the TV and flipped through Netflix.
Once they were both done, they joined me on the couch in their pajamas and socks, and I had a kid snuggled into each side with a dog in my lap, when Olivia told me to open Amazon on the TV so we could watch a movie. With how late it was, sometime after eleven, I knew they wouldn’t make it long. We ended up on Home Alone and as I predicted, they were out cold minutes later. Since I didn’t want to wake them, I stayed where I was.
Sometime later, there were fingers combing through my hair, over and over, and it felt really good, tender but with just enough tug to let me know that it was a man touching me and not a child.
“Hey.”
My eyes opened slowly, and I realized Emery wasn’t in front of me, but behind me, and his warm breath on my ear meant that his lips had to be only a hairsbreadth from my skin.
My groan was pure agony.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” he said softly, his hand on the back of my neck, squeezing gently. “But if you sleep like this, you’ll be broken in the morning.”