AllFreeNovel
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“I’m fine. Just a little shaken up. Honestly, I’m more sad about your situation. I was only going to stay here for a few weeks, but you had this whole big plan to fix up the house and rent it out.”
Brandi waved a hand. “I don’t care about that, Alyssa. None of that matters. I’m just happy you’re okay. Why didn’t you tell me you were staying here instead of a hotel!”
“I was trying to fix the place up for you. I stocked the fridge and pantry, put sheets on the bed… three hundred bucks down the drain.” I turned to the house. “My suitcase was inside, too.”
“Oh no. I have plenty of clothes you can use. Was that your car?”
“It’s a rental.”
She laughed through her tears. “And you parked in the driveway?”
“It felt like an act of defiance at the time!” I said with a laugh of my own. “The bitch of it is that if I had parked on the street, it would probably be fine. I still have some stuff in the trunk, but I don’t have the keys.”
Brandi walked over to the car and tested the handle. It was locked. She looked around, found a brick at the edge of the house rubble, and smashed it through the window. Then she unlocked the door and pulled the latch to pop the trunk.
“What?” she asked. “It’s already totaled!”
I opened the trunk, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. “All my camera equipment is okay.” I began removing bags of gear, quickly checking them first. “Losing my suitcase isn’t a big deal, but there’s five grand worth of cameras and lenses here.”
“Five grand! And here I thought photography was cheap to get into. My iPhone camera is pretty good.”
I smiled. “There’s a big difference between pretty good and professional. My clients pay me for that difference.”
Brandi helped me carry the bags into her car. “Let’s get dinner. We have so much to talk about.”
While eating fried fish at one of our favorite old restaurants, I caught my sister up on everything going on in my life. My photography business in New York, the last two boyfriends that had come and gone without much fanfare. Eventually, I brought up the subject I had been avoiding.
“Remember Jack?” I said once we were several glasses of wine deep. “Jack Franco?”
Brandi snorted. “Are you seriously suggesting I might have forgotten the hottest, hunkiest asshole on our street? Wait, not asshole. Jackass.” She giggled at her own joke.
“Well, he doesn’t live on our street anymore. But he’s still in Clearwater.”
She frowned at me. “How do you know? Did you run into him?”
“More like he ran into me. He was one of the firemen who rescued me from the house fire.”
Brandi stared at me for three long seconds. Then she busted out laughing.
“What?” I asked.
“Jack Franco carried you out of our burning house?”
“It was one of his teammates, actually. Liam, that foreign exchange student from New Zealand.”
“Who?”
“You really don’t remember him? He lived with Jack. It was the junior year of high school. Thick blond hair, yellower than Jack’s. It’s impossible to forget that accent.”
“I didn’t ogle every boy in our grade,” she shot back. “Why are you so insistent that I remember him?”
“Well… he sort of asked me out.”
“What!”
“I went to the fire station to thank the men who rescued me. Turns out two of them were Jack and Liam. And Liam asked me out, right there in front of Jack.”
Brandi raised her hand to get the waiter’s attention. “Hi, yes, we’re going to need another round of drinks because my twin sister just told me the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
