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But still, I hesitated.
“Well?” Jack asked. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“It is about Alyssa,” Mateo said.
“What about her?”
“Well…” I cleared my throat. Might as well spit it out. “I slept with Alyssa again. And Mateo was there. We sort of had a threesome with her.”
Jack blinked at me. I waited for his response. My heart pounded in my chest like it was trying to break free. Why wasn’t he saying anything?
All three of us jumped as the alarm system went off. “Engine five,” came the robotic voice. “Respond to injured pedestrian at 1520 Turner Road. Engine five. Respond to injured pedestrian at 1520 Turner Road. Engine five…”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered.
“Finish this conversation later.” Jack ran to the nearby lockers. Mateo and I shared a look before joining him, dressing quickly and then climbing into the fire engine.
The ride to the call was silent. Eerily so. From the passenger seat, I searched his face for any clue as to what he was thinking about. His emotions were a mask.
A patrol car was already on the scene. A man who looked homeless was lying on his back on the sidewalk, tapping his foot. A trash bag of belongings sat next to him.
“He says he’s fine,” the police officer told us. “But he won’t get up.”
“I am fine,” he barked in a raspy voice. He looked like he was in his seventies.
“Heat exhaustion, I bet,” the officer commented.
“I said I’m fine!” the homeless man said.
“What’s your name?” Jack asked.
“No.”
“Can you sit up for us, then?” I asked.
“I don’t have to do anything.”
Mateo brought a bottle of water over and held it out to the man. He slapped it away, then seemed to realize what it was. He immediately sat up, snatched the plastic bottle, and began chugging it down so fast that water spilled out the sides of his mouth.
Most of the calls we got were of this variety. Necessary, but boring. That’s okay. Boring was good. Boring was safe. Nobody ever burned to death helping a homeless man drink some water, and I still went home feeling like I had contributed to society.
An ambulance arrived a few minutes later, and we piled back into our fire engine.
Halfway back to the station, I cleared my throat. “So, yeah. We had a threesome with Alyssa.”
Without taking his eyes off the road, Jack replied, “I know.”
Mateo leaned forward from the back seat. “What?”
“Alyssa let it slip during our argument at the upholstery store today.”
“You…” I smacked Jack’s arm with the back of my hand. “You knew about it, yet allowed us to suffer your silence for half an hour while helping a homeless man?”
Jack’s lip curled in a minuscule smile. “Yup.”
Behind us, Mateo started laughing.
“I’m sorry you heard it from her,” I said. “We were going to tell you. As evident by the fact that we did tell you. We just needed a day to collect our thoughts.”
