Page 2 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

That's all. That's the whole assault. And my hand closes on the edge of the counter and I have to look at the menu until the letters organize themselves again.

Anger, I know what to do with. A guy runs his mouth in a bar, that's easy. That's arithmetic.

Kindness comes in under the door.

She refills my cup twice without asking and pats the counter next to my hand when she drops the check, and I leave her a twenty on an eight-dollar tab and get out of there like the place is on fire.

***

Here's the thing about Claire. She hit my fire engine.

Not a fender tap. She backed her little gray Corolla into a parked, forty-four-thousand-pound engine in the station lot, and then she got out and argued that it was the engine's fault.

"It's red," I said. "It's the size of a house."

"It was in my blind spot."

"The engine was in your blind spot."

"Are you going to give me your insurance information or are you going to stand there being tall at me?"

"Ma'am, you backed into a stationary vehicle."

"Which was parked irresponsibly."

"In its own parking spot. At its own firehouse."

She crossed her arms. "The angle of that spot is a hazard. I teach fourth grade, and if one of my students drew a parking lot like this, I'd send it back."

"You'd send back a parking lot."

"I'd write see me on it."

Half my shift was watching from the bay door by then. Nobody was helping me. Rodriguez had his phone out.

"Okay," I said. "Here's what we'll do. I'll get you the insurance information, and you'll let me buy you dinner, and we'll call the whole thing even."

She blinked. First crack in the armor all day.

Then she said, "No," got in the Corolla, and drove off with my heart hooked on her back bumper next to the dent she swore wasn't there.

She said no for six weeks.

Then one day she showed up at the station with a plate of cookies and told me the cookies were an apology and dinner was a maybe, and the maybe depended entirely on whether I could go one full evening without being right about anything.

I couldn't. She married me anyway.

***

Missouri. The land starts to roll.

I stop for gas at a station off I-44 and a guy at the next pump is burning trash in a barrel behind the building, and the smoke drifts over and I stop breathing.

Not panic. Nothing that clean. My body goes somewhere without me and stands there a while.

The pump clicks off. I put the nozzle back. I drive.

***