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“That’s true. They have all the wrecks on the 15 to contend with though. I like wildland firefighting the best, and we’ve probably had a fraction of structure fires compared to what my dad has. I can’t stand it when families lose everything, sometimes their lives. I don’t see how urban firefighters face that kind of tragedy on a daily basis. It sounds like I’m a chicken, and it could be true.”
She was close enough to him to grab his hand. “You’re just sensitive. It’s okay. Not everyone can tolerate that day in and day out. My mom was a nurse, and she couldn’t wait to retire. She said she still has nightmares about some of the stuff she saw.”
“Yeah, come to think of it, I’m probably running away.”
“I’m glad you ran up here, then,” Emily said.
He pulled her floating chair close, and he got down off his, standing in the water to reach out for her. They embraced for a while, he didn’t try to kiss her, and he didn’t squeeze her so tightly that her breasts smashed like some guys did. It was a compassionate embrace and nothing more. After he released her, she noticed he was moved by their conversation. He climbed back into the floating chair and rested his head back.
“How long have your parents been married?”
“Forever, thirty-two years. My mom had trouble getting pregnant, and she was twenty-five when she finally had me, but they’d gotten married when she was eighteen.”
“That’s a long time. I don’t even know how long my parents were married, but since I’m twenty-three, it had to be at least twenty-three years,” he said, laughing. “I wish they could have worked out their problems. I’m dreading the holidays now. They are such a big deal in our family. I can’t see my mother and Harry Steinberg at my aunt Roberta’s house.”
“When stuff like this happens, I see it as a sign we need to make our own traditions. I used to spend Sundays with Mom and Dad whether it was convenient for me or not. Then one day my mother called me and said that it was becoming a problem for her, having to entertain me every Sunday. Dad, I call him colonel by the way, wanted to golf, and she wanted to hit the flea markets with her girlfriends.
“So I’m like, what the fuck, Mom, I could have been doing fun stuff with my friends, too. So guess what? I rarely see her now. My dad comes up here every chance he gets, but Mom is too friggin’ busy.”
Biting his tongue, when she let out a guffaw, that gave him permission to laugh, too.
“I admit, I love going to the family Sunday dinners. Probably because I never have to grocery shop or cook because my aunt loads me up with all her Italian specialties. I take the empty containers back the next week, and she loads me up again.”
“Now that would be worth going.”
“The cousins are fun.” He looked at her. “Please come with me tomorrow. It might be pushing it for you to meet the family already. Ha! But I would really like you to come.”
“Really? I’d love to go with you. Italian, you say?” she asked, laughing. “I love Italian food. My family is good German stock, as you can see.”
She did a front double bicep pose sitting in the chair, and that set the tone for the rest of the afternoon, laughing and posing for each other. Paul got up on the deck and did a front lat spread, and Emily fell off her chair she laughed so hard.
“I’d push you in if you weren’t in the pool already,” Paul said. “How about this one?” He did a side triceps with his toe perfectly pointed. “Note the quads,” he said, narrating his poses.
“You can’t tell, but I have tears streaming down my face,” Emily replied.
Paul immediately did a cannonball, water splashing all over. He swam underwater and ducked his head between her legs, popping up out of the water with Emily on his shoulders. They were screaming laughing, and it was at this moment that Colonel Porter walked around the side of the house.
“I could hear the screaming around front of the house. I wondered why you weren’t answering your phone.”
Holding on to Paul’s head, his hair streaming wet, with his hands around her calves, Emily tried to stay calm. As though reading her mind, Paul ducked under water again so she could get off his shoulders as gracefully as possible.
“Hey, Colonel,” she said, waiting for Paul to come up for air. “Paul Saint, my father, Colonel Rob Porter.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Paul said, shaking the water off his hand.
The colonel laughed. “It’s okay, gesture noted. And you can call me Rob.”
“Paul’s a firefighter at Red Mountain Ranch.”
“Oh, okay. What a job.”
“He comes from a family of firefighters down by Escondido,” she explained.
“I might have read about your family in the paper a few years back,” Colonel Porter said thoughtfully.
“That was before I joined the service, but yes, sir, the Saints have worked for the fire service for about a hundred years now.”
“Do you live up here?”
