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“Yep. Of course, Garrett and I don’t mind an evening off either.”
“I’m sure. Do you guys have plans after small group?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure. Probably watch a movie and fall asleep on the couch like any other night.”
Garrett hollered from across the room. “No way. We’re going out!”
I laughed. “Where exactly do you plan to go in Minden on a Monday night?”
“Bulldogs is open late, right? We can play darts.”
Mandy rolled her eyes. “He only wants to play because he recently discovered that he’s really good at darts.”
Jake came out of the kitchen with a glass of water and three cookies in hand. “Come down to the station sometime, Doc. I’ll take you on. We’ve got a dartboard and it doesn’t get used much. I’ll have to track down the darts. I think Bryce hid them when the probie kept beating him.”
I laughed despite my previous intention to mostly ignore his existence tonight.
“That sounds like Bryce. He hates to lose.”
Jake smiled at me. “Yeah, he really does. Which is why I try to beat him as much as possible.” We locked eyes, and I wanted to say more, but I didn’t have the words. The moment passed when Jake turned back to Garrett. “Seriously, though. I’ll let you know some night I’m on shift and you can come hang out. I mean, there is always the chance that we get a call and cut the game short, but it’s usually pretty chill.”
Garrett grinned. “I’d like that. I guess I won’t make you play darts with me tonight, honey.”
Mandy gave an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Oh phew. Now we can watch the Great British Baking Show.”
Everyone laughed at Garrett’s reaction, and we all began to circle up the chairs in the living room to begin the study.
As we discussed the chapters from the book of Nehemiah, I mostly listened. It wasn’t unusual for me to let others do most of the talking. This week, I was caught up in how insightful Jake was about the passages. It didn’t help that I ended up sitting right next to him and kept getting distracted by how handsome he looked with a Bible in his hands.
“What stuck out to me was how often Nehemiah prayed, you know? Not sure what to say to the king? Prayer. Faced with mockers? Prayer. Threatened with physical attack? Prayer.”
I could take or leave the firefighter uniform, but a man with a Bible who knew how to use it? Now that could make a girl swoon.
He glanced at me before looking at the rest of the group. “I admit that I haven’t done as much praying as I should in my life. I’m really starting to understand how making it your first response can strengthen your faith.”
Then, Carla chimed in. “Yeah! It’s like… You think you need to have strong faith to be someone who turns to prayer first. It’s more like a chicken and egg situation. The praying builds the faith, and then the faith takes action through more prayer.”
“Prayer always changes something,” I said quietly to myself, remembering Jake’s words from the other day.
He turned his head sharply toward me but didn’t look at me fully. Which was a good thing. I had to remind myself that I didn’t want to deepen our connection.
A flash of pain made me press my hand to my forehead and my breath catch. Behind the pain, there it was. Another memory. A circle just like this one, here at Garrett and Mandy’s house. Jake across the room, our eyes meeting. A wink and my own flush of excitement and fear that someone would see it.
“Monica! Monica, are you all right?” Jake was the first to notice.
I grimaced. “Yeah, I’m okay.” I pressed against the pain in my skull, trying to relieve the pressure. “Just another headache.”
“Here, come lay down.” Before I could object, everyone had shifted from the couch, and I was being ushered onto it and guided from sitting to lying. I squeezed my eyes shut against the overhead light.
“Could you dim the lights, Mandy?” Jake seemed to notice everything.
“Oh!” A few moments later, the lights were low, and I opened one eye to find ten pairs of worried eyes on me.
“What do you need?” Jake’s quiet question was accompanied by the gentle strokes of his hand on mine. “Do you have some medicine?”
I did still have something from the doctor, but I debated whether to take it. I hated the way the medicine made me feel, all out of control and spacey. But it did help the pain.
The sharpness was already receding, giving way to an awful, intense version of the familiar dull ache I lived with almost constantly these days.
