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“Come on, Jake. You’ve got to pull yourself together.”
My phone buzzed, finally jolting me out of my trance. I checked the notification eagerly, hoping it was Monica letting me know she remembered everything.
The bill pay notification from my credit card was the very definition of disappointment. I tossed the phone across the table–a fairly restrained move, considering I wanted to throw it across the room for its role in the fact that I hadn’t heard a peep out of Monica.
“Not her, I gather?”
I stood quickly and reached for the phone I’d just discarded. I didn’t want to have this conversation. Or any conversation.
I brushed past Bryce on my way out the door.
“Jake, stop,” he called out from behind me.
I paused but didn’t turn.
“Go home.”
That had my attention. “What?” There was no way he’d said what I thought he’d said.
“I said,go home. I don’t want you here unless your head is in the game. I don’t pull rank very often, but as your captain, I’m giving you an order. Take the day and do what you need to do. I don’t want you on a call when you can’t even focus on a thirty-minute training or have a conversation with me.”
“Come on, B. I need to be here. I’ll go crazy at home,” I pleaded. I’d worked one shift since the accident, but Bryce hadn’t been there to call me out on my distractedness. Other than that, I’d been slowly driving myself mad alone at my house.
Bryce shook his head. “And I’m sorry you’re struggling with this, but I can’t have you on a call when you’re so distracted. What if you got hurt? Or someone else?”
I hated to admit it, but Bryce was right. I’d be nothing but a liability on a call.
Just because he was right didn’t mean I had to like it. Sometimes, a guy got tired of being reminded that he was a disappointment. I probably should have been used to it after the years I heard my dad lecture me about it.
But Bryce wasn’t my dad. He was my friend. I knew Bryce wouldn’t say something if it didn’t need to be said.
“You’re a good captain,” I told him. The corner of his mouth tipped up. “But you’re a sucky friend,” I added with the hint of a smile.
It made him laugh, which was my intention. Nothing worked better to deflect from my own emotional responses than humor.
“Yeah, yeah. How about this, then? Spend your shift at the station running an inventory in the store.”
I groaned softly before I realized what a gift he was offering. He had every right to send me home in the state I was in, and running the numbers on the spare gear we kept on hand for replacements was a necessary–but low-risk–contribution to the team. It would keep me at least somewhat occupied instead of pacing my kitchen and drowning my sorrows in Oreos and milk. I stood up straight and met his eyes. “Thanks, man. I owe you one.”
When he first became captain, I thought it might be weird to report to my best friend, but even though Storm was a total boy scout, we had worked up through the ranks together. Trust and respect go a long way. Every now and then, he gave me grief about taking a joke too far, but he’s usually on board for a funny video or a good-natured prank.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll see if Parker wants to come in for a full shift. He’s been asking questions about moving from volunteer to staff.”
“That’d be a solid hire,” I commented. Parker was one of the volunteers I was always happy to see show up on a call.
Bryce nodded. “Yep. Now go get to work. I’ll swing by later and we can talk more about what’s got you so torn up.”
He walked out of the room, leaving me alone with the unfortunate realization that spending all day with Bryce meant I definitely had to tell him the whole story. He knew the basics, but I had avoided all his calls until now.
There was a reason Monica and I hadn’t been ready to share our relationship with the world until nearly several months in. In a place like Minden, everyone knew everything and everybody. Failed relationships could divide the town. Neither one of us wanted that kind of drama if things ended badly, and we didn’t know how Bryce would respond.
Guess I was about to find out.
I headed to the closet at the back of the garage that we called “The Store.” Inside, I scanned the shelves of extra helmets, masks, shirts, coats and pants. What was I supposed to be doing? Oh yeah. I pulled a clipboard from the hook near the door and started marking off the details of what we had on hand, circling things that were low or out of stock.
I heard the alarm and announcement for a call. Instinctively, I started to respond. Medical only, two miles outside of Minden. I stepped out of The Store and moved toward the gear. Bryce and Matteo stepped out the door and walked toward the ambulance rig, pulling on their dark-blue EMS jackets.
Bryce met my stare and lifted his chin when he saw me grab my coat. “We got this, Jake.”
