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18
RORY
Nah, not jealous, I typed in response to Jeremy’s message about Darren getting together with Julie. He’s a lucky bastard tho.
What a dark horse Darren turned out to be. While I was making the first move on Julie at the barbecue and Jeremy kissed her by the car after their lunch together, Darren came up on the inside and left us all in the dust, I guess. Assuming that this situation was horserace and Julie was a wreath of carnations shaped like a horseshoe or something, I thought with a chuckle.
It’s always the quiet ones lol, I added.
No shit, Jeremy replied, Lucky is right.
I had to get back to work, doing orientation with a couple of new recruits to the volunteer squad, young guys with enthusiasm but, so far, no common sense at all when it came to basic safety precautions. After a hell of a long morning trying to get the new guys into some semblance of order to do a couple of drills, I went into the firehouse kitchen to see what there was for lunch. Tyler was unwrapping a giant party sub sandwich.
“Hey,” he said, “hungry? The Baptist church sent over like five party subs and chips and stuff for the whole crew as a thank-you.”
“That’s awful nice of them,” I said. “Sure.”
We loaded up our plates, and I piled lettuce, onions and banana peppers on my sandwich from the vegetable tray. We sat down and dug in.
“How’s it going with Willow?” I asked, referring to Tyler’s girlfriend.
“Good. Getting serious, I think,” he said with a grin.
“How serious?”
“We’re going to Jamaica next month for our one-year anniversary.”
“Anniversaries and trips…sounds serious to me.”
“I’m gonna ask her,” he said, beaming.
“Good luck, bro,” I said. “Hope she says yes.”
“So do I,” he replied.
Two more guys came in to join us, serving themselves from the enormous sandwich and taking a seat.
“Italian meat?” Dylan asked. I nodded.
“It doesn’t get better than this. For real. They just sent us these out of nowhere. I’m gonna be first in line if that church catches on fire,” Josh said.
“Same,” I nodded.
“I was telling Rory that I’m going to propose to Willow in Jamaica next month,” Tyler added.
“Wait, propose?” I deadpanned. “I thought when you said you were gonna ask her that you meant about doing butt stuff.”
The guys laughed and we ribbed Tyler for a minute.
“So what about you, Rory? Do you have a special someone to ask about butt stuff?” he finally countered.
I shook my head ruefully. “That’s tricky,” I admitted, “The girl I was into…turns out both my brothers are hot for her too. I kissed her at the barbecue Labor Day weekend, and there was a spark for sure. But it’s complicated.”
Dylan, who I was sure I could count on for a smartass comment about that situation, instead looked kind of serious, “I’ve been there, bro,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“You know Zack and I have been friends since we were in school, right?”
“Yeah. He was on last night, sleeping in today, right?” I asked. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine. Better than fine. We’re both kind of seeing the same woman.”
“On purpose or by accident?” Tyler wanted to know.
“On purpose. We were out with Matt, Zack’s cousin, playing pool a couple years ago, and this hot brunette kicked our asses. Won like two hundred bucks off us in half an hour. We invited her and her friend back to our place for drinks and next thing you know, she stayed over. Just with Zack at first, and then we hung out together a few times, all four of us, played some Call of Duty and shit. We always had a great time, she’s a lot of fun and sexy as hell. Finally, we just brought it up over tacos one night. Like, asked her if she’d be down to be in a relationship with all of us. No competition or anything, just what came naturally.”
“So, you all have sex together? Like with each other?” Josh asked.
“No!” he said. “It’s not like that. We’re really happy. We all spend time together, we have fun, just like always, but there’s a romantic side, and we have one-on-one time with her.”
“So it’s like fantasy suites night on the Bachelorette except all the time?” I said. “And don’t give me any shit about watching Bachelorette. My sister got me hooked on it a few years ago because she was there during a filming at one of the clubs she promotes,” I said.
“Yeah, except there’s not a lot of jealous angst bullshit because we’re adults. We know what we want. It’s not a weird scheduled thing or whatever. It’s just organic. We’ve never had any problems as far as jealousy or anybody feeling left out or anything.”
“This is Abby, right? The one from the Christmas party?” I asked.
“Yeah. Don’t go spreading this around. I know there’s people around here that would think it said something about her as a person that she’s involved with all of us at once. But I don’t want her reputation damaged. She’s an amazing girl,” he said earnestly.
