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He nods. “Not that I fight that many fires here in Somerset, though. It’s more helping old people when they fall or getting cats out of trees. That kind of thing.”
“Also useful.”
“Oh, I love it. I get paid to help people. I can’t think of anything better to do with my life than that.”
Okay, he’s sweet. He’s reformed. He’s cute as hell. What’s wrong with him?“So, what’s your deep, dark secret?”
He chuckles. “I don’t really have any. Got divorced recently, though.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sometimes, things don’t work out. Like when your wife loses your life savings because she’s having an online affair with a scammer.”
“What?”
He sheepishly shrugs. “They call them romance scams, but I call it the last two years of my marriage. For some reason, Fawn had the idea that our life would be jetting off to Paris every other weekend or shopping in Milan or whatever. She thought the firefighting thing was a hobby. Not a career that I cared about.”
“Sounds like you two didn’t really know each other.”
He nods. “I thought I knew her. But where I screwed up was letting her parents dictate the stipulation that we could not move in together before we were married. I thought, okay, traditional values, I can roll with that. Big mistake. Between her job as an attorney for the city and my work, we didn’t have enough time together to really know each other before everyone harped on us about getting married. Never again.”
“Never getting married again?”
“I’m never getting married without living with them first. I think it’s really the only way to know someone.”
“And even then, it doesn’t always work out. Mark and I lived together first.”
He sighs. “Then I guess we’re two sad sacks on a date.”
I giggle. “I prefer to think of us as two people who learned a lot in their first marriages. Although, if I’m honest, I’m still trying to figure out why Mark didn’t tell me he wanted outbeforehe had an affair.”
“In my experience, people who have affairs do it because they can. Especially guys.”
“Maybe. But that’s cynical, and I don’t want to be that way. I want to believe there’s good in everyone. But it feels like a fairytale sometimes.”
He smiles. “Nothing wrong with a fairytale now and then. Between calls, I like to read. I’ll read anything. Fiction can teach you more about the world than nonfiction. Look at Shakespeare or Hemingway.”
“But you hated reading in high school.”
He laughs. “Oh shit, I forgot all about that. Remember when I had to cheat off of you in English?”
I giggle. “Mrs. McClusky nearly caught us so many times.”
“I hated her. Not just because of the cheating, but because she was an awful grader. I think she got off giving out Ds.”
“She was terrible, but not as bad as Coach Downing.”
“That crusty bastard,” he says with a laugh. “Remember on snow days when he would make us watch Rocky?”
I giggle hard. “I can’t watch any of those movies these days. Too many bad flashbacks.”
“Bullshit! You and the other girls had the perfect excuse to skip running laps or doing anything in his class. Cramps. That man could not deal with girls.”
Laughing, I almost cry. “Oh my god, I still remember when he nearly fainted when I asked for a tampon. Thought he was going to collapse right there.”
“If you can’t handle teens and their periods, then you should not be a high school gym coach.”
“For a guy who had gone to war, he was so damned squeamish about it. I would have thought he’d be tougher. Men are so emotional.”
