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5/
paisley
The evening air was crisp, the kind of cool that whispered of autumn without fully committing to its chill. We were all sprawled out in the Coles and Wilsons’ joint backyard, a retreat that’d become something of a legend around these parts ever since they’d torn down the fence between their properties a few years back.
There we were, the Coles on one side, the Wilsons on the other, and me, somehow both in the middle and completely outside the family lines. We sat in Adirondack chairs around the fire pit as the flames licked the night sky, casting everyone in a glow that made the scene feel pulled from a painting.
Well, except that if this were a painting, there’d be a blurry, white smudge in the background in the form of Gertie the Goat. The unofficial mascot of this interwoven family was showing off on the obstacle course that Grant Cole and the Wilson men had built, and even though it was supposed to be for Gertie’s entertainment, I swear, those men had just as much fun building it as Gertie did using it.
Plus, it had the added benefit of acting as a jungle gym for Gertie’s BFF—little Phoebe Wilson. The pygmy goat and the ten-year-old ballerina were thick as thieves, and when she wasn’ttrying to teach Gertie to dance, she was chasing her around that dang obstacle course.
Except, oddly enough, there was no sign of her tonight. I frowned as I scanned the yard, then leaned toward Kota, where she sat in the chair next to mine. “Hey, where’s Pheebs?”
Dakota wrinkled her nose and shushed me. “Don’t remind anyone. She’s at a friend’s house for supper and should be back any minute.”
I gaped at my friend. “On a Sunday night?”
These suppers were sacred. Unless you were working, you were expected to come. Nothing else came first.
Kota nodded. “It’s a birthday party for her friend from dance, and all the rest of the girls are there. The Mommas agreed, but they weren’t too happy about it.”
I chuckled, glancing at Georgia Wilson and Eleanor Cole—the Mommas. The matriarchs of these two amazing families sat between their husbands on the other side of the fire, heads bent together and gossipy grins on their faces. They made me miss my own momma, of course, but we made do with video chatting and texting.
Sitting back, I glanced at Laney, who was now officially a mom herself and looking every bit the part. Cole Axel Wilson was the luckiest kid on the planet. And his name? The middle was all his mechanic dad’s idea, but the fact that Laney and Everett had blended these families meant calling him Cole was absolutely perfect.
Bailey, bless her heart, was beside Laney, very pregnant. She was sitting down like the rest of us, but she looked so tired I’d believe it if she told me she’d just beaten Gertie in a race through the course.
I had a feeling Cole wouldn’t be the only baby around here for very long.
As the conversations around the fire continued—everything from town gossip to the kind of debates that only came out around the fire pit—I turned back to what I’d been doing: studying.
I should probably put it away and become part of this scene, soaking in the camaraderie and the gentle teasing that flowed as freely as the beer or sweet tea. Instead, I focused on scrolling through police and fire codes like they were the latest news on TMZ.
Tomorrow marked my first day flying solo as a dispatcher, so while everyone else chatted about Gertie’s latest antics or the leaky faucet at the family’s auto shop, my brain was a whirlwind of ten codes and emergency protocols.
“So, you nervous about tomorrow?” Travis asked.
I’d thought he was talking to me, but his smirk was aimed at his older brother.
I turned just in time to see Adam give a soundless snort, and my eyes narrowed reflexively.
The eye roll that wanted to come was also reflexive, but thankfully, I managed to slam a wall down on my mind before it could actually happen. Ever since Adam mentioned noticing the way I rolled my eyes, I’d made a conscious effort to stop doing it.
It hadn’t been easy, though, considering I’d spent the last two weeks in dispatcher training, forced to endure a number of eye-roll-worthy things.
But it wasn’t fair. Why should Adam get to be so attuned to the habits of my eyeballs? Why should he get to pick up on subtle cues about how I felt?
He shouldn’t.
It’d been that way the night we met, and I would’ve loved for him to be able to keep reading me like that. I would’ve loved to go on speaking to him through eye-to-eye communication alone, saying the things I couldn’t say aloud but needed him to know.
That just wasn’t how the cookie crumbled.
It was a good thing I hadn’t let thoughts of working with Adam distract me during training, but it helped that it felt a little like riding a bike. Yes, there were new codes to memorize and different procedures for some of the more civil, daytime calls. But in general, years later and states away, the job of dispatching was still the same dumpster-fire-full-of-everything’s-fine that I remembered.
Which meant I probably should’ve known that Travis was asking if his brother was ready for tomorrow and not me. These people seemed to trust that I’d be ready for whatever life threw at me.
Big problem to solve? Paisley’s got it.
