Two days after our fender bender, I knocked on Kristen’s door. Yapping started on the other side. I’d just gotten off my shift, and I had a heaping pile of building materials in the bed of my truck. Brandon let me raid his garage for power tools. Thank God. This job was temporary—I didn’t need to be buying shit.

Kristen opened the door, wearing a pink robe and a green mud mask. “Hey. Come in.”

Stuntman Mike bounced off my shins. I reached down to pet him, and she stopped me. “Don’t. He bites.”

“We’ve already met. He let me hold him at the station,” I reminded her. “He’s got a misplaced sense of ownership over me and his memory is

stored in a brain the size of a peanut,” she mumbled. “Wait a few minutes until he calms down. Then it’ll be safer.”

I looked down at the little fluff ball. He growled and wagged his nub of a tail at the same time. I followed her into the house and leaned down and gave Stuntman Mike a pat while she wasn’t looking.

A teetering stack of FedEx boxes sat piled by the front door. The coffee table was covered in carefully organized piles of paper. A laptop sat in the middle of it with a beer next to it, still cold. The glass bottle was perspiring. “Already drinking, huh? It’s breakfast time.”

“I had a Pop-Tart with it,” she grumbled. I snorted.

Her house was clean. Sparse, but clean. Smelled a little like bleach. There was a huge vase of flowers on her credenza. From the boyfriend for Valentine’s Day, I guessed. I hated that holiday. Just an excuse to spend money on overpriced shit. I was glad I was single for it this year.

“Here’s the garage.” She opened a door off the laundry room.

A tiny lacy black thong hung from a hanger over the dryer at eye level. I looked at it longer than was probably appropriate.

I hadn’t been with anyone since Celeste. I’d been too busy and worn out from the new job and the move. And to be honest, I’d been enjoying not having to deal with a woman. It was a reprieve.

It had been my experience that all women, even the ones you’re only having sex with, are on some level exhausting. I wasn’t in any particular hurry to get back to it.

I came up behind Kristen and peered into the garage over her shoulder. It was cavernous and mostly empty except for a few containers stacked against the far end and a newer black Honda parked in the last bay. She hit a button on the wall and sunlight shafted under the opening garage door.

She turned to me, the green mask starting to crack around the edges. “Bathroom is down the hall. Sodas are in the fridge. Holler if you need something. I’ll get you a fan. It’s a hundred and fucks degrees out here.” She left me standing there.

Well, the reception was chilly, but at least she’d let me in.

I backed my truck up and started to unload, and she came down the stairs and set a fan in the middle of the floor. Then she walked out into the driveway, green mask and all, and put my folded shirt into my hands. “Here. I washed it.”

“Thank you.” A car rolled by and the driver stared at her. I looked back at her with an arched eyebrow. “Don’t you care what people think?”

“Do I look like I care?” “No.”

“There you go.” She turned and went back into the house and I smiled after her.

Kristen had crossed my mind a few times over the last two days. I’d actually found myself somewhat looking forward to coming over and getting further abused.

I’d asked Brandon about her boyfriend. Not straight out—I’d asked him

why she didn’t have him build the stairs. Just an excuse to find out more about her.

Brandon only met him once, almost a year ago. Didn’t have much to say about it, other than the guy seemed all right. But he did say Sloan didn’t seem to like him for some reason. I’d pressed for more, but he just shrugged and said she wasn’t a fan.

Two hours later I poked my head into the living room. “Where’d you say the bathroom is?”

She’d changed into sweats and a T-shirt and she lay on the couch with a heating pad on her stomach. Her mud mask was gone.

She answered with her eyes closed. “Down the hall, second door. Put the seat back down.” She winced.

“You okay?” “Fine.”

She didn’t look fine. She looked like she was having the period from hell.

“Have you taken anything yet?” I asked.

“I took two aspirin at four a.m.” Even her words sounded painful.

I looked at my watch. “You can alternate with Motrin. I have some in my gym bag.”

I went out to the truck and got two pills and brought them back with a water bottle from the fridge and handed it to her. She took them gratefully.

“You get a lot of calls for period cramps?” she asked, lying back against the cushions, closing her eyes.

“No. But I grew up with enough women to know the drill. Also, I’m a paramedic. You shouldn’t be taking aspirin for cramps. Aleve or Motrin is better.”

“Yeah, I know. I ran out,” she muttered.

“I’m going to get some lunch. Want something?” I figured if I was going to eat, might as well ask her too.

She opened an eye and looked at me. “No.” Then she sat up with a grimace. “I need to go to the store.”

“What do you need? I’ll get it. I’m going out anyway.”

She clutched the heating pad to her belly and eyed me. “You don’t want to buy what I need. Trust me.”

I scoffed. “What? Pads? Tampons? I have six sisters. This isn’t my first

rodeo. Text me what you want.” I turned for the garage before she could object. I couldn’t care less about buying the stuff, and she didn’t strike me as the kind of woman to be embarrassed by feminine products—or anything, for that matter.

She wasn’t. She sent me a long list. It was all heavy-duty. Ultra this and overnight that. I grabbed her some Motrin too.

I stopped at McDonald’s and got her food, figuring she was probably too sick to make something for herself.

When I got back, I dropped the bag of tampons at the foot of the couch. “Thanks,” she said, sitting up to peer into the top of the bag. “I’ll write

you a check. I’ve never met a guy who was willing to buy that stuff.” “What, your boyfriend gets worried the cashier will think he’s got his

period?” I said, plopping onto the couch next to her with the McDonald’s bag in my lap.

She gave me a little smile. She already seemed to be feeling better. The Motrin must have been working.

I started pulling food from the bag. “Fries,” I said, putting the red container in her hand. “And a hot fudge sundae.” I put that in the other hand.

She looked from her hands back to me in confusion.

“My sisters always wanted something salty and sweet when they were on their periods,” I explained, digging out the rest of the food. “Fries and hot fudge sundaes. They’d send me out to McDonald’s. I bought it on autopilot. There’s a Big Mac and two cheeseburgers too. I didn’t know what you wanted.”

Her face softened, and for the first time since I’d met her, it looked unguarded, like she just now decided to like me. I must have finally tamponed my way into her good graces.

“Six sisters, huh? Younger? Older?” she asked.

“All older. My parents stopped when they finally got their boy.” Dad said he’d cried from happiness.

“Wow. No wonder you ply menstruating women with ice cream. I bet when their periods synced they sat around glaring at you and making prison shivs.”

I snorted. “Big Mac or cheeseburger?”

“Cheeseburger. So, how’d you meet Brandon?” she asked, setting the

sundae down on the coffee table and eating one of the fries.

I handed her a yellow paper-wrapped cheeseburger. “The Marines.” She arched an eyebrow. “You were a Marine?”

“Once a Marine, always a Marine,” I said, taking the Big Mac and opening the box.

She looked me up and down. “How old are you?” “Twenty-nine. Same as Brandon.”

Stuntman Mike jumped up suddenly from the couch and started barking frantically at nothing. He startled the shit out of me, but she didn’t even flinch, like this was a daily occurrence. He stared at nothing, seemed satisfied that whatever it was was gone, and then he spun a few times and lay back down. His shirt today read I MISS MY BALLS.

“How old are you?” I asked. “Twenty-four. Like Sloan.”

She was mature for her age. But then I always thought Sloan was too. “Hmm.” I took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. “You seem older.”

A sideways smile told me she liked that I thought that. “How are you liking the new fire station?” she asked. She must have seen the answer on my face.

“Really? It’s shitty?” She seemed surprised.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s all right.” “What? Tell me.”

I twisted my lips. “It’s just at my old station, we didn’t get shit medical calls. I mean, we only got, like, three a day—”

“How many do you get here?”

“Twelve? Fifteen? It’s a busy station. But the calls are bullshit. Drunk homeless guys. Crap that should be a trip to a walk-in clinic. I went on a call yesterday for a stubbed toe.”

“Well, most people are pretty fucking stupid.” She ate a fry.

“My granddad used to always say, ‘Even duct tape can’t fix stupid,’” I said, putting my straw in my mouth.

“Hmm. No. But it can muffle the sound.”

I burst into laughter and almost choked on my soda. I liked her wit so much more when I wasn’t the brunt of it.

“You know, I never thought about firefighting being like that,” she said

after I’d gotten hold of myself. “It’s so romanticized. Every little boy’s dream,” she said sarcastically.

I looked into my fry box. “It is not what everyone thinks it is—that’s for sure.”

I’d questioned all my life choices in the last week. So far there wasn’t much that I liked about any of it. Reduced to a probie, paying through the nose for everything, running calls to put Band-Aids on idiots. Except this was turning out to be interesting…

“Why did you move?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I had a breakup. My girlfriend of three years, Celeste. Figured a change of scenery was due. Thought I might like the busier station. And it was getting a little too much living so close to my sisters. I realized that I liked them better when I was deployed,” I said dryly.

“The breakup her idea or yours?” She unwrapped the cheeseburger and took out the pickle and ate it first. Then she dragged the bun on the paper to scrape off the onions.

“Mine,” I said.

“And why?” She took a bite.

“A lot of reasons. The biggest one being that she didn’t want to have kids. I did. It wasn’t negotiable.”

She nodded again. “That’s a big one,” she mumbled.

There were a lot of big ones at the end. I also didn’t much enjoy supporting her shopping habit or her inability to actually work in any of the many career paths she’d chosen. She was a perpetual student, jumping from one pursuit to another and never graduating. Paralegal, vet tech, dental assistant, nursing assistant, EMT—she was the most partially educated waitress in South Dakota.

“How about you? Boyfriend, right?” I asked, looking around her living room for a photo. When I’d gone to Sloan and Brandon’s to pick up tools, Sloan had photos and art and shadow boxes all over the place. Kristen didn’t have anything on her walls. Maybe Sloan took it all in the move.

“Yeah, Tyler. He’s coming home in three weeks. Moving in. He’s a Marine too.”

I took a swallow of my Coke. “First time living with someone?”

“I lived with Sloan. But yeah, first time living with a boyfriend. Any tips?”

I pretended to think about it. “Feed him and give him lots of sex.”

“Good advice. Though I’m hoping that’s what he does for me,” she said, laughing.

Her laugh transformed her face so instantly I was immediately taken by how beautiful she was. Natural. Long thick lashes, smooth flawless skin, warm eyes. I’d thought she was pretty the other day too, but a scowl is an unflattering filter.

I cleared my throat, forcing myself to look away from her. “So doglets, huh?” I nodded at Stuntman Mike. He had his head on her lap. The tip of his tongue was out. He didn’t even look real. Like a stuffed animal. “You know, he doesn’t seem like the kind of dog you’d own.”

She looked at me curiously. “What kind of dog do I look like I’d own?” “I don’t know. I guess I just had a preconceived notion about what kind

of people own dogs like this. Paris Hiltons and little old ladies. Is he the reason why you started the business?” I took a bite of my Big Mac.

“Yeah. There were things I wanted to buy for him that I couldn’t find online. So I started making them. People go nuts for their little dogs. The business does well.”

That I could believe. Just with the amount of orders she’d already given me, I could tell she made a decent living. It was pretty impressive.

I tilted my head. “They’re kind of useless though, aren’t they? Little dogs don’t really do anything.”

She scoffed. “Okay, first of all, he can hear you. Second of all, he’s a working dog.”

“What, a personal support animal?” Everyone seemed to have one these days. “Doesn’t count. A dog that hangs out with you isn’t a working dog. That’s not a job.”

“And what exactly would count?” she asked.

“A police dog. A search-and-rescue or service animal. A protection dog.

A hunting dog.”

She looked at me, dead serious, and put a hand on Stuntman Mike’s head. “He’s a hunting dog.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s an insult to hunting dogs everywhere.” I dug for my cell and pulled up a picture of my buddy’s Lab with a duck in his mouth. “This is a hunting dog.”

She looked unimpressed. “Yeah, that’s a dog that hunts ducks. Stuntman

hunts women.” I snorted.

“What? I’m serious. He’s lady bait.” I glanced at him. He was pretty cute.

She put her cheeseburger on the coffee table and pulled her dog into her lap like a floppy teddy bear, cradling him like a baby. His tongue rolled out and hung from the side of his mouth. “How about this? The next time you go to the store, take him with you.”

I shook my head. “I can’t take him to the store.” “Why?”

“Uh, because he’s not a service animal?”

She laughed. “Stuntman can go anywhere. He’s wearing clothes. He’s not a dog—he’s an accessory.”

I chewed a fry thoughtfully. “So I just walk him in on a leash?” “No, you put him in a bag.”

I shook my head with a laugh. “I’m cool buying tampons, but I’m not walking a tiny dog into a store in a purse.”

“It’s not a purse—it’s a satchel. And if this were entirely dignified, don’t you think all the guys would be doing it? It’s a core part of the strategy. Men don’t own dogs like this. They own dogs like that.” She pointed to my phone. “It’s adorable. Trust me. You’ll be a chick magnet.”

I didn’t care about being a chick magnet, but I liked the idea of having an inside joke with her for some reason. “Okay. You’ve piqued my interest. I’ll test your theory.”

“And if I’m right?”

“Then I’ll tell you that you were right.”

She twisted her lips to one side. “No. Not good enough. If I’m right, you pose in some website pictures with my dog satchels. I need a male model.”

Oh God, what have I gotten myself into? “Somehow this whole deal feels like I’m the loser.” I chuckled. Whatever. I was a good sport.

“How are you the loser? I’m giving you the opportunity to use my highly trained hunting dog to lure scores of women into your bed.”

I smirked. “You know, without sounding like an asshole, I don’t really have a hard time getting women.”

She tilted her head. “Yeah, I can see that. You have the whole sexy fireman thing going for you.” She waved a hand over my body.

I took a drink of my soda and grinned at her. “So you think I’m sexy, huh?”

She pivoted to face me full on. “There’s something you should know about me, Josh. I say what I think. I don’t have a coy bone in my body. Yes, you’re sexy. Enjoy the compliment because you won’t always like what I say to you, and I won’t care one way or the other if you do or don’t.”

* * *

Two days later I was back at the station. I’d just sat down in the living room after cleaning up the kitchen by myself for half an hour. The rest of the crew liked to hit the gym after dinner. There weren’t enough weight benches for everyone. As the probie, I had last right to anything, let alone the limited workout equipment, so TV it was.

Brandon came into the living room with a water bottle and dropped into a recliner. “Shawn lost the book I loaned him.”

“What book?” I asked, flipping the channels.

“Devil in the White City. I swear to God, every time I loan that guy something, he either loses it or damages it.”

“Did you check the bathroom?”

“It’s the first place I looked. Keep an eye out for it, yeah? I bet he set it down in the apparatus bay or something. I’m probably going to have to buy a new copy,” he grumbled.

“Why’d you let him have it?”

He waved a hand. “Eh, I don’t know. Shame on me, right?” He shook his head. “Hey, how’s the side job?”

I smiled, thinking about Kristen. “She’s cool as hell. She hung out with me in the garage a few times both days, just bullshitting. She’s hilarious.”

No offense to Brandon, but Kristen was turning into my favorite co- worker. And if I had to get bossed around, I’d rather it be by her any day.

He laughed. “Uh, I was asking about the job. But I can see where your mind’s at.” He grinned like he’d just won some bet. “I knew you’d like her.”

I gave him a sideways smile. “What do you know about her?”

Brandon was probably the one guy friend I could talk to about this. He wouldn’t give me shit. And God knows I’d sat through enough talks about

Sloan.

He shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

Everything.

“I don’t know. Just tell me what you’ve seen. You’ve known her as long as you’ve known Sloan.”

He thought about it for a second. “Well, let’s see. She’s smart.”

I could see that about her. Good with math. I’d watched her figure out the totals on a few phone orders in her head, tax and all.

“She’s competitive. Doesn’t like to lose. The couple of times Sloan and I hosted poker, Kristen played and she made it to the final table both times. And those guys are pretty good. She’s driven.”

“How solid do you think her and her boyfriend are?” I asked. “They’re moving in together, so it’s serious, right?”

This was what I really wanted to know.

He gave me a raised eyebrow. “I know she’s faithful to him, buddy.”

I wasn’t implying that I hoped she would cheat. But now I was curious. “How do you know?”

“I mean, I’ve never seen anything to lead me to believe she’s ever messed around on him. And she doesn’t seem like the type. She’s too principled.”

I liked that she was loyal. A lot of women cheated when their men were deployed. I saw it often enough when I was on tour. The long separations took their toll. It said something about her character that she stayed the course, but at the same time, I didn’t like that it meant they were probably pretty serious.

“You think she’ll marry him?”

He grinned, shaking his head. “All right.” He picked up the remote from the arm of my chair and put the TV on mute. “You want to know what I think?” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands, going into squad leader mode. He was about to level with me. “I think she’s not as into this guy as she could be.”

Now here was something. I sat up. “What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. A hunch. Body language. Sloan. Any relationship that doesn’t have the best friend behind it is going to have challenges. And I didn’t get the impression Kristen was super in love with him. It seemed one-sided between them. That’s just what I got when I saw them together.

But that was almost a year ago. Things might be different now.”

I tapped my finger on the armrest and stared at the Marine Corps tattoo on Brandon’s forearm. Mine was on my chest. We’d gotten them at the same time. “She doesn’t have any pictures of him in the house. Not one.” Girls like to put up pictures. It had to mean something that there weren’t any.

“Eh, there’s plenty on her Instagram.” I deflated again.

He gave me an amused smile. “Look, buddy, you know how it goes. You come off tour and you don’t have a place of your own so you move in with your girl. It could just be that. Convenience. Or it could be they’re really in love. You want my advice?”

I waited, looking at him.

“Stick around. One of two things is going to happen when this guy comes home. They’ll either break up or they’ll get married. And if they break up, you’ll be the first to know. There’s no deadline. You like hanging out with her.” He shrugged. “So hang out with her. Be her friend.”

Her friend. I could do that. That was easy enough. Anyway, what choice did I have?