Chapter 4-6
908 Words
Macy checked in with herself. Weak spot in her brain for Tim Harada still installed? Yep! There for everyone to see plain as day except for Tim? Check. Even Carl, the least sympathetic guy on the planet, could see it and was trying to console her?
Shit!
She looked Tim square in the eye, “I’m. Not. Your. Kid. Sister.”
“Says you,” he offered one of those casual grins that he always thought were so charming. That it was, didn’t help matters in the slightest.
He still saw her that way? She had no hope at all.
“You’re stuck with me, Mace. Not a thing you can do about it.”
“At least for this week,” and then you’ll be gone again.
He had the decency to shift uncomfortably.
“My job is in the Lower Forty-eight.”
Hard to argue. And her life was here. She rubbed her forehead and sipped some cocoa. Tim was trying to be civil and she was the one being a total b***h.
Another thing that was never going to change. Well, maybe she’d try.
“Tell me about it.”
“My job?”
“Sure. Why do you jump fire? Adrenalin rush? Bragging rights? All of the hot women?” Why she’d said the last, she’d never know. So that she could flog herself with the image of Tim in another woman’s arms?
“There’s that,” his happy smile almost had her leaving the table.
Probably would have if Carl hadn’t returned at that moment with her plate, Tim’s platter, and a bowl for Baxter. She could leave her own meal, but she wouldn’t do that to her dog.
“But the real reason is probably Akbar the Great.”
“Who?”
“My jump partner. He and I started as hotshots together. He got this hair up his behind to go for jump school. ‘Big bucks and hot women,’ he’d say. I ended up following him in.”
“He actually calls himself ‘the Great’?”
Tim nodded, “Everyone does. His first name actually means ‘the Great’ in some language or other. So really he’s actually ‘The Great the Great.’ He earns it though, he’s the best smokejumper you can imagine. Fires run and hide when Akbar is jumping them. Can’t be more than five-six, but with a pro-wrestler’s shoulders and a smile that really lights the ladies up.”
“So you and he really cut a swath,” she kept her attention down on her breakfast. She had no idea how she could eat, her stomach hurt worse than it had during last night’s date with Brett.
“Used to, yeah,” he hacked into his first toad-in-a-hole.
“What happened?” her curiosity had her looking up; all the way up. There was a surprising mix of sadness and confusion on his features. She’d always been able to read Tim and these were real emotions, deep ones; the kind he didn’t let out very often.
“He found a lady.”
“Why is that a bad thing?”
“What? No. Laura is amazing. Smart, beautiful, funny. She’s way too good for him.”
“So? What happened?” she took a sip of her hot chocolate.
“He married her.”
She practically snorted the scalding liquid out her nose. Set herself to hacking and coughing until he solicitously handed her some water.
Once she recovered, she managed to ask, “And…?”
“Huh?”
Tim really didn’t get it, “The look on your face.”
“What look? Laura’s the best damn thing that could happen to the twerp.”
“But…” It was like pulling teeth. Macy went for some bacon. That seemed to go down okay.
Tim scratched at his chin. He hadn’t shaved that morning and it added to his slightly lost look.
She could feel her brain going soft on him and even though she knew it was a path to a world of hurt, she couldn’t stop it.
“I don’t know. He and I, when we had a break, we’d go down to the Doghouse,” he looked around, “which is only a little more respectable than this place, and we’d—” He finally caught himself and realized what he was saying. He blushed. Tim actually blushed as if she was still twelve and he’d said things he shouldn’t in front of a little girl.
“You don’t get off that easy, Harada. Give.”
He did that intimidating glare thing that he’d never understood only served to peak her curiosity.
“Give.”
“Fine!” he slapped down his knife and fork hard enough to earn a startled look from Baxter. “Yesterday, was it just yesterday? Yeah, maybe. We came off a hellacious fire. Ten days, eighty thousand acres, a hundred kinds of ugly.”
“But you beat it?”
“But we beat it. And when I cruise into the Doghouse, there’s the usual g**g doing the usual thing with all the cute women in the bar.”
Macy did her best not to imagine it, but didn’t succeed very well.
“And over to one side there are Akbar and Laura being all…” he flapped his hands like when he was really perplexed.
“What?”
“Happy together!”
“Still not getting why that’s a bad, Harada.” She was really having a problem following this, but then, apparently, so was Tim.
“No. It’s good. Great! I’m really, honestly happy for him. They’re an amazing couple. Hell, I stood as best man for him.”
An actual expletive from Timothy Harada, he must really be flummoxed. “And you took home a bridesmaid or two?”
“That’s not the point.” His look said he had, but he didn’t elaborate and she didn’t want to know.
“Then what is?”
Tim dragged his hands through his hair and then looked at her. Really looked at her as if seeing her for the first time.
“I wish I knew, Mace. I turned around and there’s this brunette eyeing me—the kind with legs that never stop, and I just walked out. Next thing I know I’m sitting here with you and I haven’t a clue why.”
Macy couldn’t help herself. She reached out and brushed a hand over his cheek.
The sweet boy was still there, sitting across from her. Lost, tucked away, hidden by the man he’d become, but he was still there. And it broke her heart, for that was the Tim she’d always been in love with.
Against all odds he still existed, and in a week he’d be gone again.
- Writer
