Seth
I watch as Hannah walks away from the fire station. I need to get back to work if I want to be able to get lunch anytime soon, but my eyes cannot look away from her. The dark jeans she’s wearing today hug every curve on her body perfectly. She turns a corner—probably to go to the coffee shop—and I head back inside the bay.
“What did she want?” Jake asks. I roll my eyes because I don’t like that she came to see Chris and not me.
I can’t even bear to say the words out loud, so I just say, “Nothing.”
I’ve known her since the day she was born, and not once has she come to the fire station. She goes on one date with Chris, and all of a sudden, she’s making stops here to see him. Nope, don’t like it one bit. Why does she want to see him, anyway? She didn’t even have a good time on their date. I could tell she was lying last night. No one’s eyes are that shifty when they’re telling the truth.
If the guys hear the annoyance in my voice, they don’t say anything. We all go back to working in companionable silence until it’s time to take a break for lunch. Chris and the chief get back to the station with all of our lunches that they went to pick up, and I pull Chris aside.
“Hannah was here a few minutes ago, looking for you,” I tell him and watch to see his reaction. His eyebrows raise and then lower.
“Are you sure she wasn’t here to see you?” he asks, which is just confusing. If they’re dating, it shouldn’t surprise him that she would stop by to see him. Why would he think she would want to see me?
“Uh, no. She probably wants to talk about your next date or something,” I suggest. His head whips back around in my direction.
“We aren’t going on another date,” he says with a laugh.
“She told me you were.” We stare at each other for what feels like a full minute, and Chris smiles. I’m starting to think there’s something I don’t know. I know Hannah lied to me about how their date went. Did she lie to me about having a second date planned, too? But that seems so silly.
“I think you should talk to Hannah,” he says, and he picks up his lunch and walks away, leaving me very confused. I don’t want to talk to Hannah about her date with another man. I don’t want to hear about how he wooed her, made her feel special, maybe caressed her cheek. I want to be the man doing those things with her. I want to take her to dinner while she wears a pretty dress. I want to listen to her decompress after a long day of work. I want to caress her cheek and run my fingers through her blonde hair.
So, she was definitely lying about everything last night. Gosh, I hope that date was horrible. I hope he bored her to tears while she dreamed of being anywhere else but with him.
Well, not anywhere else. It’d be nice if she was dreaming about being with me. But that’s unlikely. Hannah’s young. She wouldn’t be interested in a thirty-one-year-old. I eat my lunch, contemplating all the reasons Hannah would have to lie to me about the date, and come up with nothing that makes any sense.
My shift was agonizingly slow yesterday and last night, especially considering the fact that Chris’s face kept me wondering about what’s going on with Hannah. I plan to spend my day at the gym and catch up on things around my house to keep her off my mind until this evening when I can corner her at Colby’s house.
The gym isn’t going so well, though. I keep zoning out in the middle of my sets, and I’m not getting anything done. I’ve barely even broken a sweat. The woman on the machine beside me asks if I need her to show me how to use the machine. I’m not insulted that it’s a woman offering to help me, because she is swole and definitely knows what she’s doing. I’m insulted that I apparently don’t look toned enough for people to assume that I know what I’m doing. I work out at least four times a week. I eat healthy most of the time—except when chocolate is in front of me. I’ve got abs. Do I really look so lost?
Whatever. I quit. It’s not happening today. I put away all of my weights, grab my bag from my locker, and head home to tackle the mountain of laundry in the corner of my room. Today sucks. I hate doing laundry.
I get home and pace around my house for a few minutes before deciding to take a shower. A shower will clear my head. I end up standing in the flow of water until it turns ice cold.
I can’t even remember if I washed my hair, but I turn the water off and get out of the shower anyway. I throw on whatever clothes I see first. I do conduct the good ol’ sniff test just to make sure I’m not throwing on something that’s been festering for a few weeks. I at least have that much brain capacity.
I grab my overflowing clothes hamper and throw it all into the washing machine—no sorting going on in this house—and start the washer. Next, I go to the also overflowing basket of clean clothes and begin folding them. I get about three towels and two pairs of underwear in when I start thinking about Hannah again. I lie back on the floor and put my hands over my eyes, trying to get her face out of my mind. I am unsuccessful, like everything else I attempt to do today. All this does is make me think about her hair, her lips, her eyes.
I clearly can’t wait until this evening. I have to talk to her now. I throw on some sandals so I can head over to the library. I get to my driveway and realize that I look like an absolute slob in basketball shorts and a t-shirt covered in old, dried paint splatters. I turn around to go back inside to change and make myself look presentable. I tell myself it’s because I don’t want to hear Gertrude lecture me about how, back in the dark ages, young knights of the realm used to care about their appearance in front of fair maidens. It has absolutely nothing to do with wanting Hannah to find me attractive.
Now, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, I get into my Jeep and drive over to the library. When I walk in, I see Millie first. I give her a quick hug and welcome her back home, my eyes scanning the room the whole time.
“She’s in the back room, setting up for a teen event this evening,” she says. I shove my hands in my pockets, doing my best to look nonchalant.
“Uh, who?” I ask. “I’m just here to look for a book to read, because I love reading.”
“Uh-huh,” she says as she turns and walks away. I glance around me to make sure no one is watching, and then I make a beeline for the back room in the direction Millie pointed.
“Caught ya!” I hear Millie say behind me as I’m about to open the door.
“Zip it!” I walk into the room and see Hannah organizing craft supplies on a table. She has earbuds in, listening to music. She starts dancing around before bursting out in song. I watch her hips sway in time with whatever ridiculous pop song it is she’s singing. She looks way too good in those jeans. Somehow, she still hasn’t noticed me standing in the doorway with my fist over my mouth to contain my laughter, so I rush up to her and grab her around her waist. All of the papers she’s holding fly out of her hands, and she turns and punches me square in the face. And I have to be honest, whoever taught her how to punch did a very efficient job. It was probably Colby. He’s meticulous with everything he does, and I assume he would approach teaching his sister self-defense the same way.
“Whoa there, tiger,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Oh my gosh, Seth!” she exclaims as she shakes out her hand and then clutches it in her other hand. She looks at her knuckles and winces before clutching her hand again.
“Are you okay?” I ask her. I press on my cheek a little with my fingertips, and the pain is intense. That’s going to bruise. I think it might turn into a black eye. The guys at work are going to harass me when I tell them Hannah did it.