I pulled up the photo he’d texted me, the timed selfie of him spraying the hose on the ambulance. Holden was fully clothed in his uniform in the photo, but somehow the picture made all of my systems go haywire just the same. It was his easy stance, the lean perfection of his strong body under the navy blue, the line of his shoulders. I recognized him as the Holden I’d known, yet he was also different. He’d been a boy when I knew him before, but this photo was of a man.
A man who thought I was sexy.
I loved my romance novels, but when I read them, I assumed that what was in them couldn’t happen in real life. But what if it could? Was that even possible?
I put the phone away and went back to work, wondering when I would see him again.
Twelve
Holden
“Come out with me Saturday night,” Eric said.
Eric, Grim, and I were at headquarters, taking a brief break between calls. Our shifts had been crazy lately—there had been staffing shortages, but there had never been a shortage of emergency calls. I loved my job and I was happy to do it, even the tough parts, but I was starting to get sick of these four walls.
Saturday night was the first weekend evening I’d had off in weeks, and if I could manage it, I wanted to spend it with Mina, telling her the truth.
“Can’t,” I told Eric. “I’m making plans.”
“Cancel them,” Eric said. He was lying on the weight bench we kept at headquarters, pressing weights and grunting. “We need a guys’ night.”
“We don’t need a guys’ night,” Grim said from his place at a table where he was sorting the supplies for one of the emergency kits. “I see you guys all the time, at work and at home. What we need is an anyone-but-these-guys night.”
I snorted, then turned back to the computer I was working on, doing charts. “Grim is right. I’m practically married to you two as it is.”
“I’m not inviting Grim,” Eric said. “He’s working.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Grim said. “And I switched shifts, so I’m not working Saturday.”
“You’re still not invited,” Eric said.
“I just said I wouldn’t come, even if I was.”
This kind of bickering was our usual style, and I tuned them out when my phone rang in my pocket. I felt a pang of dread when I saw that it was my mother. I stood and went through the door to the kitchen so the guys couldn’t hear me. “What’s the matter, Mom?” I asked when I answered the call.
“Holden,” my mother said, “I think it’s time you came for a visit.”
That was it. No How are you or Am I bothering you or Are you working or Should I call some other time since you might be saving lives. She was just centered on herself, as usual.
“I told you last time, I can’t,” I said. “I’m busy working.”
“Take a vacation,” she said. “You must have some time due. I have a spare room. You could come and spend some time with me.”
My mother lived in Colorado now. She hadn’t remarried, though she had dated a few men. My father had taken a job in California, where he was living in a new house with his new wife, as if he could leave the entire lifetime he spent with us behind. “It isn’t that easy,” I told my mother. “I can’t just drop everything and take time off. It isn’t easy for my bosses to get a replacement for my shifts.”
“Driving an ambulance?” She sounded petulant. “They can’t find someone else to drive an ambulance with all of those people in New York City?”
I felt my jaw clench. It wasn’t that my mother didn’t know what my true job was—she did. I knew she did. It was that she refused to face it. Driving the ambulance was definitely part of my job, but there was a lot more, too. It was as if my mother thought pretending I was an ambulance driver instead of an EMT would take away the sting of me leaving home, not becoming a lawyer or a politician or an athlete like she and Dad had wanted. As if pretending could erase all of the bad things that had broken our family apart long before I came to New York, long before we all went our separate ways. “No,” I said, my voice tight with irritation. “They can’t find someone else to drive the ambulance. Okay?”
“I think you’re making excuses,” my mother said. “You can never come visit. I’m alone here, Holden. All alone.”
“You’re fine,” I said. “You work part time, you volunteer, and you’re a member of a dozen different clubs. You and your girlfriends just got back from a Vegas trip. You’re hardly isolated.”
“But I don’t have you,” she pointed out. “My own son. I need to see you sometimes.”
Maybe she believed that, but I still wasn’t coming. I had no desire to see Colorado.
“I can’t, Mom,” I said. “I live in New York now. I work here. I can’t drop everything every time you think you need me. Besides, if you want to see me, you can always come to New York to visit.”
“Oh.” She sounded dubious, just like I knew she would. “New York is so big. And expensive. And dirty. You know I don’t like big cities.”
We would be locked in this pattern forever, my mother and me. We didn’t really want to visit each other, even though we knew we were supposed to. There was too much history behind us, too much baggage. We’d always do this—make excuses, hurt each other’s feelings, avoid seeing each other in person. Our family was in ruins, and everything hurt too much. We just couldn’t admit it.
The alarm went off, telling us we had a call, and it was one of the few times I was actually grateful that someone, somewhere, had probably gotten hurt. “We have an emergency, Mom,” I said. “I have to go.” I hung up before she could say anything else.
What did that say about me, that I’d rather go patch up a stranger’s trauma than deal with my own family?
Thirteen
Mina
It was Hamilton’s fault. Eight months ago, I’d sprung the maximum money I could afford from my paycheck and bought a solo ticket for Hamilton, the show I was dying to see. The ticket was for this Saturday night, the only Saturday night Holden had had off in weeks.
That was how I ended up in Central Park at ten o’clock on Friday night walking and sipping hot chocolate with Holden. It was the only time we were both free. I’d had a vocal class after work on Friday, and Holden had to work at six o’clock Saturday morning. I was starting to see that Holden and I had a scheduling problem.
Normally I wouldn’t walk Central Park after dark, even though the paths were lit and there were still tourists out. But with a tall, muscled EMT as my companion, it didn’t feel quite so risky.
“What are you thinking?” Holden asked as I frowned over my cup of chocolate.
“That if someone mugged us right now, you could probably beat them up,” I said. “Or at least chase them.”
Holden looked around at the busker playing a violin, the man offering horse-drawn carriage rides, the other couples taking a romantic walk. He was wearing jeans, a dark blue hoodie, and a buttoned wool coat, and he had that dusting of dark beard on his chin that made me swoony. “A mugging doesn’t look likely, but if it happens I’ll do my best.”