Page 55 of Firecracker

He had to get the subject off his love life. Too bad Mom wasn’t interested in his job at all. “Remember Arden Lennox?”

Shit, why had he brought up Arden? He cut a piece of roast beef with his knife and fork.

“Yes…Jamie’s sister. Didn’t her husband die?”

“Yeah. She just moved back to Chicago. She moved into the empty apartment in our building.”

“Oh, that’s nice. How is she doing? What a sad thing, to be a widow so young.”

“She’s doing okay. I think Jamie’s glad that she’s closer now so he can help out.”

“Jamie’s a smart boy.”

“Yep.”

Mom admired Jamie and the success he’d made of his business. “Maybe Jamie can convince you to go back to college. Look how he’s done.”

Tyler’s chest tightened. They’d had this discussion so many times. “I’m not going back to college. Not full-time anyway. I took some courses to help me do better on the lieutenant’s exam.”

Momhadbeen happy he’d obtained top marks on the exam. “I just think you could be doing something better with your life. Something with more of a future.”

“I want a future with the fire department, Mom. Everyone I work with is dedicated to this profession. Willing to risk our lives to help others.” He met her eyes.

Her face tightened and she dropped her gaze. “I know.”

“And like I said, I plan to move up. Also, I’m not into a nine-to-five kind of job. I like the flexibility.”

She was never going to get it. She was never going to get that he wasn’t going to be the one to live up to her hopes and dreams, the hopes and dreams that had been shattered when her daughter had died.

His parents had never blamed him for Tara’s death. Not overtly, anyway. But he’d felt the survivor guilt. The feeling that if he hadn’t been hanging out playing basketball after school, Tara wouldn’t have been walking home alone that day.

They’d never really gotten over that, and he’d become the focus of their world. The one they pinned all their aspirations on. The one they’d pushed to do more, to do better, to get into a good college, to have a career and a beautiful, perfect girlfriend that he’d marry, and to give them beautiful, perfect grandchildren.

For years, he’d tried to be that guy. He’d tried to do everything he could to make them happy. To make up for them losing their daughter. He’d worked hard at school and did okay, but never got top marks. He’d taken courses that would get him into college. He’d won science fair awards, mostly thanks to Jamie, and basketball championships, mostly thanks to the guys who’d been the real athletes. He’d gotten into college, but when Dad had died, it had been a good reason to drop out. He needed to start making money, not spending their money on tuition for courses he hated.

But in doing that, he felt he’d let his mom down…again.

* * *

There was a saying about how people would accept any kind of check except a reality check.

Today was Arden’s reality check.

She was feeling pretty good about how things were going. She had a nice place to live, she was with her brother, she had a new friend and had reconnected with an old friend. She had a job she enjoyed (mostly) and even though it didn’t pay much, she’d managed to save up a little.

She also had a hot, single man who was interested in her and who wasn’t giving up.

That was both gratifying and terrifying. And exciting.

She’d been thinking about Tyler and the things he’d said when he’d dropped her off at work, although she hadn’t seen him since. She felt…alive. Aware. Energetic.

She hadn’t been working out, other than the pole dancing class, which had definitely exposed her lack of fitness. Back in Phoenix, before Michael had died, she’d belonged to a fashionable gym where she’d gone five days a week to do yoga, barre, circuit training, or Exalt, a trendy new class that combined restorative movement and meditation with strength and cardio training. Sitting in front of her laptop in her little apartment researching gyms in Chicago quickly informed her that even a low-cost gym membership was outside her budget.

Okay, so no more barre classes. She could stay fit without spending a lot of money. More Google searching brought up a bunch of YouTube videos on workouts you could do at home with no equipment. And, she could run. Running just required a good pair of shoes and some shorts.

She had some workout clothes, but the other day she’d noticed her favorite leggings had holes worn in the inner thigh seams. And the shoes she had weren’t going to work for running on city sidewalks. She’d go shopping today. Also, she badly needed a haircut. Her ends were embarrassingly dry and fizzy.

This required more googling, to find a salon nearby. She really needed a good keratin treatment to tame the frizz, but that was probably out of the question. She couldn’t spend four hundred dollars on her hair. So the salon on North Wabash was out of the question.

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