Page 63 of The Fireman and the Flirt

“I should’ve known. Your fingers do have the magic touch, whether at the gas station or on my—hello there!” Cary’s face went white. I followed his eyeline to my daughter standing behind me.

“Hi,” she said awkwardly. I stepped away from Cary and tried to keep a stern look on my face that gave nothing away.

“You must be Jolene!” Cary’s high-pitched voice only added to the weirdness. “I’m Cary. My name is Cary. I’m your dad’s real estate….something.”

“Agent,” I said.

“I decided on Cheetos.” She handed me a bottle of water and a bag of chips.

“Do you know that the Frito-Lay company has a giant mechanical mouth that tests the crunchiness of their chips?” Cary’s smile was so big that it was about to fall off the sides of his face.

I put a calming hand on his shoulder. “Thanks, Cary.”

“I’m gonna go pump gas.” Cary hooked the nozzle to his gas tank. He shot me a quick apologetic look for his verbal disaster.

“I say we just go home,” Jolene said to me. “It’s a clear night. We should be able to see something.”

“Are you going stargazing?” Cary popped his head to our side of the vestibule.

“We are,” I said.

“You should try Renegade Park. There’s a hill there that would probably be a great place to look at stars.”

I remembered Cary mentioning the spot in our initial meeting. Jolene turned to me, intrigued by the idea. “That could be fun,” she said.

“I remember going there on summer nights and just staring up at the sky. I was never good at picking out constellations, but I liked that feeling of infiniteness.” Cary shrugged.

“When you look up, everything feels so vast,” Jolene said.

“Exactly!”

“Let’s do it. Renegade Park.” I nodded.

Cary returned the gas nozzle and turned on his car. The sounds of Taylor Swift flooded from his speakers.

“You’re a Swiftie?” Jolene asked.

“Yes. Technically. So here’s what happened,” Cary began, and I loved that he had a story for everything, including this. “I would hear her songs on the radio or out and about, and I liked them. But I never actively sought her music out. And then my cousin who lives in DC got tickets to her latest concert on a whim. She was supposed to go with her friend, but her friend broke her foot when her treadmill malfunctioned. She’s currently suing the manufacturer, and it’s in active litigation. Oh, and the lawyer for the treadmill company is her ex-boyfriend. It’s a whole thing. The point is, I wound up going to the concert, and it was a religious experience. I was converted into a middle-aged Swiftie.” Cary danced in place and mouthed along to whatever this song was.

“That’s so cool! I didn’t know grown men were into Taylor Swift,” she said.

“We’re out there. Taylor is an inspiration. She has been mocked and maligned her entire career for being a maneater or boy crazy, yet when male artists write songs about girls, they’re romantics. The media only wants to talk about her in relation to men in her life, but she’s persevered and refused to let them write her narrative. She’s shown everyone that she is an icon all on her own.”

After what he went through in high school, I could see how Cary found Taylor to be a beacon of light for him.

Cary kept mouthing along to the song and dancing in place, ignoring looks he was getting from people getting gas. Jolene began shuffling in place, the music slowly taking over her. He went into his car and turned up the volume.

“What are you doing?” I asked them.

Cary took Jolene’s hand and spun her around during the chorus, both of them belting out the words like they were in the shower.

“Uh, we’re in public. Let’s keep it down,” I said.

So what did they do? They sang even louder, right at me. Cary danced around me, using my body as a prop in a choreographed dance.

“We’re going to get kicked out,” I said.

“Or invited back.” Cary bopped his hip against mine. I refused to take part. “Jolene, does your dad ever dance?”

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