Page 44 of The Fireman and the Flirt

An envelope addressed to me.

“Oooh, is that how you passed notes back in the day? Very formal,” Jolene had said. “And it’s unopened.”

I carefully ripped open the sealed envelope and unfolded the yellowed piece of notebook paper. I got a few sentences in before I realized I couldn’t read this in front of my daughter.

“What is it?” Jolene was in front of me, still thinking it was a fun note passed during class. “Someone asking to borrow your portable CD player?”

“Something like that,” I said with a strained laugh. I slipped the note in my pocket, where it burned a very hot hole.

When we got home that night, as soon as Jolene went to bed, I retreated to my makeshift bedroom and read the letter in full.

Then I read it again.

Cary hadn’t written me a letter defending Cal from my brotherly teasing. He’d had a crush on me all during high school, and he wanted to shoot his shot before he lost his courage. That part was sweet. But then the letter went into confessing all theverydirty things he wanted me to do to him should I feel the same way. It was actually impressive what he wrote considering this was back when porn could only be accessed via dial-up internet or deciphering scrambled channels on cable. He certainly had a vivid imagination.

How would teenage Derek have reacted back then? I didn’t know. But fortysomething Derek found himself rock fucking hard. Fortysomething Derek had to rub one out before going to bed.

And now fortysomething Derek was face-to-face with Cary, whose face had gone stark white.

“You found it,” Cary said softly.

“I think when you put it in my locker, it had fallen into one of my old notebooks.” Or even worse, I’d seen the letter was from Cary and shoved it in my notebook because he barely registered for me in high school. Teenage Derek was a dipshit.

“Did you…read it?” His fingers clinging to the wall behind him, as if he were primed to make an escape.

I nodded yes.

“Oh my God.” Cary’s hands went to his mouth. He stumbled into the dining room, which was empty. He had to dodge hitting his head on the light fixture. “Oh my God.”

“Cary.”

“Oh my God.” He walked to the corner of the room and faced the wall, regaining his composure in real time.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay! Oh my God.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. Fuck, why did I have to show him the letter? Why couldn’t I have read it and forgotten about it and saved him this embarrassment?

Maybe because deep down, I wanted to talk about the letter. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, reading it in Cary’s voice, my mind going to steamy places with him, a constant, painful erection in my pants.

Since he had been the one to originally bring it up in our first meeting, he’d been thinking of it, too. Hadn’t he?

“Cary, can I be honest? I found the letter?—”

“Inappropriate.” He whipped around, the sense of panic and fear painted over with one of his wide, salesmen smiles. “It was extremely inappropriate. My teenage self was hormonal and out of control. I don’t even have a good Caryism to explain this away.”

“That’s why you were so nervous when we first met. You wondered if I’d read it.”

“If you had, you never would’ve wanted to work with me.”

“That’s not true. It was…” I wanted to say hot, but I felt that description wouldn’t go over well. I wasn’t the best with words and searched my mind for a good one. “It was funny.”

I regretted the word choice as soon as it left my lips. A quick look of soul-crushing horror flashed on Cary’s face before the salesman came back.

“Teenage Cary was quite ridiculous.”

“Funny wasn’t the right word. I admire your courage.”

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