Page 1 of Things You Save in a Fire

One

THE NIGHT Ibecame the youngest person—and the only female ever—to win the Austin Fire Department’s valor award, I got propositioned by my partner.

Propositioned.

At the ceremony. In the ballroom. During dinner.

By my partner.

There we all were, the entire B-shift from Station Eleven, in our dress uniforms, using salad forks—and there I was, in my crisscross tie, getting more and more nervous at the prospect of having to walk up on that stage in front of all those people under all those lights. The winter before, a busload of schoolchildren had slid off an icy road into a ravine, and I had climbed inside to push the kids out through a window, one by one, as the water rose. That’s why we were here. The newspapers were calling me the School Bus Angel.

And Hernandez, of all people, chose this moment to hit on me.

Hernandez, my partner of three years. Hernandez, who I’d never once thought of that way. Hernandez, who was so perfectly, mechanically handsome that he didn’t even register as handsome anymore.

He was like a Latino firefighting Ken doll—so bizarrely perfect, he wasn’t even real. He lifted weights, and flossed, and preened, and he used his washboard stomach and perfectly aligned white teeth to snare more unsuspecting ladies than I could count. He wasn’t just in our department’s calendar—he was on the cover. Picture-perfect Hernandez, the last guy on earth I would ever think of as anything other than a health-food-eating, CrossFit-training ladies’ man, leaned over close to my ear, right there at the banquet table, and asked me to spend the night with him.

“Maybe tonight’s the night,” he said.

I kept chewing. I honestly didn’t see it coming. “Tonight’s the night for what?”

He looked at me like,Duh.“To finally do something about all that sexual tension.”

I looked around to see if the other guys had heard him.

He had to be joking.

Somebody had to be making a video, or taking a photo, or poised to jump out and start laughing. There was no way this was anything but an epic firehouseCandid Cameraprank. I surveyed the rest of the crew. Pranksters all.

But everybody was just sawing away at their chicken.

I decided to call Hernandez’s bluff. “Okay,” I said. “Great idea.”

He lifted his eyebrows and looked delighted. “Really?”

I gave him a look like,Come on. “No. Not really.”

“I’m serious,” he said, leaning closer.

“You’re not.”

He gave me a look like,And who are you to judge?

I gave one back like,You know exactly who I am.Then I said, “You’re never serious about anything. Especially women.”

“But you’re not a woman. You’re a firefighter.”

“Yet another reason I’d never go home with you.”

“I think you want to.”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“Deep down.”

“Nope.”

“I could dare you,” Hernandez said.

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