Page 23 of From Nowhere

“Can’t she be both?”

“No.” I smirk. “When will she be here?”

“Any minute.”

I laugh. “Thanks for the short notice. She’s going to have to deal with my messy bathroom mirror. Is Will awake?”

“He didn’t come home last night.” Fitz scrubs the hell out of the toilet. His fiancée, Jamie, loves a clean house. When she lived here full time, she was the cleaning drill sergeant.

“Are we worried that he’s been in a car accident, or are we happy he got laid?” I ask.

“Nah, we would have heard about an accident by now. He probably stayed at the firehouse to make us think he got laid.”

I giggle. “You’re so mean.”

The front door creaks open.

“She’s here,” I whisper, eyes wide.

Fitz stands, drops the toilet brush into the bucket of supplies, and quickly washes his hands. “Why don’t you make yourself scarce for an hour or two?”

“Why?”

He glances up at my reflection in the mirror and smirks. “It’s about to get loud.”

I roll my eyes. “Why don’t you have your loud sex in the shed?”

“My bed is bigger.”

The creaky stairs alert us to Jamie’s proximity.

“There’s my BFF!” I meet her at the top of the stairs with a bear hug. Jamie’s a travel nurse, enjoying the rest of her twenties and the opportunity to explore new places before marrying Fitz and starting a family. They spend most of the winter together; then she takes assignments when it’s fire season. But she agreed to a six-week position at a psych hospital in Seattle before the start of fire season because the pay was too good to pass up.

And because I like to make my friends squirm, I keep a firm hold on Jamie, knowing she’s dying to be in Fitz’s arms and his bed after six weeks apart.

Fitz pries her from my hold.

Jamie giggles. “Missed you, too, Maren. How have—”

Fitz smashes his mouth to hers, hands tangled in her long black hair, a few inches longer than when I met her.

She moans, and he walks her backward into his bedroom and kicks the door shut. Then the door makes athunksound like something hit it.

She did. He’s going to screw her against the door before they make it to the bed.

I don’t plan on standing this close to the bedroom, listening to their loud sex, but I take a few seconds to envy that kind of passion. No one thought Fitz would ever marry or attempt a committed relationship. The firefighter profession, in general, doesn’t have a great track record with long-lasting relationships.

“Oh god, Fitz ...” Jamie moans.

Suppressing a grin, I jog down the stairs to grab a coffee.

When I’m half-caffeinated and under a blanket on the sofa, I text Ozzy since he hasn’t texted me. Not that he needed to, but it’s nice to get a follow-up after a date if it was a good one.

I know scavenging for chickens wasn’t the dream date, but I hope he gave me points for originality.

Maren: G-morning

I start to vomit a long message about how much fun I had last night despite Reagan and his chickens, but I delete everything except the basic good morning.

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