The Firefighter Who Rescues Me

Chapter 2 ♚ The Angel

The drive from Edmonton to the small town of Silver Grove wasn't a long and winding one. Yet, I felt like I was in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Sometimes the sky here felt so vast, so infinite, that it was hard to fathom I was in the same planet as my hometown with its cloying heat, labyrinth of streets teeming with cars and people everywhere you went. Here, I felt alone and small under a sky so blue, driving through a scenery taken straight out of a fairy tale with sprawling mountains and green fields dotted with trees.

I rolled the window down and breathed in the fresh air that portended rain. God, I missed the smell of smog and sweat in the air of my Maracaibo. What I wouldn't give to breathe it in once more. But that was where he was. And wherever he breathed, I couldn't.

Shaking my head to dissipate the memories, I pulled onto the shoulder of the road and rang my sister. These days she was busy with a husband, kids, and a job that consumed her every waking minute, but as she'd done for the past six years, Cata picked up the phone almost on the first ring.

"Ya llegaste?"

"Nah, I needed a breather." Immediately upon saying this, a blood-curling screech echoed from the other side. I knew the source right away. "Why's Gabriela acting up?"

My twin sighed. "Her dad just refused to let her keep watching Peppa Pig."

"Atta boy, that'll rot her brains."

"Yeah, but the problem is that if she's not watching Peppa she gets like this. It's a no-win situation." After a break she added, "I'm going to give you some advice for free: don't have kids."

"It's okay, I'm not planning to." Having kids meant that I needed to find their papa, and that wasn't something I was interested in.

Cata didn't press the topic, rather she shifted gears to different one. "Are you sure you want to do this? It's a big move for you."

The groan bubbled up my throat until it finally came out. "We've talked about this already."

It had started out by her asking if I was crazy, which devolved into a solid five minutes of her apologizing. The fact I saw a shrink regularly didn't mean I was crazy, she reasoned. After getting past that, the conversation became even rockier. The topic of men made it hard to skirt around the one that had brought about my bone-deep dislike of the male half of the human race.

Once, a few years ago, I admitted to Gina that sometimes I saw a little bit of him in every guy's face. A customer would have the same eyebrows as him. A pedestrian would have the same hair color. Or someone at a store would have a voice so similar that it sent shivers down my spine and rendered my entire body useless. Twice I'd been fired for getting full blown panic attacks in the middle of work because of men that reminded me of him. Even without them looking at me. Or touching me. Or speaking to me.

"I'm just saying, maybe you can find some shock therapy that won't be so shocking—ya va, espérate."

Then there was silence at the end of her line for a moment until she finally told her daughter, in Spanish, that if she didn't stop the tantrum she would have to face the chancla. I cringed as though it were mami threatening me with a good paliza. Somehow Cata had developed The Voice already, the one that made all kids cower and made all grown-ass adults feel like kids in trouble. I felt for her husband.

"That girl, she's just like her dad. They always want my attention," she said when she came back. "Anyway, I'm just worried about you. It won't be easy to be surrounded by men all the time."

Technically I'd already been. A lot, if not most, of fast food customers were guys. Most of my coworkers had been guys, too. And then there was Jean. He'd lived under the same roof as Alina and I for a couple of years already and I never saw a trace of him in Jean's face.