Page 8 of Honeyfires

She stared at me for a moment. "That's the hottest thing anyone has ever said to me in a diner. Anywhere, even. Top five, possibly top three. I'll need to review the full list, but preliminary numbers are looking strong for you."

I stared at her. "You have a list."

"Everyone has a list."

"Of the hottest things people have said to them."

"Of impressive things, generally. I'm very organized." She smoothed the edge of her napkin with perfect composure. "Library science."

The waitress arrived to refill our coffee, looked between us, and left without a word. Smart woman.

"Do you like it?" Vera asked. "The job."

"It's not about liking it." I picked at my fries. "It's about purpose. Knowing what you do matters when the day's over. I did two Army tours before this, came back and still needed something that felt real."

She nodded, not pushing for more, not pulling back from it either. No pity in her eyes. Just concerned, genuine understanding, the kind that doesn't rush, that lets a thing be what it is. I hadn't expected that from someone who named her car after a flower.

"Do people ever actually understand the danger?" she asked. "Not the calendar-photo version. The real version."

I looked up. "The what version."

"You know." She gestured vaguely. "The hot firefighter calendar. It's a whole genre."

"It is absolutely not—" I stopped. "How do you know about the calendars?"

"Everyone knows about the calendars, Petra."

"I don't—I'm not—"

"Are you in one?"

"No."

"You answered that very fast."

"Because the answer is no."

"There was no hesitation, which is suspicious, because an innocent person would need a moment to even consider the question—"

"I am not in a firefighter calendar."

"Okay." She picked up a fry. "But just so you know, if you were, I would absolutely buy it. For the library. As a community resource."

I stared at her. "As a community resource."

"Educational." She nodded serenely. "Fire safety awareness. Very important."

"You would put a sexy firefighter calendar in a public library."

"In the reference section." She took a bite of her fry. "Under local community resources. Completely dignified."

I looked at the ceiling for a moment. The ceiling of Rosie's had a water stain shaped vaguely like my mother's pug/beagle mix, which my mother said was a Puggle (look it up), named Bozo. I had noticed it five years ago and was noticing it again now.

"You're a little weird," I said.

"Oh, it is fully intentional." She leaned forward, the florescent diner lighting catching the gold in her hair. "So. The helicopter. Walk me through it. You get the call, and then what happens?"

So I told her. And she listened intently, like she'd never been part of a more interesting conversation. The kind of listening that made you hear what you were actually saying for the first time. I told her about the rappel, about reading a fire's behavior from altitude, about the way you learned to watch the wind move through a tree line like a sentence you had to translate fast or something went wrong. She asked smart questions, specific ones, the kind that meant she was actually tracking what I was saying rather than waiting for her turn to speak.