Page 31 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

Then I snap my ponytail elastic hard enough to sting and file the whole thing under never.

The blue thing with the buttons says nothing, which is why I put it on.

Then I take it off and put the green one on anyway.

"You have a rule," I tell the mirror.

The mirror does not care. The mirror is busy watching me fix my hair for the third time.

Rule one: thirteen weeks, then gone. Rule two: nothing you can't pack in an hour. Rule three: you leave first. It's tidier. I recite them like my mama used to recite Bible verses, right before she did the exact opposite of every one of them.

I grab my keys and go before the mirror can say anything smart.

***

The Wagon Wheel sits out past the feed store, a low wood building with a gravel lot and a neon sign missing its G. Owen's truck is already there. Early. Interesting. He kept a whole diner full of gossips waiting on Sunday, but tonight the man beat me here by a country mile. Somebody's making a point.

He's in a booth by the window. Clean shirt. Damp hair. He stands up when he sees me, and he does not pull out my chair, and I can see it costing him.

"Learned your lesson," I say.

"Wrote it on my hand." He shows me his palm. There's actually ink there. DON'T, in block letters.

I laugh before I can stop it. He looks pleased with himself, which should be annoying.

It is a little annoying. It's also a little something else.

We order. I order for me. He orders for him. Nobody dies. The waitress, a girl named Charlene who has definitely already texted somebody that we're here, brings sweet tea and a basket of fries big enough to require a permit.

"So," he says.

"So."

"You gonna throw that tea on me?"

"Night's young."

And there it is. His mouth does the thing. It's not a smile, exactly. It's the ghost of one, the outline where a smile used to live, and I want to trace it, and I put a fry in my mouth instead.

Here's the problem with Owen Peterson when he forgets to be mad.

He's funny.

Not trying-funny. Dry-funny, the kind that sneaks up sideways. He tells me about the probies at the station, how one of them waxed the pole so good that Tater came down it like a greased pig at the county fair and hasn't lived it down since. He does Tater's voice. He does the chief's voice, and it's so dead-on I choke on my tea.

And when I tell him about Dwayne Pruitt and the fishhook, and Dwayne's follow-up visit for the second fishhook, in the same thumb, Owen laughs.

Out loud. A real one. It cracks out of him like it surprised him on the way up, and he looks almost embarrassed by it, like the sound belongs to somebody he used to be.

I stare. He stares back.

"What," he says.

"Nothing. Didn't know you could do that."

"Do what?"

"Sound like a person."