Page 69 of Set Me On Fire

To find it empty.

Stupid firefighters went out and did things like fight fires, I guess. The guys didn’t know there was an emergency here too. I looked down at my phone then tapped out a response to Noah’s text.

Sitting down to talk would be good. Let's make a time.

That little sound the phone made when it was delivered felt like a knife to my heart, but I got into my car and started it rather than dwelling. I could meet Noah tonight at my place. Nope, neutral ground. Men took women to restaurants, banking on the fact we didn’t like to make a scene, to deliver difficult news. Maybe I could do the same. I thought of some of the suitable places we could go to on the way home. Cars were hemmed in close, peak hour traffic all around me, when I heard the noise.

Flap, flap, flap, flap, flap.

“No…” I moaned, indicating abruptly, then waving as I cut into the far lane. I found a spot outside a strip of shops that wasn’t a park, but would become one right now, because I had a flat tyre. “No, no, no…”

I had been zoned out behind the wheel, thinking about walking into my bedroom and face planting on the bed. Nope, make that face planting for an hour or two, then seeing if Noah had replied before going out for the world’s most excruciating date to break the news to him. Maybe I’d be back in time to catch my favourite TV show and drown my sorrows in a bowl of ramen. This, this was not part of the plan. I walked around the back of the car and sure enough, my tyre was losing air fast.

You’ve got this, I thought.

But I didn’t want to got this. I felt like a whiny child as I walked over to the back of the car, popping the boot open and rummaging through way too much crap to find the tyre brace, then the heavy trolley jack my dad insisted I keep in the car. I felt the feminism leaving my body as I hoisted them and the spare tyre out because I was willing to become anyone’s trad wife if they’d just take this job on for me. Instead of a knight in shining armour, I was faced with this reality. I was my father’s daughter, my brothers’ sister, so all the boys had made sure I could change a tyre.

That was no consolation at all as clouds massed above me, grey and dark. They were a perfect reflection of my mood. My low curses were drowned out by the rumble of thunder as I put the brace socket against the first nut.

The cute tailored skirt I’d put on this morning made my arse look amazing, but right now, it was a total pain in the butt, constraining my every movement. A few raindrops splattered across my unprotected back, forcing the thin fabric to stick to my skin, and as I tensed every muscle, the rain lubricated thefootpath just enough to send my heels skidding across it. My feet scrambled for purchase, my whole body strained against the brace, trying to break the hold the first tyre nut had on the wheel. But just because I knew what I had to do didn’t mean I could actually do it. My feet gave out on me, losing purchase, and right as I tried to regain it, my knee went slamming down onto the concrete.

For a moment there was only pain. Bright, hot, and cutting straight through me, past everything that happened today, yesterday, and beyond that, right down to the core. A small, shivering, miserable one apparently, because I pressed my head into the side panel of my car and recited under my breath every last swear word I knew until the pain turned from agony to just a dull, throbbing ache.

Who the hell was I kidding?

I liked to think I was a girlboss, able to tackle anything life threw at me, but look at me right now, brought to the point of tears by a bloody flat tyre. I jerked back, wincing when my knee dragged across the concrete, but in a series of limping movements, I got myself upright.

My hands were pressed against the side of my car, forced to use them to keep me up, and that’s when I stared into my back seat. It wasn’t hard to see it, a baby seat where there was just discarded gym gear, old coffee cups, and reusable shopping bags. A baby seat with a little person kicking within the confines, looking out at me, waiting for Mummy to sort the problem out. Trouble was, my mind didn’t stop there. Next to my baby was Charlie, smiling down at our child and babbling some nonsense to keep them smiling as the other two got out. Noah walked around the back, Knox, the front, and they said the words I wanted, needed to hear.

“We’ve got this.”

I didn’t need declarations nor flowery words of love, but that? That I needed like my next breath. Instead, I was forced to let a shuddering sigh out, because as I stared out at the road, watching cars whizzing by, people looked idly my way, momentary witnesses to my moment of weakness.

But not for long.

The trouble was Brock was the one that serviced my car and he and his team removed the wheels with a rattle gun, then rotated them before tightening them back up. I had no pneumatic tools in the mess of my back seat, but I did have this.

“Get the brace level and then stand on it, love,” Dad told me the day he taught me how to change a tyre. “You might get lucky and be able to break the nuts by hand, but usually you’ve gotta help them along.”

With shaky hands I’d slapped them on the roof of the car, just like I did now, using my bare feet to climb up onto the brace. The metal cross bar bit into my soles then and the same thing happened now, but with a crucial difference. Then Brock and Dad were there, cheering me on, talking me through what to do, and then I’d bounced a little on the brace, breaking the first nut.

No such luck today.

The skirt, my knee, the rain, this god awful day, they all conspired against me. I didn’t break the nut, instead letting out an ungodly shriek as I clawed at the roof, trying to stop myself from slipping backwards.

Of course, that was the moment when he drove past.

Charlie’s eyes were a curious shade of blue, I noticed that, his going as wide as mine for just a second before he abruptly veered sideways. I didn’t see why as I landed hard on my butt.

The baby!

It couldn’t be hurt, I knew that academically, but emotionally? My arms wrapped around my belly, forcing mytailbone to take the full brunt of my fall. If I thought my knee hurt, I was about to get an education on what real pain was. I sucked in a breath, then another, shuddering through the waves as I heard a door slam and boots clump against the concrete.

“Millie…?” I was trying to be the cool girl, the capable one, confident, but I felt none of that as I looked up, seeing a version of Charlie through a veil of unshed tears. “Jesus, love, what the hell were you doing?”

“Flat… tyre,” I ground out, my eyes screwed down to slits.

He looked at the car, taking in the jack, tyre and brace before glancing back at me.

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