Page 26 of Clean Out of Luck

I glance at the clock. It’s almost noon, which means it’s almost my lunch break. I don’t have a court case this afternoon, so I’ll be able to just catch up on proofing this morning’s transcriptions.

For lunch, I’m going with one of the court clerks. I don’t know him well at all, but we’ve said hi in passing. He’s friendly and outgoing, and when he invited me to lunch this morning, he was open about saying he was going on a date with someone else tonight and wanted to know if I was okay with that.

Since I’m pretty much doing the same thing—dating a new guy every couple of days—I told him he should. We’re all just trying to find our person.

This is why I look forward to lunch with him: low-stress, low-stakes. We both already have dinner dates planned.

We walk down the street to the small delicatessen directly across from Station Seven. I want to turn and gawk at thehuge fire station, but I’m also half scared I will seehimlooking back at me through one of the big windows.

I haven’t spoken to Wade since we got coffee earlier this week. It’s been a few days, and he hasn’t texted or randomly shown up at my house, so I think our talk went well. I appreciate that he cares about my safety. I’m not going to be ungrateful for that, but I do want him to just leave me alone.

With startling clarity, I realize Liam is telling me something about his summer plans and I’m not paying attention at all. The guy is a traveler, and I admire that in a man. He likes to see something new on every trip.

“I’m sorry. Where did you say you’re going?” I ask him.

“Oh, I didn’t. I was saying that I couldn’t decide. I have a friend who’s going to Barcelona, and I’ve never been. But then my brother is going to the Big Island in Hawaii. I’ve been to Oahu but never Hawaii. What do you think?”

He looks at me with a smile, and I realize Liam is cute. I’ve never really thought about it before. We often walk by each other on our way to our little office spaces and corners at work, and we smile and say hi, but that’s it. We haven’t really interacted. We just work in the same building and sit in the same courtrooms.

I turn back to look at the sidewalk so I don’t run into something or step into oncoming traffic. The large door on the fire station begins to roll up slowly. I don’t hear any sirens or horns, so I don’t think there’s a big emergency or anything.

“Here we are,” Liam says as we reach the delicatessen.

He walks up to the door and swings it open for me to go in first. We walk into the small sandwich shop, and it smells divine. Pretty sure there’s a panini somewhere in this restaurant with my name on it.

We sit down at a table right by the window because Liam says, “I don’t want to miss any action if the fire station isgoing to roll out all the trucks. I’ve loved fire engines since I was a little kid.”

I smile back at him because it’s such a wholesome, endearing thing. I already like him ten times better than Allen.

I stare at the big open door, and Liam glances over the menu. I should probably pick up a menu and pretend to look—as if I didn’t search the online menu an hour ago and decide what I was going to order.

“I just can’t decide,” Liam says. “Maybe I should just let them surprise me with something good.”

I look at him with wide eyes. “What kind of horror are you talking about?” I tease him.

His grin grows. “It’s a fun adventure! You never know what you’ll get. And usually, most of the servers are good sports about it.”

Movement out of the corner of my eye catches my attention, and I turn to see that there are a couple of firemen walking out onto the concrete in front of the fire station. I wonder who it is. I can’t quite tell because they’re walking backwards, pointing and gesturing at something—either in the building or on the door, it’s hard to see. They finally turn to each other, and I recognize that, yes, one of them is Wade.

I lean back in my chair and watch as they gesture wildly back and forth. It almost looks like they’re arguing. I kind of wish I could crack open the window to hear what they’re saying. The other guy throws his hands in the air and walks back into the garage.

Wade plants his hands on his hips and slowly turns to face the street. Hopefully, with the sun shining, he won’t be able to see who is sitting inside the restaurant directly across from him. It’s only a two-lane road, so it’s not like there’s a big distance between us, but if the light works in my favor, he won’t know I’m sitting here staring at him.

Liam sets his menu down and looks across the street to see what I’m looking at. “Oh, hey, I met that guy! He had to come in for a court case one time—some kind of arson thing. He seems like a good guy.”

And then Liam does the unthinkable. He knocks on the window—bangs, really—and waves really big at Wade. Wade’s eyes slowly focus on the window where we are, and his face breaks out. He waves back at Liam, and then I notice his eyes shift to me.

I’m worried he’ll walk across the street once he realizes it’s me.

Hopefully, he’ll keep his distance.

His big grin turns to a scowl when he sees me. I give him a little wave, and he just shakes his head slowly as if he’s disappointed in me. My chest tightens at his expression.

Thankfully, he doesn’t walk across the street. He turns around and heads back into the fire station. I let out a breath of relief.

Liam is more intuitive than I thought, because he looks at me and says, “You know him too, don’t you?”

No sense in lying. So I tell him, “Yeah, he and my brother are friends. That’s Wade Hendrix.”

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