Page 11 of Sunshine

Feeling a bit less stressed, I went back to my text messages.

Sunshine:

Apparently, Ember will buy me time to finish the *cough cough* five invoices I have left if Logan makes more Sex in a Pan.

Julian sent me some laughing emojis.

Julian:

That’s too obvious, even for me

I can make that happen, tell Ember the goods will be delivered tomorrow

In the meantime, if you want to do your invoices let’s body double and I’ll do my checklists for Wednesday

Sunshine:

We have a deal

Sometimes having someone work at the same time helped me hate it less. Julian called it body doubling, and I saw the term floating around the Internet a couple of times.

I filled out my stupid, boring, horrible invoices while Julian made occasional comments about the safety checks. I snickered to myself as he cracked jokes about how the fire hose was still fine, the water tank was still where they left it, and so on.

I got my invoices finished with a rush of relief, and even managed to finish up other boring tasks before it was time to go home.

When I got back to my cottage, I messaged Julian to see if he was free for me to call so we could play video games. He was done with his work tasks, so we both signed in online to playRace to Win. I sucked at the game, but Julian loved it, and it was an easy way to turn off my brain. The players raced around a variety of tracks from normal racetracks to the moon.

I could hear the voices of other firefighters in the background, some of them joining our game, and for a while I forgot about my worries.

Right in the middle of a race, an alarm sounded, and Julian’s voice changed from excited to calm and controlled. “We got a call, got to go.”

“Text me when you get back safely,” I said, before exiting the game and hanging up.

It was impossible to sleep that night. I tossed and turned, wondering if Julian was okay. How Luca and Logan could stand it. My phone vibrated, and I rolled over, grabbing for it.

Julian:

Back safe, gonna crash now

Sunshine:

Okay good

Sleep well.

I stared at my ceiling in the dark. We were friends, but the worry and stress I felt didn’t feel like that was all we were.

No matter how many times I told myself it would end with my heart shattered in a million pieces, I couldn’t help wanting more.

Chapter 5

Sunshine

Iwas off work the next day, so I slept in then decided to do a whole lot of nothing. My invoices were done, and most of the prep work I needed to accomplish for the next few jobs was ready to go.

Sometimes, I liked to have a lot of stuff to do at once followed by absolutely nothing. Today, not having anything to do was a curse. I didn’t have any real hobbies. I’d tried painting, crochet, clay sculpture, cooking, and all sorts of other things, but they never stuck.

Nothing kept my interest. I would fall in love with something, spend a bunch of money to get into it, and lose motivation in a few weeks.

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