Page 2 of Small City Heart
“Oh, sorry, son. Didn’t expect anyone to be standing there,” the guy said.
“It’s his own fault, Dan,” Patrick’s mom called across the room. “Standing right in front of the door like a lump.”
A group of firefighters filed in behind Dan. They were all wearing SCFD T-shirts and navy pants and fuzzing up Patrick’s brain with hormones. His hormones, not theirs.
God, was there anything better than a man in uniform? The woman was hot too. And familiar.
“Suzy Michaels?” Patrick said.
She jumped out of her chair. “Pattie Pearl! Holy crap, your hair.” She gave him a hug, and he laughed. People commenting on his hair, which he was embarrassingly vain about, was pretty normal. It was long.
“You’re a firefighter?Dang.” He squeezed her biceps. She was jacked. They’d been in band together, and she’d been a slip of a thing back then.
“Carting that tuba around did me good.”
“I’d say.”
“You’re here for the Alumni Weekend, right? I’m on shift on Friday, but I’ll be at all the other stuff. I’d love to hear all about your life, you city slicker!” Suzy said.
Uneasiness hit him in the chest. He hadn’t exactly been thriving as a city slicker recently, but he smiled and nodded along with her anyway, happy to see someone who hadn’t completely shunned him in high school.
His mom appeared at his shoulder and said hello to the group. Patrick got the impression they were regulars. She hadn’t asked for their drink orders before bringing them lemonade and tea.
“Where’s Charlie?” his mom asked Dan, who seemed to be the leader at the table.
“Ah, the kid’s out there eyeing that motorcycle. It’s illegally parked.”
Patrick’s head snapped up. “What?”
He whipped around to see out the front window of the diner, and sure enough, there was a man leaning against his bike, which wasnotillegally parkedthank you very much.Patrick had parked in that spot since he was fifteen.
The man, though. The man was what really caught Patrick’s eye.
Charlie.
Charles North.
Patrick walked toward the door as if in a fog. Charlie had been voted Mr. Congeniality of their graduating class—popular, friendly, athletic, smart. Everyone had loved him, but Charlie had avoided Patrick like the plague. Charlie had never been outwardly rude—he wasn’t a bully by any means—but he hadn’t been the bubbly, kind kid he was to everyone else either. The cold shoulder was strange enough for Patrick to have noticed.
Of course, it was easy to notice Charlie North. He drew eyes in every room he walked into. He had as a teenager, and the effect was more jarring as an adult because that boy had grown into one hunk of a firefighter.
“That’s my bike,” Patrick said when the diner door slammed behind him.
A weird smile flitted across Charlie’s face. “I know. I recognized it.”
That was enough to make Patrick’s brain explode. He’d had the bike since high school. It was his baby.
Some of his friends had cats. He had Blue.
Charlie continued to lean against Blue like a goddamn 1950s movie poster. “Do you remember me?” he asked as Patrick drew closer. “We went to high school together.”
“No,” Patrick lied. It felt better to lie than to admit he could have picked Charlie out of a crowd of a thousand. The last ten years had been kind to him.
The prick.
Patrick scowled. People like Charlie North were supposed to peak in high school then fade into obscurity, not strut around in tight firefighter T-shirts, popping muscles at the unsuspecting public.
The giant prick!
