A Firefighter in Her Stocking

“You say that as if you think I don’t know that.” Anger laced his words. “You think I don’t? I lived it every single day. It doesn’t matter now.”

“Sure it does. You’re still living it.” She said the words softly, but they echoed around the room as if she’d screamed them from a speaker phone.

Jude opened his mouth to say more, but his cellphone rang.

It wasn’t a normal ring but the specially programmed one that she’d never heard but which he’d warned her about. It meant there was an emergency that required him to get to the fire hall as soon as possible.

He pulled his phone out, glanced at it as if he considered ignoring the call, which surprised her, but then let out a resigned sigh as he touched the screen to answer.

Which was just as well.

There was no reason for him to ignore the call. He was in love with a ghost and Sarah couldn’t compete with a dead woman. Competing with the beauty queens he usually dated had been intimidating enough. Competing with the memory of lovely Nina Davenport, well, that didn’t even tempt.

Jude loved Nina.

Those three little words summarized everything. There was nothing else that needed to be said. Or done.

He hung up his phone. “I’ve got to go, but this conversation isn’t over.”

He was wrong. It was over.

They were over.

He was in love with another woman.

Maybe that wouldn’t matter to some women, but it mattered to Sarah. She wasn’t going to have sex with a man, have a relationship of any kind with a man, knowing that he loved another woman, that he’d given his heart to a woman who hadn’t even wanted it, and that Sarah would always be second best, if she was even that.

Maybe when she’d started this she’d had no real expectations from him, but over the past few weeks, expectations had sprouted roots and blossomed. Expectations that, no matter how much she hoped and prayed, could never be met because the man she’d fallen for loved a woman who would never grow old, would never falter or mess up, because she was eternalized in his mind as the perfect woman. Even in real life, Nina had been as close to that as a living breathing woman came.

Sarah couldn’t compete with that. She wouldn’t.

Better to cut her losses now and move on before she became so entangled with Jude that she couldn’t function without him, before every warning her mother had ever preached came to be.

He must have seen that truth in her eyes, because rather than leave he hesitated. “Sarah, I—”

“Please, don’t.” She stopped him. “There’s no need. We both got what we wanted and there’s nothing more that needs to be said. Not from you and not from me.”

“I disagree. I—”

“You need to go,” she reminded him. “Goodbye.”

They both knew she meant for more than just the moment.

Still, he hesitated, then seemed to accept the reality of whether it was now or Christmas, as he’d previously suggested, they would be saying goodbye. Apparently he agreed now was as good a time as any, because he nodded.

“If that’s how you feel. Bye, Sarah.”

With that, he left. No goodbye kiss, no hug, no “It’s been fun”, nothing. Just bye.

Sarah stared at the door, waiting for the tears, waiting for the misery to rip at her chest and tear her to bits. It was coming. She could feel it.

Oh, she’d survive. She’d move on. She’d go back to her rather mundane existence, but on the inside she’d never be quite the same.

Thinking Manhattan would forever be changed as well, she walked over to her floor-to-ceiling view of the city, meaning to stare out, to draw comfort from what usually filled her with inner peace, but instead her reflection in the glass caught her eye.

The reflection that was very different from that of the drab woman who’d done her best to blend into the background a mere three weeks ago.

No, she would not go back to her mundane existence.