Firefighter's Virgin

“It’s my birthday,” Billy said. “And my parents wanted to take me out, and I thought what better place to come to than my favorite bar in the world, especially if there was the chance of running into you. Sit, join us.”

“That would be lovely,” his mother said, smiling. “Billy’s told us a lot about you.”

“He has?”

“Well, just that I happened to meet one of the nicest, funniest girls I think I’ve ever met before,” Billy said. He paused. “And that I hoped she wouldn’t turn me down when I asked her if she’d like to go out with me.” He grinned.

There were a couple of ways I c

ould play this. I could agree to go out with him, because he was nice and we did get along, and I knew that would make him happy, but I knew I would never like him the same way he liked me. Or, I could tell him no, that I wasn’t interested in dating anyone right now, yet that would leave the door open to some time in the future. “I’m actually seeing someone,” I said. I knew that pretending that Ian and I were still together was not going to help me get over him any faster, but I also didn’t want Billy to start thinking that I was available. Part of me thought that it was presumptive to even be thinking that, but then I kept thinking to what Caroline had said about him wanting to take me to his parents’ summer house. If I could avoid that whole conversation altogether, it would be a good thing. What sucked was that I actually did enjoy hanging out with Billy, and getting to go with him to his parents’ summer house would probably be a lot of fun—if it was understood that it was a friends-only sort of thing.

“You are?” Billy said, his gaze going from me to his father. “You’re seeing someone?”

“Yes,” I said. I saw Billy look at his dad again, and then his dad and his mother exchanged looks. I was getting a weird feeling, all of a sudden, like there was something going on that everyone but me was privy to. I looked at Billy. “I’m sorry if that wasn’t what you were expecting to hear.”

“Oh,” his mother said after a moment had passed and Billy didn’t say anything. “We were under the impression that you were single.”

“I’m not quite sure what gave you that impression,” I said. “I don’t remember us talking about this before or anything.”

“Well . . .” Billy glanced at his father, who was looking at me closely, as though he were trying to detect whether or not I was lying about seeing someone. I didn’t care, though, if he had the world’s greatest bullshit detector and he knew that I wasn’t telling the truth. “I see. I didn’t realize that—”

“It’s not Ian Roubideaux, is it?” his father asked.

Inwardly, I flinched at the sound of his name, but I tried to keep my composure. “Yes,” I said. “It is.”

His father gave me a gentle smile. “Last I heard of it, Ian wasn’t involved with anyone. Or maybe it was that he was involved with several someones. He’s that kind of guy, you know. Man about town.”

“I didn’t realize you knew him,” I said stiffly.

“Of course I know him; he technically works for me.”

“He owns his own business. He doesn’t work for you.”

Billy’s father smiled. “Let me rephrase that: I am one of his biggest clients.”

“So that means you know about his love life?”

“I know about a lot of things. Something else I know is that my son is a good man and—”

“Dad,” Billy said, a mortified expression on his face. “I thought you told me that you had talked to him—”

“Ian?” I interrupted. “Are you saying you got your dad to talk to Ian?” The realization hit me—and of course, it was so obvious now. That had been the impetus for Ian’s sudden decision that we just stop seeing each other. I knew there had to be something more, that I wasn’t getting the whole story.

“Daisy,” Billy said, turning to me, “I’m sorry, I know it probably seems really weird that my father would talk to Ian.”

I stared at him. “Um, yeah, that’s putting it mildly.”

“We’ve known Ian a while,” he continued, as though that somehow made it okay. “He and I went to school together.”

“Yeah, I think he might have mentioned that. But what does that have to do with the fact that you got your father to talk to with Ian, and basically made him break up with me?”

“I didn’t realize the two of you were together,” Billy said. “I mean, he had mentioned that you guys were sort of seeing each other, but . . . well . . . knowing Ian, and his past . . . he’s always seeing someone. Or that’s how he used to be anyway.”

“I see. So you figured I was just another disposable name on Ian’s list.” It occurred to me as I said it that I thought I had been too, for a little while, but I knew that wasn’t really the case. “And I know Ian,” I said. “Why would he just do what you told him to? That doesn’t even make any sense. He’s not the type of person that you can just tell him what to do and he’ll go along with it.”

“You’re right,” Billy’s father said. “He’s really not. That’s something that I’ve respected about him all these years, too. But . . . there are a few things one could say to him that he’d have reason to go along with.”

“Like what?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “What did you say to him?”