Fahrenheit Read online

  “I wasn’t hiding. I was taking care of business.”

  “Right,” he chuckled. “Business that you can’t take care of elsewhere.”

  “Sex isn’t everything,” Adam snapped. “Now drop it.”

  Tully, the voice of reason in the group, most days anyway, looked up from his paper. “You love her?”

  “Maybe,” he wasn’t ready to admit anything to them just yet. He wasn’t sure himself, but when he was sure he was going to be sure to tell Eve and not the guys.

  “Either you do or you don’t.”

  “I just met her,” he stressed.

  “I knew I loved my wife from our first date. Of course it took me six months to convince her she loved me too.” He laughed. “You either know, or you don’t. Is she worth waiting around for? Because if your answer is no then you need to cut her loose before you break her heart.”

  “Listen up men,” Chief Pedington broke the uncomfortable direction of the present conversation with his boisterous voice. “The mayor wants a conference call with our house this evening. Knowing the mayor this could go on forever. So, those of you who thought you were getting off work…well, you’re not now.”

  “Why us?” A few of the men grumbled. There was no secret that the mayor was not a well-liked man around the firehouse.

  “Probably has something to do with the picture of Adam in the paper last month.” He cut Adam a look that told Adam he was not happy about having to stay late for a meeting with the mayor.

  “I didn’t ask her to put my picture on the front page.”

  “Of course he didn’t,” the guys laughed. “Yeah, we believe that one, Superstar. But it’s okay. We’re not mad at ya…”

  Adam rolled his eyes. “I didn’t.” He reaffirmed his position.

  “Whatever,” Pedington grumbled. “Seeing as though you’re dating a wedding night virgin I’m sure you don’t have any plans for tonight so I expect you to stay here for the meeting.”

  “Sir, I…”

  “You’re staying.” He rolled up a piece of paper in one hand and slapped it in the palm of the other hand. “That’s all men. You can go back to talking about whatever you were talking about.” He grinned as he left the room.

  “Actually, I was going to ask you, Adam; can you cover my shift tomorrow night? It’s not as if you have somebody you have to do…oh, my bad, something you have to do.” Dwayne laughed.

  “That’s enough,” Tully snapped. “This conversation is getting dangerously close to compromising this team. It ends now.”

  Adam stormed out of the firehouse. He needed to call Eve, to cancel on her once again. He dialed her number, trying to think of a good way to preface the conversation. “I need to cancel for the umpteenth time,” didn’t seem like the best words to say right now.

  “Adam, it’s good to hear your voice. I picked up the tickets for the show already so…”

  “I have to cancel on you Eve. I’m sorry. But I have to work.”

  “Again?”

  “Yeah, it’s just…”

  “Forget it,” she sighed. “You know, Adam, let me just do you the favor and save you the trouble of finding excuses. Obviously this isn’t going to work between us and so I think we should just resolve to be friends at this point. Or whatever people say when this happens.”

  “Eve?”

  “No, I don’t blame you, Adam. I blame myself because I thought this could work…that it would work. I should have known it wouldn’t. What guy really wants to wait? So, you’re off the hook.”

  “Eve, that’s not…”

  “I’ll see you around, Adam.” She hung up on him. What the hell! She hung up on him. He wanted to go to her, but he couldn’t. He was on duty and even though he should have been off in a few hours he now had to stay for the meeting. The worst part was that she was going to be getting into the new place tomorrow and the only thing he knew was that it was in the Z section. She had told him she had to go shop for furniture down in Daytona, but that she had been able to pick up the key to the place, so she was going to check out of the hotel in the morning.

  “Well, hell,” he growled. He dialed her number once more but it went straight to voice mail. This was a joke. She couldn’t break up with him. She just couldn’t walk out of his life, and not because of this. She had to know he really meant what he said when he told her he would be willing to wait. But then again, why would she know that? Since they had dinner that night he had cancelled every date they had arranged. He either got called to work or was unable to leave work. Since he had to work she offered to have lunch with him. Then he got word that lunch was being ordered in because they had to stay for a meeting. He called her and told her he would love to see some new movie at the cinema with her. He couldn’t even remember which movie it was now, just that one of the guys told him it was going to be a good one and he could take his “girl” to go see it with him. She volunteered to pick up the tickets early so they wouldn’t have to rush when he got off work. Now he was canceling that date too. A month of cancellations did not relationship security make. He had talked with her on the phone—though briefly, and each time it was because he was cancelling on her.

  This thing with the mayor better not run all night because there was no way he wanted to spend the night listening to the mayor ramble on about something he had no control over when he could be trying to save his relationship with Eve.

  He dialed her number one more time, cursing when it went to voice mail once again. If he wanted to talk, clearly he was going to be talking after the beep because she wasn’t picking up the phone.

  “Eve, please don’t do this. I really do have to work. I’m not making excuses…baby just please?” He let out an exasperated breath. “Please answer the next time I call?” He tried her cell number three more times that day and still she hadn’t answered the phone. Great, just great! Now she was ignoring him completely. Had she even listened to his message?

  Eve awakened the next morning sore, very sore, and tired, but she still pulled herself from the floor. After her conversation with Adam she had been so sad that she needed to do something to get her mind off things. So instead of hanging around the hotel all night, she loaded the rental car with her things, checked out of the hotel, stopped at the local Target for some cleaning supplies and drove over to the new place. When she picked up the keys the landlord told her she could move in whenever she was ready. Well, that night she was ready. She took the cleaning supplies in and did a top to bottom cleaning of the entire place. It was long after midnight before she finished disinfecting with bleach water, cleaning the baseboards and spraying for bugs. She hated bugs and one of the things she realized when she moved to Florida was that it didn’t matter how clean a person was, bugs were inevitable. Spraying every six months was mandatory, but of course since she was so anti bugs in the house, she sprayed more frequently than the container called for. The only bugs she hadn’t managed to completely be able to eradicate were the silverfish. She hated those things. Whenever they decided to slither their little bodies into her apartment it always freaked her out. Pulling back a shower curtain and having a flat, creepy bug fall nearly on one’s body would freak anybody out.

  She hadn’t bought an air mattress while at the store because they were expensive for what she needed it for. She had plans to go down to Daytona and get new furniture so she hadn’t planned on needing the mattress for more than a couple days. Had she been thinking straight last night she would have bought one anyway. Clearly, the tile floors were not the zenith of comfort to sleep on. They were cute, but not made for sleeping.

  She actually wasn’t sure how long it would take to get her furniture. Just because she was buying it today didn’t mean they would schedule delivery the same day. She needed a bed set, at least the frame and mattress if nothing else. But she planned to get the dresser too. Actually, if she got lucky they would still carry the set she had brought from Boston with her. She loved that bedroom set. It was dark wood, the color tone
was chocolate, the wood was sturdy and nice. The headboard was more rail than solid piece and she liked that. Her first thought, when she saw the bed was that one day her husband could tie her to it. She shook her head at her own thoughts. She, the virgin, still had her desires and fantasies and one day she would find a man who would be willing to wait for her; one who would think she was worth waiting for, and once they were married they could explore each other’s fantasies all night long.

  She shook the thoughts of marriage and fantasies from her mind because those thoughts led back to Adam. He clearly wasn’t going to be that man. He hadn’t even called her back. Her phone hadn’t rung all night. She considered calling him, but then why should she? She had said all she could say, and calling him back wouldn’t be fair. She had given him his way out and she couldn’t take it back.

  “Sofa,” she looked around the big empty split level floor plan house. It was a single story home, but it was big, too big for just one person. There were only two bedrooms, but both bedrooms were large. There was a den, a spacious Florida room with beautiful rock fixtures that expertly framed the salt water pool. She didn’t care about the pool. She didn’t swim so she didn’t need it, but she couldn’t deny the beauty of the area. It felt more tropical oasis than Florida home extension. She loved it. Maybe one day she would learn how to swim and actually use it. Then again, she hadn’t learned in all these years she didn’t particularly think she was going to do it now.

  “You really are too big for me,” she sighed. It wasn’t just keeping the place clean—she could do that, even though it would take more time than her little one bedroom apartment used to take to clean, but she could manage. It was filling the place with enough furniture and art to make it feel like home. She planned to use the guest bathroom as her darkroom. At least she wouldn’t have to keep dragging the enlarger in and out of her master bathroom. She could just set everything up and leave it in the spare bathroom for whenever she was ready to work on some black and white photographs. It wouldn’t exactly be as if she wouldn’t have the time. Her life was about to get back to the same schedule she had before, work, more work, and home. She shrugged. “Such is life, Eve. Such is life.” She took a few measurements of the rooms as she thought about where she might want to put certain pieces of furniture. She couldn’t buy everything she wanted, or needed, for that matter. She was on a budget and she didn’t do plastic. She didn’t even have a credit card. She had declined every offer her bank had given her to get one. She didn’t even bother opening the letters of preapproval. She just chalked them straight in the shredder and moved on. Why use plastic when a fifty dollar purchase would end up costing her twice as much in interest fees?

  No, she was using hard earned cash and if she didn’t have enough for something she just wouldn’t buy it until she did. She wanted the bed; that was first and foremost on her list. She wouldn’t mind a sofa or some nice seating chairs for the den, maybe even for the living room, but she would forego the dining room table. She ate standing up in the kitchen anyway so a dining room table wasn’t a necessity. She needed an area rug for her bedroom. She loved tile floors, but they could be cold. She didn’t want to crawl out of bed on some cold winter morning to have her feet hit what felt like blocks of ice. An area rug, one that fit underneath the bed and extended slightly outward, would be perfect.

  She showered, using a travel sized bar of Dove soap and her body sponge. She let the hot water beat down on her body. The shower wasn’t anything spectacular. Looking at the care that had gone into designing the home she would have thought the master bathroom would have been a knockout, but it really wasn’t. It was nice; she wouldn’t deny that, but it wasn’t a knockout. There was a floor to ceiling glass block wall that let in the natural light from outdoors. Fortunately glass block had a tendency to obscure the view of others, and since the master bath faced the Florida room she didn’t have to worry much about peeping Toms anyway. In fact, her bathroom had a door that led out to the pool area. She did like that aspect, but she would have loved the bathroom more if the showerhead had been something more than the standard sprayer. She knew she could change it if she wanted to. She would have to make a run to the local Lowe’s to see if she could find a showerhead that provided more coverage for her body, maybe one of those rainfall shower heads with the massaging sprayer option. She would look for that later, right now priorities were getting a bed to sleep on, if nothing else.

  She had to give it to Mr. Chris Armstrong; when he designed the interior he had broke away from the standard white walls, but he hadn’t gone as crazy as some of the homes she had seen with the purple walls in one room, green in another, yellow in another and something pink just down the hall. He had done nice soft shades of pale desert sand in the bedroom, and a pale yellow in the master bathroom. The wall colors flowed from room to room and connected in a way that would make adding any furniture color possible. She was leaning toward deep reds. She loved rich reds and burgundy tones, a little mahogany and wine red color was good too. First things first, she needed the bed. If they had one like the set she used to have then she knew exactly where her next stop would be…bedding and a rug for the floor. Now that she thought about it, she needed everything. She needed new cooking tools as all of her pots, pans and dinnerware were now lost to the apartment that was. She had her insurance payout, but she was trying to spend that judiciously, as in not all at one time and not all in one place. She put most of the money in her savings account and left some of the money in her checking account for shopping. There was a lot she needed to replace, and since her car was no longer operational she had to consider replacing that too. Fortunately the car insurance would eventually get around to paying on her claim.

  She thought about the task ahead of her, and the expense of undertaking such a task as she stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel. When her hand hit an empty silver rod she realized something else. “Towels…you need towels.” She mumbled as she stood there, dripping wet all over the sand colored tile floor. She had a little time before she wanted to head south; she would just have to air dry.

  After a morning at the furniture store she had found her bedroom set still offered for sale. She wasn’t sure she would find it when she first arrived, but after walking around the massive store she spotted it. The sales clerk, Jordon, a very nice man with deep ebony skin and a bald head, told her the set was slowly inching its way to the discontinued section so she was lucky she didn’t miss it. In a couple months it wouldn’t be available anymore. She ordered the queen size bed, the master chest, not the dresser because she liked the chest with its three quarter mirror that was encased on the door that opened for more storage, and beautiful dresser drawers already complemented the chest so there was no need for a separate dresser. She bought the bench to go at the foot of the bed and a cute eighty dollar vanity table and chair set in a nice cherry wood finish. She even found one oversized sitting chair for the den. It was round and cushiony with creamy beige sued fabrics and dark wood tones. She was going to put that chair near the bay window so, whenever she had time, she could sit and look out at the cul-de-sac. The way her new home sat she could open the blinds without having a direct look inside her neighbor’s house. She liked the layout because it meant she had a little privacy of her own as well. She made a run to the Big Lots down the street where she found a nice dinnerware set, some silverware, glasses and two towel sets. She didn’t care that one set was yellow and the other was red. She needed towels; they didn’t have to be perfectly matched…not right now anyway. Once she settled in and acquired some of the things she needed, then she would worry about buying more of the items that weren’t as important as others.

  The furniture store couldn’t deliver her furniture for another two weeks. Jordon had said a month at first, but she batted her eyes and assured him that a month was just too long to wait. He smiled at her and then promised he would see if he could work her into the schedule earlier. Everything she had ordered would be in within a wee
k, except the chair and vanity, he had said, so he scheduled two delivery dates. The earliest she could get was two weeks, but two weeks was better than a month.

  She didn’t want to sleep on the floor for two weeks so she stopped and bought the air mattress. It wasn’t until she pulled into her driveway that she noticed the very angry looking man standing on her doorsteps. She took a deep breath as she pushed the button to raise the garage door. As if he had any right to look miffed, she mused. She was the one who should be angry. She told him up front what she could and couldn’t do and he said that he could wait. She told him up front because she liked him and she didn’t want to like him any more than she already did if he wasn’t going to stick around.

  She was angry with herself because the moment he said he could wait she let down her defenses and she let him in. Well that was stupid on her part, and she wouldn’t make that mistake again. Some people were meant to be married, some people were meant to be single, and clearly she was going to stay single forever. Never again would she put herself in this position. She was officially swearing off romantic relationships.

  “You can’t return a phone call?”

  “How did you know where I live?”

  “I went by the hotel to see you last night. It was late, but the desk clerk recognized me. He told me you checked out.”

  She nodded. Clearly she had checked out. That wasn’t her question. She wanted to know how he found her. She popped the trunk and went around to get some of her bags out. Normally she would let the garage door down before starting to unload, but she didn’t exactly want to be stuck in a closed door garage with Adam right now.

  “I have friends in many places,” he stepped in front of her as she tried to move past him.

  “Do you mind?” She tried to side step him again as she shifted the bags in her arms. She had loaded up with her bags trying to carry as much as she could—as she always did—she had bags hung on her forearms and she was still trying to carry the comforter set in her arms.