I should have been immune. But I was a little off-balance, in this fancy hotel, anticipating walking up on that stage. It’s a hell of a thing to be recognized, to be honored, and it was clearly stirring my emotions in unexpected ways. And truthfully, Hernandez wasn’t a hundred percent wrong about me. Despite everything I knew about him, and life, and firefighters, and myself, I confess: Something about his whole shtick right now wasn’t entirely not working.

I guess you can’t keep your guard up all the time.

Maybe I was lonelier than I’d realized. Maybe I did need something more. Maybe nothing in my life was quite what I thought.

The problem was, he’d just said things that were surprisingly true. Which seemed unfair—to know me so well and then use it against me. Trapped in this strange moment, I was suddenly blinking at my entire life through a different lens. Was he right?

Maybe I didn’t even want to play checkers.

It was the strangest moment of all the time I’d spent with him. Stranger than the disco party, and stranger than the pie-eating contest, and stranger even than the karaoke night that went off the rails.

Hernandez. Of all people.

We both watched his finger on the knife handle. He pushed it closer to me. “You’re tempted.”

I wasn’t. Or maybe I was. Just a microscopic fraction. I thought about my sad, spartan apartment and its neat little row of herbs on the kitchen windowsill. I thought about my bed, always made with military precision, hospital corners and all, and how I’d never once had anyone in it besides me in all the time I’d lived there. I thought about how quiet it would be when I got back, just the tick-tick of the kitchen clock.

I knew exactly what going home to that apartment tonight would look like, and feel like—the slight tightness I always felt on my face after I’d washed it with soap, the whiff of my laundry detergent as I slid my pajama top over my head, the sound of the sheets as I pulled them back and slid between them and tucked them carefully under my arms. The same bedtime routine, over and over, endlessly—as safe and repetitive and dull as always. I could play it out to the minute in my head.

I could even tell you what I’d think about as I fell asleep. The same thing I always did: I’d imagine making chocolate chip cookies, each step in soothing detail, from mixing in the butter to adding the vanilla, from cracking in the eggs to stirring in the chips. I’d watch the mixer blades spin, and scrape the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, and scoop the dough with little half-sphere tablespoons, dropping them one by soothing one onto the cookie tray in neat, perfectly spaced rows.

I hadn’t baked cookies in years. But I thought about doing it every single night.

What would it feel like to shake up that routine?

You’re the loneliest person I know, Hernandez had said.

Suddenly, I knew that was true.

But that wasn’t a reason for me to sleep with him. Sex was hardly a cure for loneliness. More likely the opposite.

Hernandez. It was like if your high school chemistry partner suddenly propositioned you. Or your dry cleaner. Or your doctor.

I was not, absolutely not, going to sleep with Hernandez. That would definitely never happen.

Probably.

Without even realizing it, I held my breath.

And then, off to the side, three seats over, across the table, I heard a familiar, distinctive, telltale sound: the muffled, closed-mouth snort that our engine operator, Big Tom, always made whenever anybody got pranked.

My eyes snapped toward it.

There was Big Tom, hand clamped over his mouth and nose, hunching down into a guffaw that he couldn’t contain any longer.

I’d seen him do that a hundred times. He was the one who always broke.

“Oh my God,” I said, turning away.

I scanned the rest of the table. The guys from our shift were all there to cheer for me on my big night. They’d been perfect gentlemen all night long, chewing with their mouths closed and everything. But once Big Tom broke, they all broke. In one scan, I saw it on every single face: glee. Triumphant, practical-joke-infused glee.

They’d gotten me.

I turned back to Hernandez and punched him on the shoulder. Hard. “Seriously?”

They’d never gotten me before. And not for lack of trying.

What can I say? Nobody’s perfect.

Once the guys’ restraint collapsed, it collapsed hard. They all started pointing. And raising their arms in victory. And cackling so hard they made the table shake. Reichman, Nolan, Trey, Big Tom, and especially Hernandez—now hooting with delight, leaning back for air, turning red.

I let them have a minute. They’d earned it.

Then I started laughing, too—at the relief of it—as the world shifted back into a recognizable pattern and became familiar again. I took a deep breath of comprehension: Hernandez had not propositioned me. He had pranked me.

Only a prank. Thank God.

When Hernandez finally settled enough to talk, he pointed at me. “You totally bought it.”

I punched him in the shoulder. “You freaked me out, dude! Tonight, of all nights.”

“We thought you could use a distraction,” Hernandez said. Then he pointed at Big Tom. “You torpedoed me, man! She was about to say yes.”

“I was not,” I said.

“You were,” Hernandez said. “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s getting girls to say yes—”

“I’m not a girl. I’m a firefighter.”

“—and you were one second away.”

I threw a dinner roll at him. “You wish.”

But he’d made some good points, I’d give him that. Maybe a few too many.

Hernandez dug into his pocket for his wallet. “Man! I just lost twenty bucks.”

The other guys pulled theirs out, too. “Never bet against Hanwell,” Big Tom said, giving me a wink.

The money came out and got shuffled around the table as the guys paid up, counting bills and collecting them.

I watched Hernandez pay out and punched his shoulder again—harder this time. “You bet against me?”

He shrugged with a sly smile. “I know what I know. I’m irresistible.”

Up onstage, the program was starting.

An emcee fired up the mic as the waitstaff cleared away the plates and people rerouted their attention to the stage. “It’s my great pleasure,” the emcee said, “to help honor our city’s fire and rescue heroes here tonight.”

A huge cheer roared up from the room. Then the guys at my table started chanting, “Cassie! Cassie! Cassie!”

I shushed them and made a “cut” gesture at my neck.

But I smiled anyway. Knuckleheads.

I gave Hernandez one last glance. Just a prank. And it had been a good distraction.

Then we all got quiet, I sat straight in my chair, and all my nervousness roared back. I clasped my hands together on my lap, noted how cold they were, and then took a second to appreciate the ridiculous fact that nothing scared me—except, apparently, stages at banquets.

I stared straight at the podium as they started calling up the honorees—fully dreading the moment when I’d hear my name.

I was wearing pumps, of all things, with my dress uniform, and I was having a few issues with balance. I was not exactly a person who loved the spotlight. Plus, I’d have to speak. We’d been given two minutes each to say our thanks at the microphone, and two minutes seemed impossibly short and impossibly long at the same time.