Was I perfectly capable of opening my own door? Yes.

But I liked it.

As I tried to settle into my seat, I didn’t know what to do with my legs. Finally, I crossed them, watching one hook over the other with a strange, out-of-body feeling like they didn’t even belong to me.

The rookie, settling in on his side, watched them, too. Instead of starting the car.

“I didn’t know you had legs,” he said then, nodding at them.

“Yep,” I said. “Always.”

“You kind of keep them hidden.”

“Not hidden,” I said. “Just, you know—in my pants. Exactly where you keep yours, by the way.”

“But you have women’s legs,” he explained.

“Yes.”

“And I don’t.”

“True.”

“I’m just saying, nobody wants to see my legs.”

“I’m sure somebody wants to see them. Case, maybe.”

The rookie grinned and made crinkles at the sides of his eyes. He started the ignition. Then he shook his head. “Hanwell has legs,” he said, marveling at the idea.

I smacked him on the shoulder.

Then we were off. We followed the coastline south, and I just let the view and the wind flow past me for a while.

“I won’t be drinking tonight, by the way,” I said, “so I can be your designated driver.”

“Want to keep your wits about you, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, it’s fine if you change your mind. I never get drunk. I can drink all day and never feel it.”

I gave him a look, like, Please. “I could drink you under the table, pal.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

I leaned back against the headrest and let the wind flutter my hair. “Have you decided what you’re going to tell your parents about me?”

He nodded. “I thought of a perfect sentence, actually.”

“Hit me.”

“When they say, ‘Where’s Amy?’ I’ll say: ‘She couldn’t make it, but I brought a friend.’”

“That’s actually genius. It’s not even lying. Distract and redirect.”

“And then your job is to whisk me out onto the dance floor to avoid all further questions.”

“I’m not sure I can whisk anybody anywhere in these shoes,” I said, “but I’ll try.”

Seventeen

THE THING ABOUT the rookie at the firehouse was: He was quiet. He smiled a lot, and he was helpful, and he’d do everything anybody asked of him and more—but he wasn’t what you’d call a big talker.

But take him to a family reunion with twinkle lights and a disco ball in a room full of Irish cousins and a DJ playing Top 40 hits from every decade?

He never shut up.

From the minute we walked in, folks were grabbing him, hugging him, smacking him, ruffling his hair—and he was doing it all back to everybody else. Pointing at his cousin Mikey, high-fiving his cousin Patrick, telling his aunt Aileen she looked like a million bucks.

He was the life of the party.

I was the quiet one. Standing there all braless in my flammable hankie dress and double-decker shoes and just trying not to fall over.

His sisters were all over him, giving him hugs and cheek squeezes and smacks. He confessed to one of them what we were up to, and in seconds they all knew—like ants in a colony. The oldest showed up with a baby on her hip to get a gander at me.

“This is the decoy girlfriend, huh?” she asked, smiling.

“We’re not pretending she’s my girlfriend,” the rookie corrected. “We’re just using her as a distraction.”

The sister—Shannon—looked me up and down. “She is distracting.”

Where was my bunker gear?

Then she pointed at me. “Don’t break his heart.”

“Shut up,” he said to her.

I marveled. Was I passing for a heartbreaker?

“I’m kidding,” the sister said. Then back to me, “But seriously. Don’t.”

It took us half an hour to make it across the room to greet his parents, and by then he’d downed two beers and about twenty mini-quiches, and I’d finished off two virgin daiquiris like a champ.

His parents were adorable. His dad wore his Boston FD dress uniform, complete with cap and epaulets, and his mother wore a pink pantsuit with a corsage on the lapel. The rookie leaned in and kissed them both.

“Happy anniversary,” he said. “Colleen and Big Robby, meet—”

His mom interrupted and said, “Where’s Amy?”

We’d been expecting it, but maybe not quite so fast.

“Amy couldn’t make it—” the rookie started.

Big Robby leaned in and wiggled his eyebrows. “Because our boy’s got a new girlfriend.”

The rookie and I froze. This was not the plan.

Colleen froze, too. This was not the girlfriend she’d been rooting for.

Big Robby shrugged. “I overheard your sisters talking.”

Colleen looked me over. “What happened to Amy?”

The rookie stood up a little straighter. “We’re taking a break.”

His mother waited for more.

“In truth,” the rookie went on, in a spark of impromptu brilliance, “Amy’s job took her out to California, and it just didn’t make sense for me to move out there with her.”

Whatever dismay Colleen felt at the loss of Amy was suddenly tempered by the fact that her son had not foolishly followed her to California. She smiled at me. I might not be Amy, but at least I was local. “And you are?”

“I’m C—” I started, but the rookie suddenly yanked me to his side.

“Christabel!” he shouted. Then, in a normal voice. “This is my friend Christabel.”

Colleen looked pleased. “That’s one of my favorite names,” she said. “If we’d had one more girl, I would have named her Christabel.”

“Oh,” I said, still a little flummoxed.

“How did the two of you meet?” the rookie’s dad wanted to know.

Before I could invent an answer, the rookie yanked me off toward the dance floor. I stumbled off behind him, and when he finally stopped and turned around, I went flying right into his chest with an ooof. The DJ was playing Kool & the Gang.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, smacking him on the shoulder.

“You were supposed to whisk me off to the dance floor.”

“Well, we had a change of plans.”

“No shit. And now they think you’re my girlfriend.”

“It was super-rude to just walk away from your mother when she was complimenting my name.”

“It’s not your name,” he said. “It’s my name. My almost-name. If I’d been a girl.”

We stared at each other. The song ended. A new one started. Suddenly, the lights dimmed, and we heard the DJ—yet another cousin—on the speakers. “Welcome to the greatest slow dance of all time. The Bee Gees’ timeless classic ‘How Deep Is Your Love?’”

“They’re watching us,” the rookie said then, looking over my shoulder. “Put your arms around my neck.”