She nodded acknowledgment, and answered, “To firefighting,” clinking glasses before they drank and put down the empty shot glasses. She fingered the rim of her glass and then they both leaned forward on the table with great expectation.
Finally, she realized he expected her to answer the question he had asked what felt like hours ago, and she said, “Oh, oh, I work for Stohlman Industries.”
“Stohlman?” His expression showed he was impressed. That pleased Laura—it was impressive. Stohlman was known for being very, very competitive for jobs, and it had been hard to break in to the world’s third largest media company.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve been there well, since I graduated college.”
“Really? What is your degree, then?”
“IT—Information Technology.”
“But you’re a business analyst?”
“Yeah, I work with the tech side of things.”
He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, clearly making himself comfortable, and gave her a mirthful look. “So what do you do?”
And she laughed, her face relaxing, her cheeks spreading and matching his mirth. “Do you really want to know? ‘Cause it’s awfully technical.”
He leaned forward on his elbows, propped his chin in one hand and said, “Yeah, I do want to know.”
She studied his eyes. He meant it—he really meant it. Oh, man, was this really the whole package? Did she really get a gorgeous, ripped firefighter who gave a shit about what she did for a living as a business analyst for some nameless, faceless, mega corporation? If so, she didn’t want to pinch herself cause this might be a dream. Then again, there were parts of her that she certainly wanted him to pinch. Whoa there, Laura.
“Well, I work in healthcare IT, and what I do right now is work on a large project for one of the state governments, making sure that their old medical records program for children who get health insurance is compliant with new federal guidelines.”
He nodded. Made an expression with his mouth that indicated that it was interesting and then said, “You lost me at children’s health insurance...” and he grinned.
She said, “Enough about my job. What do you do? You’re a firefighter, right? So you pretty much save damsels in distress from burning buildings and rescue cats out of trees. I don’t have to really know more than that,” she teased.
He laughed, bright teeth gleaming, straight and perfect, speaking to orthodontia decades ago. His eyes twinkled a bit as he fingered his empty sake glass and said “It’s a little more complicated than that, but you got the gist of it.”
“Aw, come on. Tell me more. How is it more complicated? Are there, like, different levels of fire fighting?” The words came out of her mouth and she felt a slow, electric feeling creep up her spine as his fingers crossed the table and reached for hers, his fingers clasping hers, the warmth shaking her, going all the way up her neck, through her hips, into her belly.
Rendering her completely speechless once again.
“Well,” he said, peering down at her hands and then looking at her with raised eyebrows that asked an obvious question. She grinned back. He softened and clinched her hand just slightly more, and the added pressure was like having her hand turn into one big giant throbbing clitoris.
“I do plenty of shifts where I rescue cats from burning buildings and help damsels in distress out of trees,” he joked, “but mostly, these days, I am in charge of fire management safety protocols for large corporations like yours.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, pretty much. After 9/11, we had to really tighten up on how you empty out a thirty or forty floor building, especially in the face of a disaster, or in the face of massive, multi-level, widespread fires.”
She could feel the blood drain out of her face. He had just, without knowing, dredged up her biggest fear. Something in his face said that he knew it. “Oh, no, I am so sorry, really, I did not mean to upset you. Did you lose someone in 9/11?”
She shook her head. “No, no, actually I, it’s just that...” She took a deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. “It’s just that it is one of my biggest fears. I’ve always been afraid of a fire in my building, and I work on the thirty-second floor of Stohlman Industries.”
He took his hand away from hers and whacked his forehead repeatedly, shaking his head now, saying “I pretty much just picked the worst possible thing I could bring up during a first date, didn’t I?”
Her heart rate resumed a normal beat. She took a risk now and reached across the table to retrieve his hand and said, “No, it’s ok, really, if nothing else, it’s interesting that you managed to tap into that about me, after having only known me for...” she glanced at her smart phone “...for fifteen minutes.”