Playing with Fire

Chapter 4

LUCAS

*********

Waking up the next morning I still had the mysterious girl on my mind from last night. I had never met a girl that challenged me and didn't just give me what I wanted. I didn't have to go to work today with us being off for the next three days. We had a schedule where we are 24 hours shift and 72 hours off shift. If we had a major fire we would be called in on our days off but for the most part it was three days off before working again. My crew was like my family, we were all brothers. We spend more time with each other than our own families. My parents moved away from New York when they retired, they moved down south to be closer to warm weather all year long.

I got out of bed and made my way to the bathroom to jump into the shower. It was the first thing I did to get my day going. I always felt refreshed after a hot shower. It didn't matter what the temperature outside would be I will sill be under the hot water. Once my shower was done I got dressed and went out back to see what I could start doing to tie everything together with my backyard. I finished the deck last week and now I wanted to get some plants and mulch in there to make it look better than a construction area. This was a project I wanted done before the end of the summer, I wanted to throw a big party at the end of the summer to celebrate with my fire family. Running around town all day to get the needed supplies did help the day go by fast. I threw the mulch is a pile in the yard. I set the plants down by the steps to the deck. I ran to the garage to look for my shovel. When I was searching my phone went off, with someone calling me. I grabbed the phone of the shelf I set it down on and noticed that Davidson was calling me.

"Hey Davidson, what's up?"

"We are heading over to Empire for dinner and drinks tonight with a ton of the guys not just our crew. You wanna meet up with us?"

"Yea I'll meet up with you guys around dinner time."

I hung up with him and decided to give up looking for the stupid shovel. I knew it was somewhere in this garage but I couldn't find it because I was looking for it. The plants and mulch could be done tomorrow nothing would get hurt from leaving it out there. I went inside to get cleaned up and change into some nicer clothes before making my way down to Empire. I jumped in my car and made my way down into armory square. I saw a few of the other guys parking their cars in the lot we always went too. I parked my car and made my way over to the guys.

"Hey."

"Hey Mitchell."

They all stopped and waited for me to catch up to them. Empire became our hang out after a few months of going there. Months became years and not I couldn't see use going anywhere else to hang out beside Empire. I am sure it will change if Sara ever leaves because she is one of the best waitresses that they have. We walked up to the door and we didn't even have to say anything to the hostesses. She knew right away what section we wanted to sit in and brought us over to where Sara's section was for the day.

"I wanted to let you gentlemen know that Sara does have a trainee today so it might not be the fast service you are use too."

I knew why she was letting us know. She didn't want us to hold it against Sara for having to go slower than usual. I don't think any of us would really care because Sara would hang around and talk with us on nights that she wasn't too busy. Chris was sitting next to me talking
about the department drama that was happening.

"Looks like my firefighters are here tonight."

You could hear Sara talking to her trainee in the background. You could hear them walking up behind us.

"Chris just don't let those probies get under your skin. We should be making their jobs tough."

When Sara started her introduction I turned away from Chris and looked for the first time at the new trainee that Sara was with. It was the girl from last night, I just locked eyes with her and I couldn't turn away. There was something about this girl that I knew she was going to be trouble for me. Sara took our drinks and let us know she would be back for our food order when she came back with the drinks. I knew what I would be getting it was the same thing every time but when Sara came back and asked my order I completely blanked. I was looking at this mysterious girl just standing there watching us and how Sara did certain things. When I finally remembered what to say I jumbled it but Sara was able figure out what I said and wrote down the order.

The rest of dinner went by fast and the guys didn't want the night to end here. We all pulled put cash for the tip for Sara. I didn't know if she had to share or if the trainee would have no tips for today. I wanted to get this girl's attention and I had a way of doing it. Once the guys started heading up towards the door, I took a piece of paper that was left on the table and wrote a little note and threw some cash in there to make up for yesterday and having to go through this day. I caught up to the guys as they were walking to Benjamin's on Franklin. It was one of the local bars that we would visit. I let the rest of the night go on flirting with the different girls that would come over to us. This is what I did from time to time just going through my daily life flirting with any girl that came up to me. Even with these hot girls in front of me I couldn't get the waitress out of my mind. I wanted to know her name and know more about her.