Fighting the Flames (Firefighter Romance #1)(14)
Jessie rented a little house from a man named Bill and was supposed to meet him at two o’clock to pick up the keys. She’s early and cruised around looking for a bite to eat and to get to know the area better. She pulled into the mall and headed straight to the food court. Full of kids running around in the kids play area, the noise was deafening… mostly from mothers yelling at their boys to ‘quit running and come sit down and eat’, and pre-teen girls gabbing with each other. The teenagers had cell phones in front of their faces and were surely texting each other from a few feet away.
For someone as hungry as she was, the smell of grease is like roses. Her saliva was running loose in her mouth, she can’t wait to get something, anything. As she wandered by the Falafel shop, she saw the hummus beckoning her. She loved hummus, the tangy bite of the lemon and the slight heat from the garlic, all in a smooth but meaty paste. If she were to become a vegan, she would eat tons of hummus on a daily basis.
Jessie ordered a falafel with extra hummus and since she was the only one in line, she asked the cashier, “I’m moving to town and haven’t been here in many years. What are some fun things to do?”
Jenna was a fountain of information, sharing places to go and the things to do, assuring her that, “Once you get off the main street, it’s pretty much the same old Hamilton. Nothing is very far, and you can still get around on a bicycle.”
“Thank you very much Jenna, you don’t know how much this helps.”
Jessie grabbed her food, found a vacant table and watched the chaos swirl around her while she waited until time for her appointment with her new landlord, Bill.
Chapter 9
Sweet silence.
Lisa and the twinsters are gone and she had her little house all to herself. Jessie’s whirlwind OCD sister and her very organized, everything-in-its-place attitude has helped get the house picture perfect. Now, Jessie was exhausted, bone deep tired. They’d gotten more done in one day, than Jessie had managed in the entire four month she’d been here. And now they are gone.
Jessie is kicked back on her new, black leather sofa with its reclining seats on both ends. Pulling a fleece throw over her lap, she held a hot mug of tea in her hands.
She shivered and sniffed, her head feeling stuffy and sick. Lisa said she looked tired, but they rationalized it was just from the stress all that had happened the past few months. Now, her nose was running like a fire hydrant. Terrific, probably a cold.
Relaxed and finally warm, she pulls a box of photos closer. The deadline for entering the art contest is tomorrow. Sick or not, she had to choose which photos to enter before she could get a shot at the five thousand dollars.
The job at the newspaper wasn’t giving Jessie enough hours to make ends meet. Seemed all the small newspapers across the country were hurting; why buy news when you can watch it live, twenty-four-seven?
Looking at the stack of photo albums, she rationalized that she could probably eliminate the oldest of them. The ones with the yellowing pages and plastic that barely sticks to the pictures anymore. She was careful though, she didn’t want to miss a moment of genius, or luck; she may have had when she was learning.
She found eleven candidates, but can only submit three photos. They had to be her absolute best.
She wanted something different, something with great contrast and something she could digitally enhance as well. She carefully placed the last four books on the floor and opened the laptop that sat on her tiny coffee table.
Once opened, she clicked the folder with her photos and started looking through the images. Derrick’s bar photos were interesting, but not at all artistic, and the memories… no thank you. She clicked that folder shut. There were lots of family shots, most of them composed in a hurry and never meant for anything but memories. Her trip to upstate New York had some fantastic landscapes, but most contests seem to pick photos with people in them, not necessarily landscapes.
After a couple hours, she needed a break. Having heard wine was good for a cold and creativity, she poured herself a glass of a pinot grigio from California. Normally, she preferred oaky reds, but with this cold coming on, a nice refreshing white seemed right.
Unable to smell a thing, she knew she would make a terrible judge of wine right now, but as she swallowed the first bit, she noticed the apple and pear before the alcohol burned her sore throat going down. The crispness made her hungry and she grabbed some nice, extra sharp cheddar to nibble on.
Feeling a bit lonely, she turned on the TV for some background noise before flipping through some additional folders. There were a ton of the twins, along with Lisa and her ex; Jessie felt a stab of guilt for not deleting the ones of Dick-for-Brains as Lisa had requested. She just couldn’t, thinking the kids might one day cherish the happy memories with their father. Besides, Jessie was a photo pack rat. She treated photos like some people treated books, and never liked to throw them away.
The next sip of the pinot felt better going down as the alcohol opened up her sinuses a little. Ahh, she could finally smell—the minerals and pear, lovely. She always found it strange, how you smell things differently when you’re sick. A few sips later she had to admit, she felt a tiny bit better.
Continuing on, she found some pictures she’d put in the back of her mind—pictures of Ryan at the beach house. Oh my god, she never realized how many she took. Staring at his perfect body, the green eyes stared back at her. She can almost see herself cradled next to him. What a fool she was to leave.