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“Westwood! Move your ass!”

I grunt, the sound catching in my throat like a dry engine start. I pick up the pace even though I’d rather wrestle a live gator than run before sunrise. I can lift a fire hose and haul a ladder three stories up in full turnout gear, but cardio? Cardio is my mortal enemy.

Actually, my upstairs neighbor is my mortal enemy.

I catch up to my crew in a few long, annoyed strides. We’re halfway through our mandatory weekly group run, and I’m already bargaining with God to make shin splints a legitimate medical excuse to quit. I fall in beside Trevor, who’s been my ride-or-die since day one of fire academy.

“Jesus,” he says, barely out of breath. “Did you stay up late crying over Hallmark movies again?”

“Nope,” I reply, “just another riveting night of interpretive dance from the bowling league upstairs.”

He laughs. “How many people do you think live up there? From the sound of it, I’m guessing a herd. ”

“Four. I’ve counted. I don’t know what kind of voodoo keeps them going, but I haven’t had uninterrupted sleep in weeks.”

Trevor snorts and slows slightly to match my pace. “You should get laid. Or at least punched in the face. Either way, you’d sleep better.”

I’m almost thirty, so the ‘ just get laid ’ solution doesn’t hold the same magic it used to. Hookups used to be fun. Now they mostly feel like eating cotton candy for dinner.

Satisfying in the moment, but kind of painful afterward.

“Tell you what,” Trevor says, already scheming, “Wednesday night. Cold beers and a room full of long-legged women. What do you say? I’ll be your wingman. The ladies love a man in uniform.”

“We won’t be in uniform, you Muppet.”

I roll my eyes and try not to collapse as we come to a stop in front of Station One.

Our shoes scrape the pavement, and the crew starts their usual post-run rituals: water-chugging contests, bent-over heaving, and light bickering about who’s faking shin pain.

I do none of that. I drop flat onto my back in the middle of the parking lot and welcome death with open arms. I hope the devil will make it quick.

“Vulcan,” Jackson says, looking down at me. “Your biceps are the size of commercial jetliners. How are you getting beat by a two-lap jog?”

“Shut up,” I wheeze, catching the bottle he tosses to me.

“He’s saving his cardio for the bedroom,” Trevor says, like a proud hype-man.

“Jacking off doesn’t count as cardio,” Jackson fires back.

“You’ve clearly never done it right.”

They laugh. I shake my head and sip my water, grateful for the bond between us.

These men are my brothers. Some have been doing this job since I was in elementary school.

Others, like Trevor and Jackson, started with me.

We fought fires, earned our shields, and even grew our station mustaches together.

Well…except me.

Blond mustaches just make me look like an unfortunate extra from Super Troopers. So I keep my face clean-shaven, which probably makes me the only firefighter under thirty without facial hair.

We head inside to officially relieve the night shift.

The smell of coffee, engine grease, and whatever Jackson cooked last night lingers in the air.

An UberEats driver arrives carrying five greasy bags of heaven: breakfast burritos, courtesy of an elderly woman we helped with a false carbon monoxide alarm two weeks ago.

She insists we saved her life. Honestly, I think she just enjoys feeding a bunch of idiots who remind her of her sons.

I claim four burritos and protect them with my arms like a dragon hoarding gold. Trevor and Jackson mock me with dramatic gasps.

“Are you eating for three?” Jackson asks .

“I’m growing a second personality,” I say with a mouthful of egg and cheese.

Breakfast at the station is one of the few things that can make the god-awful wake-up time worth it. We eat at the kitchen island, surrounded by chipped mugs, a stack of overdue shift reports, and a fire pole that hasn’t been polished in five years.

That’s not a euphemism, by the way. I mean it literally hasn’t been wiped down by anything other than sweaty man junk in ages.

As the crew settles into the day, Trevor nudges my arm. “So? Wednesday? You in?”

I chew, considering. I don’t love bars. Sticky floors, fake flirting, shouting over music. But I also haven’t been out in months, and I know Trevor won’t shut up until I say yes.

I nod. “Yeah. Wednesday.”

The bar Trevor drags us to on Wednesday night is exactly what I expected.

Dim neon signs, a jukebox stuck in a cycle of country-rock and Nickelback, and that familiar tang of cheap beer and old regret.

It’s like every bar in every southern rom-com, just lacking the main characters.

One thing about this small town is that we’re all equals here, and at least seventy-five percent of the town’s population has gotten blackout drunk in this very building .

We grab seats at the bar top. It was a quiet shift for once. One car accident, no fires, no major trauma. A blessing for the community, but it also means we’re more restless than usual. Trevor keeps elbowing me to check out the women on the dance floor.

They’re all beautiful, but none of them… hit.

They’re loud, confident, drinking fruity cocktails with paper straws. They command attention, and they get it. Jackson’s already practically levitating with excitement. These are his people.

Me? I’m watching like an outsider. Like I showed up to a party I wasn’t invited to, but no one knows how to tell me to leave.

I sip my beer, lean back, and wonder what it would feel like to walk into a room and spot someone who just gets me.

Someone who doesn’t require the sales pitch, the flirting, the charade.

Someone real .

I want to come home and kiss my girl on the forehead, not the mouth.

I want a woman who starts crying at two a.m. because she dropped her fries on the kitchen floor and then laughs about it five seconds later.

I want a wife who will nag at me when I put the pillows on the bed two inches too far to the left and accidentally leave a dozen mints in my pockets when I throw them in the wash.

The idea of finding that person in a bar like this? Feels about as likely as a cat saving a firefighter from a tree.

But then the door opens.

And suddenly, I’m eating my words .

She walks in with a subtle sway, her hoodie pulled halfway up her forearms, salmon-pink scrub pants just visible underneath.

She doesn’t scan the room. She doesn’t seem to care about the attention.

She just walks straight to the bar, orders her drink, and sips it like it’s the only good thing that’s happened to her all day.

And I know .

That’s her. That’s the woman I’ve been imagining in every empty bed, every quiet moment, every holiday, and every damn day.

Jackson follows my gaze. “You good?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. Because everything around me has gone quiet except her.

God help me, I think I just saw my happily-ever-after walk into a bar with sticky floors and a broken jukebox.