Soundtrack for this chapter:
Comfortably Numb—Pink Floyd
Smells Like Teen Spirit—Nirvana
Chasing Cars—Maria Levinson

4

Theo

Father Davies kept his word the morning after I helped him on the art museum steps. During Sunday mass, he peeked out from one of the side doors behind the altar and scanned the gathered parishioners. When he locked eyes with me, he smiled and gave me a nod of his head. I couldn't break a promise to him; he was a priest.

It turned out to be a good morning, so I was glad to have been there. Mom and dad had brought my youngest sister, Erin, and I was able to drag Aiden with me; Danny came along of his own free will. We often joked about how mom and dad really went the extra mile by not only having a true pair of twins through me and Danny, but by also having a set of Irish twins in Erin and Aiden. The two were just eleven months apart.

I remember mom and dad telling us we were going to have another set of twins in the family and being unbelievably confused when they came home from the hospital with just one baby.

The only one missing was my oldest sister, Mary. She was two years older than me and Dan, and she'd already settled down with her husband in the suburbs outside of the city. He was a good guy; not good enough for my sister, but no one ever could be. Our family was large, but we were close, and strong, and there could never be anyone else in the world I'd trust like I trusted each of them. Of course we fought and had our disagreements at times, but we're a loud, boisterous, loving, Irish-American family; find me one that isn't.

After mass, we went back to mom and dad's for brunch. It had been a tradition we had every Sunday when we were growing up, and it was one of the things I missed most when I was in the military. Mom's spread of pancakes and bacon, both dripping with syrup, creamy coffee, and her own take on homefries was a welcome addition to my diet after months of MREs.

At mom and dad's enormous table, we all sat around waiting for the word that it was okay for us to start digging in. After nearly thirty years of practice, mom had us trained to the second. The moment she finished saying grace, we looked to her with hungry eyes.

"Well, go on," she said with a smile.

Dad was to my left, and he choose to hold the pancakes ransom for the more intricate details of my life.

"I'll give ya a pancake for each new thing you tell me you've got going on."

"Dad, come on. I'm practically starving over here." He held firm in his gaze at me. "Fine. The show we played Friday night went really well. Owner told us we'd be put first on his backup list."

Dad put a single pancake on my plate. It was a challenge not to roll my eyes. "Work's been good. Considering getting my paramedic cert." Another pancake flopped onto my plate.

"Any plans on finding a nice young lady to bring home to us?"

Aiden couldn't help himself. He laughed into his cup of orange juice and looked up at dad. "No worries, pops. Theo has no problem bringing ladies back, in fact Dan said—"

I sent Aiden a glare that was equal parts shut the hell up and I will fucking end you. His mouth snapped shut.

Mom turned to me with concern. "Oh, Theo sweetheart, you're almost thirty. You need to find a nice girl who you can settle down with."

"She was a nice girl, I—listen, can we keep my personal life off the dining room table? I'm sure Aiden would love to tell you about how he doesn't even sleep at our house on the weekends on account of the partying he's doing  downtown all hours of the night."

Aiden turned almost as red as his hair; then again, that wasn't hard with his pale skin. He was the only one of us to get the ginger hair gene.

Mom and dad took the bait and turned on Aiden. He tried to send me a look equally dangerous as the one I'd sent him, but nothing could strip him of the title of baby of the family.

The rest of brunch was a breeze. With mom and dad expressing their concern over Aiden's late night partying, I was able to swipe more pancakes and bacon without being grilled for every minute detail of my life.

On the way out, Aiden and Danny shook dad's hand and kissed and hugged mom goodbye before going out to wait in my car. I bent down to give mom a kiss on the cheek, but she wrapped her arms around my chest. I knew it was important to her to hold on a little longer whenever I left the house. When she let go, her right hand rested against the left side of my rib cage. It always did.

"Everything's okay?"

"Course, mom." I tried not to squirm under her touch; even though it had been seven years since those scars made their everlasting mark, I still didn't enjoy the feeling of someone else's hands on them. Not even mom's.

"If you ever need to talk about things—"

"I don't. Everything's fine."

"I worry about you, Theo."

"Nothing to worry about. Promise. Okay?"

She dropped her hand and looked into my eyes. "No more dangerous excursions okay? Find yourself a nice girl; I promise, she'll add all the action to your life you could ever need."

"Mom."

"Oh! Not, not like that! I just meant—"

"Sorry, mom, you walked right into that one. I know what you meant." I bent to give her one last kiss on the cheek and slipped out the door.

***

Over the next two weeks, try as I might, I couldn't get Jules out of my head. I've never been one to just bring girls home. Granted, I have brought girls home and they have stayed over and I have had to call them a cab in the morning, but I didn't make any sort of hobby out of it. It's happened two, three times max. But none of them have given me a rush like Jules.

What was more confusing was that I couldn't pinpoint what it was about the night that gave me that rush. It wasn't like some scene you'd see out of an X-rated movie; for fuck's sake it may have been the most delicately intimate one night stand in history. There was something about her that didn't call for such animalism in the act; something about her made me want her to feel good, feel special. It felt nice to hold on to someone as we slept.

But she must not have felt the same, or if she did, she panicked.

***

I had the weekend following my meeting with Jules off, but then I was back on the next Saturday. Before leaving the house, I threw in a load of wash, and as I was pulling articles of clothing from my hamper and throwing them into the machine, my fingers grasped the Celtics shirt Jules had worn when she stayed over. I held it in my hands and closed my eyes. Either help me forget the whole thing or throw her my way again.

I didn't know who I was talking to until I felt a small tug in my side. Before my mind turned darker, I dumped the rest of my clothes into the machine and set it to its usual cycle.

Aiden was in the living room playing some game on the console connected to the TV; part of me wondered if he'd ever gone to bed given how early it was. I walked right between him and the TV to grab my keys to head to the station.

"Hey!"

"Oh, good, now that I've got your attention, I need to ask you for a favor." He fidgeted with the controller to pause his game. "I forgot to throw a load of wash in last night, so I just set it up downstairs. In about an hour, can you put the clothes in the dryer?"

"I'm your younger brother, not your maid."

Not today, Aiden.

"You're my brother who is currently living in a pretty nice fucking home rent free. I'm not asking you to mop the floors, I'm asking you to do something that will take less than two minutes."

"Theo, chill. I'll do it. You need to relax."

I tried to take into account what I'd often told Danny: he's just a kid. But he didn't recognize how lucky he had it at twenty-two.

"Thanks." It was muffled and probably sounded ungrateful, but I didn't care too much. I knew I slammed the door too hard when I felt the window panes shudder.

Work was surprisingly slow in the morning. Dave, another one of the paramedics, and I had a call from an elderly woman who had pains in her chest in the early afternoon, and a few hours later we responded to call that involved a teenager, a skateboard, and a broken ankle. An altogether mild Saturday.

After the second call, Dave and I hung out in the gym for a bit to get a quick workout in. Just as we were finishing up, the sirens in the station started blaring.

"Shit." Dave ran down the stairs with me at his heels.

"Code 3. Accident on 93. Department over there just called us for back up. Doesn't sound good." Nikki, another paramedic at our station, shouted this at us as we piled into the waiting ambulance.

My heart started racing, breath almost became short. The rush was often a source of guilt; how could I take advantage of someone else's unfortunate circumstance? I rationalized the rush by telling myself the adrenaline made me work harder, faster to save someone's life.

When we arrived on the scene, we realized the severity of the accident. My body and mind went into their standard routine, but seeing the wreckage of the pile up didn't give me hope. The fire trucks were gearing up to douse any fires that could start as we all pulled our gurneys off the rigs.

Dave and I were directed towards a man, middle aged, being attended to by volunteer firemen. A quick sigh of relief passed through my mouth when I didn't recognize him. That fear was always lingering, sulking, waiting to pounce.

"Pulse is weak," one of firemen said.

Dave started taking vitals, looking into the man's blank stare with his small flashlight. My fingers pressed into his neck, searching for the weak pulse the firemen detected. It was almost nonexistent.

"We need to get him in the rig now." The other men helped lift the patient onto the gurney and strap him in.

Dave spoke to me as we wheeled him to the ambulance. "I'll get an IV going, you keep your hand on his pulse. I'll ready the AED in case it stops."

I nodded at him, never taking my fingers from the man's neck. The moment Dave got the IV in, his pulse disappeared under my touch.

"Pulse just stopped. Scan him with the defibrillator."

I cut through the man's shirt to expose his chest, and Dave used the machine to scan the patient's heart.

"Damn it. He's got an unshockable rhythm. Get on him and start chest compressions."

I climbed on top of the gurney and repeatedly sunk my palms into the man's chest as the ambulance rocketed through the streets. The one thing that never stops amazing me is how quickly our drivers get us to the hospitals; we pulled up to the ER in less than ten minutes. A swarm of doctors and nurses met us at the gates, and someone took my place on top of the patient.

I looked down at my hands for the first time to strip off the latex gloves I'd been wearing and balled them into fists. Something about the situation didn't feel okay, didn't feel right. But I almost always felt that way; I often wondered if there was more I could have done.

Dave and I drove back to the station in silence, and I waited out the last hour of my shift in the kitchen with a cup of coffee. The sun was low in the sky as I went to clock out. Once I did, I called the hospital to see if there was any news on the man we brought in. There was; they lost him twenty minutes after we arrived.

***

The entire drive back to my house I cranked the radio and drove with the windows down. I needed something to fill my head other than the sense of failure that was trying to invade it.

With the car parked on the street, I rolled up the windows, cut the engine, and rested my head against the wheel. My fist came down on it a few times too, and once that little outburst was out of my system, I climbed out of the car and went into the house.

Up in my room, I stripped off my uniform, but when I went to throw it into my hamper, I remembered it was down in the basement. Dressed in just boxers, I bounded down the steps. When I opened the door to the dryer, it was empty, and with a hand shaking in anticipation, I opened the lid of the washer to find my clothes in a tangled heap in the bottom of it.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."

The lid slammed down, and I set the machine on another rinse cycle. That little fucker couldn't even throw my clothes in the dryer.

Every stomp of my foot up the stairs released a little more anger. I threw open the door to Aiden's room, and, though it shouldn't have come as a surprise being that it was a Saturday, it was empty.

I changed course to the bathroom and took a cold shower. I needed something to bring down the boiling rage I was feeling. When I was done, I threw on a pair of jeans and whatever band t-shirt was left in my drawer.

As I left the house, my first inclination was to turn left down my street, pop into the bar on the corner, and get absolutely shitfaced. Maybe I'd even find another girl, one who was better than Jules, one who would still be there in the morning. Maybe I'd find Aiden and knock some brotherly sense into him after my third or fourth drink.

But then my feet turned right as the face of the substance abuse counselor from the VA popped into my head. I'd never needed him, and I didn't want to put myself in a situation where I did; I've had too many friends who coped with their experiences through different vices, and I wasn't going to become another number.

Turning right down the street from my house led me to Boston Common, our equivalent of Central Park; no, equivalent is the wrong word to use—Boston Common is far better.

I let the sweeping greenery bring me peace. I let the swaying sound of the leaves in the wind fill my head. It was almost dusk, and therefore slowly growing darker, but lighted pathways and lamps gave the park a heavenly glow. I was close to having completely cooled down, close to letting go of the last shreds of failure, disappointment, and anger that still held on.

And then, my ears picked up the faint sound of music. I followed it, allowing the sound to guide me. I came upon a crowd of people; some were in chairs that had been set up, others sat on blankets, still others just stood, soaking in the melody. I made my way carefully through the standing crowd to get a look at whoever was playing.

I could pick out the soft strum of a guitar, and the equally soft, yet powerful voice that accompanied it. The performer was doing her own rendition of a pop song; it was more harmonious, gentler, having lost all notes of its original pop-y, generic sound through her voice and style.

When I made it to the front of the crowd, the last bits of any negativity dissipated from my mind. I recognized her instantly.

Jules' brunette hair was gathered into a low bun, and a flowing floral dress fell over each side of the stool she was perched on. She had no sheet music, no amp, nothing but her acoustic guitar, her voice, and her closed eyes.

I'd almost turned in the opposite direction of the park when I left my house. If I had, I never would have stumbled upon her. I had a new hope in my chest that I was meant to find her, that I was meant to run into her again.

I stayed and listened to the rest of her set, and she didn't disappoint; every song she sang she put her own slower, deeper, almost darker spin on, meaning she had far more talent than she'd let on in our first meeting. She took her final bow to sonorous applause from the audience, and I watched her hop down from the makeshift stage and make her way through the crowd, a clear direction in her mind. That was when I felt the first hot wave of disappointment wash over me; maybe she was already committed to someone else.

But instead, she walked up to another woman, one who was maybe an inch or so taller than Jules, and gave her a hug. When I felt it was safe to approach her, I worked my way through the other listeners.

Her back was to me as I made it to her, but her friend's eyes crinkled at the corners when she saw me. I tapped Jules on the shoulder, and she turned around with a start.

"Before you say anything, I want you to know that I had no idea you were playing here. I was walking through the park and I heard the music, so I came to listen, and here you are."

Her face morphed from one emotion to the next. She started with her eyes wide in surprise, maybe shock, then her brows turned inward with notes of confusion as I desperately tried to explain how I wasn't a huge fucking creep, and finally they mimicked her friend's eyes by growing ever so crinkly in the corners as her lips formed a small smile.

She gestured to her friend. "This is one of my colleagues, Nora. She was with me at Midtown the night your band played."

"Oh, nice to meet you." I extended my hand to her.

"Same," she smiled at me more broadly.

"Are, um, you two up to anything after this?"

Jules went to say something, but Nora cut in. "Actually, I have a sunrise yoga class tomorrow, so I'm probably going to head back to campus. You two should catch up."

I tried to get a read on Jules, see if she actually wanted to hang around. She was still smiling, and she seemed forward enough in our last encounter to tell me to fuck off if she didn't want me there. "Do you want to take a walk?"

She turned to Nora, and there seemed to be some sort of nonverbal communication bouncing back and forth between them. But then, Jules took her guitar off her shoulder and handed it to her friend.

"I can come grab it from you later."

"Sounds good." Nora put her arms around Jules in a quick hug. "See you back on campus."

And with that, I was once again left alone with Jules Calhoun.

A/N: Hi!

Okay, I know the soundtrack is like HEAVY, HEAVY, pop—that's because the Maria Levinson cover of Chasing Cars is kind of how I hear Jules singing in my head lol. Hope that gives you a better sense of her sound ☺️

You know what's been so great about writing this? Every time I finish a chapter, I cannot wait to write the next one. I can't begin to describe how great that feels as a writer and as someone who was feeling all kinds of writer's block 👩‍💻 (<--me, like all the time)

I love you all, and I hope you'll vote and comment and tell your friends about this so we can all chat together.

See you Friday!

L