Page 13 of The Kiss

"Good."

I closed the tailgate and walked back toward the auditorium.

"It was a good show, Cap," he called after me.

Inside, the auditorium was clearing out. Parents packed bags and wrangled kids in costumes. I found her in the hallway outside the dressing rooms.

She'd changed out of the princess dress. Her daughter was sitting on a chair while Janine worked a brush through her hair, the pool-noodle branches in a pile on the floor beside them. She looked up when she heard my boots.

I should have rehearsed what I was going to say. I hadn't. I'd spent the last five minutes folding a coat and threatening Sawyer, and I had nothing.

"I owe you an apology." I looked at a spot slightly to the left of her face because looking directly at her wasn't something I could manage. "What I did up there was unprofessional, and I'm sorry. You didn't agree to that."

"Alex."

"It won't happen again. I don't know what⁠—"

"Alex." She waited until I looked at her. "The audience loved it."

"That doesn't make it⁠—"

"Breathe."

I stopped. The word went through me like a dispatch order, and I listened to it the same way I listened to every one of hers.

"The play was great. The kids had fun. The audience had fun. You rescued a princess from a cardboard castle in sixty pounds of gear, and everyone cheered. That's a good night."

"I still shouldn't have⁠—"

Erin pulled us both into a hug that neither of us had asked for.

"You two are incredible." She was glowing. "The donation table had people lined up. Someone just Venmo'd three hundred dollars and wrote 'for the firefighter kiss.' You're invited to every play for the rest of time."

Janine smiled. "Looks like the kids are getting those robot kits."

Erin let us go and pointed toward the parking lot. "Everyone's coming to my house for the cast party. Food, drinks, backyard." She pointed at me. "You're coming. Don't even think about going home."

Her daughter tugged Janine's hand. "Mama, can we go? I'm hungry."

Janine looked at me one more time, then let her daughter pull her down the hallway toward the doors.

I stood there watching them go.

"Alex!" Erin's husband was at the grill with a spatula in one hand and a beer in the other. "How have you been?"

Erin's backyard had string lights hung from the fence posts and kids chasing each other across the grass. Someone had brought a speaker. Someone else had brought three trays of brownies.

I didn't remember the last time I'd been here. Erin's birthday? No, I'd skipped that. The Fourth of July cookout? I'd picked up a shift. Was it when Peyton was born? I tried to remember if I'd gone to the hospital and couldn't be sure, and the fact that I couldn't be sure made me stand still for a second.

"How's the firehouse treating you?" Colin asked. "Erin says you're picking up a lot of extra shifts."

"Hopefully better than Erin's been treating you."

Colin laughed. He was watching Erin across the yard, where she was rearranging the food table and directing traffic at the same time, pointing parents toward plates with one hand and catching a napkin that blew off the table with the other.

I liked Colin. He was good with money, good with Erin's moods, good with the kids without making it look like work. He would never disappear for three days and come home with nothing to show for it. My sister would never have to hide the checkbook or answer the door wondering who he owed. He wouldn't leave my sister counting what was left.

"How's work?" I asked.