Charming the Firefighter

Not that she’d change anything, she assured herself quickly, kneeling to retrieve her favorite serving platter from a lower cupboard. Her son was going through a stage. A two-year-long stage that seemed to have no end in sight.

But that was all right. She could handle it. Andrew was fine. Not quite happy, but that would come in time. There were more important things than happiness. Security. Safety.

He was healthy and that was most import—

Clang!

She reared up, whapping the top of her head against the counter. Her vision blurred and tears filled her eyes. She fell onto her butt with a thud. Rubbed the spot and prayed like mad those tiny stars circling her head weren’t real.

When the dizziness passed, she gingerly climbed to her feet. She wouldn’t yell, she thought, as she carefully climbed the narrow staircase leading from the kitchen to the second floor. She’d approach him calmly. Rationally. Explain why he needed to be more careful.

She knocked on his door. Behind it metal clanged. He grunted in exertion.

It sounded like torture.

“Andrew?” she called, knocking again, making sure to keep her tone friendly and pleasant, as if she wasn’t sporting a possible concussion due to his negligence. “Honey, could you open the door?”

Nothing. Her eyes narrowed. She widened them, blinked a few times. No. She wasn’t going to get upset. Wasn’t going to jump to conclusions. For all she knew, he hadn’t heard her.

His next doctor’s appointment, though, she would make sure his hearing was checked.

Using the side of her fist, she pounded on the wood. “Andrew!”

No matter how hard she glared at the door, it remained shut.

She tried the handle. Locked. She jiggled it, frustration building. Still locked.

There was only one thing to do, one surefire way to get his attention. She pulled her cell phone from her shorts pocket and sent him a text.

Open the door. Now.

Andrew could, and often did, ignore her. Her insights and opinions, her attempts at civil conversation and questions about his thoughts, his feelings.

But he never ignored his phone.

A moment later, the door opened and her son—her sweaty, disheveled son, the child who used to look up to her with such adoration in his eyes—scowled down at her. Yes, down at her because, thanks to a growth spurt last year, he now towered over her by a good six inches.

He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “What?”

Her mouth tightened. Her head pounded. Then again, dealing with her son usually left her with a headache, pondering where she’d gone wrong.

“Take out your earbuds,” she said slowly, over-enunciating each word in case he’d suddenly learned how to read lips.

His frown deepened. “What?” he shouted.

She jabbed her fingers at her own ears, mimed pulling something out.

With an eye roll, he pulled the earbud from his left ear. Half his attention was better than nothing at this point. “What do you want?”

Her entire body stiffened. She wouldn’t lose her cool. She would not lose her—

Oh, who was she kidding?

“The first thing I want,” she said in a mom voice guaranteed to let him know he was messing with no ordinary mortal, “is for you to speak to me civilly and politely.”

Another eye roll.

How on earth had her well-behaved, sweet boy turned into this...this...closing-in-on-six-foot, shaggy-haired, sarcastic, ill-mannered man-child?

And what did she have to do to get the old kid back?

“Really?” she asked, crossing her arms. “No apology?”

He turned, walked to the weight bench in the corner, laid back, and started pumping a barbell up and down. Up and down.

Stubbornness was just one of the new, and many, unattractive traits he’d acquired and perfected since puberty hit him full force.

She stepped into his room and wrinkled her nose at the scents of stale sweat, dirty socks and only God knew what else. Maybe it was a good thing he kept the door shut all the time.

Holding her breath, she crossed to the window, stepping over a pile of clothes she knew darn well had been clean and neatly folded two hours ago. Mainly because she was the one who’d washed, dried and folded them.

She opened the window. “I guess you’ve had enough of your phone privileges then.”

Privileges he’d just gotten back after she’d shut off his account for the past two weeks thanks to his smart mouth.

Some days she felt more like a parole officer than a mother.

He set the weights on the support bar with a clang, his face flushed, either from exertion or irritation. Heaven forbid he actually be embarrassed or ashamed of his behavior.

“Sorry,” he muttered, already moving on to bicep curls, his elbow resting on his knee as he pumped the weight with slow, deliberate movements.

She smiled. A small, forgiving smile, though his apology was halfhearted at best. Forgive and forget—her life motto.

“It’s okay,” she said, but he kept his head lowered, eyebrows drawn together in concentration, lips moving as he counted his repetitions.

He’d changed, and more than his personality. The raging hormones she blamed for his bad attitude had also broadened his shoulders, deepened his voice. His face, a blending of her features and those of his father’s, had lost its roundness. His hair was darker—nearer in shade to her own than the sandy-blond he’d had as a grade-schooler—and badly in need of a trim. He was a tall, darkly handsome, soon-to-be-cut young man.

God save her when the teenage girls started coming around in earnest.

She picked up three clean shirts and carried them to his closet. “Why don’t you jump in the shower?” she asked, shaking the wrinkles out of the first shirt before placing it on a hanger. “I’m about to put the burgers on the grill so we can eat in half an hour.”

“I’m not hungry,” Andrew said, sweat sliding from his hairline down the side of his forehead.

Yuck.

She hung the shirt, then slid a hanger into the next one. “You’re always hungry.”

It was the main reason her grocery bill surpassed the gas, electric and cable bills combined.