Author's note -
This is my first real attempt at writing a simple romance. Although the last story I published here on Lit ended up being more of a simple romance than I originally intended when I started writing it, this one was written from the beginning as, hopefully, a simple love story.
This story is a work of fiction based on something that really happened to a longtime, very close friend of mine, and some of the characters are based on real people. All the names have been changed to protect them. And although the story is set in Southern California, in the San Diego area, there is no "River City" in the area. I chose the location because it's an area I know and love, and I called the city "River City to disguise any actual agencies involved.
I have taken many liberties with the actions of law enforcement and firefighters simply for the sake of the readers; I didn't want to get too technical and risk losing potential readers due to the storyline being unnecessarily complicated. With that in mind, if you happen to be a firefighter, or a law enforcement officer, or a current or former Marine, please understand I am familiar with all three professions and ignore those little "it wouldn't really happen like that" moments.
Very minor spoiler alert - Yes, the thing that happens to "Connor" in Chapter One really happened him, and he really did meet "Brandi" somewhat in the manner I describe, but that is where the similarities between real life and this work of fiction end.
To "Connor" and "Brandi" - I love you guys, and this story is dedicated to you.
-- Prologue -
I'm not superstitious. I don't believe in karma. I don't read horoscopes. I think psychics are charlatans whose only purpose in life is to take money from unsuspecting people who are hoping to find real answers to the problems they face. I'm not even what I would consider religious, though I was raised in a religious household and I do believe most of the Ten Commandments have played an important role in today's society. I say most, because anybody who knows me knows I have taken the Lord's name in vain on more than a couple of occasions and, in this day and age, many people work on the Sabbath, including me, on occasion.
I do believe in fate, though. And while many would argue karma and fate are essentially the same thing, I would argue karma is more of a cause-and-effect belief, where one action occurs as a result of another action. Fate is when things happen because they are supposed to happen, whether they happen as a result of another action or not. And I firmly believe everything happens for a reason, happens because it is supposed to.
I was raised primarily by my father, who, up until his death, was very religious. And while he took me to church on Sundays and tried to instill his religious beliefs in me, he also made it clear I would be my own person and I was free to choose to do as I pleased where religion was concerned once I turned 18 and reached the age of manhood.
My parents weren't divorced, but from a very young age, my mother wasn't around very much. While my father, and me as I grew older, followed most of those Ten Commandments closely, my mother seemed to have a difficult time following the one that read, "Thou shalt not commit adultery". As I already mentioned, my father was religious, and along with the Ten Commandments, my father was a firm believer in the words of Jesus Christ when he said, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do". He knew Jesus was referring to those who crucified him, but Dad applied it in many aspects of his life, and every time my mother came crawling back, begging for forgiveness and promising it would never happen again, that is exactly what he did; he forgave her.
Things would get better between them for a while, and life at home would be somewhat normal for a few months. Normal in the sense that I had both parents at home, not normal in the sense that I actually felt like I had a mother around or that I felt like we were a normal family. But after those few months, my mother would grow bored with being around Dad and would find herself running into the arms - and bed - of another man.
I was almost 19 years old and near the end of my freshman year of college when Dad couldn't take my mother's infidelity anymore and took his own life. I came home from school to find him hanging in the shower with a note to me on the bathroom counter. He apologized to me, begging me to forgive him and asking me to forgive my mother as he also detailed the emotional pain he had endured at her expense over the course of their marriage. I gave the note to my mother after his funeral, telling her I never wanted to see or speak to her again. I blamed her, and I never forgave her. I didn't think she could have saved him, though. I truly believed Dad would have found a reason to take his own life even if my mother had remained faithful. As I said, I believe in fate, and to this day, I truly believed my dad's suicide was meant to happen.
I packed most of my clothing, grabbed important items such as my lockbox with my birth certificate and social security card and a few other things I thought I would need, and left the house, telling my mother to do whatever she wanted with the rest of my stuff as she told me she loved me and begged me not to go. I moved in with my best friend, Roger Hansen.
My mother died from cancer just over two and a half years later, as I was beginning my senior year of college. I didn't go to her funeral, and the only reason I even knew she died was because, even though I hated her, my friends made sure she knew where I was and her attorney was able to track me down. She left me everything, which wasn't much, but she had a life insurance policy that allowed me to pay off the house and my student loans, plus pay for the rest of my tuition and buy a new truck while leaving enough to live on for about a year while I finished college and looked for a job.
It took a lot out of me emotionally to step back into that house. She hadn't touched my old room, and I found everything exactly as I had left it two and a half years earlier. Pictures and posters still hung on the walls, many of them faded from where the sun hit them each day as it shined through the bedroom window. Clothes I had long outgrown still hung in my closet. Two and a half years' worth of dust accumulated on my desk, my old desktop computer, trophies, and other odds and ends I had in the room. A picture of me and Dad from when I won my first surfing competition in my sophomore year of high school, still taped to the mirror attached to my dresser. A box of old Playboy and Penthouse magazines, stuffed in an old backpack and shoved under my bed to keep them hidden from Dad.
With Roger's help, I got the house cleaned up and presentable. I contracted with a company that specialized in estate sales and, after going through the house and deciding what I wanted to keep, sold most of the furniture and other items in the house, including both of their cars. I had a garage sale two weeks after the estate sale and was able to get rid of many of the remaining items that didn't sell during the estate sale, and the items that didn't sell during the garage sale were donated to Goodwill. After the estate sale company took their cut, and with the money I had made during the estate and garage sales, I had enough money to do a minor remodel of the house.
Roger and I did the work ourselves a little bit at a time, working nights and weekends when we could until we graduated, then finishing it up in the first couple of weeks after graduation. We ripped out most of the carpet and laid down tile, painted the walls and kitchen cabinets, installed new countertops in the kitchen, and remodeled the bathrooms. When we were done, even though I knew the layout of the house like the back of my hand, it looked different enough that I could see myself being able to live in it, with Roger moving in and becoming one of my roommates.
Roger had been my best friend since the day we met on our first day of school, in Miss McGill's Kindergarten class at River City Elementary. We grew up together, played sports together, surfed together and went to college together. The only time our paths deviated was when we entered college. Where I majored in business administration and management, Roger studied criminal justice. Where I wanted to be a big shot executive with a Fortune 500 company, Roger wanted to be a cop.
Our other roommate was another friend named Adam Rizzo. Adam was three years older than me and Roger. He was a high school senior and captain of the surf team when we were freshman. Even after he graduated, we remained close friends with him, continuing to surf and hang out at every opportunity. He had been a lifeguard and even became certified as an Emergency Medical Technician during the summers before deciding to become a firefighter, and he helped me get a job as a lifeguard during my junior year in high school when he entered the fire academy. After graduating high school, I followed Adam's example and also became certified as an EMT.
That summer after college graduation was my last year as a lifeguard. Roger applied for every law enforcement agency in the area and went through the background processes with many of them before finally being accepted to the academy for River City Police Department. While Roger was in the academy, and with my own luck at finding an entry level job in the business world not panning out, Adam talked me into applying to be a firefighter. Adam had moved out and married his high school sweetheart, Dorothy. He told me the pay was good, and since I was already a certified EMT, if I wanted to try to get certified as a paramedic, the pay was not only better, but the department would actually pay for the training.
It wasn't what I envisioned myself doing for the rest of my life, but as fate would have it, the River City Fire Department jumped at the chance to hire me, largely due to the fact I was already an EMT, and they immediately got me into a paramedic program after I finished the basic fire academy. Apparently, I was supposed to become a paramedic.
