Chapter Eleven; Pole Dancing

You know your life has reached the cheese ball love story level when even dirty underwear has a romantic twist to it.

You see, I experienced a domestic debacle of the appliance variety when my clothes dryer decided to fizzle out. My love life may be on fire but the heating component of my dryer? Not so much.

But it is Nick, my knight in shining pickup truck, who rescues me from my ever growing pile of laundry (and rapidly decreasing supply of fresh panties) when he insists he not only accompany me to Best Buy to buy a new one but also haul it to my house in his truck. And install it for me.

I feel like the luckiest damsel in domestic distress ever.

And of course, manly man that he is, he does all of the above and more. For while we are in my basement and I am watching him do the “hooking up the dryer thing” (which involves electrical crap that I am not even remotely touching) he warns me to clean out the lint trap regularly because “I go to a dryer fire at least once a week in this town.”

I pinky swear promise. And sit atop my washing machine watching the muscles in his back ebb and flow beneath his t-shirt while he puts the back panel back onto my dryer and maneuvers it into place.

(I really want to be that t-shirt.)

But you know what the best damn part of this adventure was?

We make out in my basement for at least 15 minutes when he is done. (And I secretly pray that my washing machine goes to laundry heaven next week.)

And then Nick suggests, “Hey, do you want a tour of the fire station? I have to return this dolly anyway that I borrowed to haul your dryer.”

“Absolutely!” my inner 3rd grader enthusiastically replies.

Two minutes later, I am sitting beside Nick in his truck and he is singing aloud to a very lame song and I am laughing away. What a goober. (I love it.)

As we pull up to the station he announces, “Looks like they just went on a call, we got the place to ourselves!” as he lets me into the garage on the first floor where the fire trucks normally are.

Holy crap. They DO slide down poles!

I bound around as if I am on a school field trip and ask, “Can I see your fireman garb?”

Nick chuckles, “Hell yeah.” He leads me into a room off the garage where the firefighter gear is lined up and coyly reveals, “And you’re going to do more than just see it. You’re gonna wear it.”

“What? Oh come on!” I giggle and feign objection, but really, I think this is so freaking cool.

Nick shows me how the boots are all lined up with the pants so they can dress quickly when the alarm sounds. I step into them as he instructs. He lifts up the suspenders and hooks them on my shoulders, but not before commenting, “Damn, I do love your legs.”

Being around him is like getting a compliment overdose. I love your eyes. I love your lips. I love your smile. I am constantly showered with attention I have never before known. I don’t really know what to do with it. So I just breathe it in. And love it.

Who wouldn’t? Someone in a coma maybe. And I am feeling more alive than ever before.

“I feel like a clown!” I say in half firefighter attire.

“You look,” Mr. compliment strikes again, “pretty damn adorable.”

Next I get to put on the coat and it feels like lead, “How much does this stuff weigh? Is it made of granite?”

“That’s nothing,” he warns, “try the helmut.”

He then puts what feels like a rock on my head.

“Good gawd!” I exclaim, “How can you battle infernos wearing this much heavy shit?”

“All the gears weighs about 80 pounds when it’s all on.”

I am instantly impressed. I have a whole new respect for men who go to work and have to wear this suit of armor WHILE scaling down the sides of buildings and saving old women from smoke inhalation.

Nick shows me the rest of the station, we even swipe some pie in the kitchen. Hmmm . . . apple. Num.

When he shows me the business office he announces, “And this is the computer I was sitting at when I asked you to be my Facebook friend,” and then confesses, “my hand was shaking when I hit “send” let me tell you.”

I just smile. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone more honest.

He takes me through every nook and cranny of that place, shows me the plaques on the wall of the former firefighters over the past 100 years and the stars next to the names of the firefighters who have died during our town’s history. There are only 5, but still, I shudder.

This is a job where people can die. And have.

He reads my mind, “I am going to be fine,” he whispers and kisses the top of my head, “don’t worry.”

I do inquire about his “best” adventure on the job and his face lights up, “Well,” he coyly says, “I have delivered a baby once in a blizzard, on Christmas.”

Did he just say baby? Did he just say blizzard?

Did he just say Christmas?

I sink into my chair.

This. I gotta hear.

Nick tells me all about it. The person who had called 911 didn’t speak English so Nick and colleague were uncertain as to what exactly they would find when they arrived at this call. All the dispatcher could decipher was something about a baby and stairs.

Expecting to perhaps find an injured child when they arrived, they instead found a crowd of people gathered in an apartment foyer at the bottom of a stairwell. They parted when Nick arrived. And then he saw the girl.

She was pregnant. And in labor.

A quick assessment revealed the grave reality of the situation. She was crowning.

“Looks like we’re having a baby tonight,” he’d told his colleague, who was stunned and speechless. They’d been trained for this but never actually had to do it.

“Go. Get me the delivery kit,” Nick remembers barking.

And that winter night.

In the middle of a blizzard.

In an apartment stairwell.

Nick helps a scared young girl give birth to a son.

Talk about a Christmas story.

“It’s definitely one of my best moments in this job,” Nick softly says, his eyes shining as he continues, “in fact, the experience moved me so much, that if I ever do marry someday and have children, I want to deliver my own child.”

It is all I can do at that moment not to raise my hand.

And volunteer my own uterus.

“Oh, they’re back,” Nick announces as we hear the enormous garage doors opening below us, “Now you can slide down the pole with me and say hi!”

I laugh internally and think to myself how I’ll get to tell Naomi later that I was offered the chance to slide down Nick’s pole sooner that she thought.

But in reality, I balk, “No way! I am not really doing that!”

“What? Oh come on, I’ve slid down this thing with a hot piece of pizza in one hand, you can do it!”

I know. I am a loser. I am terrified of heights to the point where an unfamiliar flight of stairs can cause me anxiety. So I can’t even bring myself to try.

I rode the Harley. I am drawing the line at the two story scary pole.

Nick just laughs at me.

And we take the stairs.

He tries to persuade me to just pose by the pole for a quick picture before the firefighters get out of their trucks. Oh fine. So I do, but then as one of the doors swings open I shriek and run away in embarrassment.

Nick is doubling over with laughter, “Nice one! This picture is a blur! I’m sending to you anyway you dork!”

“Audra’s First Fire Pole Dance” is the caption he gives the picture that he sends from his blackberry to mine, which is literally, nothing but blurry motion.
Which is a fitting visual for this story so far.

Because things are moving so fast and feel so unreal, that at moments I am not sure if I can even get clear picture of what is going on with this guy who burst into my life so swiftly and with so much intensity.

But just a few days later, things become clearer.

Even though I simply can not believe.

The words Nick tells me.