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Meeting Shannon had felt a bit like a fairy tale.

They’d met on the water and danced to no music while they waded, the sun setting behind her, the sand and salt exfoliating his feet with the movement. Fire erupted to their side, a bonfire circled by drunken minors, but the clattering of beer bottles and thrum of laughter melted away the more he looked into her – the more she spoke, the more she huffed soft laughs when the water swayed them to a fro, the more she rubbed a hand on his chest and asked about his ambitions and dreams and favorite music and about JROTC and his hopes and his sisters and his faith and him.

It aches in his chest so delightfully. When he looks to the beach the bonfire is on it’s last legs, the moon has dulled. Shannon pulls him back to her. There’s a soft light from somewhere, he can’t tell where, and it’s illuminating her face in such a way that her eyes glitter and the breathy smile on her berry red lips invite him in without hesitation. He’s hooked – besotted – sworn to this fiery, scary beauty.

He swears he hears a quiet ah-ah-ah-ahah sing to them from the waves.

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But fairy tales aren’t real.

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Eddie’s a bonafide firefighter for all of two months in Texas before a rope rescue is caught on camera and throws him into a national spotlight. It’s nothing special really. A toddler had fallen through the bars of a balcony of the 24th floor of a 30 floor building and was cradled in a caved-in banner hanging from another balcony on the 20th floor. By the time his unit arrives there’s three adults mixed up in it – one dangling from the original 24th floor balcony, another perched precariously on the ledge leading from a window on the 20th floor on the complete opposite side of said baby, another is being held against the railing of a balcony of the 3rd floor by someone who’d, miraculously, caught them on their fall from the 7th floor. The last one was unrelated, and the captain calls out to Burks to start pulling out the ladder before they’re out of the truck for that one.

Heavy rescue is short staffed that day and he’d been on the roof and connecting himself to the rope tether before the captain could call him out for, like, crowd control. He hadn’t been thinking but he remained completely locked in as he was lowered down, floor by floor, picking up each blubbering adult on the way down and depositing them safely on any balcony where any concerned (read: nosey) neighbor stood and allowed them in.

He reaches the baby, dozing off in it’s multi-colored makeshift cocoon of mesh vinyl. He straps it to his chest and pulls the rope to begin the ascent. Instead, the rope breaks. Snaps in two like belligerent fray. Sends them careening down, down, down. Near what he thinks is the 15th floor, he manages to grab onto a railing and they dangle there, the baby grizzling in his ears. Leverage isn’t on his side enough to get up and over the railing he’s attached to. The crowd below him is in shambles, and when he glances down he can see the fail-safe being carried into place and inflated. Breathing comes easy for a moment, until it never inflates and his team below begins scrambling around to find and plug any hole in the inflatable.

Tucking the baby in tighter and saying a quick (hollow) prayer, he launches and twists his body enough to careen into the balcony under him. They land without incident – well, the door to the condo is locked, and he finds out that the owner is out of town, so he bounces the baby against his chest until his captain can connect with the building manager and get it opened for them to escape. The crowd cheers and once the baby is calmed he holds it up like Simba – they erupt.

Video of it goes viral. Duh.

When he takes Chris to physical therapy the next day all the nurses fall over him, supplying him with Gatorade to make sure he never goes hoarse talking about the rescue. He picks up burgers for him and Sophia and the girl at the front desk comps it, on the house, even throws in a couple overflowing pints of agua fresca. When he stops for gas, the mother next to him tearfully insists she pays to fill him up. On a walk in the park with Abuela he’s stopped no less than a dozen times for pictures, or autographs, or for a poorly timed sexual innuendo. You look good going down, one man says with hungry eyes, and Abuela knocks him out with her purse full of rocks. Nearby birds cheer.

Local news does a segment on the station, Eddie the focus. Duh.

He likes Texas, enough. The heat in El Paso is bearable and his family’s here, and in some ways, save for the dusty battlefields, he knows nothing else. A few employment offers come in from other stations, brimming with promises to make him the best heavy rescue medic the state’s ever seen, and he entertains the closer stations.

The 118’s invitation comes nicely decorated with a stamp of a dalmatian in a helmet and turn outs. Captain Nash has included a heartfelt letter, handwritten. The rescue comes up only as a means to start, the rest explaining the history of firefighting and how they (him, the captain, the others of the 118, firefighters everywhere) found themselves where they are now. I won’t pretend the 118 can make you the best firefighter there ever was, he writes at the end, but I can promise you a home to help you become the best man you can be.

Eddie flies to LA a week later.

Captain Nash walks him around the station, introduces him to his team and shows Chris all the cool doohickeys littering the space while Eddie pals and pokes around. Henrietta – Hen – hosts a small dinner at her house with the other heavy rescue crew, and he enjoys one too many glasses of wine with her wife, Karen. Lena, his would-be partner, rolls her eyes at him like they’re old pals and cuts him off. Chimney, a loud mouth, slides him some more in a regular glass and his girlfriend huffs in his ear about being respectful. Captain Nash – Bobby – pretends he doesn’t see it, face turned away with a small grin. The kids – Chris and Denny, Hen and Karen’s son, only a year or so older – run away to the play room and Eddie finds them later, asleep against each other with Lego’s embedded in their skin.

The air in LA feels different. People bustle around him more than in El Paso, and he finds himself walking along the sidewalks without worry or care. The parks have real, lush, green grass. Shops line every corner – big ones, small ones, ones with scents that pull him in and ones with people who kind of scare him. There’s a park near the station with accessible equipment. There’s beautiful women and gorgeous men, there’s a three bedroom home for sale in a good school district a few streets from Hen and her family. There’s a police sergeant who frequents the station and gives him a run-down of the best Indian restaurants nearby while she stresses, face serious and deadly, that he won’t want to go because Bobby’s cooking is much better. Maddie, Chimney’s girlfriend, is a nurse and passes along a handful of pamphlets on home health aide she can help him research eligiblity for – she even, with dewey eyes, points out a couple programs where she’s on the roster.

He chances a visit to the pier. Rolls his pants up, wades in the water, closes his eyes, breathes it in.

The waves sing to him a light ah-ah-ah-ahah.

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Again, lest we forget.

Fairy tales are not real.

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They’re on a domestic call in this subdivision called Honker Hills – a lady’s locked her husband out of the house, trapping him on the balcony butt ass naked and they’re both fuming out the side of their necks about it. The wife is in the driveway, a silk gown hanging off her shoulders as she screams obscenities upwards with wild hands and arms to match the energy – the husband is equally as pissed off, and Eddie thinks that if he weren’t so busy covering his junk and yelling curses right back that he’d be pulling the balcony railing off with the sheer force of his desperation.

There’s not much to do on these calls except let it happen safely, so Lena and Garcia keep the crowd of nosey neighbors at bay. Chim and Bobby approach the house, Bobby garnering the wife’s attention as Chim keeps out of her peripheral and slips into the house. Eddie leans against the firetruck next to Hen and they wait.

“50 bucks says it’s an affair.”

Eddie tsks. “Too easy,” in front of them, Bobby’s got the lady’s ire turned to him instead of the husband, who’s looming over the railing and attempting to interrupt whatever they’re saying, still cupping his exposed dick and balls thank god. The wife points an angry finger upwards and Bobby lowers her arm gently. “What do you take me for, a chump? It’s always an affair, first of all – and I know you were texting Athena on the way here.”

A scoff. “I was texting Karen, I’ll have you know. She wants you, Chris, and Ana over for dinner tonight.”

“Wants us for dinner, or wants me to come over and put together that new swing set –“

“Dinner, ass!” Eddie narrows his eyes at Hen, who grows a smirk in the shared silence between them. “And if there’s time before dinner, maybe you, your big head, and bigger muscles could help me put together the swing set.”

“There it is. Me and Chris can come over, but Ana’s traveling in from a conference, she won’t be home until late.”

Hen chuckles. “You can sound less excited about that, ya know,” and Eddie flushes.

Chimney exits the front door as the husband decides to turn sour, face screwed up and one hand gone from acting as protection and instead waving around wildly. “What did I ever do to make you so angry?!”

The wife points at him so hard she bounces a little. “Why can’t you ask yourself what you haven’t done to me – it’s a much shorter list!”

“What would you even do if you couldn’t blame me for all your problems, Giselle –“

She retorts something they tune out, for ratings, and Bobby lurches forward to redirect the conversation. Instead, he gets hard pokes along his chest. The husband starts telling him he needs to back off and she in turn defends Bobby for keeping me sane and away from the likes of you! When their captain goes to coax some more placating words into the conversation, she reaches out and shoves him away with dramatic moves, going back to bickering with her husband without a second thought.

Bobby puts his hands up in surrender, turns, makes a beeline for the engine. “We’re outta here. In the truck, everyone!”

“What, we’re just leaving him there?”

There’s a loud pop of bubblegum. “I unlocked the door to the balcony ages ago. Now they’re just engaging in foreplay,” Chim says with a grimace.

Alright, leaving is probably for the better. The husband’s got both hands in the air now.

They load in the truck and Garcia drives them off. Rain’s on the horizon so traffic is light, and there’s a brightly lit billboard showcasing a fairytale setting as a fairy godmother, or maybe a waitress? Whatever’s supposed to be, this lady who’s both plump and kind with sexy arms enticing drunkards towards her and a flirty quirk of her lips, floats above a meadow near a castle and tells them “Enjoy your time!” with instructions to get off on exit 7. It’s brightly lit, obnoxious, and he thinks the doors of the castle are swaying in the pre-storm breeze like they’re threatening to spring open. Eddie focuses on the integrity of the build instead of the light conversation filtering through the headset.

“We’ve been getting these kinds of calls a lot lately. All that fighting, all that anger – man, Chim, you see this shit every day and still want to get married?” Lena’s perpetually single and they can all hear it in her voice.

“Maddie and I don’t have anything like that. Those two got together on an arranged marriage or something, you should have seen the pictures in their hallway.” He shutters. “We’re in it for love. Being such separate people…” he grabs his chest dramatically and whines, “oh, Lena, it’s like I need to be with her all the time.”

Eddie’s still looking out the window. A car honks at them and Eddie looks down to see a truck passing, an adult and a kid plastered against the windows facing them, both flipping him off. Tongues out for mass levels of disrespect. What the fuck.

“What about you and Ana?”

“Hm?”

“You and Ana. You wanna be with her all the time, right?”

“Well, yeah.” Eddie sits up. “She’s funny, pretty, whip smart, and she’s great with Chris. I mean, she’s no Abuela – half a Maddie,” that gets a dopey grin from Chim, “but we get the job done together. It’s nice to be with her.”

Hen adjusts her headset. “Ahh, Lena. You know you have to be careful talking to Eddie about love. He still thinks he’s not into all that ‘crazy romance crap.’ It’s all sagacious.”

“Hey - I never said there’s no romance. But me and Ana, we’re practical. Rational.” Hen and Chim groan. “No, listen. We’ve taken the time to really connect, ya know, learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We work well together – and it’s not like we don’t get along.”

“It sounds like you’re building a bridge,” Bobby’s voice filters through the headset, but he’s not turned back towards them.

“We’re – ok,” he rubs his face. What good are friends for, again? “Guys, it’s – I have a kid, ya know, it’s different.”

No one teases him for the rest of the ride.

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A world and a day away, a princess abandons responsibility in exchange for a stroll in the woods, hears a beautiful tune. Crosses a mountain, slays an ogre, and takes a tumble down a short cliff in search of the source.

At the end, she meets a baker.

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READER. DO NOT BE DISSUADED BY THE STORY AHEAD.