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Eddie woke up with a start and sat bolt upright, desperately trying to catch his breath. Not today of all days, he groaned inwardly. He honestly thought he’d grown out of these visions, he hadn’t had one since he’d left school, although they would have come in handy in his army days. Might have saved him from being shot.
His abuela said they were a gift, but he wasn’t so sure. They seemed more like a curse, especially when they decided to come without warning and made him wake up like this. Glancing at the clock on his bedside table, he groaned again. 6am. There was literally no point in going back to sleep, his alarm was going to go off in half an hour anyway. Crawling out of bed, he headed straight for the shower. At least he would have extra time to get himself ready before he had to wake up the currently snoring seven-year-old in the next room.
Feeling the hot water pounding on his shoulders, he closed his eyes and tried to shake the vision, but it just seemed to replay in his head. He’d been at a church, standing at the altar wearing a navy suit. There were lots of people there, some he recognised – his parents, sisters, all his tíos and tías , his cousins, his abuela , and, strangely, Captain Bobby Nash.. And then there were a lot of faces that he didn’t know. Some names floated into his head, Hen, Athena, Chimney...but he couldn’t be certain that those were these people’s names. And if they were, who was who. The visions were funny like that, sometimes they spelled things out for him, and sometimes they made him try and piece it together.
Music started to play, and he looked past everyone to see a man and a woman walking down the aisle slowly. The woman was wearing a light blue bridesmaid dress, which looked quite elegant to his eye, nothing like the ruffled things that his sister Sophia had made her bridesmaids wear. Eddie had secretly thought that it made them look like meringues, but his mom had told him not to say anything, so he kept it to himself. Walking beside her was a tall man, maybe slightly taller than Eddie, a nervous smile on his face as he grabbed onto the woman’s arm. He was dressed in a suit exactly the same colour as her dress, with a white shirt and a tie to match the suit. Blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, and that beautiful, wide, absolutely perfect smile.
They eventually reached him, and the woman stood to the man’s side, and he took Eddie’s hands in his. Turning to face him, he noticed a pair of red birthmarks, one above and one below his left eyebrow, and he had the overwhelming urge to reach out and stroke them. But he just stood there and stared into the man’s eyes as he whispered “are you ready for this?”
Climbing out of the shower, he wrapped a towel around his waist and headed back to his bedroom to get dressed. He needed to get this vision out of his head and get ready for his first day. And besides, just because he’d seen it, didn’t mean that it would come true. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t. They were just hints to something that might be and considering that this one was so far in the future, the chances of it coming true were really slim.
Two hours later, he stood in the locker room of the 118 firehouse. The door opened, and Captain Nash walked in, followed by three people. A woman with a shaved head, who introduced herself as Hen, a shorter Asian man, who was introduced as Chimney (“don’t ask”, he’d said, while Hen told him she’d tell him later), and then the third. He held his hand out, and Eddie shook it, trying not to stare at him. Slightly taller than Eddie, blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, a beautiful, wide, absolutely perfect smile, and a distinctive birthmark on his left eyebrow.
“Hi, nice to meet you, I’m Buck.”