🎂 The Cake at the Station — Chapter One

We were parked along High Street that afternoon. It was cold and overcast, the kind of gray that settles into your bones. A slow day. No calls. Just a routine hydrant check and the usual sarcastic chatter flying back and forth among the crew. The kind of day where you’re just waiting for something to happen—or quietly hoping it doesn’t.

It was my birthday, but I hadn’t told anyone. Not really. I’d mentioned it in passing last week, mostly so I could get tomorrow off. No one made a big deal, and that was fine by me. I didn’t want a fuss. Birthdays have been quiet things for a while now—more reflective than celebratory.

Then Ethan rounded the fire engine, grinning wide, carrying a cake like he’d just pulled it from a dream.

“Happy Birthday, Finn!” he shouted, and the rest of the guys followed behind him, clapping, smiling, throwing in off-key renditions of the birthday song like we were in some weird sitcom.

The cake was perfect. Too perfect. Three layers, buttercream frosting, delicate lettering. Candles already lit. Not a grocery store job—this thing came from an actual bakery. It looked expensive. Thoughtful. Planned.

I laughed and played along, even posed for a photo with them—grinning like a kid. But in the back of my mind, something started to itch.

Because here’s the thing: Ethan once gave his own mother a gas station bouquet for her birthday. Leo didn’t even remember mine last year, and I was his ride home. None of these guys are the cake-planning, candle-lighting type. They’re good people—brave, loyal—but sentimentality isn’t really in their vocabulary.

So where did this cake come from?

Back at the station, we sliced it up. I got the corner piece with extra frosting. The guys joked about getting old, about my hairline, about whether I was going to cry. I laughed, but I couldn’t shake it.

Something about that cake didn’t add up.

Later, while the others were in the lounge watching highlights from last night’s game, I slipped into the kitchen and checked the box. Fancy bakery in the next town over. I peeled the tag off, flipped the box open—and found the receipt taped underneath.

Not addressed to the firehouse. Not paid for by anyone I recognized.

One word caught my eye: Harper.

And beneath her name, a note scribbled in neat, almost familiar handwriting: “Don’t tell him it’s from me.”

Harper.

I hadn’t seen her in four years. Four years, two months, and some change—not that I was still counting.

The last thing she ever said to me? “I hope someday you realize what you lost.”

And then she was gone. Just like that.

Now, four years later, a birthday cake shows up out of nowhere. Beautiful, thoughtful, deliberate. With her name on the receipt and a message that felt like a whisper across time.

I stood there, holding the box like it was fragile, like it might disappear if I blinked too hard.

Why now?

Did she hear something? Did someone tell her? Or had she just remembered, in that way you remember people you used to love—softly, quietly, like a song you forgot you liked?

I didn’t say anything to the guys. I didn’t tell them what I found. I just sat back down, fork in hand, staring at the last bite of frosting melting on my plate.

It wasn’t just a cake.

It was a message.

And maybe… a door.