Page 31 of Fire & Ice

With a disappointed shake of his head, Leander puts his phone down and steps into the shower. He’s resigned to the fact that Tripp isn’t going to answer him tonight, but understandably uneasy and wishing that he would. If what Tripp needs is space, though, Leander will give him it. He’s already pushing the limits Tripp has set with all of this texting, so the least he can do is wait to contact him again until the man decides that he’s ready to reciprocate.

The ball is in your court, Tripp,Leander thinks to himself, blinking against the water as he wets his hair and soaps himself up into a lather. He tries his best not to worry that Tripp has simply taken his ball and gone home.

After an extended, thirty-minute affair in the shower where Leander mostly stands and stares blankly at the white tile wall, he steps out and shaves off the last two days’ stubble. Freshly smooth, he wrangles his hair into something semi-styled and presentable before spritzing on some cologne. At least he’ll look and smell decent, even if his attitude and mood don’t match.

It takes longer to pick out an outfit. Leander rejects a lot of his staples because they’re things Autumn has, at one point or another, indicated she enjoyed seeing him wearing. No need to add fuel to the fire or insult to injury—whatever the correctsaying there would be, Leander’s too mentally exhausted to unmix his metaphors.

In the end, he chooses something simple: black jeans, black duty boots, a long-sleeve gray Henley, and his trusty black leather jacket. The resulting vibe definitelydoesmatch his gloomy disposition, and that gives Leander a perverse satisfaction. The debate between his car and a ride-sharing service takes less than thirty seconds and is a no-brainer, the easiest decision of the night by far—Uber it is. Leander’s going to need a drink or seven for what he’s about to do, and while his car may be a piece of junk (at least according to Tripp), he’s not keen on leaving it overnight and halfway across town when he inevitably can’t drive home.

The city feels stark and bleak tonight, the biting cold that’s settled in over the past twenty-four hours not helping matters in the least. It’s almost too chilly for the outfit Leander has chosen, but when he steps outside to the wind cutting straight through his clothing to his skin, his Uber is already parked and waiting by the curb. Knowing that if he turns around now, he probably won’t be able to force himself to come back, Leander forges on.

“Tempt-Pura?” the driver asks, confirming, and Leander nods.

This particular sushi restaurant is a place that he and Autumn used to frequent on a twice-weekly basis, mostly due to its proximity—close to both her apartment and Leander’s EMS station. Traveling through the city tonight on this once-familiar trek, Leander finds himself melancholy. As they cross into his ambulance’s first due area, the car passes location after location filled with memories of calls and patients past, and he can’t seem to turn off the film reel.

A fire scene, where a former diner suffered a devastating arson event, and the sidewalk outside where Leander spentnearly ten straight hours doing fire rehab. Dead on his feet, cycling equally exhausted firefighters in and out of the blaze, taking vital signs and tending to minor injuries.

There’s the cross-street where Leander responded to his first major pediatric trauma—a six-year-old hit by a car while riding her bike. Patently terrifying, but the child lived, so there’s that. Next is the subsidized housing highrise that towers above them at a stoplight: Leander’s been called here more times than he can count. Multiple elderly men with heart failure, a frequent flyer who goes into diabetic shock on the regular (both high and low blood sugars, she’s not picky), and chronic bronchitis requiring CPAP on the third floor. Down on the first, there’s a vet with a below-knee amputation who’s never learned to use his prosthetic properly—he falls constantly, and often only needs a hand up off of the floor.

So many dwellings and businesses they pass evoke similar memories, both public and private spaces Leander is all too familiar with for all the wrong reasons. He can see the ghosts of the past replaying scenes from his mind like a movie: patients being carried out on stretchers or in stair chairs and in varying states of distress. He can see himself, tending to the wounded and the gravely ill, some of whom will live to see another day because of his interventions, and some who won’t.

Despite the streets being empty and cold, in Leander’s mind, the red lights flicker, casting the nearby buildings in an eerie glow, both a warning and a reminder.

None of this is unfamiliar to him, these ghosts that follow wherever he might go. They’re always there, a few steps behind and lurking in the back of his mind. People he couldn’t fix, patients he worries that he didn’t do enough to save, in one way or another. The ghosts are something Leander’s becomeaccustomed to seeing, something he’s accepted that he’ll always carry with him.

In all fairness, though, normally they don’t weighquiteas heavily on his psyche.

With some effort, by the time his Uber pulls up in front of the restaurant, Leander has managed to effectively push those thoughts aside. Ironically, his work woes aren’t problems he needs to hide from Autumn, either—she’s a nurse over at Central, and she certainly understands. On the other hand, Leander’s professional trauma is not what made him send that text, and it’s definitely not the focus of their meeting tonight.

“We’rehere,”the Uber driver snaps impatiently, and only then does Leander realize that they’ve probably been parked for several minutes.

Embarrassed, he mumbles a rushed apology and a thanks. The man just grunts and probably annihilates his star rating for being as anti-social and oblivious as they come, but he can’t do much about that now. Stepping out into the cold, Leander suppresses a shiver and regrets the lack of additional layers between the leather and his bare skin.

The restaurant is fancier than he would have chosen for tonight, and he nearly grimaces at the heaviness of the front doors, the cool sophistication practically emanating from the place. His usual haunts are more, ‘stale beer smell and sticky floors’ (or maybe that’s Tripp’s influence), butthisis Autumn's purview. She is doing him a favor, though, so Leander will deal.

The atmosphere inside is subdued: candlelight on the tables as the primary illumination, deep shadows around cozy booths that offer the illusion of privacy. A low, respectful din of patrons socializing politely while eating, and ice clinking in glasses.

To be fair, it’s a relaxing sort of place, and Leander does feel some of the stress sliding off of his shoulders as he moves inside and gives the host Autumn's name. That, or perhaps it’s the nostalgia setting in, triggered by sensory recall tossing him back to all the nights they spent together here in the past. Either way, Leander can admit that Tempt-Pura wasn’t abadchoice for somewhere to meet, to hopefully unpack the particular issues weighing on his mind.

“Right this way,” the hostess tells him with a charming smile, and Leander follows her slim figure, bouncing ponytail, and high-heeled feet as they turn and lead him into the depths of the restaurant. It’s plenty warm in here, so he loses the jacket and drapes it over his arm, ignoring the piqued glances of several women and at least one man as he passes by their tables. Autumn is seated all the way towards the back, at a table that—once upon a time—even Leander might have referred to as “theirs.”

“Simba,” Autumn says warmly, though her grin is smug as she rises from her side of the booth to greet him. “My little ‘Lion Man’.”

“You know that I hate when you call me that.” They watched the stupid Disney movieonetime by accident at the beginning of their relationship, and—drunk on endorphins—Leander had casually mentioned the meaning of his name. Autumn has never let him forget it.

“You’ll always be my Lion King, hot stuff.” Somewhat stiffly, Leander allows her to draw him into a hug and to kiss his cheek, because that’s just Autumn’s nature. He’d be shocked if she didn’t invade his space and act overly personal. Even after everything they’ve been through, there’s no changing her, nor would he want to do so. She is unapologetically herself andexactly who she’s always been, and Leander could never fault her for that.

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure? And I don’t just mean those kickass arms you have on display, there.”

“Autumn,” Leander replies easily and with a small smile, sliding into the booth across from his old friend and accepting the menu from the hostess. She looks somewhat disappointed by their interactions, and Leander finds that very amusing. If she only but knew.

He watches her go, in some ways almost resentful that he isn’t remotely interested in flirting or taking her on a date—it would be nice to feel ‘normal’ for once, to understandinstant attraction,as it were. It must be unspeakably blissful to be able to feel a romantic or sexual spark upon meeting another human being, to not be required to nurture an established connection simply to have enjoyable sex or be comfortable engaging as a Dom. To fall in love, or at least togrowto love someone else in a predictable way…it must be nice.

In an attempt to distract himself from his own thoughts, Leander immediately turns to sipping on the glass of ice water set in front of him, but under Autumn's piercing gaze, he’s a mouse in the tiger cage. Outside of the bedroom, no one ever would have guessed their dynamic, not when they were actively involved with each other and definitely not now.

Back then, Leander got off on it—thought it was hilarious that other people assumed Autumn had him under her thumb, that people thought he was quiet and awkward and mousy. Their friends would joke, and Autumn would smirk, and Leander would shrug and sip his drink knowing that Autumn's provocative hip-sitting was only because she had as-yet unscabbed whip marks on her ass that hepersonallyput there.

Now, raising his eyes to meet Autumn's twinkling brown ones, Leanderalmostmisses when things were as easy as that. He definitely misses the feeling of having the upper hand, the one that comes along withnotbeing the unfortunate dumbass who fell in love with the one person he definitely can’t have.

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