Page 65 of Keeping It Professional

He rolled his eyes. “Oh,please.”

I guessed we hadn’t been as discreet as I’d thought. Someone must have spotted us leaving together, or maybe they’d noticed her wearing my shirts.

“So, why’d she break up with you?”

“I broke up with her.” I winced at the way my retort came out, harsh and defensive. Like it mattered who left. What mattered was, I’d been happy with her. She’d been happy as well, as far as I could see. I could’ve gone a whole lifetime waking up to her smile, even as it puckered and crinkled with age. If only things had worked out that way. If only they could.

Brian set down his beer. “Thisislike back then.”

I stood up, not wanting to hear what came next. Brian stood with me and blocked my escape.

“No, listen,” he said. “You need to hear this.”

“I don’t. I don’t want?—”

“Five years ago, you went out on a call. A house fire, a bad one, and you got there first. You saw someone in there, so what did you do? You went running in over your partner’s objections. You ran in with no gear, no gas mask. No blanket. You?—”

I shoved Brian aside. “I know what I did.”

He grabbed me and shoved me into the wall. “You had to be rescued. You and your partner both. He ran in to get you when you didn’t come out.”

“Iknow!Then he quit. What’s your damn point?” I threw Brian off me and stormed back down the hall. “I fucked up. I know that. I took my suspension. I worked through retraining. My hearing. Probation. It’s over, so?—”

“You always do this.” Brian quit chasing me, now we’d run out of hall. He stood looking tired, his hair in a mess. “You treat every bump like it’s the end of the world, and you’re this lone hero, this… I don’t know. Like every problem you have, you need to solve it alone, and if you can’t, that’s it. You’re done.”

“What? I don’t?—”

“You walked out on our friendship over one little fight. Ran into a fire when FD was coming. Two minutes out, and you couldn’t wait? You gave up on them too. On all you worked for. And I’m betting with Sophie, it’s exactly the same. You hit some damn roadblock, some stupid hitch, and rather than talk to her, you called it quits.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. When he put it that way, it was hard to refute. But the thing was, with Sophie?—

“You’re a good guy,” said Brian. “You’ve been a good friend. But sometimes I ask myself, am I a pain in his ass? Are we friends like I think we are, or is it all in my head? I can’t keep reaching out, and you slap me away. So answer me. Tell me. Do you want me around?”

I swallowed hard. “Yeah. Of course.”

“And Sophie? You want her?”

I laughed, a crude bark. Did I want Sophie? More than anything, anyone, I wanted Sophie. “You think she’d still want me if she saw all this?”

Brian glanced at the trash bags. “That’s not what I asked.”

“Well, yeah. Obviously. Of course I want Sophie. She’s all I ever dreamed of, my fairytale ending. But even if I married her. Even if we were happy…”

“Even if,what?What’s wrong with that?”

I picked up a chip bag and tossed it in the trash. “One day she’d leave me. Or I’d leave her. She’d get in an accident or I’d get sick,or something would happen, and it’d be gone. Everything we lived for, all that we’d built, all up in smoke like it’d never been.”

Brian took the trash bag from me and set it aside. “Do you actually hear yourself? What you just said?”

“It’s true, isn’t it? Nothing’s forever.”

“So, you dumped Sophie because one day she’lldie?” He laughed like he couldn’t believe his own ears. “If you lived till eighty, that’s fifty more years. Fifty good years you two could have. You’d give all that up because it can’t last forever? That’s the dumbest-ass thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Wouldyouwant to lose someone you’d loved fifty years?”

“No, but it’s better than no years at all. Losing love, yeah, it hurts, but at least you once had it. Don’t you think you deserve that, for however long it lasts?”

I took a good look at Brian, at his broad, earnest face. Did I deserve his friendship? His kindness, his care? He had plenty of places he could be tonight, fresh-smelling places, not choked with trash. I tried to think when I’d last rescued him. When I’d been the kind of friend he’d been to me.

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