Page 34 of Up In Flames
“My cousin owns a farm outside of town. We can get you behind the wheel of one of his flatbeds, and we can drive aroundthe property. There’s a million roads to go down, and the only traffic you might run into are some cows.”
“That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.” But I smiled anyway. I didn’t hate the idea.
“I can call him up and let him know we’re on our way if you want.”
“Oh, you meant today?”
Hal grinned at me. “No time like the present. Simon already gave us the afternoon. You’re already having a bad day. It’s the perfect time to go because your bad day will either improve, or it was already shit to begin with. So what’s a little more?”
“Your logic astounds me.”
He grinned at me. “You’re welcome.”
“Call your cousin. What have I got to lose?”
“That’s the spirit.” Hal looked happier than I’d ever seen him as he made the call to his cousin. It was like he’d tied his personal happiness to me in some twisted way. Like I’d made his day just by letting him help me.
It was an hour before I realized he had done exactly that, because I was his friend and he was grateful and relieved that I let him help me.
Hal was my friend. Liam was my friend. Will was my friend.
It might only be three, but it felt like three more than I deserved. Three more than I felt like I’d had that morning when I’d woken up in a bleak mood, feeling sorry for myself. Three suddenly felt like a fortune.
CHAPTER 16
Will
The day started off like shit, and it only got worse. We’d no sooner got back from putting a car fire out, and we were called out again. This time to a structure fire in a residential area. House fires were the worst. I hated watching people lose so much so fast. It was part of the reason I became a firefighter, to help people on their worst days.
We arrived on scene and bailed out of the truck. The house was already a goner. Fire had eaten its way through the roof already. Flames poured out of the second story windows, and black smoke filled the sky. House fires stank. The smell wasn’t woodsy and nostalgic like campfire smoke, but full of toxic fumes. Building materials. Plastic. All sorts of shit that wasn’t meant to burn polluted the air.
A couple cops had been first on scene and had their work cut out for them dealing with the frantic family. Even over the roar of the fire and Brigg’s baritone barking commands, I heard them crying and screaming.
Getting the hoses up and running was second nature even with the chaos around us. We battled back the flames and tried to keep the fire from jumping to the next house. Their vinyl siding was done for, though. The heat from the blaze had meltedit and left it hanging off the side of the house, but so far they’d been spared worse.
After a while of doing this job, it was easy to tell which houses were goners. I’d known the roof was going to collapse when we pulled up, and it wasn’t long before my guess came true. Fires were loud events, but the moment before the roof gave in, it wobbled and it was as if the world held its breath.
A strange silence fell, and then the roof caved in, and all the sound came rushing back into the void. More crying. Briggs shouting orders at us. Cops keeping the looky-loos back and out of our way.
By the time the fire was out, it had burned down to the studs. The roof was gone, and the back wall had collapsed in on the structure soon after. All that was left was wet, smoldering rubble. Ash and soot and water-logged memories.
The homeowners clung to each other, huddled under a blanket on the side of the street in lawn chairs provided by kind neighbors. No one was hurt. They didn’t have kids, and their family dog had been taken to the groomer that morning. They hadn’t even been home when the blaze started.
It was still hard to look at the destruction of their lives and say shit like they were lucky. People didn’t feel lucky when they were watching their world burn. They didn’t feel lucky when you pulled them out of a car that their two best friends had died in.
As it always happened lately, my thoughts circled back to Oren. I felt lucky that I’d found him, but damned if I knew how to keep him. He was newly… whatever he was. Newly not-straight. And I was in the closet. Out to only him. I’d stolen a few moments of happiness with him and called myself lucky. But it was hard to hold on to that feeling when I knew it couldn’t last.
He’d either wake up one day and realize that he wasn’t into men after all. Curiosity sated. Experiment over. Or he’d find someone who was out. Someone who wasn’t scared of losingeverything. The truth about my sexuality would rip my life apart like a house fire and it was hard to stare at the destruction of your world and say,wow, I sure am lucky.
After we finished mopping up, the crowds dispersed. Even the homeowners found a better place to be for the moment. I guess they couldn’t stare at the end of their world any longer.
“Hell of a day,” Briggs said, sliding in next to me in the rig. We were both covered in ash and soot. Sweat and dirt.
“Yeah.” I couldn’t muster up the energy to say anything more.
He arched an eyebrow. “You okay?”
“Fine. Just tired. The fire took a lot out of me, I guess.”
