Page 5 of Up In Flames
He looked like he still had things he wanted to say to me, but maybe didn’t want to in front of the whole firehouse and his colleagues. Sometimes accident victims or people who’d been trapped in burning buildings had questions about what happened. Their brains blocked things out due to trauma, and they came to me seeking answers.
I wondered if that was the case with Oren.
“Did you want to talk in private? If you have questions about that night… Briggs—ah, Carl—he was there too.”
Oren paled and shook his head. “No. That’s—I just wanted to say thank you.”
“If you change your mind, I’m at Station 860. Just ask for Dorsey. None of these assholes use my first name.” My comment earned a smile from Oren, but not a real one. A small, timid smile that hid away as soon as it poked out.
I watched Oren go back to his crowd of suits and I took a seat. Jonas had switched with me and took my place by the wall.
“Who was that?” he asked as he folded one of the napkins into a Bird of Paradise. It was one of his many useless talents, something he’d picked up from working in his family’s catering business growing up.
“Seven months ago, we tore the roof off a car, and I pulled him out of the back seat. He was the only survivor at the scene. Two fatalities in the car with him, and the driver of the car they hit died too.”
Jonas let out a low whistle.
“I’m surprised he remembered me,” I told him. Oren was one of those people I’d thought about after the fact. Sometimes I tried not to think of what people’s lives were like, but when I did, I liked to imagine that they were happy. Oren didn’t look happy, but I didn’t know the first thing about him.
“Your admirer is a lawyer,” Briggs said. He was sitting across the table from me, and I looked up at him.
“How do you know?”
“Because I pay attention to shit, Dorsey. They’re in here every once in a while. The hot shot with the silver hair pays for everything. That’s Simon Preston. My cousin was a paralegal for his firm before she went back to school.”
“Let me guess. Law school?”
Briggs snorted. “Nah, she does nails now. Fancy ones. Charges like a grand for a set, but they’re super custom.”
“A grand. For fingernails. I’m in the wrong business.”
Briggs and Jonas laughed.
“No shit, right?” Briggs took a swig of his beer. “I’d do it, but I can’t draw for shit. I’m better off busting doors down.”
Briggs was our muscle. Everyone on the crew could knock a door in, but Briggs could do it faster than everyone on the crew. It was a point of pride for him.
“Think he’ll come back?” Jonas asked, motioning toward the group where Oren sat.
I wanted him to, but not when the whole crew was around. There was something about Oren that made my insides wobble. I’d noticed his full lips, his pouty mouth, the worried expression etched into his face. I’d wanted to kiss him to see if it would bring another smile to his face. But Oren didn’t set off my gaydar… and none of the guys knew I was gay.
It wasn’t like they were a bunch of homophobes. Briggs’ little brother came out as trans last year. Jonas volunteered at the local LGBT center in honor of his best friend who hadn’t survived the hellish teenage years. I didn’t think I’d get any flak from them. But my parents would care. They were card-carrying Catholics. Confession every Sunday. Mass at Christmas. Crucifixes as home decor level religious.
Every so often, they tried to get me to date, usually a nice church girl. And every so often, I’d bite the bullet and take someone out just to say I’d been on a date recently, and it hadn’tworked out. My parents were sweet and well-meaning, and lucky for me, easily fooled.
The older I got, the harder it was to keep up the charade, but it seemed pointless to come out when I didn’t have a reason to upend my life. I’d tried to date before, but I was closeted, and he was straight. Turned out, I didn’t like being a science experiment. Keeping a secret was bad enough, but I didn’t want to be a secret and an embarrassment or a mistake.
The old wounds still bled when I pressed on them. The words had been thrown at me like daggers, each one hitting the mark. When I did date, I only dated men who were comfortable with their sexuality. Whether they were gay, bi, or pan. Out or not out mattered less, because I wasn’t out either.
Mostly I avoided the whole problem by not dating. I hooked up now and then, and sometimes I’d even go for a repeat or two, but so far no one had stuck around once the thrill of fucking a fireman wore off or when I wouldn’t bring them to the station for hookups. Sorry, boys, I wasn’t a wish-granting genie. I was just a lonely gay boy who couldn’t stop thinking about the most-likely-straight lawyer he’d pulled from a wreck over half a year ago.
The group of lawyers he was with trickled out one by one, and Oren was with the last group to leave. I sipped my beer as I watched him go. He’d removed his suit jacket, loosened his tie, and rolled up his sleeves. He caught my eye as he walked out, but he looked away like he hadn’t meant to be busted looking at me.
The guys from the station were thankfully unaware of whatever electricity had zapped between Oren and me. Looks like the ones Oren gave me on his way out were dangerous. They came with heat. And questions. His gaze had been haunted. I hoped he’d come by the station someday to talk to me. The wreck was the kind where we were certain we were going to pull nothing but bodies from the twisted metal.
Oren was a miracle that night. He was battered and bloody, but he’d come out of that car in one piece. The scent of gasoline was everywhere, and the only way to get him out had been to cut the roof off the car.
“What did that drink do to you, man?” Briggs asked, bumping his hand into mine to get my attention.
