Page 6 of Up In Flames
“What?” I blinked the table into focus. “Sorry. I got lost in thought.”
“No shit. I keep telling you not to think so hard. You’re going to hurt yourself.” Jonas laughed and peeled a few bills out of his wallet. “Are we getting out of here? I’m off for the next couple of days, and I have shit to do. I see enough of you ugly fuckers at work.”
“Who you callin’ ugly?” Briggs scowled at Jonas, but there was no heat in it.
“Don’t worry, Briggs. It’s what’s on the inside that matters” I added to the tip Jonas left and made my own excuse to leave.
Rush hour traffic had passed, and I was glad of it. And for the fact that Briggs and Jonas lived close to each other, meaning neither of them ever asked me for a lift.
Normally I wouldn’t have minded. Sometimes living alone bothered me, and I’d find myself missing the station. It often felt like more of a home to me than my shoebox of an apartment was. Most of the time, if I was honest.
I wasn’t looking forward to going back to my place. Earlier in the day, I thought I might have tried to find a hookup, but the thought didn’t appeal now. Seeing Oren had thrown me for a loop. He was just my type. A little shorter, slimmer, and blonder than I was. I liked his pouty mouth and his green-grey eyes.
Home greeted me with silence. I lived on the ground floor of an apartment building. I’d put out too many fires and evacuated too many people from higher floors that the idea of living anywhere above the second floor gave me nightmares.
I put my phone in the dock and filled my apartment with music to drown out the silence. After a shower, I cooked dinner for myself. Truthfully, I preferred cooking at the station. Cooking for just myself sucked, but I liked making food for all the guys. They were an easy crowd to please. A few of the guys would even swing by if they were off-duty, and I was cooking. Briggs was the worst offender for that. Jonas frequently sent me videos he saw online of different foods he wanted to eat, but didn’t want to bother making.
When I’d first started cooking for the guys, it had been a way to expend some of my nervous energy during downtimes at the station. Mom had never been much of a cook, so it was my dad who taught me how. Mom could pour cereal and microwave things, but when it came to actually cooking, it was best if she didn’t.
Dad taught me because he joked that though he loved my mom, he wasn’t bound by any kind of religious law to love her cooking. Sometimes I wondered if Mom was bad at it on purpose, but if she was, that was between her and Dad.
Eventually, I’d taken over most of the cooking at home. There wasn’t a kitchen gadget I wanted that Dad wouldn’t buy for me. He kept a notepad on the fridge. A stubby pencil taped to a piece of string that was used to write down things we needed, and every week he’d take the list to work with him. Friday after work, he’d be late, but he’d come home with all the things on my list. When I went for dinner at their house, half the time I ended up helping Dad cook.
On a whim, I sent off a text inviting myself over for dinner the next night, if they were free. Dad’s response gave me immediate regret.
Dad
What’s the occasion? Are you bringing a friend?
His questions were followed by a series of emojis that I’m sure made sense to him. Or maybe they didn’t, and he’d just smashed a bunch of random ones to throw me off.
No friend. Just me and my barbeque tongs. I’ll grab steak on my way over.
I got another text a few minutes later.
Maybe next time then.
I didn’t dignify that with a response. Telling my parents I didn’t want kids had gone over like a lead balloon. I was their only child, and I knew they hoped I’d have found a girl by now to pop out a bunch of babies with. But I never wanted that. Even if I were straight, the idea had never appealed to me.
They pretended, of course, that all that would change when I met the right woman. I put my phone down and closed my eyes. That was never going to happen, but I was also starting to wonder if I’d ever meet the right man.
CHAPTER 3
Oren
By virtue of scheduling difficulties, Liam had been unable to come outthatnight to celebrate with me. He’d felt bad at the time, and even after I could see the shadow that haunted his gaze when he thought I wasn’t looking. Eventually, I’d gotten him to open up, and he’d confessed that he felt like the night might have ended differently had he gone. And I agreed. He might have also died, and then I really would have been all alone.
His friendship was a comfort to me, but there were things that I couldn’t discuss with Liam. Or anyone for that matter. Like the way I couldn’t stop thinking about Will. Running into him at the pub had seemed like a sign. Ever since then, old memories mixed with new ones in my head.
Will pulling me from the car had lived on a loop since that night. It was inescapable. But now it had been replaced with Will at the pub, smiling and laughing. His gaze sliding over to me, his eyes lighting up with recognition. The man had to help countless people each year, and it had been months since the accident, but he remembered me.
That shred of knowledge was the first thing that felt good since that night. When I returned to the table, I’d had to explainmy absence to Simon, who’d taken an interest in my sudden departure from the table.
Admitting who Will was had taken almost no effort. But when other eyes flicked over to me as I mentioned the accident, my stomach clenched. The last thing I wanted was to talk about the wreck. It was finally getting easier, but as the layers of grief and trauma peeled away, they just revealed new ones underneath.
Hal swooped in and steered the conversation back to another story of Simon’s brilliance, and the questions anyone might have had for me were easily forgotten. Talking about the accident was hard enough, but then people sometimes asked questions I didn’t have the answers for. Because of the booze I’d consumed and the accident itself, I was missing blocks of memory from that night.
I didn’t remember the crash itself. The only fragments that remained were the smell of gas. Flashing lights. And Will like a fucking angel. His eyes. The sound of his voice. Hell, I even remembered the ease with which he yanked me from that car. But after that? Nothing. Snatches of me in the ambulance, but I hadn’t felt like myself. Everything seemed fuzzy, like I was watching things happen through someone else’s eyes.
