Page 37 of Fire
They moved together in a rough rhythm, Jake’s hips canting into him. Toby wrapped a leg around Jake’s waist as he arched up, needing more. Jake caught his hand, locking their fingers together as he pressed it into the bed. Their bodies were tangled together in a closeness strange and wild, slick skin meeting on each thrust, but as his climax neared, Toby felt the headiest triumph he’d ever known.
Like the vastness of the ocean, the power in this intimacy and moment was more than he could comprehend, but it filled him with that same endless awe, the knowledge that there was good in the world, and he and Jake had seized a piece of it for themselves.
Each thrust drove him higher, each panted breath mingled with Jake’s a reminder that he was not in this moment alone, never alone again if either of them had anything to say about it.
This was the realest moment that Toby had ever experienced. In that final moment, crashing into pleasure with Jake still buried inside him, he knew that no one could ever take this away.
PARTII
8
Three Years Later
“I’m sorry,can I get your name again?”
“Tobias Hawthorne.” He smiled at the librarian, who was updating his member card for the new system installed last year.
Of all the many libraries across the country Tobias had visited, the one in Boulder was the only one that felt like home. It hadn’t changed much since Tobias had first entered it nearly five years ago: the same natural light flooding through the glass ceiling, the scattered armchairs, and most importantly, the two floors of aisles and aisles of books. Admittedly, noticing those details had come later, after his first time inside. What he mostly remembered from that first visit was the diamond pattern of the carpet and the color of the librarian’s desk.
“And your birthday?” she asked. She had long hair gone slightly gray and wore a vest with tiny winged books flying across it.
“April 11, 1984.”
“That’s right around the corner, isn’t it!” She glanced up at him, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening as she smiled. “Got big plans for your twenty-first?”
“A few,” Tobias said. His birthday was the reason they were back in Boulder for more than a pit stop, after all.
New library card in his wallet and books (a couple on cooking, one on wilderness first aid, and Bill Bryson’sA Short History of Nearly Everything) under his arm, Tobias left the library and headed down the street to Moe’s Broadway Bagels. The spring sun lit the street and warmed Tobias’s skin. He felt he knew these roads and belonged. Once, this familiarity had been unnerving rather than comforting.
Neither Janet nor Maryann (Tobias’s “bagel ladies,” as Jake always referred to them) were behind the counter. Instead a morose-looking teenager slouched over the glass display, long dyed black hair concealing one eye. He kept blowing his hair out of his face, and it kept falling back down immediately, even as he rang up Tobias’s dozen assorted bagels and stored them in a large brown paper bag.
The only other person in the shop was a young woman about Tobias’s age, who had half a chocolate bagel with cream cheese on a small plate by her elbow. All her attention was on the laptop in front of her, a chemistry textbook open beside it.
Tobias took his bagels to a window seat and texted Jake that he was ready to be picked up. While he waited, he opened the Bryson book, but he’d only gotten a page in when the doorbell chimed, and he looked up.
The man’s thin gray hair hung limply from under a ratty ball cap, and he had a suspicious, mistrustful gaze. He stood with a slight hunch, as though protecting himself from a cold wind that hadn’t followed him into the bagel shop. Layers of clothes hung loose on his frame. His hand bounced on his leg in an irregular pattern that made Tobias tense. This man was no freak, at least not that Tobias could see, but that kind of energy always found an outlet. Tobias shifted to the edge of his seat, keeping his movement slow and relaxed.
The man glanced toward Tobias out of the corner of his eye and flinched away. He took in the counter where the bored employee fiddled with the espresso machine, then turned toward the woman sitting at the table in the back corner. He blinked, stared at her for a minute too long, and then shuffled toward her. When he took hold of the back of the chair across the table from her, she looked up and froze.
“I’ve seen you here before,” he said, loud in the quiet shop. “You’re a student. I know where you study, you study at the university.”
The woman sat up straight in her chair. “Yes, but I don’t think?—”
“You’re always alone. And you’re real pretty to be alone.”He spoke aggressively, without pausing for her to answer. “Can you buy me a coffee? You always get the good stuff, so you could buy me a coffee. I don’t think you have a boyfriend.” He was blocking her path to the door.
She had taken hold of her laptop, her other hand extended toward her bag like she wanted to grab it and bolt but didn’t dare to make any sudden moves. “Listen, I don’t know you, and I’d just like to get back to?—”
“What, what, that’s too much to ask—you won’t get me a fucking cup of coffee? What’s wrong with you?” the man shouted, and Tobias was on his feet.
He didn’t want to be another body blocking the woman’s exit, but he needed to redirect the man’s attention. He leaned over the table between them, breaking into the man’s line of sight.
“You need to back off,” Tobias told him, in a calm but implacable tone. The man jerked back a step, his gaze flinching.
“I’m not talking to you,” he said. “I was talking to?—”
Tobias took a step in, forcing the man back between two tables and opening the space behind him. To his side, he heard the snap of the laptop shutting and a rustle. The woman was out of her seat, then out of the shop with her bag, laptop and textbook clutched under her arm.
Tobias took a step back when she was safely outside, but he kept his gaze locked on the man, who was glaring at the floor somewhere to his right. “Don’t do that again,” Tobias warned him. “Don’t go looking for someone weaker than you are.”
