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We get to work, and just before we turn the firehoses on, my sensitive eyes see a flash of golden hair near the top floor. I look up and my stomach falls to my feet.
It’s Denise. She’s trapped in the burning building.
Chapter Ten
Denise
All in all, I’m doing pretty well. I’m not crying myself to sleep every night anymore. I can manage to get through a song or two without bursting into tears or losing track of what I’m doing and just sitting despondently in one spot for hours. I haven’t laughed or offered a smile that wasn’t forced in the past three months, but I’m headed in the right direction.
Things are getting better.
Leaving Curt turns out to be a lot harder than I anticipated. At first, I believe that I’ll be able to compartmentalize my grief, to rationalize it with the understanding that it was the right thing to do. After all, he and I are too dissimilar to have a future. He wants a structured, ordered life with a predictable routine. He wants to live in the same place for the rest of his life, to shop at the same store, to sit at the bar with the same people and trade the same jokes, reminisce about the same memories. He wants to belong.
Meanwhile, I crave freedom. I need for each day to be different from the last and just as different from the next. I need to wake up somewhere new, if not every day than with no more than a few weeks in one place, preferably a few days. The world is wonderful and varied and complex and different and vibrant, and I intend to experience as much of it as possible until I’m too old to travel anymore. Hell, even then, I fancy myself passing somewhere on the open road, traveling seamlessly from my adventures in this life to the greatest adventure of all that awaits me in the next life.
So why am I not happy?
I mean, I expect to miss Curt. I expect to be sad without him for a little while. I definitely expect to be sexually frustrated. I haven’t hooked up with anyone else since leaving him, but I have no doubt that going from the sexiest man I’ve ever seen to anyone else will be a letdown. I’m pretty sure I’ll never find anyone who can satisfy me the way he can.
I expect to miss everything else too. I enjoyed his company, not just the sexual parts. But the sadness is deeper than I anticipated. The weight of it feels like a physical force, pushing me down as I try to navigate my new life. I can barely muster the motivation to get out of bed, let alone find new places to explore on the open road.
I think that’s why I ended up here, in a small town just about an hour away from the city where Curt lives. I don’t intend to go see him. In fact, I make a point to stop here and not that city specifically to avoid seeing him. As much as I miss him, I’m still convinced that he and I won’t work out in the long term, and I don’t want to put myself in a position to get hurt again. I definitely don’t want to hurt him any more than I already have. He’s a good man, and he deserves better.
But twice now, I’ve returned to hover on the outskirts of that life, as though by being close to it, I can somehow recapture some of the joy I felt when he and I were together.
I’ll move on tomorrow. I have to, or I’ll run out of money and be forced to hitchhike or rely on the kindness of strangers. Unfortunately, for a young woman like me, the kindness of strangers typically involves trading sexual favors. Before Curt, I didn’t mind that. I considered it part of the adventure of my life. I even found it exciting, something that made my experience unique. I suppose too, that I enjoyed knowing that I was a private, beautiful memory in the minds of a number of men who don’t have the luxury to live a life as free as mine.
Now, though, the thought of being with anyone other than Curt is debilitating. I need to leave, to go somewhere far away, far enough that Curt will be distant enough that I can push him to the back of my mind and play some serious music. I need to replenish the meager savings I had before I pined for him and avoid ending up trapped homeless somewhere with no choice but to give the body that no longer feels as free as it used to.
So, I will check out of this small hotel tomorrow morning and use the last of my money to buy a bus ticket and enough food to get me to California. I’ve been to San Francisco before, but I’ve never been to Venice in Los Angeles County. I hear that a lot of street performers do very well there, not to mention the people watching it affords and the vast array of new experiences available to me. I could spend a few months in that area, moving from Venice to L.A. to Hollywood to Malibu to Orange County to the desert and let the wonder of it all slowly heal the wound that Curt leaves.
Tonight, though, I will rest. At least, I plan to rest. I don’t even manage to close my eyes before I smell smoke. I try to dismiss it, but when I feel heat with the smoke, my mind can no longer pretend that what’s happening isn’t happening.
The hotel is on fire.
Panic sets in as I jump out of bed, scrambling to grab my few belongings as quickly as possible. My heart races with fear as I hear people screaming and running around outside. I look through the window and see that the hallway is filled with dark smoke, making it impossible to escape that way.
I rush back to the door and try to open it, but the handle is too hot to touch. I'm trapped. I feel the heat of the flames against my skin, and tears stream down my face as I realize this might be the end for me.
A strange sense of calm washes over me. I walk quietly to the edge of the bed and sit, staring ahead at the window. I can see several other fires in the distance and wonder idly what must have happened to cause them. It must be a forest fire that spread to town.
I don’t regret dying. I know that’s an odd thing to say since I’m so young, but it’s true. I don’t fear death. What I regret is the life I’ve sacrificed. Not the life of wandering and experiencing something new every day but the life of comfort and closeness and love that I had with Curt; the life I gave up thinking I would never be happy in one place with one man and one future.
God, I was such a fool. What I wouldn’t give to have one more moment with him, one more chance to feel his arms around me, his lips on mine.
I don’t regret that I’m dying. I regret that I never gave myself a chance to live.
Chapter Eleven
Curt
In order to be a successful firefighter, you need to be able to separate your emotions from the job. People die in fires. People get hurt in fires. Buildings collapse, towns are destroyed, thriving, vibrant forests are turned into wastelands. Fire destroys and unless you can accept that, you’ll break emotionally.
I’ve been very good at separating my emotions from the job in the past. I’ve found myself trapped in burning buildings, rescuing others trapped, narrowly avoiding explosions and jets of flame that would incinerate even the strongest of shifters.
I’ve faced death time and time again, seen death time and time again, and never once has it overcome the trained calm that fills me every time I’m sent to battle a blaze.
Now, though, seeing Denise staring through the window of her room near the top of the burning hotel, my calm is shattered, and I am filled with scintillating, blinding panic. I cry out her name and start sprinting toward the building, forgetting everything, forgetting my training, forgetting the ladder truck parked ten yards to my right.
