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I continued to drive through Lantana, not sure where I was heading and not entirely caring. Resisting the urge to drive all the way to the ranch, I made another left turn to continue around the block for now. Though I knew the ranch would allow me to work through the frustrations without anyone questioning why I was hitting the dirt with the hoe so hard, or why I was happy to do some of the dirtiest jobs, there just wasn’t enough time for that to be applicable tonight.
Especially since I had a feeling that the chief would be watching closely to be sure that I actually helped. He had expressed his wishes to see me help with the fundraiser before, but I had never wanted to.
After an hour of riding around and thinking about the situation, I decided that it was time to head home. There were a few reasons – the growling in my stomach being one of them – but the main reason that the sky looked as though it was going to start pouring rain. That was the last thing that I wanted to have to drive through right now.
I arrived home safely, and was not entirely shocked to see that Jade’s car was there. We had carpooled after all. I checked my phone. She hadn’t called to see if I could come give her a ride home… perhaps that meant that she had gone to Maria’s for a while, and Maria would be bringing her home.
But when I went to open the front door, I found it unlocked. Jade was home. She had to be. Otherwise, the door would be locked. I sighed softly before walking into the living room and shutting the front door behind me.
I kicked my shoes off. There was a soft vanilla scent in the air. Perhaps she had lit a candle. Though I wasn’t usually much for scented candles, I had to admit that this one was nice.
The further I got into the home, the more I wondered where Jade was. She was not in the living room or the dining room, which were the two rooms that I could easily see from the entry way. If she was not in there, was she in the kitchen and baking with vanilla extract instead of having lit a candle?
Turning the corner, I found her coming out of the laundry room. She had started laundry while I was gone and switched it, probably. Or had just started it. Who knew?
“Welcome back, Jesse,” she said.
Her tone worried me a little bit. It was hard, icy. As if she was determined to be as warm with me as I was with her. For some reason I had not anticipated, it hurt.
“Thanks. I’m… sorry for leaving you without a ride at the store. I just need to, uh, to clear my head,” I said.
Hopefully she’d recognize that I didn’t want to share the real reason with her, or she would take the lie at face value. She only nodded. Whatever it meant to her, she was going to keep it to herself.
She walked right past me. I let her. However, since my stomach would not shut up, I went into the kitchen. I started filling a pot with some water as she sat down at the counter.
“Would… would you like some ravioli?” I glanced at Jade as I was filling the pot.
I only had one pot for noodles. It was a large three-quart pot that would easily make enough ravioli for the both of us if we needed to do that.
“No.”
I put the pot on the stove and turned on the burner before turning the water off. Jade was still standing in the doorway.
“And I’ll tell you what else,” she continued. She sounded terrifyingly calm. “I’m sick of the way that you’ve been treating me. Our interactions are painfully awkward because I don’t know what to say to you that won’t end in you either deciding to walk away or getting upset with me and yelling at me about how hard it is to be a firefighter.”
Her voice shook a little, and I wondered how long she had been working up the courage to say anything to me. How long she had wanted to say something and hadn’t been sure if I would react in a way that she’d regret.
“Not only that, but the words you said to me in the store about my jewelry were hurtful. I know my jewelry is not everyone’s cup of tea,” she continued, not giving me a chance to say anything. “I just don’t understand why you’ve decided that I’m the perfect punching bag for your frustrations. Go to the gym! Go out on a drive. Do something else,anythingelse than yell at me again for just trying to get to know the man I’m sharing a house with.”
I felt my ears turn hot. I had a feeling she was right, but I couldn’t find the words to admit it. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s absolutely none of your business how I decide to take my frustrations out.”
I turned back to face the pot of water. While a watched pot never boiled, it was far more exciting than facing Jade.
Perhaps renting out the upstairs had been a terrible idea. But she was here now, and hadn’t done anything to break her lease. As much as I wanted her out of the house, I knew that I didn’t have any legal grounds to kick her out. If she brought up breaking her lease, then I would let her without any penalties and take the place off the market. It was not worth the trouble.
“You’re making it my business by always being angry at me,” Jade retorted bitterly. “Even now, while I’m trying to have a productive conversation with you about it all, you’re shutting me down as if my opinion has absolutely no bearing on what isgoing on in the house. I wondered why a man like you would have such a large house and no family. The upstairs would be perfect for your children to run around in, play in, but you seem to be capable of turning everyone you meet against you just by speaking to them. And I don’t understand it! What have I done to you to deserve this kind of anger?”
I clenched my fist and counted to ten. Maybe I should have gone to the ranch instead of coming home.
“Jade, I have been a firefighter for ten years,” I started, but my voice rose to a yell quickly. “I have lost friends, fellow firefighters, and plenty of other people I didn’t even know in this line of work. Each and every one of them, I visited in the hospital! The burns on their bodies haunt me, and I cannot take getting close to anyone else. Do you know how awful it is to see a building and only think about how it would go up in a blaze and decide whether you’d occupy it based on that alone or not? How much time I spend thinking about how each building’s sprinklers work, praying that they’re connected right to buy everyone time to get out and suppress the fire so everyone can get out before the fire department gets there?”
Both of my hands were clenched tight in fists at my sides, and though I could hear the water in the pot bubbling furiously now, I didn’t much care for dinner.
“So, you’ll have to excuse me if I come off a little stand-offish because I refuse to lose another person I don’t know very well to the memories of the hospital and the burns and the awful cries of pain because there are some kinds of burns that you just can’t numb! And, I’ll be honest, I don’t much appreciate that you’re using the same colors of fire for the beads in the jewelry that you’re going to be selling. How dare you make a mockery of what we do by using the same colors that haunt all of us to raise money for us to do our jobs.”
Jade’s mouth hung open. I hoped she had nothing more to say, and I pulled the ravioli out of the freezer and put a few of the pieces in the water. My appetite had significantly shrunk upon getting accosted with these claims. I pushed her away for her own good. Formyown good. If she were to get hurt, and I were to have to visit her in the hospital… I didn’t want to know how I’d react to it.
I set a timer on the microwave.
