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“If that’s how you feel about it, I’m sorry. I’ll be back to get my stuff tomorrow. I’ll do anything I can to help you, but you have to know that I’m going to make choices you don’t like. I haven’t agreed with everything you did, not by a long shot. But I put up with it because I care about you and wanted to take care of you in spite of that. If you can’t tolerate anything from me other than obedience even though I’m grown, maybe you’re right, and it’s for the best that I move out.”
“Are you going back to school then?” he said, as if it were of passing interest, nothing that affected him.
“I’m going to wait for Luke,” I repeated.
I ran upstairs and changed, shoved my toothbrush and some clothes into a bag and carried it out with me. I didn’t say goodnight. I didn’t have anything else to say at all. I’d made my choice, after weeks of trying to hide what I wanted, apologize or make excuses for wanting anything at all for myself.
I got into his front door the same way I’d broken in last time. The house was dark and empty. I kicked off my shoes, switched on a lamp that bathed the room in a dim, warm light. I curled up in his chair and waited. I didn’t waste my time, though. I let myself think it all through, from the first time I’d kissed him on the bus playing spin the bottle to the way he’d told me he loved me, first in bed, then again at the dinner after making a toast to me. I felt the weight of it, not heavy as a burden, but heavy like velvet, like something thick and sumptuous I wanted to wrap myself in. We had our second chance, something most people never got at all. I’d wasted weeks of our time together, time we could’ve been happy out in the open instead of keeping it a secret. I’d been afraid of upsetting people. I hadn’t put his feelings or mine first, but what other, peripheral people would think. They’d think I shouldn’t date my brother’s friend or do anything to upset my dad or further piss off my brother as he careened toward drunken misanthropy.
Anytime I heard that pager buzz or the scanner alert, I knew that I could lose him. He could go out on a call and something could go wrong. A fluke, an accident, equipment malfunction or a roof caving in, or an explosion in one of those warehouses that could have a meth lab in it just as easily as it could store somebody’s old furniture. All of us could be gone at any moment, but the life of a firefighter was forever being risked saving others, to save lives and property. When I thought of the clammy earth beneath the tree where we’d met in secret, I felt ashamed. Not for meeting him, kissing him, finding ways to be alone together, but for secreting him away like we had anything to feel guilty about. I should’ve marched him in the back door at my house, announced we were seeing each other, and let everyone else deal with their own issues about it. I didn’t have to try and manage people. I could make choices based on joy, not fear. I’d wasted so much time.
Not another minute, I swore to myself.
26
Luke
The last of the paperwork was filed at the station. I took a shower, halfheartedly, just to get the worst of the soot and smoke stink off of me. I was dead on my feet. We’d had a close call there. Nothing explosive in the warehouse, but one of the cars had given us a hell of a scare. Jake had to go in the ambulance to get treated for burns despite his protective equipment. The cuff hadn’t been down on his sleeve and he had taken a ring of second degree burns on his wrist and arm as he tried to fight the fire and, as we say, the damn thing fought him back. Chief was with him, and we knew he’d be okay, but it was sobering seeing a brother suffering, a member of your home crew loaded into an ambulance, his face tight with pain.
I was practically staggering when I got to my front door. It was unlocked. I paused for a heartbeat. It was too much to hope for, that she’d be waiting for me after that call that lasted so late into the night. But there was the lamp turned on, and there was Sarah Jo in my chair, her feet tucked under her, looking like the best damn thing a man could wish for. I didn’t wait, didn’t say a word. I crossed the room in three strides and scooped her up off the chair where she was dozing, cheek on her hand. I pulled her close and kissed her.
