AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I shrugged. “She guessed it, was pretty damn sure about it for a while.” I pulled up a chair and propped my legs up on the couch. “Besides, I think I rose to the occasion pretty well.”
“Took her down with your fire hose?”
“You need to remember that we’re not in junior high anymore,” I said.
“Speaking of which,” Bobby yawned. “What are you going to do about the reunion? Show up with Boobs McCrazy?”
“I’m thinking I might just pass on going altogether,” I admitted.
Unlike common belief, I had never been a popular guy back at school. Sure, I played football, might have been considered a jock by some, but I had mostly stayed to myself. Bobby was the only friend I had come out of school with, and I think the fact that we were both firemen kept that friendship going. A lot of the old class were still in Mansfield or around it, and I had lost touch with everyone. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing anyone again.
“Come on,” Bobby smiled. “Town hero that you are, I’m sure you’ll have crowds flocking to you.”
“Flex my muscles a bit and make the women swoon?”
“Precisely,” Bobby laughed. “And if worse comes to worst, I can always step in and make you look good.”
“Forever the devoted wingman.”
“I know my strengths,” Bobby shrugged. “Won’t try to hide it.”
“So, you’re actually going?”
Bobby shrugged and stretched. “Might be fun,” he said. “We’re completely different people now, man, you and me. Would be interesting to see how everybody else’s changed.”
“Let me make it easier for you,” I smiled. “The cheerleaders are probably married with kids and bored out of their minds, the jocks are definitely working their way up the blue-collar ladder, and the nerds will be driving in with Mustangs and Bentleys.” I leaned in. “You and me, we’re going to get lost in the crowd and probably go home early.”
Bobby winked. “Maybe hook up with some of the bored housewives.”
“Knowing you, you’d probably by them a drink and listen politely while they tell you about how their husbands ignore them.”
Bobby chuckled at that and was about to reply when his cellphone rang. He looked at it, frowned, and quickly got to his feet. “Gotta take this,” he said.
I watched him disappear behind the truck, just a little curious as to who was calling. Bobby rarely took a side when answering his phone, and I began to toy with the idea that maybe he had found a new love interest or something. He definitely deserved it, especially after the crap he had gone through with his parents’ death. Sometimes I worried about him, and I knew that living alone in that house was getting to him. There were times I’d catch him taking on extra night shifts, and I knew it was because of the company and not the job. I couldn’t remember the last time I called him and found him at home.
It’s not like you’re any better.
Which was true. I had learned to stay the hell away from any home a long time ago, back when my father was a drunken ass who could still piss standing up, and my mother was the mousey housewife who always forgave him. I used to listen to him hitting her from my room upstairs, balling my eyes out and hiding under the bed. When I was old enough to take a proper beating, but still too young to fight back, he came for me, too. It was junior high when I finally stood up to him.
I remembered the day clearly. I had been in my room, and my old man was going about his usual late-night beatings downstairs. I had tried to shut out my mom’s cries, had tried to ignore the gamut of insults he was throwing at her, but in the end, it had been too much. I guess it was anger, maybe fear, b
ut definitely a loathing towards how much power the man had over me and my mom. I remembered screaming at him from upstairs to stop. I remembered the anger on his face when he came up after me. I remembered the rage that had given his fists an extra bit of strength as he slammed them into me.
And I remembered being so pissed off and scared that I had fought back and pushed him down the stairs.
My old man died in a wheelchair from a heart attack. My mother disowned me, which I thought was a fucking hoot. When she died, I didn’t even attend the funeral. All things considered, I didn’t have a family. The people who called themselves my parents were only two idiots who brought me into this world, probably by mistake, and had left me with nothing when they left. The station was my home; the men and women who served in it my family. I had made my peace with that a long time ago.
I turned around just as Bobby made his way back around the truck, a look of concern mixed with what I could only assume was anger on his face. It was a foreign look to me, and immediately put me on edge.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s Andrea,” Bobby said.
I stood up quickly. I had hardly known Bobby’s little sister, but I had heard enough to make me take the look on his face a lot more seriously. Bobby had told me about her marriage, the abuse she was taking, and how, like my mother, she didn’t seem to want to do anything about it. I knew Dennis Canfield. We went to school together, and despite the good looks and charm, he was a Class A asshole.
“Is she alright?” I asked. My mind immediately went to hospital rooms and broken bones. I had warned Bobby about this several times, but I knew that if Andrea didn’t ask for help, didn’t want it, then there was very little he could do.
“She’s calling from the road,” Bobby said, still glaring at his phone as if he were watching her through it. “Says she’s coming home. That she’s leaving Dennis.”
