Wildfire

by Allison Martin

  “Let’s go work on this outside okay?” I stretch my arms high over my head and she gathers her papers.

  On the porch we settle into the chair and she tucks herself close to my side.

  We work for a half hour, blocking out the noise of the day as the Rykers rip apart my mother’s greenhouse and reassemble it into a studio. Jet works alone for a bit until Xan shows up and greets us briefly before jumping into work alongside his brother.

  “Mom,” Millie whines and tosses her pencil down. “They’re all wrong. I hate fractions.”

  “Me too, kid. Me too.”

  “Did someone say fractions?” Jet asks from the bottom of the steps, his arms full of broken wood.

  “Yes. I said I hate them.” Millie grumbles and leans back against the bench with a huff.

  Jet drops his stuff and jogs up the steps. He picks up Millie’s paper and glances at it for less than a second.

  “Yeah this is all backwards. It’s not a math issue it’s a teacher issue.” Jet grins at me and I cross my arms in defense. “Your teacher sucks at math.”

  “I do not,” I say, and his grin turns into a full laugh.

  “Briggs, you do recall that the only reason you passed math was because I did your homework for you...”

  Millie’s wide eyes prove she can’t believe her mother would do such a sneaky thing. Thankfully that’s all the rebellion she knows about me.

  “Well fine, if you’re so amazing then you teach her.” I try to hold my pout but a smile cracks it.

  He throws his gloves at me. “Done. We’ll trade for a bit. You go help my brother clear debris.”

  My stomach rolls at his words and the sun heats my skin as I step out from under the shade of the porch. I leave Jet’s gloves on the steps because they’re massive and would never fit me. I’ll be like Mickey Mouse trying to pick up a dime.

  Xan watches me approach and as I get closer all the little details about him come into focus like it’s the first time I’ve seen them. The broadness of his shoulders, the faint line of sweat where the soaked fabric stuck to his skin, the crinkle between his brow when he concentrates, the shadows across his face from the baseball cap. Mostly I notice how he notices me. The intensity with which he watches me, his clear blue eyes pulling me in. How could any woman resist being looked at like that? This woman. This woman had to resist being looked at like that.

  “Hey, I’m supposed to help you out for a bit while Jet undoes the math damage I’ve done.”

  Xan laughs, and my heart fills with light fluttering beats as history tumbles through me. That laugh.

  “Shit, Briggs. You did not try to teach math, did you?”

  “Why is everyone hating on my math skills,” I ask with a high pitch and hands firmly on my hips.

  “Because you have no math skills,” he replies and then jumps backward in case I swat at him. It’s disorienting to be bantering with him like I used to. It’s so easy to be around him. So natural.

  “Well, even so. I think I’m doing a damn fine job of raising my daughter, all things considered.” I pause, my body going cold even under the hot sun. Xan’s eyes cloud over and his gaze dropped to the pile of wood at his feet. I’ve been a single mom for so long that retraining myself to include Xan was going to be hard. My needs to become our, and that thought hiccups through me.

  “Have you ever thought of putting her in public school?”

  “Yeah, I’ve thought of it. But public school is terrible, and it doesn’t fit with our life,” I answer unable to stop the sharp tone of my words.

  “Living in an RV,” he says.

  “Running the business that keeps food on our table,” I snap. “What is she going to gain from public school that she wouldn’t get from actually visiting places, spending time in nature, learning with her whole heart, using her hands instead of memorizing things from a fucking book.”

  “Friends?” he responds without hesitation and it feels like a slap to the face. Every defense I have is running in high gear, but my lungs are stalled. No air, no words, no response.

  After a few moments of silence battle, I spin on my heel and huff around the yard getting my own work gloves and using my frustration to fuel me as I haul lengths of wood to Jet’s truck.

  My phone buzzes in my back pocket and I answer it with an irritated hello, not bothering to check who it is. There’s nothing but loud breathing on the other end.

  “Hello?” I say again, lowering my phone to check the number. It’s unknown.

  Shit. Not this again. I already changed my number twice.

  “Listen, Asshole. I wasn’t interested then, and I’m not interested now. Stop calling me.” I stab the end button with my finger and almost immediately the phone rings again.

  “What do you want from me,” I say and there’s a pause on the other end.

  “Um, hi, Briggs. It’s me.” The voice of my virtual assistant puts me at ease and the tense muscles in my body all loosen at the same time.

  “Leslie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even look at the number.”

  “Is he calling you again?” she asks without hesitation.

  “I think so,” I reply. The last time I changed my number was a few weeks before I came to Raston, right after the break in.

  “You sure do attract the crazies,” Leslie laughs, her voice shrill and I sigh because it’s true. My choice to keep my face unattached to my business is both the best and worst thing I’ve done. People make it a point to hunt me down. Or to point out all my perceived flaws in the comment box of a phone app. But this phone breather wasn’t a fan of my jewelry, he’s a guy I met in Arizona who wanted to take me out and after two dates I knew without a doubt that there was no way I could see him again.

  He didn’t take kindly to the rejection.

  I think about the words painted on my truck. The fact that I’m hiding out in my father’s house, living a lie. Acting like I have it all together. Acting like I don’t have a stalker that keeps tracking me down.

  Shudders ripple along my skin and I shake the thought.

  “Did you need something from me?” I ask reverting back to business. Leslie often wants to chit chat like we’re buddies and not like I’m paying her a lot of money to do certain tasks for me.

  “I was wondering if you were working on a new line? People are asking and commenting about you not posting. Usually you post every day. It’s been a few days now.”

  “I am,” I lie because I know I should be. I’m always good about posting new lines every month and trickling the products out through social media. I only create a small amount of each piece and they sell out minutes after I post. “It’s taking me longer to source this time.”

  I haven’t told Leslie I’m hiding out at my childhood home. She thinks I’m still on the road, still looking for small pieces of nature.

  “Well, maybe to keep people happy you should host some sort of giveaway or something that people need to enter over the next few days. Buy you some time.”

  “You are a genius, Leslie.” I’m distracted by Xan watching at me, questioning what I’m doing on the phone with his sexy judge-y gaze. “Thanks.”

  “Are you okay? You seem off?” Leslie asks and I shake my head even though she can’t see me.

  “I’m good—thrown a little by the call is all. I thought that was all over and done.”

  “Yeah, me too.” Leslie trails off into silence before she clicks her tongue and inhale sharply. “Well, I’ll let you go and get back to your sourcing. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  I thank her and hung up the phone, tucking it in my back pocket. Jet is still on the porch with Millie who is furiously writing something in her book, her tongue clenched in her teeth. Xan stops in front of me with a stack of broken two by twos on his shoulder.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yup,” I say clipped as I squinted into the sun. “Just some business to deal with.”

  I move quick to the pile and clear my head with man
ual labor.

  #

  The light is dim in the living room so I have to move to the kitchen where the moon glimmers out the window and the low hanging lights are enough to help me fasten clasps on the chains of new necklaces.

  Quiet blankets the house and the hum of the fridge puts me into a trance as I work. I still have no clue what I’m using for pendants, and I don’t have the energy to start any rings. They’re tedious and I don’t usually bust out the lathe unless I’m extremely stressed out and need to hyper focus on something. I kept a bunch of scrap wood to use from the greenhouse project, but I need to find some scrap metal or stone for inlays.

  The clasp work is quick and two separate lines are prepped before my tea is cold. When I first started in the basement of my aunt’s place in Surrey this would take me hours. Days even once Millie was born and I had no time to even think between feedings and diapers.

  A text comes through from Xan startling me with a harsh buzz.

  Xan: I feel bad about the last couple times we’ve spoken. can we talk?

  Me: sure

  Xan: Meet at the creek in 20

  I suck my bottom lip between my teeth, biting down nervously on the skin. That phrase holds a lot of meaning for me and I can’t stop my brain from going there. Weaving between the trees, ducking below branches, moving toward him like we were magnetic and didn’t need the light to find each other. I can feel him, each heartbeat a drum guiding me closer to him.

  Feelings that intense leave footprints on the soul, ones that even time can’t wash away.

  With a slow breath I respond to the text, saying I’ll be there.

  I make my way through the house to the family room where Dad props up in his recliner, his white cast glowing in the dim light of the TV. The volume is almost muted, and the closed captions scroll along the bottom of the screen. I’m pretty positive my father prefers to read the shows rather than listen to them.

  “Hey, Dad,” I say quietly, and he peers over his reading glasses at me. “I’m going to go for a little walk okay.”

  His expression turns to quizzical, his gaze untrusting, but he simply nods and goes back to his show. There’s tension knotting up my shoulders and I roll them back, wondering why he didn’t push for details.

  Because he knows where you’re going, I think as I slip on my running shoes and grab a sweater from the coat rack. I’ve never met anyone who hated Xan as much as my dad did.

  Maybe Dad finally moved past whatever grudge he has for Xan. I pause in the doorway, studying him with a furrow in my own brow. Suspicion holds me in place. That knowing, clawing, twisting of my gut tells me something I don’t understand is going on.

  I silently slip through the door, knowing that even if I ask him, Dad wouldn’t tell me anything. I have my own mysteries to solve first. Like how on God’s earth I’m ever going to build a relationship with Xan that doesn’t include this thunder in my chest, and lightening in a few other places...

  Chapter Fifteen

  XAN

  I sit on the smooth boulder we’d both occupied days before, but it feels like weeks have passed. Twirling the flowers in my hand, I suddenly become self-conscious of the wild blooms I’d stopped along the highway to pick for her. The purples and yellows and bright green stems feel garish and I almost toss them into the stream to wash away the evidence of my weakness for her.

  The cracking of branches and rustling of trees hold me capture and when she steps out from the tree line calmness washes through me. I stand quickly, striding over to her with an intense need to make things right between us.

  “I’m sorry I’m a dick sometimes.” I hold the stems out to her, and she takes them hesitantly. With a gentle touch she strokes the bright yellow petal of the flower and her demeanor is forlorn. She lifts the bouquet to her nose and inhales as she walks around me to sit on the boulder jutting from the rocky ground.

  The sky is an explosion of color and the light softened everything around me, even her.

  “Thank you, Xan,” she says laying the flowers across her lap. I sit next to her knowing I’m too close but her shoulder against mine feels right.

  “I get, I don’t know, caught up sometimes. I think you’re doing a great job with Millie. From what I see she’s just...” I get stuck on the words, rotating through all the different things I could say about my daughter. “She’s fucking perfect.”

  Briggs smiles, but she feels distant. Something is happening inside her head and I know it. That unfocused gaze and way she spins the little ring on her finger.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, like I did earlier that day. Something is bothering her and it’s driving me crazy that she isn’t talking to me. She used to talk to me about everything, almost to the point of annoyance and once she’d circled back two or three times to repeat the same stories in different words I’d scoop her up and put my lips to hers and then the only sounds she made were ones I gave her.

  “I’m fine. I’m just really overwhelmed by all of this. I don’t know how to navigate it all.”

  She’s lying, but I play along happy that she’s at least talking.

  “We don’t have to have all the answers. We do however have to communicate, Briggs. We can’t keep secrets from each other now.”

  She finally meets my eye, her eyebrow lifting slightly.

  “I’m not the only one with secrets,” she says and even though the tone isn’t accusatory I’m certain she’s calling me out.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Del told me you aren’t working fires this summer. Something about an assessment? She clammed up and refused to talk after that. It was sort of obvious that you’re dealing with something that isn’t light?”

  Her words are soft and even, as if she’s debating each one as it rolls from her tongue.

  My heartbeat makes it tricky to hear what she’s saying but the way she watches me as she asks the question is enough to erode my defenses.

  I cannot fall back in love with this woman, I scold myself.

  “It’s protocol,” I start, the words hurt to push out. “There was an accident at a fire last year. Winds changed without warning; mistakes were made.”

  Briggs waits for me to finish but I can’t. That’s as many words as I’ve ever spoken about that day to anyone else.

  Her warm fingers tuck their way in between my clenched fist, and I relax my hand. She threads her fingers with mine and it’s like coming home. Her hand in mine is what I’ve always been missing but until this minute I’d never have admitted that.

  “I’m sorry, Xan,” she says squeezing my hand.

  “I go Monday morning to meet the therapist.” The words don’t carry the volume or the command I want them too. “I have to be deemed mentally fit to go back to work.”

  “Are you?” She asks. “Mentally fit?”

  “I dunno,” I reply. The honesty frees me and for a brief moment I’m able to breath. She tilts her head to rest on my shoulder and I don’t dare move for fear of her realizing her closeness.

  We stay like this for a long time, watching the water bubble and gurgle over rocks and for a moment it all feels simple. Easy.

  But nothing with Briggs and me has ever been easy.

  #

  Monday morning comes with a hang over and I groan as I roll out of bed. The effort makes my head pound and I cradle it in my hands, putting pressure on my temples. The clock on the wall says 9:45 and I have fifteen minutes to get to my appointment with Ms. Bakshi and I already know I blew it like last time. But the difference is last time I did this on purpose. This time I’m just a fucking idiot.

  She doesn’t seem the kind of woman that will take kindly to me being late and reeking like beer. I stumble to the bathroom, still drunk and do my best to make myself look and smell human again.

  My sunglasses don’t cut it as I leave my small basement apartment and outside my brother is waiting against my truck with his arms crossed.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask and Zeke shrugs, his
youthful aloofness had never left him.

  “Del told me you got wasted last night, Jet had to drive you home.” The casualness in which he mentions all this dig at my shame because this is not unusual in my family. Coordinated strategies to move siblings around the volatile drunk.

  “Still doesn’t answer why you’re here,” I try to move around my truck, but my little brother puts a large hand on my chest and pushes me back.

  “I’m here to drive your drunk ass to your appointment. Jet had to work so he sent me. Believe me bro, I don’t want to me here as much as you don’t want me here. Let’s just get this done so I can go back to work.” He opens the door and gestures for me to get in.

  My head is pounding too hard to argue and I slide into the passenger seat and close my eyes.

  The creaking of the doors sounds like the jaws of life are tearing apart the metal and my thoughts spin around what they always do when I feel like this.

  Maybe I am like him. I didn’t mean to drink this much. But I started thinking about this session, I took a sip, the thoughts kept coming, I kept drinking, hoping they would stop. They never stopped coming, I never stopped drinking.

  The movement of the truck makes me nauseous and Zeke throws a water bottle at me and nods to the cup holder where two painkillers rattle around from the bumpy roads. In any other family this would be a kind gesture. A caring and thoughtful brother looking out for his own.

  Not in my family.

  In my family this is routine.

  I hate myself for making them have to do this.

  “Man, I–” I start but Zeke shakes his head.

  “It’s fine. Really.” He rolls to a stop in front of the small beat up building that is wholly unworthy of Ms. Bakshi’s presence and throws the truck in park. “But, can I ask you something?”

  I swallow the pills and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “Of course.”

  “Are you trying to fuck this all up?”

  I’m stunned silent not only by his question but by the tone of desperation in his voice. This question is layered in a way my mind can’t grasp in this state.