A Low Blue Flame

by A. J. Downey

“To ‘happily ever after’s,” I said.

  “To ‘happily ever after’s,” she murmured and we clicked our glasses, which rang a little too clear to be glass. My guess was, it was probably crystal. Another thing I liked about Lil, she had expensive tastes but it didn’t seem to really mean much to her in the long run. Like she’d just as happily trade it all just to make someone happy. Like the smiles were far more important to her than the cash. That wasn’t something you found in a lot of rich people. At least, not the way the media portrayed them. Lil was probably the first actual rich person I knew but she was just so down-to-earth it was like all this money wasn’t even there.

  We each sipped our wine from the perfectly pitched and sparkling crystal, (that probably cost more than my last paycheck for the one glass,) and tucked into our food.

  “Hmm,” she hummed out in pleasure, closing her eyes and chewing slowly, savoring the bite of broccoli she’d put in her mouth. “This is amazing.”

  I smiled, “Glad you think so.”

  The conversation was smooth and natural, flowing back and forth between us like water in a tidal basin. I gleaned little bits of information from her here and there about her life. She didn’t have a good relationship with her mother, though she was too embarrassed to talk about it. Her cheeks flushed all through the topic and she couldn’t look at me. Instead, she studiously fixed her eyes very solidly on her plate and the food she pushed around on it. We moved to the topic of my parents; I’d had the all-American-boy upbringing and a good relationship with both my mom and dad who lived nearby and were contemplating retiring to Florida. She had no siblings, I had one asshole brother.

  Her cats finally came out to visit just as we were clearing our plates from the table, I now knew why she’d shuffled a couple of small chunks of chicken to the edge of her plate. Before she rinsed her plate at the sink and put it in the dishwasher, she took it over to the end of the kitchen where the kitties’ food bowls rested and knocked a piece of chicken each into their waiting wet food dishes.

  “This is Jaspar,” she said, scratching the behind of a white cat with washed-out tabby blotches on his coat. “And this is Marigold,” she said giving the striped ginger kitty some lovin’s. “Jaspar’s my good boy and Marigold’s my special girl.”

  I smiled. “Looks like the perfect ‘crazy cat lady starter set’ to me.” She scoffed and I laughed. “What, I thought it was some kind of rule that if you’re a writer or author that it at least required two to start.”

  “Let me guess,” she said, narrowing her eyes in suspicion, “You’re one of those dreaded dog people.”

  “‘Dreaded!’ Dreaded? Oh, I see how it is.” I turned back to the sink to hide my stupid smile and rinsed the pan I’d used to make the chicken, mumbling, “Dreaded, ha!”

  “Well, I won’t be explaining to these two your reasoning, that’s all you.”

  “Okay, okay, I see how it is,” I said and we finished up cleaning the kitchen together, laughing.

  “What do you feel like watching?” she asked.

  “Let’s see what they got listed.”

  We went over to the couch which was easily long enough to seat, like, seven people and I was pleased she was comfortable enough to sit close. I took off my boots and crossed my feet at the ankle on the chaise end of things, tucking myself into the corner while Lil curled up like a cat, her legs up under her, next to me. She spoke into the remote, bringing up Netflix, and I paid attention to her viewing habits as we scrolled through trying to settle on something.

  “You watch a lot of true crime,” I remarked.

  “I do! I tend to put it on in the office while I am writing as just sort of background noise. I don’t always listen to music. Sometimes I need a break from it.”

  “What did you watch while writing Hallowed Be Thy Light?” I asked and she smiled.

  “Mostly fantasy movies on repeat.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, I got attached to a couple of songs from the movies and played those on repeat when I didn’t feel like having the TV going.”

  “Huh, I wonder if that’s an author thing or just a ‘you’ thing.”

  “I think it’s a little bit of both, I’ve heard of other authors writing to the same song playing over and over for hours on end because it captured the essence of the character or the scene they were working on so well.”

  “I wonder what my song would be if I were a character in one of your books,” I said with a grin and she smiled back.

  “I’ll get back to you on that, not that I’m writing you into a book, or anything! That would be weird. That ‒would‒ be weird, wouldn’t it?”

  I laughed and nodded, “Maybe just a little weird, but I think I’d be honored if I were romance-novel material.”

  “‘Book boyfriend’, that’s what we call them. I think you’re definitely book boyfriend material.” Her face got one of those priceless looks and she said, “Oh, God! That sounded totally corny, didn’t it? Like, holy hell; that was really embarrassing!” She covered her flaming face with her hands and shook her head back and forth.

  I laughed, I couldn’t help it, but I hugged her around the shoulders and said, “No, it wasn’t that bad, I promise you.”

  She shook her head again and took her hands down from her face, which was a brilliant bright pink, and groaned. “Oh, God, please just save me from myself and pick something to watch, already.”

  I took the remote and asked, “Have you watched this yet?” to make her come out from behind her hands, which she had gone back to hiding behind again. She peeked between her fingers and lowered them, shaking her head.

  “No, but I’ve been meaning to when I haven’t had my nose buried in a computer monitor and could actually focus on it.”

  “Alright, Sci-Fi adventure it is!” I cued up the show and she put her hands onto her cat, Jaspar, who had jumped up into her lap demanding love. Marigold jumped up on her other side and looked at me warily, before curling up against her mama’s hip.

  We settled in to watch and I couldn’t ever remember being this content with Tori, or anyone else for that matter, doing anything so simple. It was super nice and something, hopefully, I could get a lot more of in my life.

  10

  Lilli…

  I woke up tucked into my bed and couldn’t immediately remember how I’d gotten there. I remembered eating a lovely meal cooked by Backdraft and then we watched some of that new show on Netflix, snuggled with the cats, but then? Had I fallen asleep on him? I sat up and breathed deep and blinked, realizing that my stomach was growling and the rich smell of coffee and something sweet was coming in along the air from the hall. I pushed the covers off and put my feet down on the platform my bed was suspended on, digging my toes into the white faux-fur decorative area rug. Jaspar and Marigold were both looking at me like, ‘Really mom?’ from where they had been curled up on and snuggled beside my legs. I frowned at them a bit.

  “Yes, really,” I said, and realized I was still wearing my robe. That is so weird!

  I turned and put the covers back where they belonged, making up the bed neatly before I descended the two short little flights of glass and cement stairs to the polished cement floor of my bedroom.

  The sun glistened along the water of the Chesapeake and I did what I always did first thing in the morning and took in the astounding view I had all the way down to the water. I’d had to move to the opposite coast because of my mother and the need to get away from her influence and crazy, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t move away from the water completely. It would have been like tearing out a piece of my soul.

  I went out into the hall and followed my nose to find a rumpled but delicious looking Backdraft barefoot in my kitchen, flipping pancakes in a skillet, fresh coffee nearby in the French press.

  “Ah, hi. Hope you don’t mind, I was starving.”

  “Mind? No, why would I mind?”

  He smiled at me and it warmed me all the way to my toes. When I didn’t smile back
right away, he faltered.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “I don’t remember anything past the second episode,” I said, truthfully.

  “Ah, yeah, we both fell asleep under a pile of furry purring. I woke up but didn’t have the heart to wake you. You looked wiped out, so I just carried you into bed and tucked you in. I didn’t want to just leave, so I hope you don’t mind. I just racked back out on the couch.”

  I stood there for what felt like the longest time, just wrapping my head around what he’d just told me. My first thought both did and didn’t take me by surprise. Damn. My first sleepover with him and I didn’t even get to sleep next to him. That doesn’t seem very fair.

  “You know my bed is, like, eight times the size needed to fit just me and the cats,” I said. “You should have taken half of it.”

  “Just friends, remember?” he said softly.

  I rolled my eyes, my lips twisting into a wry smile and said, “I remember, but friends sleep next to each other all the time, I promise.” Then I couldn’t resist teasing him a little. “Were you afraid your virtue was in danger, what with the big bad romance author and all?”

  He laughed and I giggled and he nodded, looking chagrined. “Okay, okay, you got me there and fair enough.”

  He got the spatula under the pancake he was making and flopped it onto a neat stack of them on a plate nearby.

  “Do me a favor and make yourself useful, set the table,” he said with a wink.

  I laughed and went to oblige, pulling down two more plates and getting the silverware. He opened the oven and I froze as the delicious smell of bacon rolled out, along with a generous cloud of smoky-scented steam.

  “Wow, and bacon?” I asked. “I might just have to take you off the market.”

  He chuckled but didn’t comment, but he also didn’t look at all uncomfortable with the overt flirt. In fact, dare I say, he looked quite pleased with himself.

  While he did some scrambled eggs with cheese, I put the pancakes on the table and went back for the platter of bacon. He stopped me and piled the fluffy eggs on the platter beside the bacon before he’d let me take it and I was struck by just how harmonious things were. Like we were two puzzle pieces that just fit personality-wise and I really loved that. I also had to say, I really loved that he had stayed. Or, rather, that he had felt comfortable enough to stay.

  It was nice that the fact I made as much money as I did didn’t seem to faze him. Like it was an ‘Oh, that’s nice’ before moving right along to a subject that actually interested him. Those ran the gamut from shows and movies to an awful lot about me. He was a wealth of questions and sometimes it was hard to keep up. I liked it though; nothing he asked me made me uncomfortable and I really loved that he seemed genuinely interested in my work despite the subject matter, even going so far as to enthusiastically get into whatever story I was telling him about, and to even make suggestions.

  He let me ask deeply-intimate questions about what it was like for a man to think or feel a certain way and he never hesitated to answer me, always answering perfectly candidly, and I appreciated that so much.

  “So, what are your plans for the rest of the day?” I asked when we got through the majority of our meal. I was duly impressed by just how much he managed to put away. He was a large man, very tall and super muscular, but at the same time, very svelte. I didn’t think he had enough body fat on him to grease a cake pan. He seemed to be all muscle, at least from what I’d seen down at the pool.

  “Mm,” he swallowed his mouthful of coffee. “I have a ride with the guys in about an hour I have to get to. You want to go with?”

  “Ahhhhh,” I hedged. I really did but my inner responsible adult won out. “I’d really, really love to, but I have to get these last few chapters written on this book before I do anything. The deadline might not necessarily be looming, but the sooner I get it done, the sooner I can get to working on the project I really want to be working on right now.”

  “Lemme guess, got with the publisher and now there’s a certain amount of having to write for the man?” He raised his fist and crossed his eyes, and I laughed.

  “Pretty much exactly how that goes, yeah. I have to pitch a bunch of story ideas and they pick from them, and it feels like they almost always pick the one that is pretty much ‒least‒ near and dear to my heart. So I get what they want done out of my way, then write what I want to write before moving on to the next one they want pitched.”

  “So what do you do with the ones that you finish that they don’t want?” I asked.

  “Send them to them anyway,” I said sipping my own coffee and smiling around the rim of the mug. “It’s a fifty-fifty shot that they take them, and when they don’t, I go on to self-publish them under a different pen-name.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he asked curiously.

  “Yeah, she’s doing really well, a lot of people say if you love Timber Philips, you’ll like her books, too.”

  He laughed and said, “So you’re double-dipping between traditional and independent publishing?”

  “Absolutely! Except I don’t keep the money from the independently-published books. I donate it to various charities. Partially for the tax write-offs, but more because whatever cause I donate it to is something I’m equally passionate about.”

  “What’s your favorite charity?” he asked, leaning back in his seat.

  “Right now? Literacy programs for underprivileged youth.”

  “Trying to make more readers, huh?”

  I smiled and said, “Business feeds itself when you put it that way.”

  “Best way to do it,” he agreed, “but yeah, no, I get it. Reading gives kids places to go. Some kids, we can’t imagine the shit they go through.”

  His face sobered a bit and I knew his mind wandered back to his friend, Corbin, who he’d told me about last night. He’d been how Backdraft had known about narcissistic parents. I reached out without thinking and covered his hand that rested on the edge of the table with my own. His hazel eyes dropped to it and the faint curvature of his lips encouraged me. Still, with what happened with Mark still so fresh, I didn’t think it was a good idea if I went there just yet, but with every genuine small act of kindness Backdraft bestowed upon me, he was rather effectively changing my mind.

  He gave my fingertips a gentle squeeze between his thumb and the side of his hand and with a sigh that was half-reluctant, half-satisfied, got up from his seat.

  “I’m happy to clean up. You cooked.”

  “Thanks,” he said, checking his watch.

  “Pick you up bright and early on Thursday morning?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said softly. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  He laughed lightly and picked up his jacket from the back of the couch, swinging it around and sliding his arms through.

  “Might not be saying that by the end of the ride, but we’ll see.”

  I smiled; he’d warned me about the potential of becoming saddle-sore, said it always happened from a long ride, but to what degree was a very individual thing. I was willing to try and could always fly back if need be, I’d told him. He’d said good point and I knew that he was giving me one last chance, here and now, to change my mind.

  Not on your life, I thought, but what I said was, “I’ll be ready.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you then.”

  “Be safe,” I told him and his look softened. He nodded and I knew he took it seriously. I also knew that nothing in life was guaranteed and that something similar to what had happened to his friend could just as easily happen to Backdraft. That was the way life really worked.

  I saw him out and held my breath at the door that he might just bend down and kiss me. I wanted him to, and I suppose I could have been the brave one and initiated, but I wasn’t. I watched his broad back, the wide expanse of leather emblazoned with its shield and the indigo knight chess piece and hoped I hadn’t bitten off more than I could chew with such a long first real ride, all the
way from Maryland to New York.

  I guess I would find out in a few days. He gave me a wave and stepped onto the waiting elevator and I sighed, holding back my curious boy Jaspar with my foot as I closed the door to my apartment. “You don’t need to go out there,” I declared before I looked back at the table and shouted, “Marigold!” I sighed and she jumped down with her piece of left-over bacon off Backdraft’s plate. Jaspar caught on to the fact she had something he didn’t, and he took off after her.

  “You guys!” I groaned, and shaking my head, gladly went to finish cleaning up. I was grateful for the refreshing change in my daily routine which had become so monotonous lately. I was even more grateful that Backdraft was the reason that routine had been broken up, giving me something to really look forward to.

  “What do you guys think? You like him?” I asked, but they were too busy play-fighting in the living room.

  I rolled my eyes and finished up the minor chores before heading into my office to write. My sense of romance was renewed and ideas were flowing freely as to where to go with this current piece I was working on. I was hoping for my good morning to carry me through a good writing day. We would see.

  11

  Backdraft…

  “Look at you!” I declared, shutting off my bike, and putting my hands on the tops of my leather-and-denim clad thighs.

  “You said to dress for the ride and for the slide. I have to say, I feel really awkward, but the girl at the Harley-Davidson store said this was the best money could buy, so that sounded about right.” She wrinkled her nose and looked unsure, blushing with embarrassment, but the girl I’d sent her to, Kathleen, wasn’t about to steer her wrong. That’s why I’d told her to go there.

  “Naw, Kathleen hooked you up, I’m glad to see it. You warm enough?”

  She nodded, “Almost too warm.”

  “Good, you won’t be once that wind hits you; hopefully you’ll be just right. Where’s your bag?”

  “Don’t need one,” she said and smiled. “They literally take care of everything for the red carpet premiere. I just need to show up. Plus ‒New York‒. I already have some things on order to be delivered to the hotel.”