by K. S. Thomas
I’ve nearly texted him a hundred times. When I couldn’t go through with that, I almost texted Tony. I’m telling myself that’s where Penn is. At Tony’s. Sleeping on his couch. Getting his belly stuffed full with homemade Italian foods brought over by Tony’s older sister. She’s gorgeous, so I’m also telling myself that dinner is all she’s bringing by.
But I can’t seem to remember how to hit send on anything I type anymore, so everything is still pure speculation at this point. The only thing I do know, is he’s not working tonight. And, he’s gotta be out of clean socks by now.
Dressed in my sweats and ready to curl up in my bed with Gilbert to have myself a solid mope, I do a sudden explosive dance as if I’ve stepped onto an anthill the second my phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s gotta be Penn. I just know it.
It’s Nat.
Put some clothes on. Real clothes. Cute clothes. I want to see heels, woman. Be there in twenty.
I consider blowing her text off as an empty threat. After all, she’s never been to my house. But then it occurs to me that she probably has access to all my info through work, so she’s probably not bluffing as much as she’s actually on her way over.
I take one gander at my current ensemble and decide that Nat’s seen me at my worst often enough this week. It’s time to face the world looking like a competent human being again. In heels.
With Gilbert still hanging from my arm and pressed to my stomach, I walk into my closet and start exploring the hangers. Since I’m working under some pressure here, I don’t waste much time selecting a pair of black skinny jeans and a flowy blue top. I complete the look with a pair of black stilettos as per Nat’s instructions and then I go and sit in the living room, perched on the recliner closest to the door.
I don’t have long to settle in there before I see headlights streaming in through the front windows and hurry outside to greet her.
Nat’s not alone. Another woman is getting out of the passenger side to join Nat just as I walk up to the car. She’s shorter than Nat, with long brown hair and a pretty, but shy smile that’s painted up in a bold red.
“This is Amber,” Nat explains. “My girlfriend.”
I reach out to shake her hand, smiling back at her. She’s lovely and I can see why Nat has a hard time giving her up. There’s an innocence about her that makes you want to forgive her for just about anything because it’s hard to fathom she would ever hurt anyone intentionally. And yet, I can’t help but feel like she has to know what her indecisiveness is doing to Nat.
Torn between being the good loyal friend and the good supportive friend, I decide to settle on polite.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say.
“You, too. I’ve heard a lot about you,” she responds and I’m thinking Nat included a crash course on how to best communicate throughout the evening on the way over here based on her deliberate pronunciation of each single syllable. Maybe I’ll do better than polite. Maybe I’ll move it up to being open and giving her a legit chance. You never know. People have been surprising the hell out of me lately.
After a few minutes of small talk we all pile back into Nat’s car who insists I ride with them so that I can’t, as she so bluntly put it, escape.
We wind up at a bar I’ve never been to but have heard Penn mention plenty over the years and my stomach ties in knots before we even park. I’m not sure this is the place I want to run into him at. If he’s here, there’s no way he’s here alone.
“Why do you look like you encountered a vampire in my backseat and he sucked all the blood out of your body?” Nat demands as soon as we’re out of the car.
“Penn comes here.”
She shrugs. “So?”
“So, he hasn’t been home in a week. I haven’t talked to him since my meltdown and I don’t want the first interaction following said disaster to include some bimbo with fake boobs and no brains.”
She leans back against the hood of her car. Apparently this is going to take a while. Amber seems to conclude the same thing since she’s taking a seat beside her, one hand resting on Nat’s leg.
“Okay. What would you prefer your first interaction to be?”
I haven’t thought that far.
“It’s entirely possible that I’m not really ready for our first interaction.”
She claps her hands together. “Perfect. We’ll go with that. If he’s here, we’ll just ignore him.”
“No! I’m not going to ignore him. I did that plenty. It didn’t pan out so well.”
She leans forward, her expression softening. “He’s not here, Trix.”
My brow crinkles and I bite my lip, confused by how she could possibly know this.
“What do you mean?”
Nat nudges my side and grins. “Come on, Trix. Haven’t you been paying attention the last few weeks? Because I have, and I can tell you without doubt there’s no way you’re going to walk into this bar and find him drooling over some bimbo with fake boobs and no brains because he’s clearly into next to no boobs and big brains. Big, twisty, slightly psycho brains, but brains nonetheless.”
If I weren’t trying so hard not to melt into a puddle of warm mushy goo right now, I’d make the effort to take offense to her next to no boobs statement. The brains stuff...I mean, who am I kidding? I’ve got no room to fake offense there ever.
Amber and Nat both hook an arm into one of mine and together more or less carry me across the parking lot and into the bar.
We spend nearly four hours there. Talking, playing pool and enjoying the house band. When I get home I find I feel myself smiling. Not a big, dopey happy smile like Penn was putting on my face before I lost it, but a careful, almost content, smile. I have friends. I went out. I had fun. And somehow this feels very significant to me.
Penn
“You know, some people might call what you’re doing stalking. I’m not saying I’m one of those people, but you know...they’re out there.”
I scoff at Nat through my phone. “How am I stalking her? I haven’t even laid eyes on her in two weeks.”
“Dude, you’ve called the office like every other day since you’ve been staying with your dad. You’re definitely hovering in Stalkerville. Let me know when you start parking outside while she’s here and we’ll both know you’re there to stay.” The click of computer keys accompanies her snide remarks and I can’t help but wonder if Trix is sitting at a desk beside her. I don’t ask though. Because that would be stalkerish.
“What do want from me? I’m a codependent ass and I miss her. Just tell me she showed up this morning smiling and I’ll hang up.”
Nat sighs loudly just to let me know how annoying she finds me. She must like me too though, because she’s yet to decline my calls and twice she even texted me on her own. The first time was to let me know that she was taking Trix out to keep her from dwelling on shit last Friday, and the second was the following morning. Although, I’m pretty sure that text was just to mock me since it was dripping in sarcasm and exaggerations regarding their outing and how shocking it was they all made it home safely after. I wasn’t really worried about that. Short of Trix spending time on the other side of the planet with the possibility of gunshots being fired within ten feet of her when she’s traveling for Doctors Without Borders, I never really consider her to be in danger from the outside world. It’s herself she needs to be kept safe from.
“She wasn’t smiling today. She wasn’t bawling either, nor did she show up sporting a new self-inflicted hairdo, so she’s fine. But it wouldn’t hurt if you packed your shit and finally came back home. She misses you. She doesn’t talk about you, but she misses you. I can tell.”
I lean my forehead into the back of my hand. “I miss her, too, Nat. It’s fucking killing me to stay away. But you’ve said it yourself. She’s doing well. She’s working through shit. I don’t wanna mess that up. I need her well. I need her ...I just need her. And I don’t want her today if it means I won’t have her down the road. I’ll come back when s
he’s ready. When I can have her for good.”
Nat mumbles something I can’t clearly make out although I’m pretty sure I hear the words shrink and fucking crazy, then she graces me with another grueling sigh before she offers me some parting words of wisdom. “Stop being stupid, Penn. Go home.” Then she hangs up. I’m pretty sure ‘stop being stupid, Penn’ has become her official sign off from our little chats.
Feeling keyed up from the conversation, I walk out into the kitchen of the firehouse to find Tony. He does the bulk of the cooking around here, so I’m not at all surprised to find him with his head in the pantry exploring the options for dinner tonight.
“Hey, I need a sparring partner and I know you’re going to wind up whipping something up off the top of your head later anyway.”
I hear him grunt as he gets into an upright position.
“Go ahead, I’ll be there in ten. Just gotta throw some stuff in the crockpot. There’s this dip I’ve been wanting to make and we have all the fixings for it here. You better be ready to get your ass kicked when I get down there though. The way you been actin’ the last few weeks, you need it.”
Fine by me. He’s right anyway. I do need my ass kicked. Only he’s not the one who’s gonna do it. There’s only one person who’s ever been able to bring me to my knees in surrender and she weighs a buck ten soaking wet and wouldn’t know how to throw a punch if her life depended on it.
After an hour of trying to release all that’s pent up within me, I’m still wound up enough to go ten more rounds. And if we had the time, I would. But Tony needs to make dinner and I’ve got equipment to check before night rolls around and the next slew of calls begins.
The evening is surprisingly slow for a Friday. We all sit and have dinner together. After, a couple of the guys pull out a deck of cards to pass the time but I’m not much for company right now, so I head up to the beds and try to pass out while Nat’s words still ring in my mind on repeat.
When the alarm sounds and rips me from my sleep, the knot in my gut still twisting away, I can’t shake the feeling this night’s only going to be getting worse from here on out. And I’m right.
Car accident. The worst kind. Passenger vehicle versus a semi, and this time, even the tractor-trailer didn’t fare so well. The entire highway’s been shut down and there are cops lined up left and right already when we get there. Our crew is a well-oiled machine, and hardly anyone says anything when we jump out of the rig and get straight to work.
I take in the scene with every step my feet trace over the pavement. The truck driver is out of his cab and sitting on the ground near one of the cop cars. He’s got blood gushing from the side of his head, but it’s nothing a few staples won’t fix. The way his leg is twisted in the wrong direction may be another story though. The other driver is even worse. He’s unconscious and still in the car. A Honda Civic. It rolled several times before being stopped by a group of trees lining the shoulder where it burst into flames, catching the nearby branches as well. There’s a woman in the passenger seat, she’s awake but definitely in worse shape. Half of her body has been crushed by the side of the car and it’s going to take a while just to get her out. Meanwhile, we have to kill the fire before it leads to more complications, like explosions and deadly fumes.
Tony and I get to work on the woman while Crys, the only chick on our crew, and Peterson take the driver. Before long, the fire is out and the medics show up to help, and we’re all busting our asses just to get people out of the wreck and to the hospital before they crap out on us in a permanent way.
The woman’s breathing is shallow and even though she’s conscious, she’s not able to speak at all due to a massive gash across her throat from where the seat belt sliced into her. A few times I think I see her eyes darting around the scene, searching for something, but then her lids droop and her gaze loses focus all together.
It takes over an hour to free her from the vehicle, and when we do, parts of her are no longer attached. Three times we almost lose her right on the spot, but by some miracle, she winds up in the emergency chopper still clinging to her heartbeat.
With all of the victims out of the way, we begin to clean up and clear out the vehicles and remaining debris. I’m about ten feet out from the Honda, sweeping up shattered glass when I stop dead in my tracks, a cold chill running through me and piercing me at my core.
I feel like I’m moving in slow motion as I bend down and wrap my fingers gently around the small action figure, which unlike everything else, is completely intact.
“Hey!” I yell out, waving my hand up in the air to get everyone’s attention. “Over here! I think we have another victim!” I don’t even wait to make sure anyone heard me, I’m already running toward the brush and trees. I get it now. The woman. Her eyes. She wasn’t staring off into space aimlessly. She was looking for her kid. And we missed it. We fucking missed it.
I feel like every move I make is weighed down by sandbags I can’t see or shake loose, but I know I’m racing as fast as I can through the tall grass along the wooded area, following the path the car took on its way toward total destruction. Then, finally, I see it. A hand. An arm. A boy.
And it’s too damn late.
Chapter Nineteen
Trix
The feel of someone’s hand on my ankle startles me out of a dead sleep. It’s still pitch black in my room and one glance over at the glowing numerals of my alarm clock tells me that’s not about to change for at least another two hours.
The hand on my ankle doesn’t move except for the thumb, which rolls back and forth over my skin. The hunched over figure looming over the edge of my bed is undoubtedly Penn. I don’t need to see him to know it. I can feel it. Feel him. And something is wrong. And not just because he’s suddenly in my bedroom in the middle of the night after two weeks’ worth of disappearing acts. The tension in here is so heavy and heartbreaking, I want to cry just looking at him.
Blindly, I reach for the cord to the small lamp on my bedside table. I fumble for a second before I get it on. As soon as the light hits him, I wish it hadn’t.
He’s a mess. Black soot and ash covering his body. Blood smeared across his arm and cheek bone and, judging by the lack of wounds, it’s not his. But his physical appearance is nothing compared to the empty gaze staring blankly at my sheets near the end of my bed where he’s still gripping my ankle like it’s an anchor that can somehow save him from floating away and getting lost for good.
Slowly, I sit up and move closer to him. His eyes never waver from the spot near the end of my bed and I have to physically pry his hand from my leg before I take it in mine. I slide off the mattress and carefully lead him to the bathroom. He follows without hesitation as if he’s on autopilot, his line of vision never rising from the floor and I’m too horrified to ask about the things he’s seeing right now or where he really is because whatever it is will take me down with him, and one of us has got to stay standing.
Gently, I strip his clothes from his body until he’s nothing but skin and lingering proof of the wreckage he left before he came here. I turn on the water and step into the shower, taking him with me as I go. Within seconds the t-shirt I wore to bed clings to my body, but I don’t care. All I care about is Penn. And washing away the layers of tonight he carries on him. Because I’ll never be able to touch the ones he holds within. Those he’ll carry forever.
Using my bare hands, I scrub at his skin until there’s no sign of blood or ash or trauma left to be found. I rake my fingers through his hair, suds covering his dirty blond strands which take with them the stale stench of smoke. After rinsing his head thoroughly, my hands glide softly down his face, tracing first the small scar still visible on his forehead from his most recent bout with my first aid skills, then down to his chin where they stop on the mark he’s had since the night Bo died. The night he lost his best friend. And lost his goddamned mind as well.
I’ll never understand what possessed him to do it, but he’d walked straight through
a glass door that night. Like it wasn’t even there. Maybe he really hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t felt it. Hadn’t been aware of anything other than that Bo was gone. And wasn’t coming back.
My finger grazes the scar one last time when he moves suddenly, his hand coming up to meet mine. My eyes automatically find his and I can see him coming back. The blank stare is morphing into something new, something dangerous. Something that should scare me, and would, if I hadn’t seen it a hundred times over already.
His one palm pressed to mine, he uses his free hand to pull my soaking wet shirt over my head before letting it drop in the pool of water at our feet. His eyes locked on mine, his hand reaches around the back of my neck, gripping it forcefully as he lowers his face, and before I realize what he’s doing, his lips are melting into mine, his tongue frantically invading my mouth.
Stunned, I yank myself out of his grasp, freeing my hand as I do so.
“What the hell are you doing?” This isn’t how it was supposed to happen. He’s not supposed to kiss me like this when we haven’t even spoken in weeks. When we never had our real first kiss. And not when I have no idea whether he’ll choose to stay or go when this night is over.
But he doesn’t respond. Just reaches for my face, softly caressing my skin before cradling both cheeks in his calloused palms. Heartache streams from his deep blue eyes and all I want is to take it away for him.
“Please, Trix.” His mouth moves and the words are unmistakable. “Please.”
And I do the only possible thing I can. I do what he wants. Even though I know saving him now could destroy me later. I kiss him.
Penn
The heat of her mouth and the soft, plush feel of her lips is even better than I remember it. I thought maybe I’d idolized her kiss over the years, but I haven’t. If anything, I’ve dimmed the memory to make living without it more bearable. I can’t be without it tonight. I need it. I need her. More than I need air, I need the feel of her breathing body under my own. The pounding beat of her heart banging into my own chest so my heart can mimic it.
