Things You Save in a Fire

by Katherine Center

  It was Owen. I was drunk on Owen. His name, his tie, the ironed, slim-fit dress shirt clinging to his pecs. His kindness. His hands on my hips.

  The song was ending.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you want to get some air?”

  I nodded, and he led me off the floor.

  Word about us had spread like a gas fire. As we made our way back across the room, Owen got high fives and cheek slaps from his cousins, and comment after comment, like, “Nice work, buddy,” and “Better lock that up,” plus plenty of teasing, like, “Your fly’s unzipped.”

  We had the exit in our sights when I caught the edge of my platform shoe and my leg went out from under me. I twisted and fell, but Owen caught me right before my knee hit. I started to say, “Thanks,” and scramble back up, but his arms locked, and he held me right there in place, my eyes even with his belt buckle.

  I got my feet under me, and I was just about to push up and say, “What the hell, man?” when I heard Owen say, “Hello, Captain Murphy.”

  Then I heard Murphy’s voice, like a nod. “Rookie.”

  I froze.

  Then, after a second—and presumably after taking in the sight of my head at Owen’s crotch, the captain went on. “Looks like you’re having a fine evening.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “See you next shift.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A beat, and then I felt myself hoisted up, clutched against Owen’s chest, and hustled straight into a coat closet.

  The door clonked closed behind us.

  “What the hell?” I said, as Owen released me, blinking my eyes in the blackness.

  He sounded amazed that I would ask. “That was the captain.”

  I knew that already. “I thought he RSVP’d no.”

  “He did RSVP no.”

  “But now we’re stuck in a closet.”

  “You’re stuck,” Owen pointed out.

  It was so dark, we were nothing but voices. Owen was tapping around the doorframe for a switch. “We could be in here for hours,” I said.

  His voice was a little teasing. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  I was mad, and the teasing made me madder. “I’m serious.”

  “We’ll figure this out.”

  “How?” I demanded. “You said we wouldn’t get caught!”

  “We won’t!”

  “Hello!” I said. “The captain just saw us!”

  “But there’s no way he recognized you.”

  “Why?”

  “Trust me,” Owen said. “You look nothing—at all—like you do at the station.”

  Was that an insult or a compliment? I frowned. “I’m recognizable, though. I’m not in a clown suit.”

  “Whatever he saw out there, it wasn’t Hanwell the firefighter.”

  “What did he see?”

  “He saw me holding a sexy drunk girl who was all legs and hair.”

  “I’m not drunk!” I blinked. “Or sexy!” Did he just call me sexy?

  “That’s my point. That girl out there was the opposite of you.”

  Guess not. “Thanks.”

  Owen had already shifted into problem-solving mode. “There are a million ways to get you out of here. We just have to take a second to think it through.”

  I didn’t want to have to solve this problem. “What was I thinking coming here?” I demanded into the darkness. “This was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “You were helping me out,” Owen said.

  But I was just getting started. “I knew this place would be lousy with firefighters. Even if the captain wasn’t coming, there was no way we weren’t going to get caught somehow, by somebody. I knew that, but I came anyway. My captain in Austin specifically told me not to do this. Of all the ten thousand things I was not supposed to do, this—right here—was number one! But here I am, like a chump. Sabotaging everything I’ve ever worked for. I’ve never even been kissed, and now I’m going to get fired for sleeping with a rookie!”

  The rookie held very still. “Wait. You’ve never been kissed?”

  I gave an angry sigh. Tried to think of a way to backtrack. Then gave up. “Not properly.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I’ve been busy, okay? I’ve been working.”

  “Yeah, but—no one’s that busy.”

  Silence.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing.”

  “What?” I demanded, stepping closer. My eyes had adjusted now. I could see him.

  “It’s just,” he said, shaking his head like he was trying to shake the idea out, “hearing that makes me want to kiss you.”

  “Don’t kiss me,” I said, pushing him by the chest back up against the closet wall. Our faces were just inches apart. I stood my ground.

  Was I trying to put out a fire? Or trying to make it worse?

  I should step back, I thought. But I didn’t.

  “I will get you out of here,” the rookie said then. “I promise.”

  And that’s when I kissed him.

  He was startled but not too startled. In a flash, his arms were around me and he was kissing me right back—and not just with his mouth, with his whole body: arms, legs, shoulders, hands. He leaned into that kiss so hard that we stumbled backwards and bumped against the back wall of the closet. Then he was pressing against me, running his hands all over that silk hankie dress, and up my shoulders, and behind my neck, and into my hair—and I was doing all the equivalent things right back.

  It was like a wave crashing.

  And I got swept right in.

  Is it too dramatic to say time stopped?

  Because time stopped.

  Maybe kisses are special for everybody, I don’t know.

  But this was my first one.

  My first good one, anyway.

  When the rookie’s mouth touched mine, somehow everything in me that had been aching—for years, it seemed, now that I noticed—got soothed.

  I felt some new kind of joy that I’d never felt before.

  Was this what love was?

  I had no idea.

  I did know that this kiss, this moment right here, was something special. I’d seen and done and felt a lot of amazing things in my twenty-six years. But nothing like this.

  The rookie slowed down but pressed closer. I tightened my arms around his neck. I touched my fingers to the velvety hair at the back of his head. I slowed down, too. Savoring. Relaxing into the moment.

  He was kissing me. And I was kissing him back.

  Impossible. But true.

  Somehow we slid against the closet door, and he pressed up against me and brought his leg between mine, wedging us together in a way that made every cell in my body hum. I started melting like a stick of butter in a hot pan. I just dissolved into him and gave in to all of it—all this amazing, heart-thumping, breathless goodness.

  This was what I’d been missing. All this time. Huh.

  The thing that would astonish me later, looking back, was that nothing was bad. Not one part of this unbelievable moment in the story of my life felt scary or creepy or painful. And for a minute there, as I gave in to every good thing about it, it felt like nothing could ever possibly be bad again.

  Until there was a loud knock on the closet door.

  The same door we were pressed up against.

  The knock reverberated through my rib cage.

  We startled out of the moment and looked around.

  “Are you guys in the coat closet?” came an annoyed voice.

  The rookie gave a sharp sigh. “Go away, Shannon,” he called.

  “Everybody thinks you’re having sex in there.”

  “Nobody is having any sex. Scram.”

  “There’s a betting pool, actually,” she went on. “I put fifty bucks on you.”

  “I mean it, Shannon,” Owen said again, louder this time.

  “Fine,” she said, “but don’t let us all down.” Then she leaned very close and fake-w
hispered, “Alex has a big box of condoms, if you need them.”

  The rookie and I were both out of breath. When she was gone, he said, “She’s a world-class pain in the ass.”

  I felt like a person waking from a deep sleep. I blinked and looked around. Reality came back into focus. The moment was definitely lost. I was in a coat closet. With the rookie. Not good.

  I pushed against Owen’s chest ever so slightly, and he got the hint and stepped back.

  He straightened his clothes, and I straightened mine.

  “That was surprising,” I said.

  “I agree,” the rookie said.

  “Probably a very bad idea.”

  “Not on my end. Just saying.”

  “I’ll likely get fired now.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said. I knew how life worked. I knew how things were. This wouldn’t end well for me.

  Then the rookie did something that surprised me. He grabbed my hand and squeezed it, leaning in to meet my eyes in the shadows. “I will never tell anybody about this. Please know that you can trust me, okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay,” he said then. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  “How?” I said.

  He shrugged, like it was easy. “I’ll carry you out of here over my shoulder, and that mane of hair will hang down over your face, and even if the captain sees us, he’ll never know it’s you.”

  Eighteen

  THAT NIGHT, WINDOWS open, I lay in bed watching the pom-pom curtains flutter in the breeze, with my heart gusting around inside my body like a kite.

  The rookie. I’d kissed the rookie. Very well. In a coat closet.

  I might have expected some mixed feelings on kissing, given how long and how hard I’d avoided it.

  But I had none.

  I felt thrilled. I felt enchanted.

  Nobody could have been more surprised than me.

  So this was what it was like. This was how I could feel.

  I’d thought for so long that I’d lost all capacity to feel all these good things.

  Do I have to describe what Heath Thompson did to me on the night I turned sixteen? Do I have to lay out all those details?

  Let’s just agree that it was bad—very bad. So bad that “bad” isn’t even a bad enough word. So bad that it left a black vortex at the center of my heart that I’d spent every day since trying not to look at, or think about, or get too close to for fear I’d fall in and disappear. So bad that I closed off my heart entirely—I never went on another date, or kissed anyone, or even had a romantic thought for ten solid years.

  Until now.

  Until the rookie.

  Who had given me something undeniably good.

  I would have told you I was fine before. I was fine. I was functioning, I was strong. I paid taxes and changed the oil in my car and bought organic eggs at the farmers’ market. I was a self-defense instructor, for Pete’s sake. Some people get derailed by trauma. Some people are crushed by it and never recover. I get it. I understand. But I was lucky. It took so many years I could barely tell it was happening, but I was able to put my life back together. I was able to finish high school, go to college, and make a living helping people.

  I’d wanted to die for so many years.

  But I didn’t die. I survived.

  More than that, I thrived.

  Before the awards ceremony, I would have told you I was completely recovered.

  Until Heath Thompson showed up on that stage and dared to touch me—and then we both found out exactly how strong I’d become.

  Maybe too strong for my own good.

  It had felt like self-sabotage in the aftermath. I had been so worried, as I drove across the country alone, that I was at the beginning of the end. And maybe it was the end of something. But it was a beginning, too. One with the potential to make things better—or possibly so much worse.

  But so far so good. I had kissed Owen—in a no-holds-barred, full-body kind of way, and it had been good.

  All violence is bad, of course, but what Heath Thompson had done to me was an attack on love itself. It took one of the best parts of being human and ruined it.

  I’d gladly given up all hope of love for a guarantee of never having to relive even a part of that memory again.

  Here was the astonishing thing: Nothing about what had just happened with the rookie reminded me of that night. It didn’t cause flashbacks, or spark terror, or—worst-case scenario—make me want to die. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  It wasn’t terror, it was joy. It wasn’t agony, it was pleasure. There were mouths involved, yes, and hands and arms and bodies touching—but the context was so different, there with a person I’d come to like and admire and absolutely trust, there was just no comparison.

  The kiss itself was a big surprise.

  But the discovery that kissing wasn’t agony? Even bigger.

  It felt almost nostalgic, like remembering what it felt like to believe that the world was full of good things and good people and good luck. It tasted bittersweet, because it insisted there was so much to look forward to—even when I already knew there was far more to dread.

  Somehow, what the rookie made me feel was the kind of hopefulness you could only get when you didn’t know any better.

  Even though I did know better.

  And worse.

  I wondered if that was it: Maybe I only liked him so much because I couldn’t have him. I could not have chosen a more forbidden, off-limits, never-gonna-happen guy to obsess over than Owen. We couldn’t be together.

  In a way, he was a safe choice.

  In another way, it was more dangerous than anything I’d ever done. Because now I knew what I’d been missing. Now I just wanted more.

  And now I was crying in my bed. So much my hair was wet on the pillow below. I’m not exaggerating at all when I say that I was a person who never cried—but there they were: tears.

  I’m not even sure I could’ve told you what they were for. There were so many different emotions making up their alchemy, I had no idea how to separate them out. There was sadness in the mix, for sure. And anger.As well as relief and joy and longing and anxiety. Tears of everything, I guess. They were tears of intensity. Tears of coming back to life.

  Nineteen

  THE NEXT MORNING, the captain called me into his office and yelled at me. But not for what you think.

  When I entered his office, he was at his desk.

  “What the hell were you thinking, Hanwell?” he demanded, without looking up.

  I froze.

  Oh God. This was it.

  When I didn’t answer, he looked up—then stood up. “Well?”

  I shook my head, like I didn’t understand.

  “There’s no way this was an accident!” he said then. “Because there is no way you don’t know the rules.”

  I held still.

  “And if you know the rules,” he went on, “and you broke them anyway, that’s insubordination.” He took a step closer. “And you know how I feel about insubordination.”

  I blinked.

  “Are we clear?”

  We weren’t. Not at all.

  Ever so slightly, I shook my head.

  “You don’t know what I’m talking about?” he said.

  I shook again.

  He reached out and picked a package up off his desk. “I’m talking about this.” He held it out, like incriminating evidence.

  I frowned.

  Then I realized what it was.

  It was a cyanide-poisoning antidote kit.

  That’s what he was mad about? The relief hit so hard, I felt dizzy for a second. But it passed.

  “Do you care to explain this?”

  I took a breath. “Looks like we got a cyanide kit,” I said. I checked his desk for another package. “There should be two.”

  “So you admit you’re responsible.”

  My name was right there on the mailing label. �
�Yes?”

  “Hanwell,” the captain said then, tossing the package back on his desk and crossing his arms. “As you keep reminding me, you are not a newbie. You know how things work in a fire station. So what I can’t figure out is how you could possibly have imagined you were allowed to order fire equipment without my permission.”

  “I didn’t order it,” I said. “I applied for a grant.”

  “And who told you to do that?”

  “You did, sir.”

  He gave me a look that said he could not be bullshitted.

  “Remember?” I said. “Way back, on my first day. I asked if we had cyanide kits at the station, and you said no, and I said we needed them, and you said, ‘Find me two thousand dollars a pop and we’ll get some’?”

  He squinted at me. “Vaguely.”

  “Well,” I said. “I found you two thousand dollars a pop.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I applied for a grant from FEMA. For the station. For money to buy two kits. And we got it.”

  “You applied for a grant?”

  “I applied for a bunch of them, actually,” I said, feeling the tiniest bit of pride in my initiative. “From different places. Funding for new paint, new mattresses, better lighting. Also, for a new gear dryer and new lockers. A better vent for the engine bay. A bunch of stuff.”

  I’d assumed, honestly, that if any of the grants came through, that would unequivocally be a good thing. How could it not be?

  But as I watched the captain’s face, it was clear: not good.

  The captain stood up. “Is writing grants part of your job description?”

  “No, sir. I just—”

  “We have a chain of command here, Hanwell. You do not apply for grants, or decide we need new mattresses, or even get us new toilet paper unless I tell you to.”

  “Yes, sir, but you yourself said—”

  “This firehouse,” he went on, “has been standing here, on this very spot, for one hundred and twenty years”—

  Oh God. I’d offended him.

  —“and we’ve survived all of them, every damn one, without your help.”

  “I just thought—”

  “You thought you’d come in here with your compost heaps and your solar panels and show us all how it’s done.”

  “No, I—”

  “Don’t you see how that’s a little insulting?”