Into the Flames

by Multi-Author

  Pressing his fingertips into my hips, he shoved in so hard I dropped to my stomach. He grunted and pushed me down further into the bed. It kind of hurt, but by then I was barely hanging on by a thread. I don’t remember him coming, or passing out for a few hours, or even leaving. When I woke up, I was naked, sprawled, freezing, sticky all over, and my ass was sore.

  Damn guy back-doored me while I was passed out? What a loser.

  I winced my way through a hot shower, then an even hotter soak in the tub, sipping weak tea and berating myself, shoving away the inner Harriet-nag telling me that some guy had gone anal on me while I was passed out—which was technically rape.

  No, no, no. I invited him over. I let him finger me under the table in public. I let him pour a bottle of champagne over me and lick it off. Nothing about any of that would ever been deemed as not consensual.

  I ignored Trent’s calls and messages the rest of the weekend, getting that familiar, bored sensation at the thought of putting up with him. By Sunday night, I’d done my workout, flipped through work emails, and figured he’d waited long enough, so I responded to a text. He answered in seconds.

  Trent: Hey. Sorry I had to bolt the other night. Needed to get up early Saturday.

  Me: Fine. You owe me an apology though.

  Trent: What for? You didn’t have a good time?

  Me: I did. You’re damn good with those fingers and your tongue. I might let you have another go. Except for that little back door thing you pulled once I passed out. No fair, naughty boy.

  Trent: Did I really? I swear I didn’t mean to.

  Me: You’re a fucking liar.

  Trent: No, Jane, I’m not, I swear. I didn’t know but that kind of explains…well…never mind.

  Me: Gross. You’re telling me you were so drunk you didn’t realize you were doing me in the ass?

  Trent: Guess not. Wow. I’m not usually into that.

  Me: Well, I don’t mind it, but it takes two to tango on that. And I wasn’t lubed. So, I am sore as hell, thanks much.

  Trent: Damn. And here I was about to ask you out on a real date. Probably messed that up, right?

  Me: Probably. Anyway. I’m going to bed. See you tomorrow. I think we’ll get the final signatures for the project financing. More reason to celebrate.

  Trent: I can think of some fun ways to use champagne.

  Me: I’m sure u can. C U tomorrow, nasty boy.

  I turned off my phone, unwilling to engage any longer, and held onto my big glass of wine, shocked when I discovered I’d finished it and wanted more. The empty feeling was slowly taking over and closing the room in around me. I sloshed another healthy portion of the cabernet into my glass and drank it all standing in the kitchen. Figuring I’d never get to sleep anyway, I flopped onto the couch. After tuning in a show I’d been binge watching a few weeks ago—in my pre-George days—I turned the phone back on, grateful to see the screen free of any more BS from Trent. I woke to the sound of my alarm, my face stuck to the leather chair’s arm, head pounding, mouth dry, and chest heaving from the familiar house-fire-George-rescue dream.

  Chapter Ten

  I’d taken to reading George’s story online a lot, usually late into newly insomniac nights when a full bottle of wine and a Xanax did the precise opposite of what they used to do for me. My sense of loneliness was driving me lately, in a way I knew bordered on the manic. For some reason, reading about his tragedy, his downfall, his rock bottom moment, and then his slow ascent to wherever he’d ended up and however he’d inserted himself into my life, gave me a soothing kind of hope.

  A mere two months after closing on the old fire station, the local monthly glossy magazine ran a feature of Detroit’s newest entrepreneur. It was a six-page spread by a guest writer, a journalist who’d met him right after 9/11, and included all the random facts I’d gathered in my obsessive study of the man’s back story. The bonus tidbit being that FireBrew Brewing Company, a craft brewery whose profits would partially support the families of firefighters killed in action via the Rachel Elizabeth Lattimer Foundation, would be holding a grand opening gala the following month.

  I studied the photos of George—who was, of course, called ‘Trey’ throughout the article—with the beautiful, successful, stockbroker wife, then one of them both with the perfectly gorgeous little dark-haired, dark-eyed girl—Rachel Elizabeth, it would seem. There were photos of him at his New York fire station where he’d worked his way up, after dropping out of college, from a raw newbie to a sergeant, which was when he met his sexy, Manhattan wife when answering a call. He had literally caught her in his arms when she’d had to jump from her fourth floor window to escape—too romantic for words.

  But on September 11, 2001, he wasn’t able to rescue either her or his daughter. Not for lack of his personal effort. Both had perished, along with thousands of others that day the south World Trade Center tower, where her office and the little girl’s day care were both located, collapsed.

  George had saved hundreds of people in the early minutes before they’d been ordered out of the towers. He’d nearly made it on foot, humping hose up a stairwell to his baby girl’s daycare on the eightieth floor, ignoring all orders to abort. It took two of his men, who were racing down from upper floors, to physically remove him and they both got black eyes for their trouble. The three of them came within seconds of getting buried along with everyone else in that tower, racing out ahead of the deluge, the two grunts hauling and dragging a yelling, cursing, soot covered Trey.

  He’d kept working for a few years, accepting sympathies and kudos for his bravery, receiving his wife’s hefty bank account and her company’s giant life insurance payout without changing his lifestyle a bit. He’d go to work, be jovial enough, do his job, and go home. His men at fire station number 29 tried to get him to go out, once the horror of the empty-casket funerals was complete, even tried to fix him up, as he was apparently one of the hottest widowers around.

  But he would decline their offerings with a smile and stick to himself.

  About midway through 2010 something slipped. He began sleeping every night in his bunk at work after putting away a twelve-pack of shitty beer. The men would arrive for the morning shift and find him passed out on the couch in front of the television, reeking of booze. They covered for him as long as they could, but when the mayor dropped by as part of some ten-year commemoration tour of the various fire stations closest to Ground Zero and wanted photos taken with the sad but brave hero Trey Lattimer, the man in question had been roaring drunk.

  He’d lashed out at the mayor and the giant press contingent following him around, accusing him of capitalizing on the city’s tragedy for his own political purposes. Every last minute of his slurred, curse-laden tirade was captured for New York morning news viewers. The thing went viral capturing the deniers, the conservative Islam-haters, and everyone in between, including Oprah, Ellen, and every single late night host in its web of drama.

  I don’t know how I missed it but realized that was the year I’d been desperately trying to escape my own version of a nightmare life. I’d been sick of cocktailing, pondering something as drastic as going to community college or becoming a prostitute, right before Harrison Tucker walked into the club and sat at my table with a couple of his broker buddies.

  The single image that I must have seen at some point and ignored in favor of letting Harrison think he was seducing me, was of Trey Lattimer slugging the mayor in the jaw, hard, then of him standing over the guy, huge fists clenched and a single tear rolling down his handsome face. He’d punched his way through a layer of security and press by then, but that photo was the one that brought cheers, jeers, and his first stint as a guest of the New York State psychiatric system.

  His breathless words ‘I haven’t done this in a while. I hope I remember how,’ wafted through my brain, and I wondered if the man had truly gone over a decade without being with a woman in any way at all. I doubted it. Men who looked like him with
his smoky, mysterious attitude would be too much of a challenge. Women would be drawn to him, would offer to cook, clean, pick up his laundry, walk his dog, spread their legs, anything just to get him to bestow that smile.

  I shut the magazine, the photo of him standing in front of his shiny and amazingly renovated new brewery dressed in dark jeans and a brewery-labeled T-shirt effectively seared into my retinas. I had the man’s history memorized anyway and I now I had another obsessive worry—why hadn’t he invited me to his grand opening party?

  I looked up from my desk to acknowledge someone calling out a Monday morning greeting from the hall. While managing to avoid Trent’s persistence in the real date department, I had gone out for drinks with a couple of women in the office. Only one of them managed properties like me, the other was a sales admin. Neither of them liked me at first; I could tell, but I figured I could use a few allies amongst the females at such a male dominated company. By the time we’d polished off our martinis and were flirting mercilessly with the cute bartender, we’d bonded.

  Lucy’s latest email dinged into my inbox; something or other about bridesmaid’s gifts. I was about sick of the wedding plans and couldn’t wait for it all to be over even if it meant a dateless weekend up north for the event itself.

  I had a busy week ahead, ample opportunity to ignore George Lattimer, his newly acquired local celebrity status, and his damn brewery, which seemed to have arisen from the ashes of that crappy old building overnight. Plus I had a new boy toy, the adorable young Max, an intern in the legal department who’d caught my eye at a company picnic the previous weekend. It had taken about three second’s worth of effort but he’d proven to be worth it, so far. Eager, tall, with funny, curly blond hair, and bright blue eyes, he’d allowed me to add the term cougar to my personal description.

  I never asked him how old he was of course. He was in law school, so he had to be at least twenty-one, which was only nine years younger than me since my last birthday—celebrated with only the company of an expensive bottle of bourbon and a single fancy cupcake.

  That depressing memory made me pick up my phone and start scrolling through old text messages, landing on the three words I’d received from George around nine o’clock that very night. “Happy Birthday Harriet,” he’d said. I’d ignored him. Guy must have NSA connections in addition to all his other ones because no one knew my real birthday, not even Lucy. It was something I guarded well. Plenty of times, the memories of supposed celebrations in my childhood were enough to make me wish I’d never been born.

  I had celebrated, of course, the very next weekend, on the receiving end of some incredible and energetic attention from the sweet kid in legal.

  “Jane,” the sale secretary said, breaking into my sexy trip down recent memory lane with the well-endowed, youthfully exuberant Max. “Ready?”

  “Yes, thanks.” I stood and grabbed my suit jacket and keys. We were doing a ribbon cutting for the new Campus Martius project then had a fancy cocktail party planned for tonight. The city inspector hadn’t wanted to give us permission to do it since the existing structure was a rickety, graffiti-covered mess. But we’d had some shoring up work done for a few extra bucks, set up tents outside and figured if the weather held, we’d be out there most of the time anyway.

  I’d been in charge of media for it and expected all my usual suspects. The catering had been arranged with my close supervision, and the tents had been set up on schedule late yesterday. I had the mayor, city council, and all my high-maintenance investors scheduled to show in exactly thirty minutes. The sky was a bright summer blue and temps hovered at about seventy-five.

  Something made me glance down at my phone screen right before I heard the light ding from an incoming message. I blinked at the sender and then waved at the girl hovering in my doorway. “I’m coming. Need to answer this real quick.”

  She nodded and scurried away clutching the expensive glossy brochures about all the occupancy opportunities for the new project.

  “Harriet,” George wrote.

  “Good luck with your ribbon cutting today. I’ll see you tonight.

  P.S. I’m not really comfortable with the condition of that building.”

  Trey

  I gulped and typed out a reply before I could talk myself out of it.

  “Why would I see you tonight?”

  I hit send, irritated that my pulse had started racing at the sight of the man’s name. After waiting as long as I possibly could, I grabbed keys and headed for the elevator, mind spinning around the possibility that I’d be seeing him again.

  Chapter Eleven

  The event went off without a hitch. Anything less would have been unacceptable. I’d micromanaged the shit out of it, eager to prove to my persnickety investor group they had indeed made the correct decision to follow me from Harrison Tucker to the new brokerage. After the requisite photos of various clumps of people holding the giant cartoon scissors with City of Detroit and our company’s logo emblazoned on them, I made sure the right reporters got in front of the developer and architects while others got to fawn over the money men.

  “Nice work,” a voice said behind me as a hand landed on my ass for a little pat. I frowned and then noticed it was Trent. I bumped his hip with mine when he stood beside me.

  “Of course,” I said. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Yeah, well if the rest of this project goes like today, we’re golden, sweet cheeks.” He grinned and chucked me under the chin. “All this and great at throwing parties too.”

  “I’m the whole package. Now, make yourself useful and fetch me a glass of wine.” I batted my eyelashes at him. He saluted and trotted toward the temporary bar. I observed the increasing crowd as we eased into the private, invitation-only, happy hour portion of the festivities. A sort of languorous sensation was stealing over me. I covered my yawning mouth and turned away, wondering if I should start with a big cup of coffee first.

  An hour later, I’d consumed two cups and had started on the wine. The outdoor tent was overflowing so some people had ducked into the foyer of the crumbling old building and stood in clumps, drinking, laughing, and flirting. The music was cranked and the afternoon had eased into a pleasantly warm evening. I smiled into my glass, thrilled that I was going to get credit for pulling off such an amazing deal. We were managing the rental and sale of all the planned spaces but already had half of them bottom-lined with completions well into the next two years.

  Trent appeared at my elbow with a fresh glass of cabernet. The other two guys involved in the deal were working the room like the pros they were. “You’re amazing,” he whispered, draping his arm over my shoulders.

  “I know,” I said, leaving his arm alone for a few minutes before stepping away. I gave the crowded tent a quick once-over, knowing exactly whose broad shoulders and smirking face I sought and hating myself for it. “Gonna check inside.” I blew Trent a kiss. He caught it and pressed it to his crotch. I giggled. The guy was pretty cute and fun if I remembered right. I’d sampled a few others between that time and today. The realization of that made me stop and think. Counting them up, I felt a bit slutty until I cut that feeling loose with a healthy dose of ‘I deserve it’ and ‘if I were a guy I wouldn’t think that about myself—I’d be a cocksman.’

  “Guess I’m a pussy-woman,” I’d said to Lucy recently. She hadn’t been amused. She’d become a real fuddy-duddy.

  I let my gaze wander around the crowd inside the musty old building, noting that of the twelve or so men, I knew what at least five of them looked like naked. That thought both exhilarated and depressed me. I stopped a roaming waiter and traded my empty wine glass for a full one before launching myself into the fray.

  “There she is!” A male voice boomed across the heads of people who’d turned the foyer of the old building into an impromptu dance floor. “That’s the woman we have to thank for all this.”

  I looked around the shoulders of a guy I’d just met
who was angling for a grope. Relieved for an excuse to extricate myself, I patted his arm. “Sorry. Gotta go.” I wove through the crowd that was growing louder and drunker by the minute. I’d cut myself off after my last glass and had been sipping water like a good girl for the past half hour. The source of the voice was one of the biggest pains in the ass amongst the investors—and that was a serious designation, considering how annoying they were as a group.

  I let myself smile wider and be enfolded in his boozy bear hug. “Water?” He snagged my bottle and set it on a passing tray of drinks. “I think not. This is a celebration that calls for some Pappy.” He held out a fancy gift bag. “Go on, doll. This one’s on me.”

  I suppressed a shiver of memory when I pulled the bottle of bourbon from the wads of tissue paper. “Oh, you shouldn’t have, Larry. Really.” I kissed the bottle and winked at him.

  “Now there’s one lucky bottle, eh, Trey?”

  “Indeed it is.” George Lattimer’s deep voice hit my nerve endings, leaving them twanging. He moved into my sight line, dressed in a charcoal gray suit and looking as edible as ever. Asshole Larry The Investor clapped George on the shoulder.

  “Trey, my man, meet my favorite realtor ever. This woman can sell ice cubes to Eskimos I shit you not. Jane, sweetheart, allow me to introduce you to—”

  “We’ve met,” George said, raising an eyebrow at me and holding out a hand. I stared at it a second before I placed my palm in it, watching our hands, remembering how he felt and tasted and nearly dropping the damn bourbon in the process.