Burn

by Shey Stahl

  Help me embrace a little child before it is too late.

  Those words stand out to me. That’s exactly what Evan did.

  My eyes shift to Heath, who’s now watching me. No words need to be said between us but I know now why I have the bond I do with him.

  He saved me before it was too late.

  WE’RE AT MY parents’ house and I’m drinking. No surprise there. In the distance, Mila’s talking to my mother. It’s the first they’ve met each other, and they suddenly seem inseparable. It gives me the first hint of a smile I’ve had in days.

  “Life seems so different now that he’s gone. I feel bad when I smile because he can’t anymore,” Jacey says, holding a tissue to her bloody nose. She’s not wearing her glasses today. Said it was too hard to wipe away the tears. Hence the bloody nose. She ran into the goddamn wall. “How am I supposed to go on now? I get that I can—it’s not physically impossible—but I don’t want to and I want to know where he is, damn it.”

  “He’s in a better place,” I tell her, trying to offer something when all I want to do is get away from her.

  Don’t tell anybody this, but I hate blood. I don’t like the sight of it. It’s why I prefer fire over being a paramedic. Sure, I see a lot of blood every day, still doesn’t mean I like it.

  “You don’t know that,” she points out, sniffing and smearing the blood on her cheek. I resist the urge to gag. “He could be nowhere. Just gone, to where we don’t know. We think, we hope . . . but we really don’t know. I’m just not sure anymore. Everyone I love dies.”

  I point at my chest offensively. “I’m still here.”

  She pushes on my shoulders. “Protect yourself. I’m a death magnet.”

  I’m not sure what to say to her because, in a way, I feel that way too.

  Jacey glares at the distance, her stare unfocused. “You want to know what someone said to me?”

  I shrug and lean against the wall. She’s going to tell me anyway, so I’m not sure why she asked. “Sure.”

  Her stare moves to me, unaware, uninterested even. “That I looked sad and I’m taking it hard.”

  “Who said that?” I ask, snorting. I’m not actually surprised by this. People say fucked up shit at funerals because they don’t know what else to say.

  “Your grandma.”

  My chest shakes as a laugh rolls through me. “Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret, Jacey.” Raising my drink to my lips, I take a drink before saying, “Grandma Lou has dementia. She thinks this funeral is for her cat that died fifteen years ago.”

  Jacey laughs. She thinks I’m making a joke until Grandma Lou walks by and smiles tenderly at me, her hand on my shoulder. “Oh, Caleb, can you make sure you find Whiskers’s favorite mouse and place it on the casket before they bury him?”

  Smiling at Grandma Lou, I side-eye Jacey when she bursts into laughter and has to excuse herself as I tell Grandma, “Sure.”

  I don’t, but I let her think I do before I find the liquor cabinet.

  I pour a drink and take a sip of it. Then another, then the entire bottle’s gone before I know it and I’m using a water bottle to disguise it from my mother because she’s watching me like a hawk. She knows I’m struggling today and always warns me about turning to alcohol to numb the pain. The problem is no amount of whiskey will ever numb this pain.

  An hour later, Jacey finds me again. This time she’s glaring at Daphne. “I’m going to punch Daphne,” she tells me, stealing my water bottle, taking a sniff of it and then handing it back to me. “She knew him what, like two weeks?”

  I laugh, the action slow as I blink just as slowly. “I don’t know . . . it was at least a few months.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Still. She’s acting like she knew him for years.”

  Attempting to sit up, I have to scoot over on the chair to get Jacey off my lap as she sits beside me in a chair that’s not meant for two people. “Let’s be fair here,” I point out. “When Patrick Swayze died, you cried for a week and told me twice . . . twice, you weren’t sure if you could go to work.”

  “Oh, whatever.” She blows me off, rolling her eyes. “You’re just being an asshole now.”

  “It’s what I’m good at.” My stare moves over the room to Daphne being comforted in the opposite corner by my mother as if she’s lost the love of her life. “Okay.” I lean back trying to push Jacey off the chair completely. “You have a point.”

  “How much do you want to bet she tells someone they were engaged?”

  “Oh, probably.” And then I feel the need to add, “They weren’t.”

  She nods, tears falling from her reddened eyes. “I know.”

  It’s a minute later when I lean forward, my elbows on my knees. Twisting my head, I stare at her and knock my knee into hers. “He wanted to marry you.”

  Jacey laughs, shaking her head. It’s the last thing she wants to believe. “I’m not in the mood to be lied to.”

  “I’m not lying to you. Corbin found a ring in his locker.”

  Jacey takes off to the bathroom, crying, and I think maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the last part.

  Nobody will miss Evan like Jacey will. Especially not now that she’s pregnant with his baby, a baby she’s going to have to raise on her own.

  I can’t say their relationship was ever pure. Evan and Jacey hurt a lot of people along the way, including themselves. But their love, it was real and fucking deep. It can still be felt, even now, in this room, overshadowing everything else in it.

  I’m pissed off they can’t have a chance at forever together, especially now. She fucking deserves it after everything he put her through, and I’m angry at him, at the world, at everything that she can’t have her happy ever after.

  As I’m leaving my parents’ house that night, I find Mila leaning against the wall.

  She waits for me to speak, her comfort radiating from her.

  Standing before her, I bury my hands in the pockets of my black slacks and take a step closer, wondering at what point she’ll tell me to leave her alone or run away from me. I’ve known her three months and asked her to come to my brother’s funeral. I still don’t know why I did, just that I didn’t want to be here without her.

  And as I look at her now, time stops, sounds cease, everything around us silent when her hand touches my cheek. “Let’s go back to your place.”

  Removing my right hand from my pocket, I take her hand that’s not on my cheek drawing her into my chest. “Thank you for being here for me today.”

  Our eyes lock as we gauge each other and try to figure out the next step in this unfamiliar dance we seem to be involved in. The one where I step around what I really want to say and she lets me.

  With a sigh, Mila melts into my embrace, her head dropping to my chest. “I’ll always be here for you.”

  I scramble to think of something to say to her, something to ease her worries that I don’t care for her, but I’ve got nothing, at least not words.

  Sometimes there’s a pain you can’t touch. Nothing can. Nothing even comes close to breaking through the steel barrier surrounding it.

  And then there are times when one person has the ability to do just that.

  Determinate

  A code given by dispatch (Alpha-Echo) showing the severity of a call and how you should respond.

  When the alarm goes off at the station, I’m ready and willing to give my life to save a nameless face. But why is it I can’t seem to tell Mila I love her? If I can risk my life for someone else, I should be able to tell the ones I don’t want to live without how I feel for them, right?

  It’s Sunday night and I’m sitting on the couch with Jacey, telling her all the reasons why I can’t love Mila and knowing I do.

  My problem is, I don’t believe in fairy tales anymore. Mila does. I see it written all over her face. How can someone like me give her a fairy tale?

  “If you love her, tell her, Caleb. Don’t wait,” Jacey says me, her focus on a book in her lap about
what to expect during your first trimester of pregnancy.

  “I—” My words falter, stopping short of what I’m about to say. She doesn’t want to hear the words “I don’t know how” again. If anything, they meant nothing to her anymore after everything she’s been through with Evan.

  “Just tell her how you feel, Caleb. I’m speaking from experience here. This sucks. This not knowing where you stand until suddenly it’s too late.”

  “I don’t know if she feels the same way,” I admit, showing my vulnerability. If Mila doesn’t feel the same way for me, then what?

  Jacey snorts and closes the book. “Don’t be an idiot. She loves you.”

  “How do you know?” Deep down I have a suspicion Mila loves me.

  “I see it on her face. She loves you.” Then she gives me that side-eye. “And you’re too much of an asshole for her to stick around if she didn’t love you, sorry.”

  There’s certainly truth to that.

  “I’m scared.” Never have I admitted this before. “I’m scared because me being in love comes with me disappointing her and her resenting me for the things I can’t give her.”

  “What makes you say that?” Jacey chokes out in disbelief.

  I shrug.

  “Caleb, life is really short. I know I keep saying it, but it’s the truth. It’s really fucking short. Tell her. Tomorrow you may not get the chance.”

  Her words hit me right in the heart. Evan never got the chance to right the situation with Jacey, and for that, guilt hits me because here I am being given a chance to right my situation and scared of the consequences if I can’t give Mila what she needs.

  Maybe it’s because I feel guilty about what happened to Evan, and I would be lying if I didn’t say that part of me died in that fire with him. Another part died with my parents and Wyatt. What parts did I have left to give Mila? The parts that drowned himself in whiskey and fucked his demons away?

  She deserves better than that.

  Given everything that’s happened to me over the years, I know feeling guilty is the worst part about death. Maybe it’s meant to be.

  Just like I’ll never forget my family, I’ll never get over Evan’s death. Ever. Even now in the week following the fire, I wake up in cold sweats and remember him like he’s right there with me, but he’s not. He’s gone.

  The dream I have of him is one where he’s lying there just like he was after the first explosion, talking calmly to me, cool and collected as he always was. Fearless. And I walk away from him.

  I don’t know why I walk away. He’s screaming for me to stop, but I keep walking for some reason.

  I wake up in tears, and with a little more of my heart damaged. Sometimes I’m afraid to sleep. Afraid of what I will dream about.

  Because there’s one dream about Mila I have usually right after that one with Evan that shakes me to my very being and tests my will to survive anything else happening. The one that has me holding the words I love you at bay.

  The dream I have is one of Mila and takes hours to get over, and I can’t go back to sleep after it.

  In the dream, she’s standing with flames surrounding her, and she takes her hand with my heart in it and throws it in the flames. Only it’s not just my heart, it’s both of ours, as if to say they’re burning together. I call out to her, tell her I can save her, knowing I can’t.

  And then I’m standing beside Evan’s grave. Only it’s not Jacey I’m holding, it’s Mila, and I’m the one who’s died. In horror, I watch as they hand Mila my helmet, same charred edges as Evan’s had. When I look closer, it’s Nixon holding her, his arms wrapped around her as I’m lowered in the ground.

  I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to let that happen.

  The thought of losing Mila before I ever had the chance to have her in a normal sense, terrifies me. Her standing before my coffin is an image that haunts me, a fear I’ll hold with me forever.

  The dreams got me thinking about Mila a little more, and I know, since that day in her apartment where I showed up drunk, she’s probably just as confused. I haven’t been the same, and there’s so much we haven’t talked about. But every night she comes by my apartment and stays with me, gives me her body, her heart, whatever I need with no demand in return.

  I’m confused, emotional, frustrated . . . and she’s feeling the same.

  TODAY I HAVE to clean out Evan’s locker. The ring is in there like Corbin said it would be. I’ve been putting it off cleaning his locker, but it has to be done and nobody else will do it.

  Following any line-of-duty death, an investigation is started. I had a lot of paperwork to fill out, and reliving every moment of that day wasn’t something I enjoyed doing. No firefighter does. Sure, we want to know what went wrong and how we could do it differently, but it’s different when it’s someone close to you and not some nameless face you were trying to save.

  The autopsy report came back amongst the paperwork. Evan died from third-degree burns covering 80 percent of his body. In the hospital, I have no idea how he’d manage to make it there alive; he wasn’t even recognizable at that point.

  There was no way to tell the burns were the real cause of death because he also had a piece of shrapnel impaled in his side that ruptured his spleen. That was there at the first explosion.

  Who’s to say Evan wouldn’t have died hours after the fire, even if the second explosion wouldn’t have happened, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I still felt responsible.

  Inside the locker room, I sit and stare at his locker and the ring. Guys shuffle in and out, never bothering me. I think they know I don’t want to be disturbed. I have a permanent look of “fuck off” plastered on my face these days.

  One by one I pull away photographs showing his happiness. Ones of him with me and our brothers, our parents, a few of Jacey.

  I drop the photo of him and me at Christmas two years ago with Kellan beside us and sit down on the bench, my head in my hands.

  I can hear the boys coming again, so I quickly grab the rest of Evan’s belongings and jam them all in the box.

  Corbin comes in, all five foot four of him. I’m pretty sure he’s the shortest firefighter I’ve ever seen.

  I still don’t like Corbin, but he says something to me right then that makes me think otherwise.

  As he sits across from me on the bench, his shakes his head, looking down. “I know we’ve had our own share of bullshit together. I know you and Evan did too . . . and I’m not even sure when it started, but . . .” He swallows, choking back what seems to be tears. I have none left. I’m not sure I can cry anymore. “Evan was the type of firefighter we all wished we could be. I’ve never met a guy more put together than he was, professionally.” He looks right at me now, our eyes meeting, understanding. “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t make this any better and I can’t imagine what you’re going through but know that he thought the world of you. You two may not have gotten along the greatest, but you know as well as I do he would have done anything for you.”

  I nod. One that says sure. I’m not sure what to think. Mostly because I know it’s true in some ways. Standing from my place, I put my hand on his shoulder. In another time, I would have shrugged off his words as nothing, but today they offer me a little relief. “I’m sorry too.”

  It’s not much in comparison to what he gave me, but it’s what I can give for now.

  Flash Point

  Lowest temperature at which a material will emit vapor combustible in air mixture. Higher than flame point of same material.

  It’s never easy seeing someone you love pull away, and it’s worse when you understand why, I think, because you want so badly to help them and you know you can’t.

  Nothing you say will make it any easier for them.

  Every day seems to go by faster than the next, but it makes no difference to Caleb, or even Jacey.

  For Jacey, time has stopped since Evan died, as had her life.

  In the weeks since Evan’s funeral, something
has obviously changed in Caleb. Instead of being this guy who teased me and made me laugh, looking for an angle to get a rise out of me, now he’s lost, giving me long stares or ignoring me completely. I miss him showing up at the hotel and begging to fuck me on my desk, even though our hookups at the hotel are off limits now.

  The past few days he’s been tired. Sometimes it’s less noticeable, but I still see it in his all-too-sad eyes and his regretful posture.

  Two weeks after the funeral, Caleb got back on the truck.

  A firefighter puts his mask on to show the rest of the world what he can do. Save people. But when he emerges from the fire and removes the mask, he reveals a rare intimacy. He’s just like everyone else. He’s human. And that’s a hard thing for them and everyone else around them to understand sometimes. Me included.

  In the moments when he let me in, I learned from Caleb that the boys on the Ladder 10 dealt with Evan’s death in different fashions, each one finding his own way.

  If they could make sense of it, they could find a way to deal with it. Some cried. Some laughed and made jokes, speaking of a time when they were happy. Finn questioned it. Owen ignored it. And Caleb? He shut down.

  In some ways, those boys thought they were invincible. Then, when Evan died, they slowly accepted that they weren’t and could die.

  One of the hardest parts for me was seeing what Caleb was going through, because it was there, right in front of me.

  I hated it mostly because here was Caleb, the man I would give everything to, my heart, my soul, my love, and he was ignoring me. I understood why, but at the same time, it didn’t make the hurt any easier.

  THE MAN BEFORE me with the dull green eyes and dark circles, the one with the five-day beard and the mess of dark hair in his eyes, this isn’t the Caleb I met two months ago. I don’t know if I know this guy.

  Or, and this is a shocking reality to grasp, maybe this is him. Maybe this is what I’m left with. Maybe this is who he’d become.