by Lynn, Davida
With the outburst over, I looked around. I was leaning over my desk, yelling at Jonah like he was an employee being chastised. Beyond him, another office worker was frozen in the hallway right outside my open door. She stared until I met her eyes with an unwavering glare. They quickly found the floor, and she moved on.
“Uhh.” Jonah was stunned, and to be honest, so was I. I was upset with him being dragged back into my life, but he didn’t deserve it. “I meant how do you like it, because that’s what I’m wanting a transfer to.” He looked baffled, and I felt so embarrassed that I couldn't stand it.
My face flushed to the point where I had to turn away. Oh god, so stupid. The requested department jumped out at me on Jonah’s form: HQ. How did I miss that? Jonah was transferring out of line-of-duty work? I didn’t understand. He lived and breathed for fighting fire. Half the time, I wasn’t even sure if he could read, and now he wanted to work downtown.
I had to turn back to him, and I had to apologize. It was hard, but I managed.
“Jonah, I'm so sorry.” I let out a heavy breath. I had made a complete fool of myself. Nothing like letting someone know you don’t forgive and forget. “I...I thought you were throwing this in my face.”
I turned and waved a hand around my small office. I had grown to love it, but thinking about being on the front lines, battling blazes, and helping people when they needed it most made my office feel drab and unimportant.
I’d lived in my own head for far too long. The breakup ached and tore at my insides, and within five minutes of sitting down with Jonah, I was unloading some severe hostility onto him.
I watched him. My heart twisted inside my chest as he spoke. “It’s all right. No, I’d never do that to you, Abbey.” He had always been so patient with me, and it only twisted me up all the more inside. He didn’t deserve that hostility. Not entirely anyway.
Sitting back down, I said, “I know you wouldn’t. It’s just been so long, I don’t know. There’s no excuse for it. I’m sorry.”
Jonah had taken so much abuse from me in the past. My frustrations were vented as soon as we got off shift, and I carried that through our days off. I tried not to, but it wasn’t easy for me. I wanted to fit in and be just one of the guys, but it was hard to accept that it would never happen. The other men who worked on my shift would never get comfortable as long as I was in the room. It was obvious that I’d never earn their respect. Our breakup was the last straw. There was no way I’d ever be accepted after that.
“You think that I don’t think about it?” Jonah caught me off guard with that. In my head Jonah was fine with things. I got that impression because every day after our break up, I hadn't see one bit of pain in his eyes. He joked with the other boys like we had never been together; like it had never happened. I just wasn’t strong enough to pretend that I wasn’t hurt.
I laid my hands across my chest as a comfort and defense. I leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
Jonah laughed. It was his I know more than you laugh. He could be smug, but that’s not what this was. This was something else. His expression told me I had been completely wrong. I felt the blast coming back on, again. I told myself to calm down and let the man talk.
“Abbey, I’ve thought about this plenty. After we broke up, I’m sure you felt even more hurt by me. I wasn’t trying to be hurtful; I wasn’t even trying to make myself feel better. You and I got so much shit from the brothers. I had to play along. I guess I didn’t have to, but I did. I can remember every joke at your expense, especially ones I told. They haunt me. I regretted every single day, and it killed me when I first found out about your transfer.”
I heard every word he said, but it was hard to believe. When we still worked together, the breakup had meant nothing to him. What he was telling me across my desk made me question two years of pain and emotion. Had he been that good of an actor, or had I been so distraught that I couldn’t see it?
“I’m an asshole. That’s the long and short of it, Abbey.” Jonah turned and looked over his shoulder. Leaning back in the chair he reached out and gave the door a shove. My mind raced as I took in all the new information. I’m sure he could see it on my face, too.
I gave Jonah a weak smile, “You know, I appreciate it. I really do, but it doesn’t change the past.” I pulled up his electronic file, ready to enter the necessary information. I wasn’t wise to his game, but I didn’t really want to know. My Monday was only getting worse. I wanted to get our little reunion over and done with. “What’s your reason for transfer?”
Jonah didn’t disguise his hurt. I had cut off the personal conversation like the wound that it was. I didn’t want to talk about it, even if Jonah was trying to apologize. The past was the past. My heart pounded on, anyway. A small voice in the back of my head said, It pounds for him.
I wanted to shake the thought from my head. I wanted to move on. I thought I had, but seeing Jonah before me was like a large stack of reality dropped on my desk. I had convinced myself that Jonah was an asshole, a dude, like all the others at the station and across the city.
“I can't do it anymore.”
That wasn’t exactly something I could type into “Reason for Transfer,” so I had to pry. “What do you mean, Jonah? I need details.” I remembered what I had put on my form very clearly: hostile work environment.
He hung his head, “I can't keep seeing the things I’m seeing. It’s eating me alive. I love helping people, but I can feel it take a part of me every time,” His voice shook as he spoke, “I’ve been invited to too many funerals, and I’ve lost too many good brothers. The only ones left are unbearable.”
My fingers were on the home row, but I wasn’t typing. I watched Jonah as he told me his reasons for transfer. I found it hard to accept, at first. Jonah was gung ho about fire fighting. When I knew him, he took any class available, worked out every day, and spent time volunteering to get to know his community. He was an All-American. He was what little boys—and a few girls—dream of becoming when they grow up. All of that, and now he was sitting across from me saying he couldn’t do it any longer?
I didn’t even know what to type. Looking past my screen, I asked, “What happened?”
“Everything happened.” He looked down. “I know that’s a shit answer, but it all weighs on you.”
That was something I could understand. It was part of my reason for requesting transfer. The catcalls, practical jokes, and constant diminishment beat down on me until I couldn't take it, either.
I understood the weight, but I figured he knew that going in. “You’ve wanted to be a fire fighter since you were a kid. You knew what it meant even before the academy.”
Jonah nodded, “Yeah, they tell you the risks, and you see the stories on the news, but until you are living it day after day, you don’t really understand it.”
I started typing his answer into the computer. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it, but I thought I knew Jonah better than that. He had a diamond hard exterior. When we had been together, he’d shown me his softer, more loving side, but when we were on shift, he was steel and grit and man.
I remembered walking in on him working out during my very first shift. Our captain, Clay, was giving me a station tour, and Jonah was flat on the bench press when we walked in.
“Rook.” He had sounded so blasé and cool. I was anything but cool. Jonah was shirtless, glistening with sweat, and chiseled from marble. I noted that he hadn’t called me sweetheart or hottie. He had regarded me as what I was, a rookie. It was all I wanted: to be treated like every other rookie.
Three days later, we were having sex in the very same weight room. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. It was hot; it was passionate; it was laced with danger. A call from dispatch could have come our way at any second, and we fed off that. Adrenaline was surging through our bodies as we tore our clothes from each other.
We knew anyone could have walked in on us, but neither of us cared. In that moment, there was no one in the world b
ut the two of us. When my orgasm came, I bit down on Jonah’s shoulder to keep quiet. He laughed and pushed the back of my head against his muscles to keep me quiet as I cried out.
There was no screaming, no passion, and no fear of being caught back in my office, just my fingers on the keys as I filled in boxes. My time with Jonah seemed like ages ago; even more so once he was in front of me again.
We were silent, again. I was copying the information from his request form into the computer when he spoke.
“Do you miss it?”
I looked up, “Do I miss fire fighting? Are you kidding? Look at everything around me. You don’t know real adrenaline until you’ve filled out a no-coverage form.”
He shook his head, and a bright smile came to him. I laughed. Jonah never looked bad when he was smiling. When things on the job got nasty, I would do whatever I could to make him smile. Once he was, everything else just sort of faded away.
I couldn’t help but tell him. “You look good when you smile.” I knew that the angry woman from earlier was losing her grip on me.
“We don’t feel like exes, anymore.”
I raised an eyebrow, “No?”
Jonah shook his head, “No, we feel like old pals reunited.”
The room went walk-in freezer cold. We both knew it in an instant.
I had to admit that his words hurt, even though I knew he didn’t mean them like that. He was right, though, the pain had disappeared. Concern filled me, now. Jonah was leaving his dream, and every fiber of my being screamed that something wasn’t right with him. There was something under the surface that he wasn’t telling me. I’d asked once, but he had moved away from the question the first time. If he knew me well enough, he’d know I wasn’t going to stop at one ask.
“Jonah, what happened? And don’t skirt me, this time. I know you. You know I know you, too.”
I watched his eyes. They drifted to the wall to his right: frame after frame held my certifications, my graduation diploma from academy, and below them all, my pride and joy: my helmet from Engine 37. The leather badge on the front curled around the edges from a few close calls in the flames. The leather of the badge was blackened, but the half-circle of STOKES was still visible. Below my last name were the Maltese cross and the proud declaration of Engine 37.
I may have only been a true Detroit fire fighter for less than three months, but I loved every second of it— every second I wasn’t being harassed, that is. I understood the dude culture—somewhat—and I knew starting things with Jonah could turn out to be a mistake, but fire fighters are risk takers. Mine just didn’t pay off.
When he looked back to me he was smiling, but there was pain and sadness glossing his eyes. “It’s been a rough year, already. Shit, I’m surprised McCaffery hasn’t been in here already.”
I knew Kade had gone before a committee, but I didn’t know much more than that. I assumed it was some technicality, because I didn’t think the cowboy could do any wrong. He was hero material. He was the guy all the rookies across the city looked up to.
“Why?” I had Jonah talking, and I wasn’t going to chance derailing the conversation.
Jonah’s grey eyes widened, “You didn’t hear? In the spring he went for a rescue of two kids and lost them both. He got a nasty burn to remind him of it, too. He wasn’t the same after that. Then a new rookie who was teamed up with him fell from a third floor landing. He’s in the hospital with two broken legs among other things. I was halfway up a ladder to grab onto him. Saw him slide right past my fingers.”
I remember hearing about the accident, but not with any real detail. I closed my mouth and shook off what Jonah had told me. “What was his name?”
“Rico. Twenty-three years old. Good kid, but green as the pasture.”
My heart ached for him. I had been there; I knew what it was like to be so eager. I also knew what it was like to have your dreams stripped away.
“Is he out?”
Jonah nodded. My heart squeezed, a lump forming in my throat. I’d seen my share of probies sit across from my desk. Some injuries that forced them into other roles at the fire department. Worse yet, some that couldn’t work anymore. Injured on the job, PTSD, you name it. It was a hard fucking job, and most people weren’t cut out for it.
Transfer requests required that I talk with the shift commander, and I was about to ask Jonah for Clay’s number when a sad fact hit me. I’d forgotten the digits to Engine 37. At one time, I knew the entire history of our station. I knew the phone number, and I knew every man on every shift. Time erased those facts instead of the way Jonah’s hands could easily lift my body to ecstasy, or the deep sound of his moans when pleasure took him over.
“I dated one woman.”
I snapped out of my haze and stared at him. His statement made no sense to me.
What the hell was I supposed to respond with? “That’s great, Jonah. That’s just great.” I cocked an eyebrow and turned back to my screen. I wanted to look to see if my comments hurt him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“I dated one woman in two years.”
“What are you talking about?”
Jonah had the look of a guilty child. “After we broke up. I only dated one other woman. Her name was Candice.”
“Jonah, why are you telling me this?”
He shrugged his shoulders, “I don’t know. I just had to tell you. We only dated for a few months last year, but it was just crap. I guess I expected something great, and it was not. Everything we did, everything she did made me think of you. I didn’t drag it out, either. I know you were thinking that.”
I smiled. It was a sad one, but he did make me smile. Jonah was great at reading my mind, and I was surprised to find out that even after two long years, he could still read me like a favorite book.
Leaning back in my chair I sighed. This was not the day I had intended on having. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Good or bad, I didn’t know, but it was definitely interesting.
“I’ve dated a few guys. Nothing serious, though. I guess I’d say it was pretty similar for me, too. It was never very exciting. And don’t worry, none of them were smoke-eaters.” I winked at him.
I don’t know why I had done that. I knew I was flirting with Jonah, and I knew nothing good would come from it. Even still, it was fun.
Jonah smiled, and I saw the sadness disappear. “Yeah, like that’s what I was thinking.” It’s exactly what he was thinking.
“Sorry.” I went back to pecking out numerical codes into the computer.
“What are you sorry for?” Jonah was getting more comfortable; he leaned back in the chair and put a foot up on my desk. I didn’t mind.
I shook my head a little. “I don’t know. I’m just being silly.” No form I’d ever filled out had taken this long.
Jonah smiled, “I always liked you when you were silly. Made me forget all the bad shit.”
“I liked doing that for you. Jonah, you were a great fire fighter. Do you really want to make this your life? I like what I do, but I also deal with a lot of regret. I just… I just want you to be sure.” It was remarkable how quickly I was caring for him again. It was no different than doing his laundry or packing our lunches for the day.
The few guys that I dated after Jonah made it clear that he and I had shared something special, only making it more painful. Things with Jonah had been easy. Not to say we didn’t have our issues, but he and I had a good way of working through things. It made me feel like there was no problem we couldn’t tackle, except the one.
