One Night Flame

by Beverly Evans

  “I don’t love it,” I admit. I know Mom is self-conscious of her hips, even though she’s perfectly fine, and the shape will only accentuate them.

  “Why don’t you try it on? I think it will be quite flattering,” the woman whose name escapes me says. She’s putting on a fake, sort of British accent, and it bugs me.

  “Okay, why not? We’ve got time.” Mom takes the dress and heads to the dressing room, shutting it behind her.

  “So, what are the wedding colors? Would you like to look at bridesmaid dresses while your mom puts the dress on?” The woman asks.

  “Sure, I guess.” I follow her to the room to the side, which has bridal party stuff.

  The room is filled with dresses of every color, including ones that I can’t imagine anyone ever wanting to include in a wedding. To each their own, I guess. The wedding colors are cream and dark green, so the woman helping us points me to the green dresses. I absently go through them. Mom doesn’t have a strong opinion about what I need to wear, color aside, so that makes it harder for me to narrow down choices.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I check it. It’s Krissy, and seeing her text makes me feel even better. The more I hang with her, and sometimes even some of her friends, the more I feel like getting out there and being open with people. I’m honestly kind of proud of myself.

  Yo, I know we’re supposed to go out tonight, but I’m beat from course planning. Mind if we do something chill? Krissy asks.

  I say yes and suggest that she comes over. I can cook for us. Like Noah, Krissy hardly knows how to cook more than blandly healthy food.

  “Deenie, come look,” Mom says from the other room.

  I hang the dress I’m holding back up and go over to look. Mom looks utterly lost in an explosion of taffeta from the knee down and heavy beading from the knees up. It’s skin-tight everywhere else and strapless, pushing her boobs practically to her neck. It’s strangely outdated and overly modern at the same time.

  “What do you think?” Mom asks, holding her hands up, almost in defeat.

  The look on her face makes me snort with laughter. The woman helping us gives me major side-eye, and I can tell Mom hates it, but she’s too polite to say so.

  “It’s not my favorite,” I say evenly.

  “Oh good, I feel the same way,” Mom says quickly, booking it back into the changing room.

  The woman taking care of us looks annoyed, and I can’t hold back my giggles any longer.

  “How do you make the chicken so crispy?” Krissy asks, cutting into the chicken cutlet I’d made. “I swear, every time I try to do something like this, I fuck it all up.”

  I smile from my spot at the kitchen counter. Mom had some spare stools that she gave me since there’s no dining room, so I always eat here.

  “Practice.” I shrug and cut into my chicken. It’s perfect. “Okay, this is really good.”

  “Way to toot your own horn,” Krissy laughs, clearly teasing. I like how easy to read she is. If everyone were as upfront with their feelings, I don’t think there would be as much conflict.

  “I’ve been cooking so much since I moved back,” I say, chasing my bite of food with wine. We’re already on our second bottle of the night.

  “Yeah? For your family, or are you just treating yourself like a chef?” She stabs some sautéed mushrooms.

  “I cooked for Noah once,” I say. I bite my lip, trying to stop the torrent of feelings rushing through me.

  “You cooked for him, eh?” She raises an eyebrow. “Then what’s with that face?”

  “That’s just how my face is.”

  “It’s so not.” Krissy snorts. “Do you two have a thing? Aren’t you guys step-siblings?”

  “Technically, we will be, but it’s not like we grew up that way.” I wave my fork in her direction. “And as for the thing… I don’t know.”

  “So it’s a crush? Because if so, I understand,” she says. “He’s not my type, but I can appreciate a good-looking guy when I see one.”

  “It’s complicated.” I stab my vegetables.

  “You need some wine?” she asks, holding up the bottle.

  “Yeah, for sure.” I slide my glass over to her, and she tops me off.

  “So it’s complicated between you two. Why? I can’t tell if you two hate each other or not.” Her eyes light up the way that they do when she’s learning something new. Thank god she’s not judgmental in the slightest, or else she’d probably be a destructive force. A tiny gossip storm.

  “We did. He’s my brother’s best friend, and we used to butt heads a lot. Like he was always so forceful, and I was reserved. He was loud; I was quiet.”

  “Opposites.”

  “Right.” I lazily swirl a piece of chicken in the sauce I made. It’s not quite salty enough, but that’s just me. “But now we’re not.”

  I don’t know what we are. I’m not that different than before. Maybe I’m looser and less uptight because I don’t feel so constrained in a relationship the way I’ve recently realized I was with Grant. Noah’s softer for sure. Less in your face.

  I look up at her, and she’s waiting for further explanation. But I’ve never opened up to anyone about this before. The only person who knows I’ve slept with Noah is Noah himself. No one else knows of that night. I don’t know who I would have told before this, though. My mom? No. The extent of our talk about sex was about birth control, which I went on as a teenager to help with my terrible cramps. I’ve been on my own since then, which has clearly had mixed results. I’ve gone from the girl who wanted to wait until marriage to have sex to make it special, to the girl who suggested being blindfolded during sex with Noah and liked it. Like, really liked it.

  I can’t stop my face from heating up, half out of mortification, and half out of arousal.

  “Have you talked to him about any of this?” she asks. I can practically feel her urge to bombard me with more detailed questions radiating toward me, but she has the restraint not to.

  “No, not yet,” I say after a short pause.

  I haven’t been able to talk to him since we parted ways after the vacation. The last time we had a private conversation was the last time we had sex, the last night we were in the cabin. He had just finished inside me (another thing I liked for reasons I still can’t place — thank goodness for birth control) and was going to get a towel to clean me up. He came back in, and the look on his face was so gentle that it hit my heart.

  “I’m falling asleep as we speak, so I think this is our last time together,” he’d said that night.

  “Yeah,” was all I said in return.

  He handed me the towel, and I cleaned myself up. After that, he kissed me on the cheek, then the lips, which he had never done affectionately, and left. I still haven’t texted him, and he hasn’t texted me. Are we both just repressed? I get why I’m scared to talk about my feelings, since the last time I opened up to a guy he destroyed my life. But him? What’s his excuse?

  Maybe some girl broke his heart, and he hasn’t told me. There are a lot of things I don’t know about him at all, like what his deal was when we were kids or much about his past that didn’t involve me. That scares the daylights out of me.

  “Okay, so talk to him about it,” Krissy says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. I mean, it is, but just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it’s easy.

  “I know. I really should.” I take another bite of my chicken, and it momentarily takes me away from the reality of my situation. “I don’t know how to phrase it, though.”

  “It’s like walking into a minefield,” she nods, understanding. “Listen, can I give you some advice?”

  “Yeah.” She always asks before she tells me, and her advice is usually good.

  “I came here because I was running from my ex, and what I’ve realized is that we could have either ended it sooner for both of our wellbeing’s or worked through issues if we’d just grabbed the problems by the horns and talked about them like grown-ass adult
s.” She looks me straight in the eye. “So, just tell him how you feel.”

  I rest my elbow on the counter, then rest my chin on my fist. “But what if he wants to date me?”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  “I don’t know.” I take a deep, steady breath. “There’s too much baggage there for me to feel okay about taking that plunge.”

  “More than the fact that you two used to hate each other’s guts?” She has that curious look on her face again.

  “We’ve slept together,” I finally admit, running a hand over my face. Better to start being open with someone I don’t have baggage with. “A few times.”

  “Oh. Oh.” She sits back. “So he’s put it in you, but you’ve never had a conversation about what you are to him?”

  “Well, after the first time we did it five years ago, I saw him set up a date with another girl when I was still in his bed. And kicked me out without saying much. So that told me everything I needed to know,” I say.

  “That’s a dick move,” she gasps, completely shocked. “He did that?”

  I nod.

  “I keep going back and forth on if I’m still mad at him about it,” I say. “I needed a hookup because, well, um, I had just caught my fiancée sleeping with someone else on the morning of our wedding. That asshole had been cheating on me the entire time and then telling me he wanted to wait for marriage.”

  Krissy’s mouth falls open. “What?” she practically screams. “Oh my god, sweetie, I’m sorry,” she says, rushing forward to give me a hug.

  The touch is nice, and it makes me feel so happy to have found such a true friend again.

  “Thank you,” I whisper, overcome with a rush of sudden emotion I didn’t realize I was still carrying.

  Krissy breaks the hug and rests her hands on my shoulders. “You okay?”

  I clear my throat and blink back the tears. “Yeah. I’m mostly over that now. But when I woke up in Noah’s bed just for him to toss me aside for another woman, it made me feel the same way again.”

  “Shit.” She blinks for a few moments, returning to the kitchen to top off her glass. “I can’t imagine him doing anything like that. He seems like… well, okay, he seems like a confident guy who can pull ladies, but I can’t imagine him being a player, you know?”

  “I’m not sure if he is. And then we’ve hooked up a few times recently, and we just haven’t really said anything about it. I apologized once after I pushed him away at the gym, but that’s really it.”

  “You guys hooked up at the gym?” Her eyes nearly leap out of her head.

  “Not all the way,” I say, holding a hand up. “But yeah, he kissed me, and we made out a little bit.”

  My cheeks are burning at the admission. I’ve never talked about sex with any of my friends before.

  “Hell, no shame in that game. I’ve slept with a lot of dudes in weird places.” She must have noticed my embarrassed face, because she added, “And I’m very for my friends getting the dick or vagina they deserve, in case you were wondering.”

  I finally smile a little, feeling a weight off of my shoulders; I didn’t know I was carrying.

  “Sorry, I’m just a little shy about all of this.” I sip my wine.

  “Don’t worry about it, seriously. Anyway, back to him treating you like you didn’t matter at all five years ago. Gimme some context. Like, was it just a spur of the moment thing? Did he hint at it being casual?”

  I pause, trying to think of how to phrase it. “He made it clear that he was going to be kind and considerate of my feelings because of what had happened.”

  “And clearly he wasn’t.”

  “Right.”

  “So why’d you bang him again?” she asks.

  “I think he’s changed. He’s less abrasive and douchey. He’s just nicer overall, but he’s still him, you know?” I rest my hand on the counter again. “I don’t get it. I don’t know which Noah I would be stuck with.”

  “That’s a solid concern,” she nods. “Okay, gimme a pen and paper. We need to pro/con list this situation.”

  “Really?” I get up and get a pen and paper anyway. Krissy can be such a teacher sometimes.

  “Yes, really. Sometimes seeing it all written out will help you sort your thoughts out.” She takes the pen and paper from me, draws a line down the middle, and writes pros and cons at the top of each in her tidy handwriting. “Okay. Pros to Noah — go.”

  I open my mouth and close it. The first thing I think of is that he makes me laugh, but that’s a cliché. The second thing I think of is that he’s a hot sex god who makes me want to bang all the freaking time. I take the pen from her and write down the first one, then for the second one, I just write ‘hot’. She snorts at that, and so do I.

  After that, I pause to think. I like that he’s kind — not nice in the general sense of his day to day interactions with people, but kind. He does things that make people’s lives easier or happier. I mean, it’s literally his job. He’s making people’s lives safer. And he’s caring enough to try to be cool with me since it makes our parents happy.

  But there's the embarrassment of the night we had years ago, which is healing but still aches. I write that down in the ‘con’ column, along with ‘we’ve hated each other up until recently’ and ‘purposefully pissed me off forever’ below that. I might as well have made a list of Noah then vs. Noah now.

  “Okay, nice list.” Krissy glances at it.

  “It’s just telling me that there are two different Noah’s.” I sigh heavily. “The past and the present.”

  “Right. But if you put a list of your past self and present self alongside that, would you see a difference?” she asks.

  That gives me pause. I’ve never thought about that. I’ve only ever thought about him changing. The Nadine before was admittedly uptight and unwilling to be anything but cheerful, and I’m much less like that now. I’m also too unwilling to face problems head-on still. Even though getting cheated on and dumped sucked, I think I’m finally coming out on the other side. I’ve changed, so I think I should accept Noah’s changes as well.

  But that still doesn’t make me any less scared to date anyone. What if he gets to know me and sees things inside me that I can’t even see in myself? Or vice versa?

  I think I can try to trust him. I owe him that.

  “Did you ever think about becoming a therapist instead of a teacher?” I ask her, staring down at the paper.

  “Psh, being a teacher is kind of like being a therapist. Kids need emotional support from adults more than they ever want to admit.” She grins. “I’m happy to help adults too.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Noah

  “Hey, buddy,” Dad says the second I pick up my phone. Even though he’s trying to sound normal, I can hear the sadness in his voice.

  “Hey.” I pace across my kitchen.

  Mabel senses that something’s amiss with me and follows closely. I took the day off of work today, which must be throwing her off, and I’m fully dressed, which I’m usually not when I’m at home. I couldn’t face the guys at work all day today, giving me pitying looks and pats on the shoulder. I know they mean well, but I can’t stand it. I just want things to go back to the way they were.

  “Do you still want to go to Jack’s grave?” he asks, almost timidly. “I stepped away from the office, and I’m guessing you did too.”

  “Yeah, I still want to. I’m dressed and ready to go whenever you want to meet there.” I swallow a knot in my throat.

  ‘Wanting’ to go visit Uncle Jack’s grave is a stretch, but it’s the closest I can get to being with him again.

  It’s the anniversary of his death. Last year, I thought this day would be easier to deal with as time went on. For some reason, it hurts even more today. It’s sunny and warm, the exact kind of day it was when he died. Maybe that’s why.

  “I can pick you up. Maybe you can bring Mabel too,” Dad offers.

  “Okay. She’d like the car ride.” I lo
ok down at her as her ears perk up a little. “See you soon.”

  We hang up, and my house is silent again. Mabel scoots even closer to me, almost so close that she’s sitting on my feet. I scratch behind her ears. If it wasn’t for Jack, I wouldn’t have her. I wouldn’t have a lot of things I have now.

  I go to the bathroom to make sure I look okay. I’m not sure what to wear to this kind of thing, so I’m wearing a black t-shirt and black jeans. Jack never dressed up, so I shouldn’t either. I stare at myself in the mirror, almost not even taking my own reflection in. I don’t think I look like him — he didn’t look like Dad either — but people always said we had a similar laugh.

  When I finally focus, I realize I’ve fucked up shaving, yet again. I sigh and try to make the cuts less noticeable. He always used to joke with the guys at the firehouse that he wasn’t responsible for my inability to shave, even though he kind of was. He sucked at it too. I was that teenager who held on to every sad bit of facial hair I grew, and by the time I hit college, I could grow an actual beard. Jack had to teach me how to shave properly when I became a firefighter. My dad never bothers with doing it at home since he doesn’t have to be clean-shaven for anything, so he handed those teaching reins to Jack.

  I run a hand over my face, then rub my eyes. Every little thing about Jack seems to jump out and slap me in the face on this day.

  Since I don’t know what else to do, I put Mabel in the harness she wears when she has to get buckled into the car. She gets excited immediately, and I chuckle. She definitely thinks we’re going to the dog park and not a cemetery. I wish Jack could see her now — he died before she was a year old. He’d hardly believe how big she is.

  I adjust her harness, so it’s not squeezing her to death. Maybe she’s getting a little too big. I need to lay off giving her human food and treats at the gym.

  Dad texts me to let me know he’s outside, and I head out with her. Dad isn’t listening to any music, which is unusual, but he’s drumming his thumb on the steering wheel like he’s keeping track of a beat. It’s a nervous tick of his.