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My heart begins to jackhammer in my chest, and I stand from the table quickly, sending my coffee spilling and my brothers shouting. “What is it, Bailey?” I ask, trying to lighten my tone.
“Is she with you?” she asks, her voice a little high-pitched. “Vivian, I mean.”
“No.”
“Oh,” she says and silence fills the line.
“What’s wrong, Bailey?” I bark out sternly, trying not to shout into the phone but unable to keep the urgency out of my tone.
“It’s just, well, I’m at work but someone I know from here, she lives on the same street, in another building, and she just got told a building is on fire, and I think it might be ours, and I don’t have a quick way to get home so I called one of your bars and they gave me your number because I was really hoping she was with you,” Bailey says, her voice quavering. “And Vivian is home,and she has no phone, and she sleeps like the dead after working nights…”
I don’t hear anything else she says, her voice drowned out by flashbacks of my words when I was leaving Vivian’s building the other night, when I ran into Tim. “You better get it done or I’m going to light a fucking fire under your ass.”
He’d muttered something to my back, but I hadn’t cared to hear it. What was it? I push my brain to dig deep and decipher the words that he had spat at me. Then it comes to me. Tim muttered, “Oh, I’ll light a fire.”
Fuck.
I hustle out the door, not bothering to say anything to my brothers, and once outside, I look in the direction of Vivian’s building, even though it’s clear across the city from my place. A cloud of black smoke is billowing into the air.
I run to my car and speed away from my house. I break every traffic law ever created as I rush toward the smoke, praying the entire way it’s a different building. I go to turn and nearly careen into the side of a cruiser blocking off access to Vivian’s street.
There are fire trucks everywhere on the street, every hydrant is in use, and flames shoot high in the sky from Vivian’s building.
I park my car where it skids to a stop and run full speed to the building. I ignore the cop shouting at me that I can’t park there and run through the people who have gathered in the street to stare. I go to the front of the building and look around at the people who are wrapped in blankets, people who are covered with smoke soot and look to have been evacuated. I go from person to person, move from huddled group to huddled group, but none of them are Vivian.
I look up at the building and make my way to the entry when a man in firefighter gear and a big white hat stops me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks, his tone saturated in condescension as he looks me up and down.
“My girlfriend is in there,” I tell him.
He shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “I checked the place personally; everyone is out.”
“No, she isn’t, because she isn’t here,” I tell him, plotting all the ways I will inflict pain on him once Vivian is safe.
“Look, guy, maybe she wasn’t home, because that place is empty.”
“You’re wrong.”
I watch the veins bulge in his forehead. The little man here doesn’t like me telling him the truth. I look at his name on his hat—Deputy Perkins. “I told you,” he says through his teeth, “I checked every place—”
“No, you didn’t, and something tells me you don’t even believe that. My girlfriend is on the third floor, in the back of the building. She works nights and she sleeps during the day.”
“Look, asshole, your bitch isn’t home,” Deputy Dickhead says, and I clench my fists, ready to hit him and then make my way inside, but thankfully he is called away.
I run to the back of the building, hopping over hoses, and to the rusted-out fire escape on the side of the building where Vivian’s apartment is. I grab the ladder, shaking my head in disgust as some of the metal disintegrates in my hands, and climb, hoping like hell it will hold my weight.
Please let her be okay, I pray over and over again as I climb up the escape to the third floor window. I can’t see in through all the black smoke in the way. I cover my head and kick the window, throwing myself immediately down on the fire escape, expecting flames or smoke like I have seen in the movies. But instead, all I hear is a loud roar as the flames on top of the building grow, windows popping out on the floors above.
I waste no time and hurl myself through the window and into Vivian’s kitchen. I see her bedroom door shut and run to it, touching it. It’s thankfully cool, and I shove it open.
Vivian sits straight up from the bed on my entry and screams.
“Vivian!” I shout, the roar of the flames suddenly like a freight train around us.
“Declan?” she asks, looking so confused, and then immediately the confusion is replaced with fear as the situation around us becomes clear to her. “What’s going on?” she screams.
I don’t answer her, and instead stride to her side, gathering her in my arms, and make my way out the door of her bedroom. The way back has completely changed in the seconds it’s taken me to get Vivian. Smoke has come seemingly out of nowhere, and I’m unable to find my way back to the window. I cough against the onslaught of smoke, my eyes burning from it. Vivian is coughing too, and she seems unable to stop as I try to make out where the window was.