Page 3 of Up In Flames

Will

I never forgot a face, and sometimes it made the inside of my head a messy place to be, but Oren’s face was one I was thankful to remember.

Sometimes I thought under pressure was the only way I functioned, because telling Oren that he looked better than the last time I saw him made me die inside. However true it was, it was an unnecessary thing to say.

The last time I saw him, he was loaded. Stinking like vomit, booze, and terror, and the heavy coppery scent of fresh blood. I shoved that visual out of my head and tried not to ogle him.

Oren Reid topped out at five nine or so.

His hair had clearly been tidier that morning.

The dark blonde strands now looked like he’d been raking his fingers through them all day.

He wore a suit and a tie so green it was almost black.

A table of similarly dressed people across the bar had to have been where he’d come from.

Oren pulled his hand away. “I’ve thought about you—about tracking you down, to say thank you.” He glanced back at the table.

“Friends of yours?”

Oren shook his head. “Colleagues.”

He looked like he still had things he wanted to say to me, but maybe didn’t want to in front of the whole firehouse and his colleagues.

Sometimes accident victims or people who’d been trapped in burning buildings had questions about what happened.

Their brains blocked things out due to trauma, and they came to me seeking answers.

I wondered if that was the case with Oren.

“Did you want to talk in private? If you have questions about that night… Briggs—ah, Carl—he was there too.”

Oren paled and shook his head. “No. That’s—I just wanted to say thank you.”

“If you change your mind, I’m at Station 860. Just ask for Dorsey. None of these assholes use my first name.” My comment earned a smile from Oren, but not a real one. A small, timid smile that hid away as soon as it poked out.

I watched Oren go back to his crowd of suits and I took a seat. Jonas had switched with me and took my place by the wall.

“Who was that?” he asked as he folded one of the napkins into a Bird of Paradise. It was one of his many useless talents, something he’d picked up from working in his family’s catering business growing up.

“Seven months ago, we tore the roof off a car, and I pulled him out of the back seat. He was the only survivor at the scene. Two fatalities in the car with him, and the driver of the car they hit died too.”

Jonas let out a low whistle.

“I’m surprised he remembered me,” I told him. Oren was one of those people I’d thought about after the fact. Sometimes I tried not to think of what people’s lives were like, but when I did, I liked to imagine that they were happy. Oren didn’t look happy, but I didn’t know the first thing about him.

“Your admirer is a lawyer,” Briggs said. He was sitting across the table from me, and I looked up at him.

“How do you know?”

“Because I pay attention to shit, Dorsey. They’re in here every once in a while. The hot shot with the silver hair pays for everything. That’s Simon Preston. My cousin was a paralegal for his firm before she went back to school.”

“Let me guess. Law school?”

Briggs snorted. “Nah, she does nails now. Fancy ones. Charges like a grand for a set, but they’re super custom.”

“A grand. For fingernails. I’m in the wrong business.”

Briggs and Jonas laughed.

“No shit, right?” Briggs took a swig of his beer. “I’d do it, but I can’t draw for shit. I’m better off busting doors down.”

Briggs was our muscle. Everyone on the crew could knock a door in, but Briggs could do it faster than everyone on the crew. It was a point of pride for him.

“Think he’ll come back?” Jonas asked, motioning toward the group where Oren sat.

I wanted him to, but not when the whole crew was around.

There was something about Oren that made my insides wobble.

I’d noticed his full lips, his pouty mouth, the worried expression etched into his face.

I’d wanted to kiss him to see if it would bring another smile to his face.

But Oren didn’t set off my gaydar… and none of the guys knew I was gay.

It wasn’t like they were a bunch of homophobes.

Briggs’ little brother came out as trans last year.

Jonas volunteered at the local LGBT center in honor of his best friend who hadn’t survived the hellish teenage years.

I didn’t think I’d get any flak from them.

But my parents would care. They were card-carrying Catholics.

Confession every Sunday. Mass at Christmas.

Crucifixes as home decor level religious.

Every so often, they tried to get me to date, usually a nice church girl. And every so often, I’d bite the bullet and take someone out just to say I’d been on a date recently, and it hadn’t worked out. My parents were sweet and well-meaning, and lucky for me, easily fooled.

The older I got, the harder it was to keep up the charade, but it seemed pointless to come out when I didn’t have a reason to upend my life.

I’d tried to date before, but I was closeted, and he was straight.

Turned out, I didn’t like being a science experiment.

Keeping a secret was bad enough, but I didn’t want to be a secret and an embarrassment or a mistake.

The old wounds still bled when I pressed on them. The words had been thrown at me like daggers, each one hitting the mark. When I did date, I only dated men who were comfortable with their sexuality. Whether they were gay, bi, or pan. Out or not out mattered less, because I wasn’t out either.

Mostly I avoided the whole problem by not dating.

I hooked up now and then, and sometimes I’d even go for a repeat or two, but so far no one had stuck around once the thrill of fucking a fireman wore off or when I wouldn’t bring them to the station for hookups.

Sorry, boys, I wasn’t a wish-granting genie.

I was just a lonely gay boy who couldn’t stop thinking about the most-likely-straight lawyer he’d pulled from a wreck over half a year ago.

The group of lawyers he was with trickled out one by one, and Oren was with the last group to leave.

I sipped my beer as I watched him go. He’d removed his suit jacket, loosened his tie, and rolled up his sleeves.

He caught my eye as he walked out, but he looked away like he hadn’t meant to be busted looking at me.

The guys from the station were thankfully unaware of whatever electricity had zapped between Oren and me.

Looks like the ones Oren gave me on his way out were dangerous.

They came with heat. And questions. His gaze had been haunted.

I hoped he’d come by the station someday to talk to me.

The wreck was the kind where we were certain we were going to pull nothing but bodies from the twisted metal.

Oren was a miracle that night. He was battered and bloody, but he’d come out of that car in one piece. The scent of gasoline was everywhere, and the only way to get him out had been to cut the roof off the car.

“What did that drink do to you, man?” Briggs asked, bumping his hand into mine to get my attention.

“What?” I blinked the table into focus. “Sorry. I got lost in thought.”

“No shit. I keep telling you not to think so hard. You’re going to hurt yourself.” Jonas laughed and peeled a few bills out of his wallet. “Are we getting out of here? I’m off for the next couple of days, and I have shit to do. I see enough of you ugly fuckers at work.”

“Who you callin’ ugly?” Briggs scowled at Jonas, but there was no heat in it.

“Don’t worry, Briggs. It’s what’s on the inside that matters” I added to the tip Jonas left and made my own excuse to leave.

Rush hour traffic had passed, and I was glad of it. And for the fact that Briggs and Jonas lived close to each other, meaning neither of them ever asked me for a lift.

Normally I wouldn’t have minded. Sometimes living alone bothered me, and I’d find myself missing the station. It often felt like more of a home to me than my shoebox of an apartment was. Most of the time, if I was honest.

I wasn’t looking forward to going back to my place.

Earlier in the day, I thought I might have tried to find a hookup, but the thought didn’t appeal now.

Seeing Oren had thrown me for a loop. He was just my type.

A little shorter, slimmer, and blonder than I was.

I liked his pouty mouth and his green-grey eyes.

Home greeted me with silence. I lived on the ground floor of an apartment building. I’d put out too many fires and evacuated too many people from higher floors that the idea of living anywhere above the second floor gave me nightmares.

I put my phone in the dock and filled my apartment with music to drown out the silence.

After a shower, I cooked dinner for myself.

Truthfully, I preferred cooking at the station.

Cooking for just myself sucked, but I liked making food for all the guys.

They were an easy crowd to please. A few of the guys would even swing by if they were off-duty, and I was cooking.

Briggs was the worst offender for that. Jonas frequently sent me videos he saw online of different foods he wanted to eat, but didn’t want to bother making.

When I’d first started cooking for the guys, it had been a way to expend some of my nervous energy during downtimes at the station.

Mom had never been much of a cook, so it was my dad who taught me how.

Mom could pour cereal and microwave things, but when it came to actually cooking, it was best if she didn’t.

Dad taught me because he joked that though he loved my mom, he wasn’t bound by any kind of religious law to love her cooking. Sometimes I wondered if Mom was bad at it on purpose, but if she was, that was between her and Dad.

Eventually, I’d taken over most of the cooking at home.

There wasn’t a kitchen gadget I wanted that Dad wouldn’t buy for me.

He kept a notepad on the fridge. A stubby pencil taped to a piece of string that was used to write down things we needed, and every week he’d take the list to work with him.

Friday after work, he’d be late, but he’d come home with all the things on my list. When I went for dinner at their house, half the time I ended up helping Dad cook.

On a whim, I sent off a text inviting myself over for dinner the next night, if they were free. Dad’s response gave me immediate regret.

Dad

What’s the occasion? Are you bringing a friend?

His questions were followed by a series of emojis that I’m sure made sense to him. Or maybe they didn’t, and he’d just smashed a bunch of random ones to throw me off.

No friend. Just me and my barbeque tongs. I’ll grab steak on my way over.

I got another text a few minutes later.

Maybe next time then.

I didn’t dignify that with a response. Telling my parents I didn’t want kids had gone over like a lead balloon.

I was their only child, and I knew they hoped I’d have found a girl by now to pop out a bunch of babies with.

But I never wanted that. Even if I were straight, the idea had never appealed to me.

They pretended, of course, that all that would change when I met the right woman. I put my phone down and closed my eyes. That was never going to happen, but I was also starting to wonder if I’d ever meet the right man.