Page 9 of Up In Flames

Will

A structure fire had us up at one in the morning battling flames and trying to stop it from spreading to other nearby buildings.

Attending a fire in the early morning hours always made me feel like I was in an alternate dimension.

People milled around the edges of the darkness, wanting to get a better view.

Onlookers were wrapped in blankets and thin jackets, and they all speculated about how it might have started.

The residents had been alerted by a neighbor that their house was on fire, likely the only thing that saved them. The family sat across the street and watched their home burn. And the most we could do now was make sure no one else’s house was lost to the tragedy.

Sometime after dawn, we were able to start packing it up.

The distraught family left after the roof had collapsed, and it was clear that there’d be nothing to save.

At least there were no lives lost. I so often wished I could do more, like it wasn’t enough to put out the fire.

I wanted there to be more I could do for people in the aftermath.

We returned to the station exhausted and filthy. The fire had come in the last few hours of my shift. We worked a standard rotation of twenty-four hours on, forty-eight hours off, and I was definitely looking forward to grabbing a nap.

“Where are you going looking all nice?” I asked Briggs, who’d showered off and dressed in a pair of new jeans and a button-up.

“I’ve got a brunch date. It was supposed to be a breakfast date, but the fire had other ideas.”

“It generally does.” My phone buzzed in my pocket, and secretly I hoped it was Oren.

I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since the fundraiser at the park a couple weeks ago.

He was always on my mind and I enjoyed how frequently we were texting back and forth.

I wanted to see him in person again, but his bosses had landed a fairly big client and Oren was picking up the slack in other areas.

I knew jack shit about being a lawyer, and I had no idea about any of the stuff Oren talked about, but he delivered every bit of knowledge with confidence.

He was clearly good at what he did, and he knew it.

It shouldn’t be hot, but it was. The firm he worked for didn’t do criminal trials, but I often thought about Oren up in front of a courtroom and how he’d have the judge and jury eating out of the palm of his hand.

Did I have a lawyer kink now?

Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I frowned at the screen when it wasn’t Oren’s number that appeared.

Mom

Are you free for dinner tonight?

I dropped down on the bench outside the lockers and let out a breath. I didn’t want to be free, but I was. Briggs had his date, and I was trying not to smother Oren.

I’m free.

Don’t worry about cooking. Dad is ordering in

.

“Thank fuck for small miracles.”

I’ll be there at six. I just got back from a call, going to nap.

Sleep well

I needed to get a better social life, and I knew it.

But I wasn’t about to say that out loud.

Out loud, I pretended to be fine. My shit was together.

Everything in life was as it should be. On the inside, loneliness was my shadow.

It was with me wherever I went, clinging to me even when I was around other people.

As time dragged on, the closet I’d kept myself in had grown increasingly stifling.

I did a lot of things out of fear, and for everything I did out of fear, I avoided ten more for the same reasons.

The person I was laid awake at night and thought about the person I might be if I were out. What would I lose?

What might I gain?

I could never come up with an answer to that last question, but I had plenty of hypothetical answers for the first. Enough to keep me silent about who I was and what I wanted.

When I got home, I stretched out on the couch and grabbed a few hours of sleep. My phone hadn’t woken me up, but there’d been plenty of missed messages. Some from Briggs. Some from Mom about some church function she was still trying to rope me into attending.

Outwardly, they’d been okay with me leaving the church, but I could tell it was a secret disappointment.

They were staunch in their beliefs, and they’d raised me in the church.

I’d never believed how they did, though.

Not even as a little kid. They didn’t hold it against me, but I could tell that sometimes my lack of faith made Mom sad.

If Dad was disappointed, he hid it better.

Every so often, Mom tried to lure me back in with silly church social events.

I didn’t often go. The people at their church were perfectly nice, but I couldn’t help feeling like they could see me for the liar I was.

It was definitely a me problem, but I hated how being there made my skin itch.

It wasn’t like I had a sign above my head that said “secretly homosexual” in hot pink neon or that I farted rainbows or anything.

It was that Mom would not-so-subtly introduce me to women she met.

Women who had been told all about me—handsome, single firefighter, pillar of the community type.

There was no stopping her either. Most of the time, the women got the hint within the first few minutes of strained, overly polite conversation that I wasn’t interested in playing into my mother’s matchmaking schemes.

Usually I could make up an excuse about why I couldn’t attend.

Sometimes I resorted to outright lying. Mom didn’t expect me to suddenly rediscover my faith or anything, but I think she hoped I would.

All I needed, in her eyes, was a nice church girl to settle down with.

Three point seven kids, two dogs, a white picket fence later, and Mom would be deliriously happy.

None of that appealed to me. Maybe the picket fence, but I was also happy with my ground-level apartment and my three cacti that rounded out my plant collection. Hopefully, one day I’d have a boyfriend to wake up next to. But in order for that to happen, I’d have to come out.

Every day that went by, I swore I got closer to it.

I spent my life peeking out of the closet, trying to imagine what life would be like if I took the door off the hinges.

Fear always stopped me. I could run into burning buildings, scale ladders, and walk through fire, but I couldn’t tell my parents I was gay.

Bravery didn’t always appear when I needed it.

I showed up to Mom and Dad’s a little before six. I’d stopped by the bakery on the way over and picked up a raspberry tart, Mom’s favorite dessert. I’d tried to make it a few times, but after the last failed attempt, I decided that it was better left to the experts.

Pulling into the driveway, I took note of the length of the grass, especially around the edges of the lawn.

Mom and Dad didn’t live in a huge house, but it was on a corner lot which meant there was extra land for them to take care of.

The grass was thick too. It could be a bitch to cut when it got too long.

Not bothering to knock, I went inside with the dessert.

I kicked my shoes off by the door and padded through to the kitchen.

Their house was an older style that hadn’t been renovated to make everything open.

Dad brought it up once or twice, but Mom remained adamant that she liked having separate rooms for everything.

I pushed the kitchen door open and slipped inside. “Hey. Looks like the lawn is a bit long. I’ll—” I stopped in my tracks when I noticed another person in the kitchen.

“Honey, you’ve met Chrissy, right?”

Dread bubbled up in my stomach although I’d halfway expected something like this.

It had been a while since Mom’s last attempt.

I shot Dad a look, and he glanced away. Clearly he was on Mom’s side or at least not willing to get in the middle.

More than for myself, I felt bad for Chrissy.

Whatever my Mom had told her about me was obviously enough to get her over here for dinner.

“I think I’ve seen her around.” I tried to keep my voice even to hide how irritated I was. I’d asked Mom to stop trying to set me up with women, and she always listened. For a few months anyway. And then suddenly she’d orchestrate a reason to throw a woman into my path.

“Your mom has told me a lot about you.” Chrissy looked at me with a gaze that I could only describe as hungry. Her eyes traveled down my body, then back up again and her smile widened.

“I wish I could say the same.” I set the dessert box on the counter. “I brought your favorite.” Keeping my annoyance inside for the next couple hours was going to take every bit of strength I had left. When Chrissy was gone, I was going to have another chat with Mom about my love life.

Dinner started off perfectly well, all things considered. Dad was on the quiet side, as was I. But Mom and Chrissy held the conversation up all by themselves.

“Will is an amazing cook. Too bad he doesn’t get it from me.” Mom laughed and looked at me with a hopeful expression, wanting me to join in. I managed a tight smile and then Mom was off on another tangent about me.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Normally, I was a good son and stayed present during dinner and didn’t check my phone, but I’d had enough of the conversation around the table.

I knew it was partly my fault for not telling them the truth about me, but things like this only reinforced my decision not to tell them.

Clearly they loved a version of me that didn’t exist.

Oren’s name flashed up on the screen. He’d sent a meme, and I quickly saw the opportunity to get the hell out of there.

Call me.

Oren

??? Now?

Yes

okay…

Two seconds later the phone rang, and I frowned at the screen. “I have to take this.”

I stood up from the table and answered as I stepped away. “Hey, what’s up?”

Oren’s laughter made me feel instantly better about everything. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, I get it. I’m the decoy. How bad of an emergency do you need me to have so you can get out of whatever hell you’re stuck in?”

“That bad? Shit, yeah. I’ll be right there.”

“If you need an excuse to leave, tell them my hot water tank busted and flooded my house. Or maybe I was abducted by aliens. If you swing by my place when you’re done, I have a six pack in the fridge with your name on it.”

“Okay, see you soon.” I ended the call, flooded with guilt that I was using Oren to get out of dinner, but I couldn’t sit through another ten minutes of Mom talking up my every accomplishment like it was some kind of miracle I’d performed.

I wasn’t worth all the hype and the fuss, especially for someone I’d never be interested in.

“Sorry, a friend of mine has an emergency.” I stuffed my phone away like it could hide the lie I was telling. “I have to run, but the three of you can enjoy dessert for me. Thanks for dinner.”

I went back to the table and clapped Dad on the shoulder. I brushed a kiss against Mom’s cheek and gave a polite nod to Chrissy.

Three minutes later, I was out of the house, in my truck, and on my way to see Oren.

Part of me pretended that I was only going over there because Oren mentioned beer, but the bigger, stupider part of me knew I was going there because I still hadn’t been able to shake my crush on him.

It didn’t matter that he was straight; there was something about him that captivated me.

Truth be told, I wasn’t trying especially hard to not crush on him.

It was harmless, so long as I didn’t get my hopes up.