Things You Save in a Fire

by Katherine Center

“I feel like I’m headed to the prom,” I said.

  “What did you wear to your prom?” Josie asked.

  “Nothing. I didn’t go. Ted had baseball tickets.”

  They made me twirl around.

  “I feel very naked,” I said.

  “Naked can be fun,” my mother said.

  Could it? I wasn’t sure. Being so bare was both exciting and deeply uncomfortable. I couldn’t tell if I liked it. “It’s just,” I said, “I usually go for, like, the opposite of naked.”

  Josie nodded. “Good to try new things, though.”

  Josie pawed through her dresser and found a little cropped cardigan I could put over my shoulders if I got cold, and a matching clutch, and then they started going through the shoe stash. Josie was an eight-and-a-half and I was a nine, but she had a few sandals I could squeeze into. Platform wedges, mostly.

  “I feel like a stilt-walker,” I said, once we’d strapped on a pair that worked.

  “You’ll get the hang of it,” my mother said.

  “Be the shoes,” Josie encouraged.

  I stared at myself in the mirror. I looked like a whole different person. A person brave enough to go braless. A person open to possibilities. A person in all kinds of trouble.

  I looked at all our faces reflected in Josie’s mirror—theirs with delight, and mine with concern.

  “I guess it’ll work,” I said, chewing my lip.

  If nothing else, it was a hell of a disguise.

  * * *

  SATURDAY CAME QUICKLY. Too quickly. And not quickly enough.

  Diana made me sit at her dressing table while she gave me a makeover. “Just a little,” she kept saying, but I think she used every vial, spray bottle, brush, and tube in every drawer. She plucked my eyebrows. She curled my eyelashes. She dusted me with powders and teased my hair. She frowned and fussed while I sat with my eyes closed, under strict orders not to peek.

  When she gave me permission at last to open my eyes, I saw the same me, but different. The eye shadow and lipstick were the biggest shockers. My eyes looked twice their normal size, and my lips were dark red and extra plump.

  “It’s like the cartoon version of me,” I said.

  She gave me a look. “Thanks,” she said.

  The biggest change was my hair, which they’d insisted I leave down and loose—instead of my usual low bun. A bottle of hair spray and thirty minutes of blow-drying and teasing later, it wasn’t just hair. It was a mane. I didn’t even look like myself to myself.

  The three of us stared at me in the mirror.

  “It is a very different version of you,” Diana concluded.

  “Which is better?” I asked.

  Diana gave me a quick squeeze. “I’m very fond of the everyday you,” she said, somehow knowing the exact words I was hoping for, “but this is fun, too.”

  I waited to put on the dress until the last minute so I wouldn’t wrinkle it. Same with the shoes—to lessen my chances of breaking an ankle.

  When the rookie was a few minutes late arriving, I felt like I couldn’t take it.

  I pulled out my phone.

  “I’m going to cancel,” I said, shaking my head at my mom and Josie, who were keeping watch at the front window. “I can’t do this.”

  My hands were cold. Everything felt cold. And hot. Both. At the same time. What was I thinking? We were going to get caught, and I was going to get ridiculed, scoffed at, and then fired, in that order, and my life as I’d known it was going to be over.

  “You can run into a burning building, but you can’t spend one evening with a nice guy?”

  “That’s different,” I said.

  “I agree,” Diana said.

  Josie added, “This is more fun.”

  “That all depends on how you define ‘fun,’” I said.

  It wasn’t a date, but it felt like a date. It was too many opposites. I wanted to go just as badly as I wished I’d never offered. I wanted the rookie to hurry up and get here just as badly as I wanted him to never show up at all. I wanted to wear a little flouncy dress for once in my life, but at the exact same time, I wanted to put on my sports bra and a sweat suit—with hood.

  My fingers felt like they’d been refrigerated.

  At last, a knock at the door—and I felt a visceral jolt of fear in my body. This felt like the scariest thing I’d ever done. How crazy was that? I’d extricated bodies from car accidents, and had guns pointed at me, and literally watched people take their final breaths—but this was the scariest thing I’d ever done.

  I grabbed Diana’s arm. “Maybe I should wear my dress uniform.”

  “Your uniform?”

  I nodded. A blazer and some shoulder pads suddenly seemed very appealing.

  My heart was glugging like a motor. Without deciding to, I half-hid behind one of the French doors.

  But Josie was opening the door, and then Diana was joining in, all normal, as if people opened doors for visitors all the time.

  Diana smiled and said, “Hello, rookie. You’re late.”

  “I was early,” he said, his voice all apology, “but then I saw a kid wipe out on his bicycle, and I stopped to help.”

  Of course he did.

  Josie and Diana looked at each other, like, Adorable.

  He’d gotten a haircut since that morning—shorter in back, but still longer in front. He wore a perfectly tailored dark gray suit and a baby blue tie.

  He looked unfairly handsome.

  And so it was happening. Whatever choices I’d made were playing themselves out. There was nothing left to do but step out and meet him.

  Just as I did, he looked up and saw me.

  Here was something I noticed: He dropped his smile for a second right then. It was like he forgot everything—what he was saying, what he was doing. He held very still.

  Did I look that different? I wondered. Was I that shocking?

  In my whole life, nobody had ever looked at me that way.

  I guess I could have come up with some self-deprecating explanation for the shock of his expression: food in my teeth, a booger, a sudden nosebleed … But I didn’t.

  I knew that stare. I knew it because I recognized it.

  It was exactly the way I was staring at him.

  Here’s something else I noticed: All my naked agony of anticipation? At the sight of him, it melted away. All my nervousness—gone. His presence in the room made everything okay.

  Maybe I was doomed to regret everything later. But I couldn’t regret anything right now.

  I took a step closer.

  So did he—forgetting my mom and Josie altogether. “You clean up good.”

  “Back atcha,” I said.

  “Thanks for saving me tonight,” he said.

  “Just don’t tell anybody.”

  His smile faded again then, and he made a dead-serious X over his heart as he said, “Hope to die.”

  He took a few steps closer, like we were the only people in the room. Then he took my hand to lead me to the door.

  “I have to tell you something, rookie,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I cannot walk in these shoes.”

  “That’s fine,” he said, holding out his arm. “I’ll help you.”

  “And I feel totally naked in this dress.”

  He stepped back like he was checking. “You’re definitely not naked. That, I would notice.”

  “And I know this is not a date, but it kind of feels like a date, and I need you to know I’ve never been on a date before.”

  He tilted his head. “Never?”

  “Never.”

  “This is your first date?”

  “It’s not a date.”

  “But if it were—it would be?”

  I nodded. “If it were, it would be.”

  I think we said good-bye to my mom and Josie, but I don’t really remember.

  All I remember is the feel of his arm around my waist, and how thin that silky fabric was, and how I was aware of everythi
ng: the wind blowing my hair, the late-afternoon sun on my collarbones, the feel of each unsteady step. Every inch of my skin felt awake, every breath I took seemed to swirl in my chest, and every time I dared to glance over at the rookie, my whole body tingled.

  Not good—and too good, all at the same time.

  He led me to his truck and opened the door for me.

  Was I perfectly capable of opening my own door? Yes.

  But I liked it.

  As I tried to settle into my seat, I didn’t know what to do with my legs. Finally, I crossed them, watching one hook over the other with a strange, out-of-body feeling like they didn’t even belong to me.

  The rookie, settling in on his side, watched them, too. Instead of starting the car.

  “I didn’t know you had legs,” he said then, nodding at them.

  “Yep,” I said. “Always.”

  “You kind of keep them hidden.”

  “Not hidden,” I said. “Just, you know—in my pants. Exactly where you keep yours, by the way.”

  “But you have women’s legs,” he explained.

  “Yes.”

  “And I don’t.”

  “True.”

  “I’m just saying, nobody wants to see my legs.”

  “I’m sure somebody wants to see them. Case, maybe.”

  The rookie grinned and made crinkles at the sides of his eyes. He started the ignition. Then he shook his head. “Hanwell has legs,” he said, marveling at the idea.

  I smacked him on the shoulder.

  Then we were off. We followed the coastline south, and I just let the view and the wind flow past me for a while.

  “I won’t be drinking tonight, by the way,” I said, “so I can be your designated driver.”

  “Want to keep your wits about you, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, it’s fine if you change your mind. I never get drunk. I can drink all day and never feel it.”

  I gave him a look, like, Please. “I could drink you under the table, pal.”

  “I’d like to see you try.”

  I leaned back against the headrest and let the wind flutter my hair. “Have you decided what you’re going to tell your parents about me?”

  He nodded. “I thought of a perfect sentence, actually.”

  “Hit me.”

  “When they say, ‘Where’s Amy?’ I’ll say: ‘She couldn’t make it, but I brought a friend.’”

  “That’s actually genius. It’s not even lying. Distract and redirect.”

  “And then your job is to whisk me out onto the dance floor to avoid all further questions.”

  “I’m not sure I can whisk anybody anywhere in these shoes,” I said, “but I’ll try.”

  Seventeen

  THE THING ABOUT the rookie at the firehouse was: He was quiet. He smiled a lot, and he was helpful, and he’d do everything anybody asked of him and more—but he wasn’t what you’d call a big talker.

  But take him to a family reunion with twinkle lights and a disco ball in a room full of Irish cousins and a DJ playing Top 40 hits from every decade?

  He never shut up.

  From the minute we walked in, folks were grabbing him, hugging him, smacking him, ruffling his hair—and he was doing it all back to everybody else. Pointing at his cousin Mikey, high-fiving his cousin Patrick, telling his aunt Aileen she looked like a million bucks.

  He was the life of the party.

  I was the quiet one. Standing there all braless in my flammable hankie dress and double-decker shoes and just trying not to fall over.

  His sisters were all over him, giving him hugs and cheek squeezes and smacks. He confessed to one of them what we were up to, and in seconds they all knew—like ants in a colony. The oldest showed up with a baby on her hip to get a gander at me.

  “This is the decoy girlfriend, huh?” she asked, smiling.

  “We’re not pretending she’s my girlfriend,” the rookie corrected. “We’re just using her as a distraction.”

  The sister—Shannon—looked me up and down. “She is distracting.”

  Where was my bunker gear?

  Then she pointed at me. “Don’t break his heart.”

  “Shut up,” he said to her.

  I marveled. Was I passing for a heartbreaker?

  “I’m kidding,” the sister said. Then back to me, “But seriously. Don’t.”

  It took us half an hour to make it across the room to greet his parents, and by then he’d downed two beers and about twenty mini-quiches, and I’d finished off two virgin daiquiris like a champ.

  His parents were adorable. His dad wore his Boston FD dress uniform, complete with cap and epaulets, and his mother wore a pink pantsuit with a corsage on the lapel. The rookie leaned in and kissed them both.

  “Happy anniversary,” he said. “Colleen and Big Robby, meet—”

  His mom interrupted and said, “Where’s Amy?”

  We’d been expecting it, but maybe not quite so fast.

  “Amy couldn’t make it—” the rookie started.

  Big Robby leaned in and wiggled his eyebrows. “Because our boy’s got a new girlfriend.”

  The rookie and I froze. This was not the plan.

  Colleen froze, too. This was not the girlfriend she’d been rooting for.

  Big Robby shrugged. “I overheard your sisters talking.”

  Colleen looked me over. “What happened to Amy?”

  The rookie stood up a little straighter. “We’re taking a break.”

  His mother waited for more.

  “In truth,” the rookie went on, in a spark of impromptu brilliance, “Amy’s job took her out to California, and it just didn’t make sense for me to move out there with her.”

  Whatever dismay Colleen felt at the loss of Amy was suddenly tempered by the fact that her son had not foolishly followed her to California. She smiled at me. I might not be Amy, but at least I was local. “And you are?”

  “I’m C—” I started, but the rookie suddenly yanked me to his side.

  “Christabel!” he shouted. Then, in a normal voice. “This is my friend Christabel.”

  Colleen looked pleased. “That’s one of my favorite names,” she said. “If we’d had one more girl, I would have named her Christabel.”

  “Oh,” I said, still a little flummoxed.

  “How did the two of you meet?” the rookie’s dad wanted to know.

  Before I could invent an answer, the rookie yanked me off toward the dance floor. I stumbled off behind him, and when he finally stopped and turned around, I went flying right into his chest with an ooof. The DJ was playing Kool & the Gang.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, smacking him on the shoulder.

  “You were supposed to whisk me off to the dance floor.”

  “Well, we had a change of plans.”

  “No shit. And now they think you’re my girlfriend.”

  “It was super-rude to just walk away from your mother when she was complimenting my name.”

  “It’s not your name,” he said. “It’s my name. My almost-name. If I’d been a girl.”

  We stared at each other. The song ended. A new one started. Suddenly, the lights dimmed, and we heard the DJ—yet another cousin—on the speakers. “Welcome to the greatest slow dance of all time. The Bee Gees’ timeless classic ‘How Deep Is Your Love?’”

  “They’re watching us,” the rookie said then, looking over my shoulder. “Put your arms around my neck.”

  “I guess we’re slow-dancing,” I said.

  “I guess we are,” the rookie said, like it was a dare.

  I never backed down from a dare.

  I reached up around his shoulders and settled against him. Once again, I was aware of how naked I was under my dress. I couldn’t meet his eyes. I stared at the knot of his tie.

  I felt dazed. All I could focus on, really, was how strange I felt. I’d slow-danced before, but this was entirely different at the cellular level. I was achingly aware
of every part of my body that was touching his—the weight of my arms on his shoulders, the warmth of his palms on my hips, the nearness of his freshly shaved neck, the scent of his deodorant.

  The way nothing separated us but fabric.

  “If we’re going to pretend to date, Christabel, you should probably stop calling me ‘rookie.’”

  I tried to focus. “What else would I call you?”

  “How about my name?”

  Finally, I met his eyes. “What is your name?”

  He pulled back to give me a frown. “You know my name,” he said.

  “Callaghan,” I said.

  “My first name.”

  I studied his face for a minute. Then I shook my head. “Nope. Nothing.”

  He flared his nostrils. “Try.”

  This was good. This was helping me focus. Now my brain had a task—and that task was teasing him. “Felix,” I said, mentally trying it out on him.

  “Seriously?”

  “Frank!” I tried. “Melvin.”

  “Melvin?”

  He actually looked a little perturbed. This was fun. “Reginald,” I offered. “Maximilian. Jebediah.”

  He set his jaw with a kind of grudging respect for my obnoxiousness. “Jebediah Callaghan.”

  I was delighted by his irritation. “It has a ring to it.”

  He let out a good sigh. “It’s Owen. My first name is Owen.”

  “You want me to call you Owen?” I asked, like it was the craziest idea ever.

  “Yeah, actually,” he said. “I kind of do.”

  I gave him a serious nod. “Okay, Oscar,” I said. “I respect that.”

  He didn’t let himself correct me.

  Triumphantly, I rested my head on Owen’s shoulder—and that’s when I saw his whole family watching us.

  “All that worry for nothing,” I said then. “Your mom is fine.”

  “She’s always fine on the surface,” Owen said. “I’ll get an earful later, though.”

  In truth, I was glad to have him to hold on to. I felt a little woozy.

  “Hey,” I said then. “Is there any chance those virgin daiquiris I just shotgunned weren’t totally virgin?”

  Owen stretched up to take a look at the bar. “That’s my cousin Alex bartending at a party full of Irish, so, yeah, actually, there’s a pretty good chance.”

  But the wooziness wasn’t alcohol. I knew that.