Fire Down Below

by Andrea Simonne

  Fire Down Below

  By Andrea Simonne

  Copyright © 2014 Andrea Simonne

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Liebe Publishing

  First Electronic Edition, August 2014

  Cover Copyright © Couperfield – Fotolia.com

  Cover Design © by LBC Graphics

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Liebe Publishing

  www.liebepublishing.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Dear Reader

  ~ To John ~

  Forever glad I tied my wagon to your star….

  Chapter One

  The Present Day….

  As soon as I hear the words “Kate, is that you?” I know I’m in trouble.

  “Wow, Ben?” I stare at him. It’s a peculiar shock seeing someone I was intimate with so long ago.

  “I don’t believe it. How have you been?”

  “Good....” This is a quick trip to the grocery store and I wasn’t supposed to see anyone I know, especially not an old boyfriend. I glance down at myself, horrified at what I’m wearing. An old t-shirt and baggy gray sweats. And, of course, I’m not wearing make-up. It’s the perfect storm.

  “What have you been up to?”

  I wonder if pulling lip gloss out of my purse would look freaky. Probably. “I work as a website developer for a design group downtown. I assume you’re a lawyer now?”

  Ben grins, shaking his head, and it all comes back to me like a sweet scent I haven’t experienced in ages. His understated laugh and the way I used to try and tease it out of him every chance I got. His hair is shorter now though still blond. He spent a lot of time in the mountains and his hair was always bleached by the sun. It used to intimidate me—Ben’s comfort with the outdoors, his constant need to be outside doing something physical whether it was hiking, snowboarding, or mountain climbing.

  I’m basically the most un-athletic person you’ve ever met.

  “Nah, I didn’t go to law school. I wound up taking a different route all together. I’m a geologist,” he pauses and I have to admit, he’s still handsome, “listen Kate, I have to go. It’s really good to see you.” He pulls his wallet out and hands me a business card. “Let’s get together sometime and really catch up.”

  “Sure.” I take the card and watch him walk away.

  It’s like experiencing a drive-by. Peering down into my shopping basket, I cringe at all the junk food. Cookies, brownies, chips, and a tub of vanilla ice cream. I groan. I must look like the biggest loser on earth.

  The only good thing is that I’m on the lighter side of five, meaning that I’m on the skinny side of the same five pounds I usually lose and gain back. It’s not much. It’s pathetic even. But I’m claiming it.

  ***

  For the record I don’t hang out every Friday night watching chick flicks and eating brownies until I pass out into a glucose coma. I have a life. It’s true I’m thirty-four and still single, but I’m okay with it. I have a great job, a nice house, and I do a lot of interesting things with my time.

  The reason I’m at the store dressed in sweats buying junk food on a Friday night is that my best friends, Suzy and Lauren, are coming over for a pajama party. Once a month we get together to eat junk food, sip cocktails, and hang out. I know they’re going to be interested in my drive-by with Ben, not that either of them ever met him. I became friends with Suzy and Lauren long after my relationship with Ben was over.

  “Something interesting happened to me at the grocery store,” I tell them both, after dumping some chips in a bowl.

  “Oh?” Suzy is measuring vodka into a large glass pitcher. The Indian bracelet she picked up during her visit to an ashram last summer tinkles as she stirs in the apple schnapps. Suzy is that ultra-cool girl I always wished I could be.

  “Hmm, that tone of voice sounds like you met a man,” Lauren says.

  I sit on my couch next to Lauren and tell them about my chance meeting with Ben. “It’s been more than a decade since we’ve seen each other. He’s a geologist now.”

  “A geologist?” Lauren looks confused. “That’s one of those guys that studies dinosaur bones?”

  “No, you’re thinking of a paleontologist.” Suzy comes over and hands each of us our drinks—appletinis. I take a sip from mine. It’s strong, but tasty. “Geologists study rocks and stuff. How long did you date him?” Suzy takes a seat in my leopard chair, a garage sale find I reupholstered myself.

  “A little over a year.”

  “Was is it serious?”

  “It was. He even asked me to marry him.”

  “Really? I can’t believe we’ve never heard about this guy.” Lauren puts her glass down to get a cookie. “I thought we’d heard about all your relationships.”

  “I know. I just don’t like to talk about it.”

  Lauren chews her cookies. “Were you in love with him?”

  I’m quiet as I remember all the strong emotions Ben once evoked in me. “Yes, I was.”

  “Do you regret not marrying him?”

  I take a sip from my drink before I answer. “No, but I’d be lying if I said I never think about him. Ben was so conservative. I always figure he wound up with some blonde cheerleader type.”

  Lauren laughs. “Hey, no dissing cheerleaders. We have feelings too, you know.” Lauren was, of course, a cheerleader in high school. I met her at the hairdressers where she cuts my hair. She works for a high end salon downtown and is one of those people you feel like you can tell all your secrets to which, I’m sure, is part of her success.

  None of us are married, though Lauren is divorced. She’s been single for about four years.

  “Still,” Lauren says, thinking things over. “He did give you his card and tell you to call. Wouldn’t it be funny if after all these years he turned out be The One? Is he married? Was he wearing a ring?”

  “I don’t know. I was too much in shock to notice if he was wearing a wedding ring.” I let out a deep breath that I didn’t realize I was holding. I feel like I haven’t breathed since I saw Ben a few hours ago. Was he wearing a ring? I didn’t think so. “Our relationship didn’t end well. He wasn’t supportive of me at all. When I told him I wasn’t ready to get married, he dumped me without even discussing it.”

  “That’s awful.” Lauren says.

/>   “I was really hurt by the whole thing.”

  Suzy picks up the glass pitcher. “Sounds like you made the right choice not marrying him,” she says as she walks over to top off each of our drinks.

  Lauren turns to me. “You probably saved yourself a ton of heartache. I mean, you wouldn’t want to go through what I did with The Toad.” The Toad being her ex-husband Todd, whom she discovered was cheating on her when she found a pair of used panties in her bed that weren’t hers. I know. Yuck.

  “I’d lose his number if I were you,” Suzy tells me. “If he had issues then, it’s unlikely he’s changed much.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” I pull Ben’s card out of my pocket and study it curiously.

  The problem is just seeing his name again is making my heart pound.

  Chapter Two

  The Past….

  I met Ben during my freshman year of college. He was handsome, but not someone I considered dating, since I usually went for the brooding artist type and he was too sunny and normal.

  Mostly we hung out during class, cracking jokes or talking about some of the bands we liked. He used to make playlists for me and sometimes we’d run into each other on campus and go sit and have coffee. Ben dated a few different girls—perky sorority types, while I was more Goth, so I knew he wasn’t interested in me romantically. By the end of freshman year I decided to drop out of school and lost all contact with him.

  I didn’t see or think about Ben for almost three years. Then one day, as I was working as a barista in a trendy coffee shop in Seattle called Cafe Nin, he came in and ordered a latte.

  It turned out he was working at The Zombie, a bar up the street. He’d graduated from college with a political science degree, but had decided he wanted to write a novel and was renting an apartment nearby. I was surprised, since he never struck me as the creative type. His parents were well-to-do and apparently weren’t happy with his decision. I laughed when he told me how his mother tried to get him into therapy, convinced he was having a nervous breakdown. He told me he only wanted to try something new. I understood completely since I was doing the same thing, except I was painting.

  Ben started coming into where I worked every day before his shift at the bar. I never thought it was anything other than friendship. Mostly we sat around joking with each other, just like we did years ago.

  “You know we’re both doing the same job,” he said, sitting at his usual table outside, drinking the latte I’d made him. It was sunny and warm, the perfect day for doing nothing, except I had to work. Luckily my job allowed me to sit and chat until the next drink order needed to be filled.

  “We are?”

  “Barista.” He pointed at me. “And bartender.” He pointed at himself. “You’re slinging coffee and I’m slinging alcohol, but it’s basically the same. We’re fueling people’s addictions.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Although I’ll bet you’re paid more than I am.”

  “Yes, but you get to drink free coffee all day.”

  “And you get to have pretty girls flirting with you all night. The only guys coming in here aren’t exactly checking me out, if you know what I mean.”

  Ben smiled. “I suspect you do all right. So where is your boyfriend anyway? How come I never seen him around?”

  “I’m currently boyfriendless.” I explained how I’d split up with someone, so I was taking a break for a while.

  “Yeah, I broke up with someone recently too, so I’m not looking for anything either.”

  He leaned back in his chair, checking out all the hip people streaming by on the sidewalk. This was a funky part of town with plenty of facial piercings and ink. We watched as a girl with magenta hair strolled past, walking a small dog, enveloping us in a cloud of patchouli.

  “Do you want to go to see a movie tonight?” he asked.

  I got up to go back inside, since a line of people had formed by the front counter. “Sure, pick me up after work, okay? I get off at six.”

  “Sounds good.” He drank the rest of his coffee and then grabbed his helmet off the table. I watched as he went to retrieve the mountain bike he’d locked to one of the racks nearby. It struck me how incongruous it was to see Ben here in the middle of all this.

  He’d said he wanted to try something new, though at the time I never imagined his idea of something new included me.

  ***

  I met him right after work and didn’t even bother going home to change out of my sweaty work clothes or apply fresh make-up. A date would have me preening in front of a mirror, worrying about the slightest imperfection. I wore a lot of black clothes back then, which went well with my dark hair and pale completion. I wasn’t exactly Goth anymore, but you could say I still had aspirations in that direction. I’d had my nose pierced when I was nineteen and usually wore a ring in my left nostril. I adored pointy-toed shoes and since my budget was always screaming for mercy, I wore a lot of vintage clothes that I’d pick up at second hand stores. Witchy shoes, black clothes, and red lipstick. This was my dress style at the tender age of twenty-one.

  Ben sat next to me during most of the movie. I say most, and not the entire movie, because he kept getting up. He got up at least four times. I thought his bladder was the size of a peanut, but turns out he got restless sitting in a chair for too long. Afterwards, as we headed back to his jeep, he asked me if I wanted to come over and check out his new apartment.

  “What do you think?” Ben asked, after he’d shown me around inside. He lived in an older brick building on Olive Street that was surprisingly quaint. He didn’t have much furniture, plus his bedroom was kind of messy with a bunch of mountain climbing gear piled in the corner, but it was far better than I expected. The whole apartment smelled like fresh paint with that slight musty smell so many old buildings have.

  “It’s great.” I looked around in approval. “You’re lucky to live alone.” I couldn’t afford to live by myself, so I shared a three-bedroom house on Queen Anne Hill.

  “Do you want a Coke? Or there’s root beer.”

  “Don’t you have any regular beer?”

  “Nah, I don’t drink.”

  “What are you in AA or something?”

  Ben laughed. “No, I’m not in AA. I just don’t like the stuff. I prefer to keep my brain cell quota as high as possible.”

  “And you work in a bar? That’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I know. But I only work there because it pays so well.”

  “I see.” I could only imagine what he’d think of the amount of drinking I do every Saturday when I go out dancing. I’m sure my brain cell quota the next day is a negative number. “I’ll take an iced Coke if you have it.”

  While he went into the kitchen, I wandered over by the book-shelf in his living room, scanning titles. They were mostly non-fiction with a few detective novels thrown in. I saw some framed photos leaning against a row of books and picked one up to examine it more closely. It was a picture of Ben rock climbing. “Where’s this taken?” I asked when he came back and handed me a glass of soda.

  “El Capitan in Yosemite, I was down there last summer climbing with some friends.”

  “It looks really…hard.” I wasn’t sure what sort of comment to make. I never understood sports like this. It’s a big rock. What’s the point of climbing it?

  “It was totally excellent. We climbed a route on the southeast face. Hopefully I’ll be headed down there again this summer. Hey, you should come with me and check it out for yourself.”

  “You want me to climb a steep rock?” I bit my lip and gave him an exaggerated look of terror.

  He chuckled. “Or not.”

  “I’m sure it’s fun, but it’s not my thing, you know?”

  He took a swig of his root beer and considered me. “Yes Kate, I’d say you’ve always been more of a downtown girl.”

  “Exactly.”

  I put the photo back and picked up another one that appeared to have been taken the same day except
in this photo Ben is standing with a group of friends and has his shirt off. My eyes lingered over his naked torso. He’s muscular, but not in an overblown Mr. Universe sort of way. He looked healthy and strong. I found myself wondering how it would feel to run my hands over his chest, imagining it would feel pretty good, and as I tried to push this thought away it suddenly occurred to me that I’d been staring at this photo way too long. “You’re friends look nice,” I said quickly, putting the picture back on the shelf. When I glanced over at Ben his eyes were resting on me.

  “So what are you writing again?” I asked. “A novel?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, it’s a mystery thriller sort of thing. Though I’ve been having writers block with it lately. I can’t seem to pull it together.”

  I picked up an issue of Outside magazine that was lying on top of some books. “You should write something for them. I’ll bet your writer’s block would vanish in an instant.”

  He smiled knowingly. “I have written something for them, though I haven’t submitted it yet. Do you want to read it?”

  Ben didn’t wait for an answer, but went over to his computer and sat down. I came over and stood behind him, watching as he opened Word and brought his article up on the screen.

  “My printer’s not set up yet,” he explained. I assumed he was going to get up and let me sit in the chair so I could read from the monitor, but instead he surprised me by reaching out and pulling me onto his lap. “There you are. Read it and tell me your thoughts.”

  My thoughts? Did he really just pull me onto his lap? I stared at the computer monitor, trying to make sense of this new development. His article, which had something to do with hiking trails in Oregon, might as well have been written in Martian for all the attention I was able to give it. All I could think about was the weight of his hands on my hips and that I liked how they felt.