Brotherhood of District 23 Complete Series

by Amy Briggs

  “It’s a hot one. Holy hell,” Matt said.

  “All right, boys, I’m going to take Jason into the kitchen to try to stop the interior fire. I can hear the other units coming, so try to protect that barn from catching and work with the guys already there to put out the machine fires,” I said. I radioed Brian to let him know our plan and get his okay on it. When he confirmed, we were just parking and jumping out.

  The property was just far enough outside of town that there were no hydrants, so we were going to need water tankers to keep this one under control; there was no endless supply like we usually had. I motioned for Jason to grab the hose, and I was going to back him up. He was a newer member of the department, quite a bit younger, and it was a perfect opportunity for him to have the nozzle and get some action.

  “Let’s go, kid,” I yelled.

  As we entered the porch that connected to the kitchen, the heat from the fire hit me right away. It had been a while since we had a real fire, and yes, it was terrible for the homeowner, but for a firefighter, this is what we trained for. It was exciting, and the team inside before us had already performed a search, ensuring there were no victims to rescue. It was our job to simply put the fire out at that point. We dragged the hose to the entrance of the kitchen, where the stove was completely charred, and the fire had spread to the walls and cabinets; the room was almost completely engulfed in flames.

  I demanded water over the radio and steadied myself against Jason, preparing for the force of the water as it filled the hose. The pressure could knock you on your ass if you weren’t ready for it. Once the line was charged with water, I elbowed him in the back to indicate it was time to let her rip. He nodded and opened up the nozzle, spraying a smooth stream of water in a circular pattern above the fire.

  Cooling the ceiling first like that would help make the fire smaller right away, and as the flames began to go down, they’d stop spreading. I was extremely proud of him; he did exactly what he was taught. As the flames started to lessen, he started to hit the stove directly, as well as the cabinets, now really putting the fire out. Once we had tamed it, drowning it out was the mission. Several other firefighters from other stations entered the kitchen as it had cooled off tremendously, and they began pulling the cabinets off the wall to make sure there weren’t hot spots, and opened the oven, so we could shoot water inside of it as well.

  Once the fire appeared to be mostly out, Jason shut down the nozzle and looked back for my approval. Nodding at him, I slapped him on the back in acknowledgement and grabbed another nearby guy to take my place so I could go outside and report back our status.

  I pulled my helmet off and ripped my mask off over my head as I walked to the chief’s truck. “Fire’s out in the kitchen. They’re doing overhaul now and putting out hot spots. How’s it going out here?”

  “Well, they lost three, maybe four tractors, but the barn was saved, so that’s a win,” Brian said.

  “Man, that one spread fast. Why the hell would you park all that shit right next to your house?” I shook my head.

  “Who knows, man? How bad is the kitchen?”

  “They won’t be serving us dinner tonight, that’s for sure. It’s completely burned out on one side. The window sucked a lot of the fire out to the side where the tractors are, so some of it might be salvageable, but the smoke damage is pretty bad. It looks like it didn’t spread anywhere else, though, so they could consider themselves lucky.”

  “Yeah, they sure can. None of the family was home; they were on a supply run. Someone must have left something on the stove, you think?” he asked.

  “Almost definitely. The stove was the source for sure. They’re gonna need a new one.” I grinned.

  “Well, that’s probably the least of their problems now,” he replied.

  “Yea, you ain’t kidding. I’ll go back in and see how it’s going inside. Radio me if you need anything.” He nodded at me and I went back in to check on things.

  Overhaul takes forever. Literally forever. Unless it’s a good old-fashioned conflagration, or you have problems, a fire is usually put out fairly quickly. It’s all the other bullshit that takes forever. I tromped back into the house, where the crew was still pulling things apart.

  “Take that stove out to the front yard,” I directed a couple of guys from station four.

  “You got it, sir,” they replied. The least we could do was unhook it and get it out of the house for them. Some company would have charged them an arm and a leg to do it. Everything else seemed more or less in order for a burned-out kitchen, so I instructed Jason and the other guy to get the hose out and start cleaning that up.

  About two hours later, and into the dark of night, we were finally able to go back to the station. I was starving and exhausted. Between the events of the last few days taking their toll, it had been an absurdly long and busy day, and we still had to do a bunch of work back at the station to get ourselves back in service.

  As we piled out of the truck, someone mentioned dinner and what we were going to do. I wanted to suggest going to the grocery store, just because it meant I had a small chance of bumping into Vivian there. Pizza ended up being the winning vote, which was fine, really. If I was going to talk to her, I needed more than a run-in at the store. I needed time to come clean about my feelings with her, and that wasn’t going to happen at the deli counter in the grocery store.

  Matt, Jo, and I went to the day room to sack out in lounge chairs while we waited for our food to arrive. I had my phone in my hand. I’d been checking it incessantly since we got back, trying not to send eight billion more texts to her.

  Matt looked over at me, feet up in the lounge chair, “You talk to her yet?”

  “Nope. Haven’t heard back. Trying not to send yet another message to her at this point. I guess I’ll have to go tomorrow and bang on the door until she talks to me.” I laid my head back, exhausted and frustrated.

  “What did you do, Jax?” Jo asked. She was also lying back in a lounge chair, but she had her feet curled up under her. Women loved sitting like that, curled up like a cat.

  “You don’t even want to know, Jo,” I groaned.

  “Romeo over here caught himself a case of the feelings,” Matt joked.

  “For real, dude, it’s like a disease around here. You people have infected me,” I replied sarcastically.

  “Oh, shut up, you both know it’s nice to have someone, so cut the shit. What did you do to fuck it up, Jax? You didn’t run around with another girl, did you?” she said sternly.

  “No! Why does everyone think I’m some kind of douchebag? Fuck. Once I started seeing her, she was the only person I wanted to see anyway.” I closed my eyes, picturing her smile. “I realize that in the past I wasn’t exactly a one-woman guy, but that was before. And I was never a cheater. So let’s just get off that right now.”

  “I’m sorry, you’re right. So why haven’t you heard from this girl?” she asked. I really didn’t want to tell the whole fucking story again; it was draining.

  “It’s a long story, Jo,” I sighed.

  Matt jumped in. “He didn’t tell her how he felt when he definitely should have. Major case of poor timing. He bolted on her, and now she isn’t taking his calls so he can fix it.” That was a fair recap of the situation, more or less.

  “Well, you’re going to fix it, right?” she asked.

  Still squeezing my eyes closed, I replied, “I’m certainly going to try in the morning when we get off. Until then, there’s not much else I can do short of calling her all night long which I think would make it worse at this point.”

  “Going to see her in person should help. It always does. Things always get fucked up and lost in translation over text and shit.” She was right. There wasn’t any way that I could explain myself to her via electronics; it had to be in person, so we were going to have to be face-to-face in the morning. Hopefully, she’d be there; and hopefully, she’d listen.

  “I hope you’re right, Jo. She’s special
,” was all I said. We sat in silence after that, just waiting for our food, which I had lost my appetite for.

  My flight was uneventful. In fact, I slept through it just like on the way there. Something about the hum of the engine, I guess. I always fell asleep on flights or long road trips. I found them relaxing. The events of the last couple of days along with the chats about Michael with both my mom and my dad had left me emotionally drained.

  Jess was waiting outside to pick me up with her usual upbeat and supportive attitude. “Welcome home, Viv! I missed you!” she exclaimed.

  Giggling, I replied, “I was only gone since yesterday, you dork.”

  “A whole day without you, though. It’s more than I can handle.” She hugged me. “You doing ok? How are mom and dad? How’s grandma?”

  I let out a little sigh as I got settled into the passenger seat. “Grandma is doing all right. They don’t think she’ll make it to Christmas, but she was in good spirits when I got to see her. Mom and Dad were totally surprised to see me, so that was awesome. I had very interesting conversations with each of them privately about Michael. It feels like they’ve done some healing.”

  “Interesting,” she said. “What did they have to say?”

  “Well, they both said that it was time to let go of the guilt. I guess they’ve been feeling similar to the way that I have about not being there for him. You know, we never really talked about it as a family or anything, so it was eye opening to know that they were feeling the same way that I have been.”

  “Of course they have, Viv. They lost their only son. Nobody expects that to happen. Did they seem better?” she asked.

  “They did. They seemed more at peace about everything. I guess having time to think and spending time with grandma has given them some perspective.” I continued, “In other news, I told them about Seth before I’d seen your message, of course. So, how did you happen upon this bit of information?” I huffed out. I wanted to know the whole story, of course, but I also wanted to pretend it wasn’t real and that he was the gentleman he said he was trying to become.

  “Jeremy and I went to Shea’s across town for a late dinner last night,” she began. “While we were there, I saw him having drinks with a blonde woman.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “He definitely did, and I gave him a nasty glare and shook my head at him. I didn’t confront him, though. Jeremy didn’t think it was appropriate. If he hadn’t been there with me, I would have chewed that man out in front of that hussy. Have you heard from him?”

  “I have. Several times, ” I told her.

  “And? Have you talked to him?” She seemed surprised.

  “And nothing. I haven’t replied. He called me and left a voicemail. And he’s sent a handful of text messages about wanting to explain his actions from the other night. He didn’t mention the other girl. I don’t even know if he knows I know.” The thought of him out with another girl after I thought we’d connected made me nauseous. I felt my face get hot from embarrassment and anger. “I guess he’s just not the guy he claimed to be. There’s not much else to say about that. It’s disappointing, but it is what it is.”

  “He didn’t mention the other girl at all? That’s weird. He definitely saw me. He gave me a look when he saw me.”

  “What kind of look?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, a ‘what the fuck did I do’ look,” she said. This conversation was going nowhere, and it was honestly just making me more upset.

  “Yeah, I don’t know, Jess. It’s just done, I guess. I thought when I came home I’d be able to talk to him, you know, apologize for making him uncomfortable. I’ve learned a lot in the past weekend about veterans and what they go through after deployments, and I think that it would have been helpful to know more about his past and his history before I dropped the Michael bomb on him. I think there are a lot of similarities between Seth and Michael, and that didn’t occur to me until after I talked to my dad today.” My voice fell soft and trailed off. I was sad.

  “Well, that may be true, but he didn’t stick around to talk about it, and then he went out the next day with some other chick, which is one hundred percent not cool. Not cool at all.”

  “You’re right. He’s tried calling a few times, so I guess at some point I’ll just have to shut him down if he doesn’t stop, but until then, I’m going to ignore it. Maybe he’ll just go away,” I said softly. The truth was, I didn’t want him to go away. Even if he was out with another girl last night, he still tried calling me several times and something about that didn’t settle well with me.

  “Well, tonight, just go home and shut your phone off. You’ve already talked to everyone you need to, like me of course. Just take a night to yourself, put some music on, have some wine, and call it a fucking night. It’s been a weird week to say the least, ya know?” She looked over at me to gauge my reaction, I’m sure.

  “Yeah, you’re right. Thanks again for chauffeuring me around, Jess. I appreciate it,” I told her. “And while I’m at it, your boyfriend seems like a nice guy.” I smiled over at her.

  “You know what, Viv? He really is. That whole boyfriend thing was a surprise, but we are on the same page; he makes me happy. And Hector likes him, so you know, there’s that.” She laughed.

  “Hector’s approval is super important, I totally understand.” I laughed back.

  After she dropped me off, I didn’t even bother unpacking. I just put my bag in the living room and went straight to the wine rack to choose my poison. I settled on a smooth and inexpensive Pinot Noir I picked up at the grocery store. You’d be surprised how little you have to spend on some really great wine. The expensive stuff isn’t always that great, and I didn’t have to make a special stop for this, which made it a winner out of the gate in my book.

  I poured myself a big glass and went to my room to change into something comfy so I could just drink wine and watch the Hallmark Channel or something equally sappy. Since it was late October, they were starting to show some holiday movies to get people in the mood. I didn’t even care if it was all a ploy to get me to start holiday shopping early. I loved those movies. They always had a happy ending. They also always made me cry, but that’s ok. I didn’t even mind.

  I cozied up on the couch under a blanket, leaving my phone off on the coffee table. I reached out to grab it a couple times, but stopped myself. Jess was right. I should just leave it for the night. Even though something about him trying to reach me today wasn’t sitting right with me, I decided to just shove it aside. Instead, I watched movies for a couple of hours, crying with the characters over their lost love, their Christmas love, a stray cat they took in. I cried about everything.

  The next morning, I woke up on the couch, an empty wineglass on the coffee table next to my phone. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I got up to stretch and took the glass to the kitchen sink. All the Hallmark emotion coupled with real life must have knocked me out. Well, and the wine too. I decided to take one more day off to just get my head right. I needed to do some things around the house anyway, and I didn’t really want to get all dressed up and deal with people. I needed a me day.

  I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and have a good look at myself. My reflection was as I expected; I looked like crap. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and piled my long hair into a messy bun on top of my head, deciding that was going to be the look for the day. It wasn’t like I was leaving anyway. I had on my favorite Johnny Cash tee shirt, and I changed into a pair of cutoffs suitable for hanging around my own house all day.

  As I made my way back to the kitchen, a loud knock at my door startled me; it was more like banging on my door. I scurried over to the door and looked out the peephole.

  “It’s me, Viv, can we talk, please?” It was Seth; he showed up at my house. At seven in the morning. What the hell? My heart fell into my gut, and then started pounding violently against my chest.

  When I pulled down her street, I wasn’t sure what I was going to say other than
that I wanted to explain. I was trying to think of the right thing to say without admitting my faults. Nobody wants to do that, and I was no different. As weak as it may be, I was falling in love with this girl and I needed her to know that.

  Tail between my legs, I knocked on her door. I could hear the television on, then the sound of her tiny feet coming to the door. As the shadow formed over the peephole she was looking at me through, I said, “It’s me, Viv, can we talk, please?”

  She opened the door just enough for me to take her in, looking her up and down. She had her long, blond hair up on top of her head in a messy bun and she was wearing little jean cut offs with a black tee shirt. She had never looked so amazing to me since the day I met her, and she wasn’t even trying. I was speechless. “What do you want Seth?”

  “Can I come in? I just want to talk.” I pushed lightly on the door to see if she’d give.

  Thankfully, she did let me in, but she sure gave me a hefty sigh for such a tiny little thing. “Seth, what do you want?” she repeated.

  “I want to explain what happened the other night. I told you that I was trying to become a better man, and it’s been hard. I need you to know where I’m coming from. Please let me explain myself, Viv,” I begged her.

  “Seth, the other night doesn’t even matter now. I know you went out with someone else.” What the fuck was she talking about?

  “Someone else? What? There’s no one else.” I had no idea what she meant.

  “Now you want to talk? You knew how I felt the other night. I shared things with you, I thought we were connecting, that’s what you said you wanted. And when I did, you ran away. And adding insult to injury, you went out with another girl the next day? What could you possibly have to add to this?” She waved her angry little hands in between us dramatically. It was so fucking adorable I could hardly stand it. I knew she was mad, and I was there to fix it, but goddam if she wasn’t like a little angry dragon huffing at me, though.

  “Whoa, hold on one second, Viv.” I put my hands up in surrender. “I didn’t go out with anyone else. What are you talking about?” I was honestly getting upset she thought I was out with another woman. The thought made me sick.