by Peter Styles
I paced across the kitchen floor, my mind blurring in panic. I had to call someone, but who? I had to get money from somewhere.
I ran through my list of options. I could always collect the hundred dollars Louis still hadn’t paid for his weed, but he’d drag the process out even longer just to spite me. Calling the captain and begging for an advance right after my boyfriend had waltzed into his station uninvited would get me a stony response at best and a suspension at worst, something that I very clearly couldn’t afford at that moment. I tried to imagine my mother’s face if I were to call her and beg for money from her that I would use to keep myself and my drug dealing dropout of a boyfriend from starving and immediately decided that I would rather starve to death than have that conversation with her.
I groaned. There was nothing else to be done, then.
I dialed Remy’s number.
He picked up, his voice annoyed and sleepy. “The fuck are you calling me so early for?” he griped.
“It’s almost ten, Rem.”
“Is it?” He yawned. “Shit. I must have drank even more last night than I thought I did. It was fucking crazy, man. I went out to that new club, and—”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I said quickly. “Look, I’ll listen to your stupid story about hooking up with a cute go-go dancer later if you’ll do something for me.”
His voice immediately turned skeptical. “That all depends on what you need.”
I wanted to scream. For the love of God, please, just let one thing about this be easy. I took a deep, steadying breath. “I need to borrow some money,” I explained. “I’m not sure how much, but probably around a hundred or so. My power got shut off and my bank account is pretty much wiped clean.”
“What happened?” He actually sounded alarmed, which was a good sign. “Did your card get stolen or something?”
I gritted my teeth. “Doubtful,” I spat. “I don’t know exactly what happened yet, but I have a good feeling that it’s sleeping in my bed right now.”
“Oh.” His voice was, thankfully, neutral. I couldn’t handle much at that moment, but I especially couldn’t handle an “I told you so.” I didn’t doubt that he was going to save that for later, but I appreciated the restraint either way. “No problem, then. I’ll meet you in a little bit.”
It took a few phone calls and a lot of panic, but I got the funds together and was assured that the power would be turned back on the next day. I offered to take Remy out to lunch to thank him, but he just laughed. “To where? McDonald’s?” he asked. It was a fair question; I’d forgotten that I was pretty much financially ruined.
I stayed out most of the day, just walking around town. For the first time that I could remember since I moved in with Nicky, I didn’t want to go home.
When I finally did arrive, I heard Nicky messing around frantically with something in the basement. He practically leapt out at me when he heard me walk in. “Holy shit, thank God you’re here,” he panted. “We have a huge problem.”
“I know,” I said coldly. “I fixed it.”
“But the power—”
“The power will be back on tomorrow,” I snapped. “No thanks to you, of course.”
He frowned, looking hurt. It was almost enough to make me take it all back.
Almost.
“What was that for?” he asked, sounding way more offended than I felt he had any right to be.
“That was for the fact that you cleaned out our fucking bank account, Nicky!” I didn’t mean to yell it, but I did. He recoiled at the sound, wincing away from me, and for whatever reason, his fear of me made me even angrier. I thought back to what Remy had said about how it had been long enough, and I found myself pushing away my usual well-constructed arguments in favor of believing, at least for a little bit, that Nicky was my enemy. It felt strangely good to have someone or something to fight, even if it was the man I loved.
“What the hell were you thinking?!” I continued. I was so furious that I had no control over my volume, and I was only dimly aware that I towered over his gradually shrinking body. “What the fuck were you doing that only left twelve damn dollars in our account?!”
“I… I was working on something,” he said meekly. “I was going to tell you about it, but…”
“But what?” I roared. “You weren’t fucking thinking, were you? You never think about these things! You just storm ahead, assuming that when you fuck up, I’ll be able to pick up all the pieces and take care of you like I always do!”
His eyes were growing shiny, but I knew he wasn’t going to cry. He looked too angry to do that. “What are you talking about? I’ve never asked you to do anything like that for me.”
“You don’t have to ask, Nicky!” I snarled. “You don’t have to ask, because that’s just a part of our relationship! It’s just assumed that I’m always going to take care of you no matter what, and I’m fucking tired of it! You can go out and fuck up because you don’t have to be the responsible one! Instead, you just sit around feeling sorry for yourself because you can’t do any of the stuff that you want! But you could! That’s the maddening part! You could go out and get a job tomorrow, but you don’t do it!”
“That’s not true,” he said, his voice growing quieter as mine grew louder. But while my shouts flared with hot anger, his became icy. For the first time in seven years, he didn’t just sound angry, he sounded bitter. There was a righteous anger that I could sense edging into his voice, and it only pissed me off more. I was, after all, supposed to be the self-righteous one. “You know I can’t just go out and get a job. I don’t have any of the skills or experience that any place is looking for. If I could do that, I would have.”
“Fuck that! No, you wouldn’t!” I let out a bitter laugh. “If you actually meant that, you would have at least tried, but you haven’t! Instead, you dick around in the basement, playing wannabe rock star while I have to go out and make the real money! And why? Because you don’t want to try! You don’t want to get better. Why would you when instead, you could just spend your whole life depending on someone else?”
“You think I depend on you?!” Nicky asked, disgusted.
“What, you don’t? You always have! That’s been our entire relationship! You fall apart and fuck up and I get to stand around and pick up the pieces and tell you everything is going to be okay. Well, you know what? It’s not going to be fucking okay this time. You have ruined us. We don’t even have enough money for two movie tickets right now because you go out and waste everything that I make buying equipment and gadgets and fancy food! And I’m not going to stand here and hug you and tell you that it’s all fine this time, because it isn’t! You fucked us over by being a selfish, thoughtless, wasteful idiot!”
The room fell completely silent. As soon as I’d spoken, I wanted to take the words back. Even at my angriest, I hadn’t meant to call him an idiot. I had forgotten, for once crucial moment, just how much that word stung him.
But he hadn’t. And now, he never would.
Nicky didn’t even try to put up a fight. He didn’t continue arguing. He didn’t cry. He barely reacted. Instead, he just turned and walked down to the basement, closing the door behind him.
I stood in our living room, frozen by my own shame. I’d done the unforgiveable—I’d called him stupid. To other people, that might be a little hurtful, but not completely devastating. But to Nicky, it was the worst thing I could call him. It wasn’t just the schooling he desperately wanted to have had, and it wasn’t just the memory issues that either came from his mother’s heroin use during her pregnancy or multiple concussions. It was that to him, it was as close as anyone could come to calling him worthless.
And I’d just done that and more.
I went to the basement door and put my ear to it. I couldn’t hear anything at all, not even the usual, dim scrapings. I put my hand on the handle and tried to turn it, but it didn’t budge. The door was locked.
There was no way he was coming out soon.
Nicky didn’t come to bed that night. I slept—not well, but I managed, probably out of sheer emotional fatigue—and expected to find him next to me when I woke up. Whenever I was home, we slept in the same bed. We didn’t always fall asleep at the same time, but we always ended up together at one point or another. It was the first time since we’d gotten together that I woke up to a cold bed in my own home.
I went downstairs and knocked on the basement door. There was no response.
I checked the clock. I’d already overslept, and I needed to be to work soon. The basement door was locked, so I just leaned in and shouted, “Nicky? I’m going to work.”
There was no reply. I told myself that he probably just hadn’t heard me, but deep down, I knew that was a lie.
I wanted, more than anything, to say I was sorry. I would have kicked down the door if I could have. I would have swept him up and kissed him and told him that, yeah, I was pissed about the money, but things would be okay, and I would at least give him a chance to speak. I would have reminded him that nothing could ever make me believe he was stupid, no matter how angry I might have been.
But I didn’t. That was going to be a long conversation, and even if I’d had the energy for it, I didn’t have the time. Instead, I just left and hoped that, when I came home the next night, he would have forgiven me enough to talk to me.
Chapter Six
I was woken up at two in the morning that night to a painful, clanging alarm.
I jumped to my feet immediately. I’d been conditioned to respond to that alarm the moment I heard it. It felt good, after a day of glumly slumping around the fire house, to have purpose, even though I knew that the alarm meant that someone was in trouble.
I was, as usual, the first one down the pole, and I was already in half of my gear by the time Remy stumbled up behind me. He grabbed my shoulder and swung me around. “Dude.” His face was taut. “Sit this one out.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Sit this one out,” he repeated. “Seriously. I just got a direct order from the captain. He told me to keep you here.”
I couldn’t help but let out a tiny laugh. “Why? Is he really that worried that I’m going to put you guys to shame?”
His expression didn’t crack. “Tim, please. This is a direct order. Just stand down.”
I blinked. It occurred to me for the first time that he wasn’t joking. I had no idea what it was that he was trying to keep me away from, but I knew that I couldn’t just stand by and let it happen. If he was trying to keep me away, there was no doubt that it was bad.
Which meant, of course, that I had to go.
“Doesn’t sound like a direct order to me,” I said, and I pushed past him.
“Tim!”
“You’re not my captain, Remy!” I reminded him, yelling over my shoulder. I was the first one suited up, and I jumped up on the back, gripping onto the ladder. “It can’t be a direct order if I didn’t get it directly from my superior! And if there’s a single thing that you’re superior to me in, I’ll cut off my left ball!”
In the flurry of activity that came with loading up the truck, no one else mentioned anything to me about staying behind, though that was probably either because they hadn’t been trusted with that information or just didn’t care enough to let me know. It didn’t matter to me, so long as I was still on the truck.
We took off, and my heart was already pounding hard. The alarm that went off in the fire house had the effect of pumping adrenaline into my veins the second I heard it. But Remy’s warning added something to it. He had looked worried, which wasn’t an expression I was used to seeing on him. He had spent our entire friendship making a point of looking and acting like he never cared about anything; if he was showing any emotion over something, much less genuine concern, it had to be something bad. Maybe the place where my dad’s furniture store had been before my parents moved away from their disappointment of a son had burned down. Maybe it had something to do with the college. Hell, maybe the captain was just trying to punish me by making me stay behind, and Remy didn’t want to get on his bad side.
I wished I’d had long enough to convince myself that it was one of those options. Maybe if I had, what happened next would have felt like more of a shock. I could have been numbed by the anesthetic of surprise.
But I wasn’t convinced of anything. So I wasn’t numb at all.
Which meant that I could feel every single sinew and nerve of my heart tear apart when I recognized my own street, bathed in a bright orange glow.
I don’t remember much about the fire, really. I’m grateful for that; I’m sure there are a lot of reasons why my brain didn’t want me to know too much about what happened.
I remembered running at my house at full speed, getting ready to kick in the door without even properly affixing my mask. I remembered someone tackling me from behind and dragging me away from the flames. After that, all I remembered was lying on my back beside the truck, dazed with pain that I couldn’t distinguish. It may have been physical, but it may have been that the sheer power of my grief so overwhelmed me that my body ached and throbbed with it.
I didn’t remember seeing the fire go out, though I knew it happened. I also didn’t remember what the fire itself looked like, other than a massive orange ball of destruction. I knew it was bad because Louis told me later. None of the other guys would tell me about it, but Louis did. It surprised me to see tears in his eyes when he described it.
“There was just nothing left,” he told me softly. “We put out the fire, but it was a crater. The house and everything in it was just… gone.” He shook his head and blinked hard. “I’ve seen some shit over the years, you know, but never anything quite like that. That was… I can’t lie to you, Tim. It looked like fucking hell on earth.”
Hell on earth. That description made sense. It fit with the very little my brain had told me about the fire.
I was in the hospital for the next few days. I had been burned when I tried to rush in. The skin on my shoulder felt tight and raw, and I knew I was going to have a scar, but the wound didn’t seem bad enough to keep me at the hospital for as long as I was there. I think the guys were keeping me there more for my mental state than my physical one. No one ever said anything, but they all seemed to think I was about five seconds away from suicide.
I didn’t really know whether or not they were right. Somehow, that was scarier to me than knowing that I wanted to die. Lying there in total ambivalence about my own existence was terrifying in ways that suicide never could be for me.
I was told later on that I asked for Nicky every few minutes. I had no recollection of this, but I didn’t doubt it at all.
Nobody said anything to me about the fire or Nicky, really, until almost a week after the fire. It was the first day I remembered being cognizant of anything around me.
I woke up to find Remy dozing in a chair beside me. Even in my addled state, I knew enough to be surprised. It wasn’t just that he was there, which was a shock enough in and of itself, but he looked like hell all bundled up in his chair beside me. It was one of the terrible visitor chairs that I always had to sit in when I went to see someone at the hospital, all barely-there cloth and hard plastic. How he managed to sleep in it, I had no clue.
At that moment, though, I only had one question. “Rem.” My voice sounded unfamiliar. It was so harsh from sleep and the remains of the smoke I’d inhaled that it sounded more like a bark than a human word.
He jumped at the sound, blinked around wildly, and sat up, wiping drool from the corner of his mouth. He tried to fix himself up very professionally, and I respected the effort, but we both knew it wasn’t necessary. “Hey, Tim. You okay?” He stretched and yawned. “Need me to get a nurse or something?”
He was apparently desperate not to be in the room alone with me. I didn’t really blame him. I didn’t want to be in a room with myself at the moment, either. But I didn’t let that stop me. “Remy,” I said again. I coughed, hoping to turn my
voice into something more natural. Remy, to my surprise, leaned over and patted my back as I hacked.
“There were a lot of weird chemicals in the fire,” he told me. “I don’t know if you remember, but you got a face full of them.”
I shook my head and blinked tears of strain out of my eyes. “Don’t remember anything,” I grunted shortly. “Not from the fire, at least.”
“Good,” he said softly. “I think that’s good.”
I looked blearily around the cold, oppressive white of the room. A characteristic sunshine was missing, a spot of warmth in what was otherwise utterly bleak. I didn’t realize how dark my room was without it. “Where’s Nicky?” I asked, looking around, looking for his radiance.
I knew something was wrong when Remy didn’t answer right away. “’Well,” he said slowly. He was hedging.
I felt my heart break all over again.
I’d been having nightmares ever since the fire, and I had to asked how much of them were tied into reality. “Did you find him?” My voice was surprisingly small when I said it.
“No,” he admitted. “We’ve been looking for anything, but we haven’t found any remains.”
I cringed away from that word, but it still gave me hope. “So he’s okay?”
“We… don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t see how he could be. It was a hell of a fire for him to escape in the first place. The captain is working under the assumption that the fire burned away any… evidence of him.”
I frowned and sat up. My head was pounding, but it was clearing rapidly. “But how?” I asked. I rubbed at my forehead, trying to stop the pain. “Fire can’t do that.”
“There was an explosion,” Remy said. “From the basement. That might explain it, right?”
He sounded just as unsure as me.
“No.” I frowned, thinking hard. “No, that couldn’t be it. There would still be something. Even a chemical fire wouldn’t be hot enough.” I looked up, hope welling up inside me. “He’s alive!”