Light My Fire

by Lucy Snow

  Small steps, right? I was at least trying. We were going to be mostly alone together for the next couple days, it was the least I could do.

  A peace offering, of sorts.

  Alex watched me through his dark eyes, gleaming, as I sat down in front of him and started to eat, nodding after my first bite. “And?”

  It was the best lasagna I had ever had. Just the right consistency and temperature. I never wanted to eat anything else ever again. I looked down at my plate like it was…unlike anything I’d ever seen. “This is amazing,” I said, quickly taking another bite so I didn’t have to waste any more time talking about how great it was.

  Alex nodded. “I’m gonna be a blimp by the time we get out of here.”

  I highly doubted that, considering just how chiseled his body was, but I didn’t want to say anything, even though I felt my cheeks bloom red. Alex definitely caught it, and gave me another look at that smug smile of his. I quickly picked up a napkin and tried to cover my face under the guise of wiping my mouth.

  We both ate in silence for a while, Alex polishing off his plate quickly and going back for seconds. I found myself to be just as ravenous as I’d felt before, and quickly went through my plate, bumping into Alex as he came out of the kitchen when I went back in for more.

  We settled back in and ate, and before I realized this was the longest we’d been in the same room without getting angry at each other since we’d met.

  That was progress, right?

  “There isn’t much to do around here,” Alex said, in between mouthfuls, breaking an uncommonly comfortable silence.

  “Well, yeah, it’s kinda more of a one night stop on the way through the hills. I doubt too many people spend more than a night or so here.”

  “I saw some board games in the living room.” Alex wrinkled his nose. “They looked like they might crumble into dust if you looked at them funny.”

  “Did your room have any books in it?” The look on his face suggested it didn’t. “Mine did.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Absolutely. More romance novels than I know what to do with!”

  Alex rolled his eyes so hard I was momentary worried he’d hurt his neck in the process. “Hard pass.”

  I chuckled. “What? What’s wrong with enjoying a little fantasy now and then?”

  “Those things are so fake. Real life is nothing like that.” Every time he said something like that I wondered just what dark things he’d seen before he found me. Sure, he talked a big game, but I could see a profound sadness in his eyes that shook me to my very core.

  But I wasn’t going to let him challenge me on my romance novels. Nope, this was my turf, and I was going to defend it till the bitter end. That was my happily ever after. “Who said it had to be? They’re harmless fun. Everyone’s gotta have a guilty pleasure.”

  “I don’t,” Alex said, softly, looking down and away. I drew a sharp breath in — that was probably the most revealing thing he’d said to me yet.

  “Come on,” I replied. “You’ve got to have something that you do, you know, for fun?”

  Alex kept staring far off, and for the first time, even through all the hiking through the blizzard we’d done hours ago, he looked uncomfortable. “I don’t have a lot of free time,” he finally mumbled, and I could tell he hoped I didn’t press him any further on it.

  I put in a mental pin in that — we were not done with that part of the conversation, but for the moment I took the high road and went back to eating to let him settle his thoughts, and he did the same.

  When we were both done, Alex nodded toward the kitchen door. “No thanks,” I said, pushing my plate forward. “I’m stuffed. I couldn’t eat anymore even if it was even tastier.”

  “Me neither, but I wasn’t going to let you beat me.”

  Even I had to laugh at that.

  And then we settled back into silence.

  “There’s really nothing to do here?” I glanced around the room, almost answering my own question. This place didn’t look like it had that many guests even on busy nights.

  Alex shook his head, then a curious smile came over his face that quickly turned a tiny bit sinister. “I did see one thing, though. In the kitchen.” His eyes sparkled. “It’ll warm us up for sure.”

  “Huh?” But Alex was already up and heading toward the kitchen. “This place is already warm enough,” I called out to him, words I never thought I’d say in the middle of a blizzard.

  I heard Alex laugh through the doorway, and then he poked his head back into the dining room. “Wearing a dress that tight?” He grinned. “If you say so.” And then he was gone again, and I heard the sounds of rummaging.

  I was figuring out whether to be flattered or insulted by his remark about my dress when Alex came back into the dining room carrying what was very clearly a very old bottle of whiskey. “I must have found Marty’s private stash,” he announced triumphantly.

  “You can’t take that! It’s not for guests!”

  “Nonsense. There’s a note in the kitchen that says, ‘help yourself to anything, kids!’ so I’m just following the directions.” Alex sat down. “I’d have thought as a college student you’d know all about following directions.”

  Somehow Alex always knew how to say the exact thing it took to get me going. In the wrong way. “You don’t know me,” I said, mildly in disgust.

  “I’ve heard that before,” Alex said, and poured himself a double. “But I do know that you don’t have what it takes to go drink for drink with me.”

  “I should hope not, you must weigh a good hundred pounds more than me.”

  “That’s fair. How about I do 2 for every 1 you do?”

  I looked up at the staircase leading to the second floor, and I could just barely make out the bottom of my bedroom door. I thought about rolling around in the blankets and settling back down with a pot of hot tea and a pile of those romance novels. If nothing else, it would get me away from Alex, even though a part of me didn’t want to leave…

  “Deal,” I said, taking the second glass Alex had brought with him from the kitchen. “Pour.”

  “That’s my girl,” Alex said, raising his eyebrows, and after a moment’s surprise poured me a single to his double.

  I lifted the glass and rolled the brown liquor around it. “Let’s get one thing straight, Alex,” I said before tossing back the drink and willing myself more than ever before not to choke or cough as the burning liquid went down hard. “I am most definitely not your girl.”

  The surprise on Alex’s face quickly turned to bewilderment and shock as I poured myself a second shot, then nodded at him. Alex robotically reached down and took down his entire double shot in one swoop, his head settling back as a smile curled on his face.

  “This is the good stuff. I might have guessed Marty would only stock the best.” He tapped on his glass and I gave him another double. “Slow down this time,” he said. “I’m already two in, you don’t want me under the table inside of 15 minutes.”

  I paused, letting the smile flutter across my face as I considered that possibility. “No,” I finally concluded, surprised by my own decision, “I wouldn’t want that.” Though the idea of him horizontal did have a certain appeal to it.

  Alex nodded, and we both sat back, sipping our next drinks. Alex remembered something and went back to the kitchen before returning with a huge bag of tortilla chips so we had something to snack on.

  By then I was starting to feel my liquor, getting lightheaded. The room spun a little bit, reminding me of the spinning gusts of wind and snow outside, and Alex started to look even hotter in the low light of the dining room, if that were even possible.

  “What were you doing out on the road?” I asked, staring up from the pile of chips I had built in front of me like a fort; my front line of defense. “You said something about going to see someone. Where?”

  “Meridian, where else?” Alex replied, quickly and derisively. “There’s not much out here.”<
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  “Yeah, but where were you coming from? I know you don’t go to New Hampshire State.” Not with that attitude, calling it a haven for rich Meridian kids.

  Alex scoffed as if the very idea was beneath him. “Nah. I was out there to do some fishing.”

  “In December?”

  “You never heard of ice fishing?”

  “I mean, yeah, I have, but…you don’t seem the fishing type.”

  Alex took a long swig of his whiskey. “I’m glad that I was able to break down your prejudices and stereotypes. Maybe after this is over you should thank me,” he burped, then added, “nicely.”

  I wrinkled my nose at him. “Not gonna happen.”

  Alex shrugged, staring into his glass. “I was staying out there, near a lake,” he finally said, not making eye contact with me.

  “And the fishing?”

  Another shrug. “Sometimes. Sometimes just hunting animals for food.”

  “A real mountain man.”

  “I’ve seen worse. Been worse.”

  “Yeah? Tell me more.”

  Alex finished his drink. “Nah, you don’t want to hear about it. Nothing exciting.” He poured himself another.

  I waved my hands around the room. “Look like I’ve got a better place to be right now? Lay it on me.” Then I threw a chip at him. The first one bounced off his head, but the second one he caught and deposited in his mouth, chewing as loudly and as obnoxiously as he could.

  “I’ve been overseas,” he said, though it was clear from his tone that this wasn’t just code for a couple weeks on the beach in Europe or in Bali. “Done some work overseas,” he added.

  “What kind of work?”

  With a pained expression on his face, Alex said, “Relief stuff. Disasters, famine, water, you know.” He grinned, but there wasn’t any force behind it. “The fun stuff.”

  I looked at him like he’d just grown another head. I barely knew the guy, but I was pretty damn sure the last person I’d ever have thought to have done relief work, any kind of relief work, was the guy sitting across from me. My jaw must have hit the ground more than once before I could crank it back up to my mouth, because Alex looked wounded.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” he said, angrily, downing his latest double shot and pointing at my own drink. I sighed and poured it back. The burning wasn’t as bad this time around.

  “I wasn’t surprised that you did that,” I sputtered after setting my glass down. “That’s just not what you hear most people say when they talk about their time abroad.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not most people,” Alex said, reaching for the bottle and pouring us both new drinks. I stared at mine like it had become my nemesis, but thankfully, before I could do something too dumb and knock it back, Alex took both glasses and set them far away from us on the table. “Let’s take a little break from that, yeah? Looks like we’re both warm enough for the moment.”

  I nodded, feeling flushed all over, and warm enough that were I alone, I wouldn’t be wearing this dress. I grimaced, chastising myself inwardly for thinking such naughty thoughts around a guy I at least thought I didn’t like. Maybe a little break from the booze was a good idea after all.

  “Tell me more about the work you did.”

  Alex leaned back in his chair and glanced at the ceiling, lost in thought, and I could see the memories of his time overseas playing back in front of his eyes. “I got to see a lot of things. I learned just how the rest of the world lived, and I, uh…realized that I had no appreciation for just how lucky I was.”

  “So you decided to do something about it?” This was a side of Alex I didn’t know existed, which was an odd thing to say about someone I’d met this morning, but it felt like Alex and I were way past that.

  Alex nodded. “It’s more than that, though. I didn’t do anything to deserve the luxury I grew up with - I was just lucky to be born into my family.” He leaned forward, a pained yet hopeful expression on his face. “I…didn’t know whether there was enough that I could do to make up for that.”

  Suddenly Alex looked like a lost boy instead of a man, and my heart jumped out to him. I wanted to wrap him up in my arms and pull him close and tell him that everything would be OK.

  “It’s not your responsibility to fix the world, Alex,” I finally got out, trying to lower the pressure I could see he put on himself.

  “I know that,” he snapped, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “That doesn’t change anything. I could help, so that’s what I did.”

  “How long did you do that?”

  “Years. Whenever I could. All over the place — disasters in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, helping people get water in Africa, I tried it all.”

  “Tried it?”

  Alex looked stricken, like he’d said something he shouldn’t have, and was hoping I wouldn’t catch it. “Y-yeah,” he said, sighing. “I was hoping I’d find something.”

  “What kind of something?” I was on the edge of my seat, and through the slight haze of the percolating alcohol, I was enthralled. I’d spent this entire day thinking Alex was a complete asshole, just absolutely the wrong person to associate with on any level.

  But this was another side of the guy, and it was shocking to have him open up like this to a complete stranger.

  Alex looked at me, but it was like he was almost looking through me as he spoke. “I don’t quite know what it was. But I never found it in Meridian, so…” he shrugged. “I figured I’d look somewhere else.”

  “Did it work?”

  “For a little while, yeah. I did so much that I didn’t have time to think, didn’t have time to search for anything. It felt incredible, you know? Like I was actually starting to make a little bit of a difference. Like I was…putting in instead of taking out.” The way Alex’s face looked, I could totally feel the satisfaction he must have gotten from helping people. “There’s nothing like helping a village get water for the first time.”

  He trailed off, and I could see a spark of sadness show up in his eyes. “It…didn’t last?”

  Alex took a deep breath. “Nah. Didn’t last. It was good for a while. But then I figured that out, and I had to add more, had to try something else, something new. There’s aways evil and unhappiness in the world — and eventually you get tired of trying to take it all on.”

  If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought Alex was describing a drug addiction.

  “So now you’re going back to Meridian?”

  Alex’s face hardened. “I have responsibilities there. You wouldn’t understand.”

  The scowl on Alex’s face turned me off, and we both sat in silence for a minute, occasionally popping a chip from the bowl between us into our mouths, just staring at each other, each daring the other to speak next.

  “Your turn,” Alex finally said.

  “For what?”

  “What’s your story?”

  “I’m just going home for the winter break.” I shook my head. “Nothing exciting.”

  “All alone? No frat guy boyfriend to come with you?”

  There it was - Asshole Alex emerging again. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” I hissed. “I was going home to see my parents.”

  Alex cocked his head to the side and winked. “I can tell there’s a story there, Princess.”

  He just didn’t know when to quit, did he?

  “You know what?” I said. “I’m feeling a bit more tired than I thought. I’m gonna head up to bed.” I smiled at him as sarcastically as I could. “I want to say that it’s been a nice evening getting to know you, but I don’t want to lie to someone I’ve just met.”

  I stood up from the table, less woozy than I thought I’d have been, and did my best impression of the storm outside as I charged out of the dining room and back up the stairs to my room, only stopping to take a breath when the door was closed behind me and I’d put at least one wall between me and Alex.

  I didn’t want to let him affect me like that, but I couldn’t help it
, and it tore at me. I was in a daze as I got ready for bed, even though only the clock on the bedside gave me any indication of what time it was. Outside the window the storm raged on into the night, just like had been for hours.

  At this rate it felt like I would be trapped here forever.

  With a gorgeous man that I couldn’t spend more than hour around before we wanted to attack each other. In the wrong way. I had no idea how I was going to make it through the next couple days, or however long this storm lasted. The fact that Alex could go from being a dick to actually showing there was a brain and a heart to go with that body, all the way back to being a dick, inside of 20 minutes made my head swirl with frustration, and I just couldn’t handle it anymore.

  I pulled the tight, old, dress off over my hips and off me, folding it as nicely as I could and starting a separate pile of clothing, before inspecting the other stuff and trying to decide what to wear tomorrow. I pulled on the only pair of pajamas in the pile and went to the bathroom, washing my face and staring at myself and how tired I looked for a little too long.

  I didn’t hear any creaking on this floor, so I figured Alex was still downstairs. Probably drowning himself in what was left of the whiskey. Good for him.

  Even though I knew I looked tired, something had gotten me all amped up and even when I got into bed, I tossed and turned for a while, unable to fall asleep, which was totally unlike me. Finally, after getting really frustrated that I couldn’t find a spot to get comfortable, I ended up turning on the small lamp on the end table and sitting back up to finish the story of the duke and the maiden.

  The duke had just traveled a long distance to reunite himself with the maiden after parting due to a misunderstanding, and as the story picked back up he declared his love for her regardless of her station, damning the consequences and proclaiming that they’d build a life for themselves together wherever possibly, unbound by the chains of polite society.

  I was getting really into it, hoping the maiden would make him work for it after he had treated her so dismissively, despite obviously being in love with her. I couldn’t stop turning the pages, eager for the next drop of the age-old story.