From the Wreckage

by Melissa Collins

  Blake’s little pissing match from before, cemented some concerns I already had about him. So now, instead of thoughts about stripping my boyfriend down when we get back to his apartment, the only thing running through my head is how I can break things off with him.

  Luckily, just as I begin to pull back from him, a loud siren rings over the music. The crowd erupts into a huge round of applause. Lots of woohooing screams fill the air and as I scan the crowd, I see all of the girls racing toward the front of the bar.

  “What the hell?” I call out to Jade, who simply shrugs. Stretching up on her toes, she can easily see above most of the other people here, but she still can’t see what all the fuss is about.

  That’s when Johnny leans in and explains the scene playing out before us. “You ladies have never been here, huh?” Both Jade and I shake our heads, eager to hear the rest.

  “This place isn’t called ‘Smoke’ for nothing. It’s a firefighter bar and those guys”—he points across the room—“just finished their shift.” Jade’s eyes widen at the mention of firefighters. So do mine, but I try my best to shield it from Blake, knowing full well it’ll piss him off.

  Having spent the last six years of my life in New York City for college and grad school, I developed a healthy appreciation for New York’s bravest. Hell, I challenge any red-blooded American woman not to. And I’m pretty sure their effect can be felt outside of America as well.

  When the loud roar of the crowd dies down somewhat, we make our way back over to our table only to find that it’s been occupied. “Bar?” Blake asks against my ear.

  “Sure,” I try my best to disguise the excitement in my response, but Jade can sense it. That’s where the group of firefighters is and even though I can’t touch, it sure won’t kill me to look.

  “Wait for me.” Jade falls in line with us as Johnny grabs hold of her hand. Yeah, she’s just as excited as I am.

  When the guys are turned toward the bar ordering our drinks, Jade leans down and whispers, “How the hell have we never been here before? A bar dedicated to firefighters? It’s like we’ve died and gone to Heaven.”

  “I know.” I pitch my voice low so Blake can’t hear me, but can’t stop myself from jumping up and down in excitement.

  “What’re you two chatting about?” Blake asks suspiciously as he hands me my drink.

  “Oh, nothing,” Jade deflects, looping her arm through Johnny’s. “Gracie and I were just talking about how great this place is.”

  Seemingly placated, Blake takes a long pull on his beer and scans the room. “Doesn’t seem like anything special to me,” he huffs.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Gracie, what do you think?” Shooting Jade a death-ray stare, I try to stop her from egging Blake on, but it’s really no use. The two of them are like oil and water and I can barely blame Jade; she’s just the easier one to reason with.

  “Come on, Gracie, let’s dance.” Jade pulls me back out onto the dance floor when a new song starts up and I’m glad for it. Seems like the further away from Blake I am, the more fun I have.

  Three times.

  I heard the name three times.

  My head always turns when I hear the name Gracie, but my eyes never fall on someone who looks even remotely familiar.

  But the woman dancing out there looks just what my Gracie would–at least the vision that’s in my head.

  It has been eighteen years after all, but there are some things you just don’t forget. For me, it’s two things—her hair and her laughter. Both bright streaks of light in a mostly dark world.

  As I lean my elbows back against the bar, those are the two things screaming at me, telling me that the woman out there just has to be my Gracie.

  “See something you like?” Ian elbows me in my side, nearly knocking my drink out of my hand as he does.

  “Huh?” I pull myself back to the here and now, away from the girl I knew so long ago. “Uh, no. Just spaced out there for a minute.” Avoiding having to say anything else, I swallow back the rest of my Jack and Coke.

  After placing the empty glass on the bar, I turn back to face the dance floor immediately. There’s a pull to her—the girl dancing out there with her friend. Sure, she’s beautiful—not all that graceful, but she’s moving like she’s having fun. A lazy grin pulls at my lips as I watch her stumble a little as she dances. Her friend rights her and they laugh like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever witnessed.

  “Here you go, man.” Ian hands me a shot and while they’re generally not my thing, we’ve all just had a crazy shift. Loosening up with a few drinks when I don’t have to be at work again for another two days isn’t a terrible idea.

  By the time we’re done with our shots, I try to find Gracie out there, but all I catch is a glimpse of her back as she walks off to the bathrooms with her friend.

  “She’s really caught your eye, huh?” Ian asks as we walk over to a high-top off to the side of the bar.

  “Not really.” Yeah, it’s a lame defense, one that Ian sees straight though. He shoots me a ‘cut the shit’ look and I give in. “Okay, fine. She’s cute.”

  “The redhead? No, she’s not cute, man. You need to get your eyes checked. She’s smokin.’” His voice has that ‘on the hunt’ quality to it, and it irks me more than it should.

  Cocking an eyebrow at him, I laugh. “You’re really going with smokin’? Can’t come up with anything more original?”

  Shrugging, he leans back in his chair. “What do you expect? Some Shakespeare shit? Yeah, that is most definitely not going to happen.”

  “Fine, she’s more than cute. But she has the same name as someone I used to know when I was a kid. I was looking at her to see if I could figure out if it was her or not.” My answer is mostly truthful. To be honest, trying to figure out if she is the Gracie I rescued from that fire all those years ago is only part of the reason I was staring at her. The other reason is plain as day.

  She is smokin.’

  By the time I finish telling Ian the rest of the story about what had happened when Gracie’s house burned down, I see her walking back out of the hallway where the bathrooms are located. As she walks toward the bar, a guy grabs her, pulling her through the crowd.

  The music is too loud for me to hear anything, but the look on her face says everything I need to know. He’s hurting her and not letting go. Jumping down from my stool, I start to walk over to them. Her friend is trying to get in the middle of them, but it’s not working.

  “Where the hell did you go?” The guy is practically yelling in her face.

  “Blake, you’re hurting me. Let go.” She squeaks, trying in vain to pry his hand off her arm.

  Walking up behind him, he doesn’t see me, but she does. Her eyes go wide when my hand drops to his shoulder. “Excuse me, but I think the lady said you were hurting her.” I tip my chin at his claw-like grip on her arm.

  After releasing her, she rubs a hand over where he’d just held her. Relief washes over her face as her friend pulls her away from the asshole.

  “And who the hell do you think you are?” he seethes at me.

  A smug chuckle bubbles out of my mouth. “Someone who knows enough never to lay a hand on a woman.” Stepping past him, I make sure to brush my shoulder against his with more than a little force.

  “What the fuck?” he yells, grabbing my arm and pulling me back to his face.

  I’ve got a few inches on him and I revel in the fact that I can look down at him as I say, “You might want to reconsider that.” My eyes travel down to his hand on my arm.

  “And you might want to reconsider sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong,” he retorts nastily. At least he’s smart enough to take his hand off me. “Mind your own fucking business,” he adds before turning toward the table where the girls are.

  Following behind him, I want to make sure he leaves Gracie alone, and I want to make sure she’s okay, too.

  “Get the hell away from her,” the other girl yells, standing as Blake appr
oaches the table.

  “Stay the fuck out of this, Jade,” he mutters. Pushing past her, he almost knocks her down.

  With a quick side-step, I move around Blake and help steady Jade before she stumbles over completely. “You okay?” I ask, holding her at arm’s length.

  Wordlessly, she nods and I let go of her. Luckily, I’m able to turn my attention back to Blake and Gracie just as he’s about to pull her from the bench.

  Twisting his arm around his back, I make sure he doesn’t lay a finger on her. “Listen, asshole. Why don’t you leave these girls alone? They clearly don’t want you around, so get out of here and make everyone happy. Okay?” When he nods, I let him go.

  A quiet and shaky voice cuts through the glacial stare in which Blake and I are locked. “Blake, go. Please. I’ll talk to you tomorrow when you’ve calmed down.”

  “Hell no!” he yells. “I’m not leaving you here with this guy.” He pokes me in the chest and I rein in my desire to punch this asshole right in the face.

  “You’re coming home with me. Now,” he demands.

  Gracie stands from her seat and steps between us. “Blake,” she says calmly, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You should go before you say or do something you’ll regret. I’ll call you tomorrow. I promise.”

  I want to interject and ask why the hell she’s being so nice, why she’s promising to call him when it’s so clear he doesn’t deserve her time. But I bite my lip instead and stand behind her, a bodyguard of sorts.

  “This is fucking bullshit.” He throws his arms up in the air, before storming off like a child throwing a temper tantrum.

  When he’s gone, she turns to me, dropping a soft hand to my forearm. “Thanks for helping out.” Her voice is still a bit shaky.

  “Of course,” I choke out. The feel of her hand on my skin has me so screwed up I can’t even get an intelligent sentence out. My eyes are glued to hers, searching for some kind of answer hidden there. The freckles, which were so prominent on her face when she was a kid, are still there. They’ve faded a touch, but the peaches and cream skin is the same as I remember.

  With my name dangling from my lips, I’m about to introduce myself just as Jade interrupts. “You really need to kick his sorry ass to the curb.”

  Sighing, Grace sinks back down into her seat. “I know, I know. Sorry I ruined the night.”

  “Are you kidding? He’s gone now. That makes everything even better.” Jade winks at me before asking if we want anything to drink. We both decline and watch her walk toward the bar.

  Holding her head in her hands, she’s covering her face. “I’m such an ass,” she mutters.

  “Hey, you did nothing wrong,” I say, pulling her hands away from her pretty face. “He’s the one who’s an ass.”

  With an exaggerated huff, she flips her hair out of her eyes and looks at me across the table. “Thanks for that and thanks for helping me out.” She stands, her shoulders slumped, her voice taking on a defeated quality. “I’m just not feeling it anymore tonight. I think I’ll head home.”

  As she walks past me to get Jade from the bar, I drop my hand to her shoulder, causing her to jump a little. “Sorry,” I apologize, though it’s Blake who’s the one who clearly set her on edge. Her eyes fall to my hand and then move back up to mine. Something passes between us in that moment, but before I can figure it out, Ian races up behind me. He runs into me so hard, he nearly knocks me over.

  Clapping a hand to my back, he calls out, “Finally talking to that hottie, huh, Dave,” he slurs, clearly drunk already. Gracie scans my face, her eyes squinting as if she’s trying to see me through some bright glare. The need to shut Ian up overrides the hope I feel at Gracie possibly recognizing me.

  Unfortunately, dropping a hard elbow to his ribs doesn’t seem to do the trick. “You are something fine. Damn, girl.” He gives Grace a head to toe once-over before she rolls her eyes at him.

  “You’re an ass, Ian,” I mutter.

  “Thanks, again, but I think I’ve had my fair share of rudeness for the night,” she snaps, pulling away from me before I can even tell her who I am, but if I’m not mistaken, her eyes drop to my chest before holding my gaze one last time.

  “Love watching you leave,” Ian calls out when she’s a few steps away. Fuck, do I want to knock him out, but I can’t argue with him.

  Watching her—and all her curves—strut away from me, it’s not a sight for the faint of heart.

  In the two weeks since the bar encounter with Grace and Blake, I haven’t been able to get her off my mind. Hell, I even went back to the same bar a few times just to see if she’d be there.

  She wasn’t.

  I have to laugh at myself, though. It’s not like me to pine over a girl. On the other hand, I’ve never been a ‘hit it and quit it’ kind of guy, so the fact that I can’t stop thinking about her isn’t all that strange.

  One thing is for sure, I need to clear my head before I go to work. Jamming the last of my things into my bag, I finish putting together what I need for my forty-eight hour shift. Most of my stuff is in my locker at work, but extra work-out clothes are always a necessity.

  Many people would probably say they hate driving through the city. The cab drivers alone make it less than enjoyable. But I’ve always loved the drive to work. Yeah, it’s deep in the heart of Manhattan, and it would probably be easier to take the train. But the sights, sounds, and smells—the ones that aren’t urine, anyway—you don’t get those on the train and in the subway. After parking the car, I grab my bag and make my way into the station.

  I would call it my home away from home, but that’d be a lie. This is home and my apartment is just somewhere I sleep when I’m not here. Garry, the dispatcher, greets me at the door. With his heels kicked up on the desk, he’s quietly sipping a cup of coffee while everyone else is in the back of the house eating breakfast.

  After unloading my stuff into my locker, I make my way downstairs and grab a cup of coffee, and a plate of eggs for myself. Everyone looks half asleep, barely saying a word as they devour their food.

  “Rough night?” I ask to no one in particular.

  Mickey, a three-year veteran, pipes up above everyone else’s indiscriminate muttering. “Had a run like every hour last night. Stupid shit, too.”

  I laugh around the rim of my mug, but part of me feels bad for them. A night of no sleep, taking care of routine calls, without getting much time in between to catch a break is exhausting.

  Before long, the rest of the day crew is here. Ian is here today, too. I’ve been kind of tight-lipped on how he screwed up my chances to talk to Grace. The last thing he needs is more fuel to feed the fire of him ribbing on me.

  “We’re on hose detail this morning,” Ian calls to me after looking over the task sheet.

  “Perfect,” I say, walking past him toward the rig.

  Shooting me a confused look, he asks, “Why’s that?”

  “No one has more experience playing with hoses than you, right?” I joke. Sadly, this is the perfect place for middle school humor.

  “I’m sure you have just as much, asshole.” Ian hoists himself up into the truck. Fidgeting with the gauges and tank readers, he records the necessary details we need to complete our paperwork. As he scribbles down the last of the data, the sirens go off, signaling the truck we’re working on is needed in action.

  Those are the moments the house comes to life. The men race around the truck, stepping into their bunker gear where it lays in wait for the sounds we’ve just heard. After the firefighter who operates the engine gets all the details from dispatch, and the captain, a twenty-something-year veteran named Peter Gallagher, buckles in, we’re off to our fire.

  Winding through the streets of lower Manhattan will never stop being a thrill. Even after three years on the job, it still excites me. It’s pretty much every boyhood dream come true, and I get to do it almost every day of my life.

  How freaking awesome is that?

  “Let’s do this bo
ys!” I call out as the truck pulls to a screeching halt in front of a twenty-five-story financial building. Captain Gallagher calls out orders, and people evacuating the building are lead to the side. From my vantage point, I see smoke billowing out of what looks to be around the tenth floor. “Stretch out those legs, fellas,” I joke, pointing up to the smoke-filled window. “We’ve got a trek up ahead of us.”

  Shooting me a stern look, Gallagher pulls us in for a huddle. “Andrews and Mack.” He points a gnarled finger at me and Ian. A true old-schooler, he essentially refuses to call anyone by their first name. Hell, he won’t even call Ian by his full last name. Gallagher once told Ian that MacMillan takes too much time, and as a probie, he wasn’t worth the extra few seconds of his oxygen—all in good humor of course. “You two take the south stairwell,” yelling above the chaos swallowing the scene around us, he points at an old blue print. At first, he hated the addition of tablets, bitching that they’d slow us down. But the ease with which they allow him to look up the blueprints for each and every building on our call radius, well, needless to say, he didn’t hate them for too long. “Miller and Gonzalez, you’re with them,” he concludes his directive at us, before rattling off instructions to the rest of the crew.

  By the time we make it to the seventh floor, we’re all a little winded. But, with almost seventy pounds of gear on our backs, it’s to be expected. The smoke filtering down the stairwell isn’t helping much either. Hunkering down behind the door, Ian tests it to see how hot it is. “Lucky for us,” he speaks into his dispatch receiver. “The fire hasn’t reached this side of the floor, yet.”

  With that piece of information, we open the door and find an empty floor before us. Everyone was fortunate enough to evacuate before we arrived. Making our way toward the flames, we try to clear the area of any debris. It’s nearly impossible in an office space, but we still do our best. Through the window, we see the hook and ladder crew readying themselves to enter the building. The bucket is extended all the way to the north windows. All we need to do now is to wait for the command from them for their plan of action.