But instead of letting these words vomit out of my head, I smile politely. “Maybe we can get together another time?”
“Of course,” he agrees, winking at me. “See you soon.”
And just like that, without actually making any plans, he’s walking away from me. If Jade would have given me more than two minutes to stand there watching the elevator doors close in front of him, maybe I would have called out to him, asked him when he’ll see me again.
But she doesn’t give me that luxury. Coming up behind me, she shoves a dress, shoes, and a bag into my hands. “You,”—she points to my bedroom—“in there. Now. Be ready in five.” With her hands on her hips, she taps her foot in front of her.
Huffing, I walk past her, muttering, “You so owe me.”
“What crawled up your ass?” Ian and his smug face glare at me from the stool to my side.
Keeping my eyes trained on the UFC fight playing on the screen above the bar, I take a drink of my beer. “Nothing,” I deflect. “Why are you thinking about my ass anyway?” Shooting him a look, I laugh. Clearly, he’s not amused. “Just shut up and watch the fight.”
Watching two fighters beat the crap out of one another is a decent enough way for me to vent some of my frustrations. The truth is I didn’t have plans to come to Smoke with Ian tonight. But wanting to preserve some of my pride, I played it off like her date was of little consequence to me.
After the crowd erupts into loud, raucous cheers over the knock out, Ian elbows me in the side. Angling his head to the back corner of the bar, he points out Kelsey.
Calling the attention of the bartender, I order another round of drinks. Clearly, I’m going to need it.
“Here she comes,” Ian keeps his voice low so only I can hear it. And it’s not as if he needs to announce her arrival. Her perfume precedes her by at least five steps.
“Hey, boys,” she purrs. Standing behind me, her fingers dance at the collar of my T-shirt. Motivated by the desire to have her stop touching me, I spin to greet her. “Hi, Kelsey. How are you?” It’s a mindful decision to keep my greeting as formal as possible.
A sly smile parts her cherry red lips. “I’m good, but I could be better.” There’s no missing the hints she’s dropping. Thankful for the distraction the bartender offers, I take my drink and busy my mouth with drinking rather than talking. Ian has enough good sense to keep his focus on the television. “I’ve missed you,” she adds as I drop my beer back to the bar. It’s not in me to be rude, but I can’t respond to her statement in the way she wants me to and be honest at the same time. A crimson fingernail trails down my arm, mimicking the feel of an insect crawling across my skin.
Nothing like the heat I felt when Grace touched me.
“Listen. Kelsey–”
Cutting me off, she pouts, looking ridiculous. “If you want me to listen, why don’t we go back to my place? It’s nice and quiet there.” On that note, Ian clears his throat and stands.
He mouths Good luck to me from behind Kelsey’s back. She slides into his seat as he walks toward the bathrooms.
“You don’t come around here much anymore. I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.” Her knees brush against mine as she moves in her seat. It’s a deliberate move, setting me on edge. “You haven’t returned my calls either.”
Even though I really want to say, I know. I’ve been avoiding you on purpose, it’s not in my makeup to be rude. Instead, I say, “It has been a while.” Finishing off the last chug of my beer gives me a second to avoid having to say much more. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ian take a seat a few stools down. He’s failing miserably at trying to look like he’s not eavesdropping.
As she drops a hand to my leg, she asks, “So what do you think? You want to get out of here and head back to my place? It’s been too long.”
“Kelsey, what we had was good while it lasted,” I lie. “But it’s run its course.” Clearly insulted, her face twists in some kind of agony. It takes actual strength for me not to roll my eyes at her ridiculous reaction. Up until five minutes ago, I thought I’d made this very clear. She’s right. We haven’t seen each other. I haven’t called her back. Haven’t made any attempt to get in touch with her over the last month.
“Run its course,” she mocks. “Okay, fine then. I guess I saw it as more than a fling.” With a giant huff, she stands from the bar stool and walks away.
The good guy part of me wants to call her back, offer her more of an explanation, but it’s unnecessary, really. While we definitely were not a one-night stand, I would barely call what we were anything more than a fling.
When Ian walks back to his seat, he has a shocked look plastered to his face. “I thought for sure I’d come back out here and you’d be lip locked with Tits Magee over there.”
Shrugging, I don’t bother answering him with words.
“Okay, so now I know something is definitely up. Or did your dick go numb?” The ass he is, Ian actually laughs at himself.
“First my ass, now my dick. Any other body part of mine on your brain I should know about?”
Shooting me a wry look, Ian keeps his eyes trained on the television. “No, asshole. I was simply wondering why you’d turn down a night with Kelsey. And,” he adds, twisting in his seat to face me, “if I’m correct, which I usually am, I heard her say it’s been a while. So what’s up with that?”
Over my shoulder, he eyes Kelsey, who finds a seat at the other end of the bar. As a means of avoiding his question, I refocus my attention back on the television, but catch a glimpse of Kelsey out of the corner of my eye. She’s all legs, cleavage, cheap hair extensions, and fake eyelashes. Toying with the end of her blonde hair, I know from experience it feels like straw. Flipping back through my time with her, I can’t say it was terrible. But it was anything but memorable. She was sweet. Always nice and especially attentive, she would hang on every last word falling from my mouth. But she was shallow as fuck. And that was something I could look past. Hell, I should still be able to look past it. But when she walked up to me, something was different.
Up to this point, my life had been a vicious cycle of wash, rinse, repeat. Wake up. Fight some fires. Go home. Shower. Go out with friends. Drink. Go home—maybe sometimes with Kelsey. Wash, rinse, repeat.
And holy shit, was that getting old.
“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on or what? You haven’t said more than two words since Kelsey walked away,” Ian prattles on.
“What are you, Dr. Phil or something?” Lamely, I attempt a joke, but he doesn’t laugh. Instead, he waits patiently for me to say something. “Fine,” I concede. “I guess I’m just not up for it.”
“For sex?” He nearly chokes on his beer. “Dude, what the hell?”
“It’s not always about sex, asshole.”
His face twists in confusion, as if I’ve just said the most ridiculous thing in the existence of words. “Not always about sex?” he mocks. “Uh, last time I checked, it most definitely is. Something change in the last week?”
Chuckling low, I grumble, “A week? More like four.”
Slapping his hand on the bar-top, he rattles the empty mugs sitting in front of us. “Four weeks? Oh, hell no. We need to fix that.”
“Shut up.” Trying to keep conversation of my sex life, or lack thereof, to a more normal volume, I shoot Ian a serious look. “I’ve been studying for the Lieutenant’s test. It’s eating up all my time. Add in a shitload of overtime shifts, and sex is pretty much the last thing on my mind.” As if I needed more of an excuse, I say, “Plus, my parents are remodeling their kitchen, so I’ve been helping them.”
Without missing a beat, and without listening to a single word that just came out of my mouth, Ian says, “So what? It’s sex. There’s no excuse. Unless . . .” he drags it out, dramatically scratching his chin. “Unless of course you want there to be an excuse.”
Shrugging, I say nothing. The raw truth is that his words hit a little too close for comfort. “Maybe I’m just tired of the ga
me, the groupies. You know I’ve never been a one-night stand guy–”
“But Kelsey?”
“She wasn’t a one-night stand,” I defend.
Arching an eyebrow, Ian’s look screams really without actually saying a word.
“She wasn’t.” I laugh. “We were together a month.” Ian continues to look at me as if gibberish is coming out of my mouth. “Okay, fine.” Finally giving in, I admit, “She was a month-long string of one-night stands. It was a month held together by nothing else, though.”
“Much better,” he says as he laughs. For a few more minutes, neither of us says anything else. Then, spinning in his stool, Ian looks at me as if an actual lightbulb is going on over his head. “It’s the redhead, isn’t it?”
Knowing Ian would make a bigger deal out of her than she was, I said nothing about Grace to him since she came to see me at the station. Where Ian is concerned, sometimes less is better.
But there is no denying it. It most definitely is her. From the moment I saw her at the bar, I needed to know if it was her or not. I’d thought about her over the years here and there. Probably more than was healthy at times. Especially when I was younger, I thought about her a lot. Where was she? How had she adjusted to moving? Did she like her new school? Then as I grew older, I wondered if she had a boyfriend? If her hair was still as red as it had been when she was a kid? Was she as beautiful in real life as she was in my dreams?
Of course there were times—spans of years even—when she never crossed my mind. College, mostly. But hell, most of it was a blur, anyway. It wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but my parents made me go, saying that I’d need something to fall back on if the fire department didn’t work out. In my own head, I knew it would have to work out. Being a firefighter was the only thing I’d ever wanted to do with my life. So the thought of it not working out was unfathomable.
It wasn’t lost on me that in those most significant moments—my first day of the academy and my graduation from it, my first day on the job, and my first fire—those were the times I thought of little Gracie McCann the most. It was because of her that my adult life took shape and I wanted nothing more than to thank the little girl I’d saved so long ago for giving my life a purpose.
Then, with every fire I fought, with every person I saved, I thought of Gracie. Mostly, I lied to myself saying I just needed to know she was doing well. But the more I thought about it, the more I needed to know what kind of woman she’d grown into.
And now that I knew she turned out damn fine, I couldn’t get her out of my head.
“Hey, listen.” Ian cuts through the silence. “I can see I’m pulling teeth here.” Dropping some cash on the bar, Ian stands from his seat. “See you at work.”
“You’re right,” I admit when his back is half-turned away from me. “It is Grace.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Were you talking to me?” He laughs, joking with me and my absentmindedness.
Dropping back into his seat, Ian folds his arms atop the bar. “I’m listening.”
As I explain who Grace is and the significance she’s had on my life, Ian listens, almost shocked by the very unlikely story. He nods occasionally, but when all is said and done, the only words he offers, are “So then what are you doing here with me?”
Grumbling my response, I say, “She’s on a date.” After ordering another round of drinks, I explain, “She said it was because she had to be there for her friend. And I did show up completely unannounced. It’s not like I can expect her to put her life on hold simply because I want to get to know her.”
“Are you fucking serious?” Ian mumbles around the lip of his mug.
“What?”
“Look, I’m not going to get all poetic on you or any kind of shit like that.” Swigging down half of his beer, he swipes the back of his hand across his mouth. “But you pretty much won the lottery on that fairy-tale line of bullshit the chicks love. Boy rescues girl from burning house. Girl moves away and doesn’t see boy for eighteen years. I guarantee it, if you want to get to know her, she’ll let you. All you have to do is ask.”
Maybe he is right. Maybe it is that simple.
“I guess I’ll have to wait and see. Not much I can do about it tonight.”
“Yeah there is,” he says, tipping his empty mug at me. “Buy me another round for having to put up with you and your sorry excuse of a love life for the night.”
We both laugh and the conversation shifts to work—as it usually does. Somewhere around eleven, the bar starts to fill with the usual groupie crowd. On a mission and done with idle talk of work, Ian stands from his stool. Clapping me on the shoulder, he says, “Not that I don’t love wasting away with you here, but I am in desperate need of some female attention.” Like a fox, he scans the crowd. After settling on a group of dancing girls, Ian shoots me a sly grin. “And they”—angling his head toward them, he continues—“look like the attention-giving type. Wanna join?”
“Nah,” I deflect his invitation. “I’m beat. And I have to be at my parents’ house early tomorrow.” With a fist bump, he walks off toward his targets.
Shaking my head, I have to admit, there are times when I wish I could be as smooth as Ian. It’s not that he’s uncaring, but he doesn’t let his head get too clouded up with the what ifs. And right now, the what ifs are all that fill me.
But as I lean my shoulder against the door to leave, an arm loops through mine, stopping me in my tracks. The slight movement of turning to see who it is causes the person to stumble and push into me. It’s then that I realize it’s Kelsey. Drunk as a fucking monkey.
“Hey,” she slurs, drawing out the single word. Her eyes are half-opened, her drunkenness weighing them down. “Where are you going?” Catching her balance, she stretches up on her toes and presses a sloppy kiss to my cheek.
“Kels.” My voice is calm and firm as are my hands on her shoulders, righting her. “Are you okay?” My question is met with a confused stare, her brows twisting together.
Slapping a hand playfully to my chest, she purrs, “I’m fine. Could be a lot better.” Her hint is met with nothing more than a deep sigh. “What?” she responds to the dismissive sigh, curling her fingers around my arm as I finish pushing the door open.
When we’re out on the street, the buzz of the city flies around us. Cars race down the street. An ambulance wails in the background. A group of rowdy drunks divides and moves around us, forcing me to pull Kelsey out of the way. Of course she misreads this, thinking I’ve changed my mind and I’ll be taking her up on her offer of making the night a lot better.
“So, back to my place?” She looks up at me, batting her fake eyelashes, begging for my attention.
Turning her so she’s facing me, I grip her shoulders, making sure I have her full attention. “Kels, look,” I begin to explain. “This isn’t going to happen. It can’t.”
Acting as if she hasn’t heard a word I just said, she wiggles out of my grip and loops her arms around my waist. Pressing her lips up against my ear, she whispers, “It can happen and you know when it does it’ll be so good.”
“David,” a soft voice calls to me from behind, pulling my attention away from Kelsey before she has the chance to shove her tongue in my ear. I don’t need to turn around to know who it is.
“Grace,” I say, turning away from Kelsey.
“Who the hell are you?” Kelsey spits angrily, moving away from me and toward Grace.
Stopping her before she gets more than two steps away from me, I step in front of Kelsey. “Stop it.” My voice has moved from being firm, to pissed. The last thing I need is for Kelsey to screw this up.
“Grace.” My tone softens as I approach her. “What are you doing here?”
“The date was over,” she explains, crossing her arms over her chest. “And you said you would probably be here with your friend.” Her admission is shy and quiet, the exact opposite of the annoying grumbles coming from Kelsey.
“Are you done here?” Kelsey pulls at my arm, tr
ying to twist me back to her. “I thought we were going to my place–”
“I should go,” Grace cuts through the beginning of Kelsey’s tirade. “You’re obviously busy.”
Kelsey steps in front of me, a smug look of satisfaction spreading across her face. Over her shoulder, I see Grace moving further away from us. My good conscience is momentarily torn between the two of them.
I can’t leave Kelsey here. She’s too drunk to take care of herself and it’s too late to leave her to get home safely.
I can’t let Grace walk home alone.
And the truth is, I don’t want to let her go.
“Grace!” I yell out, making her stop in her tracks. “Wait,” I add, jogging toward her. Glancing backward, I see Kelsey standing there, arms pitched to her hips, toe tapping a furious beat in front of her. “It’s most definitely not what it looks like,” I defend even though she hasn’t accused me of anything. “She’s drunk. I can’t leave her alone. Give me five minutes and I’ll walk you home.”
Grace scans my face, searching for some hint of truth, some sign that I’m not bullshitting her. “Fine,” she relents. “I’ll wait over here though.” Grace walks over to a table and chairs set up outside the bar.
Gathering my thoughts, I walk over to Kelsey, who still hasn’t cooled off much. “What is she still doing here?” Like a five-year-old throwing a tantrum of epic proportions, she points a finger over at Grace, who’s doing nothing more than sitting there minding her own business.
“She’s waiting for me to get rid of you,” I ground out through clenched teeth. Pulling her toward the curb, I hail a cab. Luck is most definitely on my side when one slides up to the curb almost as soon as my hand is in the air. As I open the door, I say, “You need to get home. Sober up.”
“What the hell, David?” she shrieks.
“Look, Kelsey,” I say, keeping my eyes fixed on hers. “I said it inside before. This”—I gesture between us—“is not going to work. It never worked before. And yeah, it was wrong of me to lead you on, but I’m not doing that anymore.”
From the Wreckage Page 6