by Vivian Ward
I sat in the chair waiting for him to start, but he said nothing. He stared at me until I became uncomfortable. I shrugged my shoulders, “What Chief?”
“I’m waiting for you to tell me why you ditched your shift, how you landed in jail and why you’ve not come to me. Is this some joke? Do you not want that promotion? Do you not want your job?”
I sighed. Fuck. I, at least, expected him to yell at me, scream or do something but he did nothing. It was obvious that he was pissed, but I had never seen him like this before. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Matt, you say sorry when you bump into someone. You say sorry when you step on someone’s shoe.” He leaned across his desk, “But dammit, boy! You don’t say sorry when you turn your back on the men who saved your life, the men who helped you turn your life around, and the god damned man who wants to put you on a pedestal!”
Now he was yelling. I swear the vein below his eye looked like it was gonna blow as it popped out on his face, causing his eye to twitch. “Chief, I fucked up. I wasn’t thinking. The day that it happened, I had—”
“Blah, blah, blah!” He smashed his fist into his desk. “I don’t want to hear your shit anymore, son! You made a promise to me—on more than one occasion. You need to stop thinking with your dick and start thinking with the brain that God gave you.”
“You’re right. I did promise you, and it’s about time I start living up to it.” It’s not like anything else mattered anymore. Stephanie made it very clear that we were through. She wanted nothing more to do with me. All I had to focus on now was my career. “Chief, I swear to god, my right hand on a stack of Bibles, no more fuck ups, no more goofing off, no more bad calls. From here on out you’ll get a dedicated Captain out of me. Give me one more shot, please, sir?”
I hated the fact that I had disappointed him. Chief was like my dad; he was better than my dad. He studied me for a moment before he walked behind my chair. I knew I had fucked up, but I didn’t realize how badly. I don’t think I had ever seen anyone this disappointed before. He bent over, hissing in my ear, “Last chance son. The. Last. One. Do you understand that? One more time and I swear to god—my right hand on a stack of Bibles—that you’ll be permanently out of this fire station faster than you could light a match.”
I gulped. “Yes, sir.”
“Good, now get the hell out of my office and do something productive. Set a good example for your brothers out there.”
He opened the door, anxious for me to get out of his office and refused to look at me as I walked past him.
We had an uneventful night with only one call to assist paramedics in getting an overweight patient out of his house and into the ambulance. I had a lot of time to process some of my feelings and put them into thoughts. Maybe Stephanie was right. She made some valid points, but I still felt that we should be together.
The main problem was that I wanted to be together no matter which way I spun it, but I knew it was impossible. The way she had walked out on me at the Pink Galleon, the way her words cut through me, there was no way we could be together. It was becoming painfully apparent that we were from two different worlds, and there wasn’t anything either one of us could do about it.
In her world, her family hated me. That hate has been building for years, and no matter how much I have told them that I didn’t do it, they refuse to believe me. Her baby’s daddy, Joe, is a whole other ball of wax. He looked like he wanted to tear into me something fierce, but he was too drunk to do shit about it. If I had to guess, I’d say he and Stephanie didn’t work out because he has, or had anger issues. It’s just the vibe I got from him.
I don’t want to ruin things for Stephanie and Andrew, either. Joe seems like the kind of asshole who would take it out on her and the kid because he’s not man enough to deal with his problems. I also don’t want to mess up her living arrangements because I know she can’t get her own place until they get to her name on the housing list. She’s already been waiting for close to six months, and I’m sure her brother is tired of sharing his small house with her and a kid.
With my situation, it seems like all I’m doing is causing or creating havoc everywhere I turn. I’m fucking up my job, my career, my love life, and Stephanie’s life. I’m squandering away all of my chances to be something, to go somewhere in life. I can’t do this. Before I know it, I’ll be thirty. I don’t want to start over at 30-years-old and have to find a new job, a new career. Not when I’ve worked so hard to get where I am today.
Aside from the work thing, I got myself arrested. That was fucking stupid. What if they look at that when it’s time for me to go up for my promotion, or what if it gets brought up to our superiors? Nobody wants a fire captain who lands in jail on the weekends, and as much as her family hates me, I have a feeling that’s where I’d end up most of the time.
How did I not see all of this? Stephanie saw it. She saw it all and ended it. I needed an outlet, a way to get rid of some of this resentment, hate. There was only one way to do that without smashing in her brother’s or ex’s face, and that was hitting the weights in our workout room. It was where I spent a lot of my days sobering up.
“I’ll be in there,” I nodded to the weight room, “if anyone needs me, Zack.”
“All right, brother.”
Chapter 18
Stephanie
“I can’t believe you did that,” Susan said, braiding my hair. “What are you going to do now?”
“I was hoping you could tell me what I should do next. For real, I see no other way that things could or would work. You should have seen them all fighting. It looked like Royal Rumble 2015 with the way the three of them were wrestling around in the front yard.”
“Honestly? I don’t know if you should have told Matt that things might not work between the two of you. I would have waited a little longer. Hand me the comb next to you, please.”
“It’s just that Lance and Joe aren’t going to let things go. Lance still believes that he turned him in, and Joe doesn’t think I should be dating anyone because we have a kid together.”
“Girl, don’t play.” She looked at me in the mirror as I handed her the comb. “You can’t be doing what that fool tells you to do, or you’ll die a lonely old maid. You know that, right?”
“There’s no right answer here,” I huffed. “I liked it back when things were simple, and nobody was fighting. Before the other night happened, I was so happy. The happiest I’ve been in a long time.” I frowned at her, “I think I messed up.”
“Stephanie, I think I told you this before, but you have to do what makes you happy.”
That’s what was the most frustrating thing to me. There was no simple answer as to what would make me happy. It would make me happy not to have my brother pissed off at me, but at the same time, it would make me happy to be able to be with Matt. As far as Joe goes, I couldn’t care less as to what he thought or had to say about things, but Matt might. He might not want to put up with Joe’s nonsense.
I had been trying to push my feelings for him to the side, but I couldn’t go on denying it any longer. I loved him and wanted him in my life, but I also wanted my family in my life at the same time. I’ll never know how he was able to cut his parents out of his life like he did, but that’s not something I could do. Andrew and I are too close to them to do something like that.
“Susan, if you were in my shoes, what would you do?”
“Depends,” she stopped working on my hair. “How strong are your feelings for him?”
“Would you get out of my head?” I turned to look at her. “You do that ish all the time, and it’s creepy as hell.” We had a good laugh for a minute, “No, seriously,” I glanced down at the floor, avoiding eye contact. “I think I love him.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I looked up in the mirror to see her reaction.
She pursed her lips and put her hands on her waist, “I think you need to set your family—the whole family—down and talk to them. The only way that you and that man are g
oing to be together is if the boys aren’t trying to kill each other.”
I knew she was right, and I hated it. The only way I was going to accomplish my brother not wanting to kill him and get my parents on board was if I sat them all down and explained the past to them. Matt wasn’t the bad guy that we all thought he was and even if they didn’t approve of me having a relationship with him, he deserved my family knowing that.
“How is your new job going?” she asked, trying to change the subject.
“Pretty good. They were right; I was able to learn the systems easily when I first started. Right now I’m making sure I learn everything I can so when there’s an opening, maybe I can advance, and my boss is such a sweetheart. I should try to hook you up with him.”
“Oh, no. Ms. Susan doesn’t need a man, thank you very much.” She grabbed another section of my hair and started working on it. “Besides,” she said a minute later, “what if things didn’t work out with us and he took it out on you?”
I could see her wheels turning as she thought about it. “How long has it been?” She looked at me, and her eyes bulged out of her head. “I’m not asking about your sex life. How long since you’ve dated someone?”
“Define date,” she grabbed another piece of weave and started working it into my hair. “Like, having dinner or having ongoing dates?”
“Ongoing. A relationship, not just someone asked you to dinner, and you never saw or heard from them again.”
“That isn’t a fair question because I’m always so busy with church and then I—”
“Susan, we all go to church, we’re all in the support group, and we all work. Come on now. Tell the truth.”
“Fine,” she stopped working on my hair, “probably….”
I could tell she was thinking and by the way she was trying to recall the last time, the answer was: too long. “Susan! Listen to yourself. You can’t even recall the last time. I’m going to set you up on a date with him.”
“You need to worry about your own love life before you start meddling in other people’s love lives. What are you going to do about your little fireman?”
“I’m going to think on that one for a minute. I do know that before I talk to my parents, I’ll have to convince Lance and get him on board.”
“Why? Why would you work on him first?”
“Because he’ll be the hardest to convince, and besides haven’t you seen my daddy before? It’ll take an army to convince him of something once his mind is made up. Hopefully, if I can get my brother on board, he can help me convince daddy. Best case scenario, at least, he won’t be teaming up with him which is already winning half the battle.”
Going over to Susan’s to get my hair done was the best thing I could have done for myself. It let me clear my head, relax and talk to someone else who cared about me and my happiness. I decided on my way home that I was going to force Lance to sit down to talk to me. There was going to have to be some middle ground that we were going to have to meet at, and I knew it would be a challenge, but I was willing to at least give it a shot before I called in quits with Matt.
“What do you want to talk about?” he asked as I brought us some iced tea and sat next to him on the couch. Matt had gotten him pretty good in the fight. His eyebrow was still busted wide open.
“Before you get all crazy on me, I want you to listen to me. Just listen, don’t say a word and let me finish. Do you agree?”
He sat his glass down, “This is about Matt, isn’t it? I know it is. Say what you have to say and then I’ve got something to say to you, too.”
“Matt never told on you. He was trying to help you get rid of evidence. When he was telling me where to have you dump everything, his dad had picked up the other line in the house and was listening. His dad went and dug out all that evidence himself and turned it in. He knew if he could crack a big case like that, he would get promoted. He was looking for an early retirement, and you gave it to him.”
“I call bullshit on that, Stephanie. You can’t believe everything you hear. Didn’t daddy teach you that?” his fingers dug into his forehead as he became visibly annoyed with me. “I’m only going to tell you this once,” he started, “but that boyfriend of yours is no saint. Did you know he used to be an alcoholic? He’s homeless and sleeps at the fire station? He almost lost his job recently? Sis,” he grabbed my arm, pressing his fingers into it, “I want better than that for you. You and Andrew don’t deserve an alcoholic, homeless, loser who—”
“Slaps me in the face? Berates me in front of people? Puts me down and tells me how worthless I am? Or how about someone who locks me in my own apartment? Huh, Lance? Huh?” I scanned his face for his reaction, but it was blank. It didn’t even register with him who I was talking about. “Because that’s what you set me up with when you insisted that I get with your boy Joe. Remember that? Why do you think we didn’t work out? It wasn’t because he wasn’t happy! It’s because I wasn’t happy. Matt would never do those things to me!”
“Would you listen to your dumb ass?” he laughed. “Joe would never do any of that. I know him, and I know that fireman that you think is so wonderful. At least Joe had a place; he wasn’t almost getting fired from his job, and he certainly didn’t have a drinking problem.”
“Are you kidding me? He’s drunk all the time! The only difference between him and Matt is that Matt was man enough to admit he had a drinking problem. Just because he refuses to admit it, it doesn’t mean that he’s not an alcoholic. The first step is admitting you have a problem! Joe’s probably the biggest drinker that I know.”
“That dude is a loser, Stephanie. He’s no good for you or Andrew, and if Joe catches you around him, he might beat him within an inch of his life—if he doesn’t kill him. Same goes for me, too. We’re not through—Matt and me—because if I catch him out again, it’s on.”
“That’s not going to solve anything, Lance. If you would just think about it for a minute, it makes perfect sense that he never told. Why would he? We had plans, a future together and were happy. You and him never had any beef with each other and instead of telling you where to hide it, he already knew where all the evidence was. It was at our house; he could have just sent the police to mom and dad’s instead of sending everyone on a damned scavenger hunt!”
I’d had enough of arguing with him. I stood up, put on my jacket and left. I needed to get out to get some fresh air and clear my head. Arguing with everyone was getting to be too much, and I couldn’t take it anymore. There was one more person—the most important person in this mess—that I needed to talk to.
Chapter 19
Matt
I did it. I made it through my 48-hour shift without any incidents or fuck-ups. My plan was to enjoy my next three days off and try to unwind. One activity that I liked to do was go hiking, and today was no exception. The weather was perfect, I felt refreshed and was getting ready when Byron called me down to the main bay. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw her standing by the fire truck.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her.
“I came to talk. Do you have a minute?”
I looked at the break room and saw all of the guys starting through the glass window. “Come with me. We can go outside to have a little privacy.” We walked to the side of the building where all of our cars were parked. “I can’t believe you came, especially after you walked out on me the other night.”
“I know, I’m sorry. Things have gotten so damn complicated, and I needed some time to clear my head, to think.” I laughed. Did she need time to think? “I tried talking to my brother about us.”
“What did he say?” Even as hurt as I was at her for walking out on me, I couldn’t turn away from her. I wanted to, but her sweet face standing before me made me realize how lucky I was to have her in my life. The fact that she talked to her brother made me hopeful. Maybe she was here because she had good news. She sighed. Or not.
“He thinks…,” she struggled for the right words. “In his mind,
he thinks Joe has done no wrong, and you’re the biggest asshole there is. He refuses to listen to me about you. I was hoping that I could get him on my side—our side—and make him believe that you didn’t turn him in, but—” her voice dropped off.
“He wouldn’t listen?” She shook her head slowly.
“No.” She looked up at me with those beautiful chestnut eyes, “He wouldn’t even budge. For some reason, he’s got it stuck in his head that you’re a snitch and won’t listen to a word I say. He said that if he catches you out,” her lip started to quiver as she gulped, “it’s on.”
“Stephanie, don’t worry about your brother. Here,” I held out my hand, “come with me. I was about to go on a hike. We can walk together and figure things out. There has to be an answer. I was about ready to give up, but you’ve renewed my hope. I want you, Stephanie.”
She threw herself into me, burying her head in my chest as she sobbed. I held her, stroking her hair and just let her cry. This wasn’t any ordinary cry, though. I couldn’t help but think something was wrong. Very, very wrong. Leaning back to get a better view of her face I asked, “What’s wrong, baby?”
“Matt,” she sobbed and wiped her nose on my shirt, “I don’t think we can do this. There’s no way we can be together. We just can’t. I don’t want you to get hurt. Joe and my brother don’t fight fair, and if they caught you out while they were together, they might kill you.”
I wrapped my arms around her, holding her tight. Those bastards. They’re bullying her into doing what they want her to do. They don’t give a shit if she’s happy or not. “Shhh. Listen to me, Stephanie. We’re in this together, and we’ll get through this. I’m not worried about your brother or your ex. I’m a big boy, and I can handle myself. Don’t worry about a thing.”
“You’re wrong,” she pulled away from me. “I’m so tired of arguing with them about everything. In their eyes, you’ll never be good enough, and I can’t keep doing this. I’m tired of arguing; I ’m tired of walking on eggshells, and I’m tired of sneaking around to be happy. That’s no way to live.” She looked at the ground, avoiding eye contact with me. “I’m sorry, Matt. If the situation was better, or if I could get through to him, things would be different, so this is over.”