by Ruby McNally
He turns on the engine, checking all the tank levels. Addie, Jill and Sharpie are in the back, scrambling to get their folding jumpseats down, Brooks buckling himself into the front. Eli hits the sirens and lights them up, then steps on the gas.
The flag’s planted in one of the old post-war developments in Lee called Berkshire Woods or some ridiculous thing, a cluster of small single family homes all identical in their ugliness except for paint color. The streets are all named after different kinds of trees. “Jim’s ex-wife lives somewhere over here,” he hears Addie say as he turns onto Pine, then Birch, then Cedar. The address they’re looking for is on Oak.
“Fuck me.” Eli can tell it’s another arson before he even hits the brakes on the engine: the burn pattern, how fast and hot the bastard’s lit up. Fifteen’s just parking at the curb. Eli’s hauling himself up to the roof of the engine as fast as his leaden body will take him, but he’s still close enough to hear Addie swear.
“That’s Renee,” she says, pointing across the yard at a forty-some-odd woman screaming her face off, a balding guy holding her back. Then, as somebody launches himself out of Fifteen’s engine, “And that’s Jim. Where’s Bryan? Renee!” Addie hollers, as she and Buono yank at the crosslays. “Where’s Bry?”
“I can’t find him!” Jim’s ex-wife yells back. She and her new husband are pristine, no soot or scorch marks. They must have got out early. “I think he’s—”
Eli doesn’t need to hear the rest of her sentence. He swears, turning on the water and the crosslays all at once with one fierce wrench, then turns his attention to the sprinting figure. “Jim!” he screams into his helmet mic, even though he knows Fifteen and Eleven are on different frequencies. “Wait!”
But Jim is already disappearing through the open front door. The parlor windows are lit up from inside by a terrible wall of flame, so bright it’s casting a glow down onto the grass outside. For just a second, it feels like everything stops.
“Did—did he have an O-mask on?” Jill asks into the open mic. No one answers.
Eli recovers first, yelling at a frozen Sharpie to run a line to the hydrant. Brooks sticks his head into the truck cabin and gets on the radio to Fifteen’s driver, wrangling everyone onto the same channel. The first thing Eli hears when he switches frequencies is the guys from Fifteen yelling and yelling for Jim to come back. They don’t stop until their captain tells them to keep the comm lines clear. Eli swallows, forcing himself to concentrate on the gauges.
Five minutes later the blaze isn’t anywhere near controlled yet, even with seven hoses and over 1,000 gallons of water on it. Eli switches over to the auxiliary supply just as Fifteen switches to foam. Nothing seems to make a difference. Which is why he’s so surprised to find Addie strapping on a respirator when Brooks calls him down to man an extra hose.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demands, the taste of his heart like a handful of pennies pulsing at the back of his throat. To Brooks: “What’s she doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Addie asks him. She’s got her helmet off to fit the mask on, dark hair wisping out of its practical braid and a look on her face like she’s wasting his time. Fuck, he loves her so much.
He—oh, God.
“Are you insane?” he asks, to cover—he can’t think about that now, he can’t. “No way is it clear to go in there. Cap—”
“Jim’s in there alone,” Addie interrupts. “Who knows where Bry is—”
“So send somebody else,” Eli blurts. He wants to grab her and shake her until she listens—although realistically that would probably be forever, all the stunts he’s pulled so far this summer. Well, tough. He’ll play fast and loose with his own life, maybe, but not hers. Never hers. He loves her. Fuck. “Send somebody else,” he repeats, not caring if the captain hears.
Addie cares though. “I know you didn’t just say that to me,” she tells him, fitting the mask over her face with finality. Just like that, she’s gone. Eli watches her head through the front door, hands open and closing helplessly.
“What the fuck?” he asks Brooks when she’s out of sight. He forgets to push transmit on his radio and has to repeat himself, fingers slick against the button. He forgot his Kevlar gloves up in the truck. “Let Fifteen send someone in!” he adds. “Jim is their guy!”
Even through the helmet visor, Brooks’s stare is like a slap. “O’Neill is a firefighter, Grant,” he says crisply. “We don’t distinguish. Now pick up a goddamn hose.”
They call that pulling the goalie, getting the driver down off the roof. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good sign.
“Motherfucker,” Eli swears, picking up Addie’s hose and aiming it toward the upper level. The paramedics are arriving now, unloading their gurneys to wait by the curb. Eli doesn’t like the look of those empty stretchers, like coffins lined up in a row. He glues his eyes to the front door and prays.
Five minutes later, Addie reappears like Eli’s own personal miracle, half-dragging half-carrying Jim. The EMTs kick into gear immediately, sprinting across the lawn with their equipment. Jim’s entire face is blackened, soot or burns or both. Eli nearly drops his hose in relief.
But, “Where’s Bry?” Renee screams, tearing free of her new husband. “Jim, where is Bryan?”
Addie pulls her mask off. Her face is pink with heat, a solid brick red Eli associates with orgasm number two. Jesus God, he loves her. “Haven’t seen him yet,” she pants. Renee starts screeching, and Addie holds up a hand. “I’m going back in, okay? I’m gonna go back in.”
“You’re what?” Eli roars, but both his hands are on the hose and it doesn’t transmit.
What does though: the panicky look in Jim O’Neill’s eyes as they load him onto the stretcher, fighting the EMTs as they try to get an oxygen mask on over his ravaged face. At first Eli thinks he’s just delirious, heat and smoke and fear, but then he raises an arm and points and Eli realizes he’s trying to get something out.
“Grant,” Jim manages, voice wheezy and barely audible. “Grant, he’s not—”
Eli turns and looks over his shoulder, following Jim’s sight line—there’s a kid on the porch three houses down across the street, one arm wrapped around a support beam. Bryan’s far enough away that nobody noticed him in all the commotion, all haze and flame and noise—but not so far that Eli can’t recognize the transfixed, hypnotized expression on his face as he watches the house go up in front of him.
It’s the exact same expression Will used to get.
Just like that, Eli fucking knows.
“House is empty!” he yells into the radio—keeps on yelling like his life depends on it, because Addie’s does. “He’s out here, kid’s out here. Addie. Addie, do you hear me? Get out of the house.”
Addie doesn’t reappear.
Just like that, Eli finds himself running. He doesn’t wait, doesn’t think, just drops the hose and sprints up the smoking porch steps. The heat hits him right away, the exposed lower half of his face. He’s raising his hands to tug the collar of his turnout jacket up when he realizes he still has no gloves.
“Grant!” That’s Brooks, on the radio. “Get back here right now.”
The front hallway hasn’t gone up yet, as far as Eli can see—which isn’t much, thanks to the smoke. One inhale sends him coughing, great hacking gasps. That’s something the average person doesn’t know about fire safety, generally—that it’s the smoke that kills you, that by the time you have occasion to use stop-drop-and-roll you’re already dead. The fire alarm was going off at some point, but it’s stopped now, probably melted.
“Addie!” Eli yells, both into the mic and out loud. The roar of the flame snatches his voice away. “Addie, fuck, answer me right now.”
The heat is insane. Eli balls his hands up inside his jacket sleeves, protecting them as best he can. The stairs are on fire. If she went up there—
“Addie!” Every breath Eli takes in here is dangerous. If he passes out, someone is goin
g to have to come and drag his useless ass to safety. “Addie, please.” His heart is pounding. He remembers calling for his dad all of a sudden, screaming at the top of his lungs as the fire in the shed got out of control, flames leaping, heat like he’d never felt before up until that moment. It had been a big deal, how Will let Eli be the one to strike the match. They’d never burned anything that big before. They didn’t have a plan to put it out.
Now he stands in the hallway for another beat, stuck, flames roaring around him—it seems awful and fitting that none of his usual plans are working, that Addie’s foiled him here along with everywhere else. He’s about to head back out, grab a breath of fresh air and some gloves and some backup, when her voice crackles over the radio. “Eli? Eli, dammit, get out here, I’m clear. I’m clear.”
Eli feels the relief wash over him like a physical thing—the hiss of water dousing a flame, the steam rushing up like that. “Addie,” he says, and “I’m coming.” He turns around and walks through fire to get to the place where she is.
It was Bry who started the fires.
Addie repeats that to herself over and over on the ride back to the station, his name like a litany or a novena, the same words over and over for nine days. Bryan, she thinks, not believing, staring out the window of the engine. Brooks told her to sit up front. Bryan, Bryan, Bryan.
It took her a moment to figure out what was happening when she ran back out of the burning house. She heard Eli’s all clear and ducked through the side door, swinging around to find the front lawn in chaos, hoses and men and Renee still screaming. Addie was horrified before she realized they were screams of joy—there was Bry, wrapped up in his mother’s arms. For a blissful second, Addie’s entire body went limp with relief.
Then Eli tumbled out the front door. And started talking.
After all was said and done, the police led Bryan away in handcuffs. He was crying, white-faced. When the arresting officer cupped his head to guide him into the squad car, it looked gigantic against his tiny dark scalp, an adult holding a baby. Jill Buono clucked her tongue.
“Seems like a bit much,” she said.
Eli, who was climbing back up onto the roof to man the pumps, swung around to look at her. “People died,” he hissed.
Addie had almost forgotten. The mother of two, the one who asphyxiated in her sleep.
Drew.
“Right,” Jill said. “I—right.”
Bryan killed two people, snuffed their lives out like birthday candles. Now, in the engine, Addie clenches both hands into fists and tries not to sob.
“You okay?” Eli mutters from the driver’s seat. He nearly wasn’t okay himself, the goddamn idiot. Brooks made three EMTs check him out for smoke inhalation, and as it is he has first degree burns on both hands. Addie can see them now, swollen and red on the wheel.
“Shut up,” she says, taking off her helmet. Her whole head is drenched in sweat, her braid sticking to her neck like a limp bundle of yarn. That’s the first time she’s ever had to use her air pack. She glances back at Eli, who’s still watching her out of the corner of his eye. “Sorry,” she mutters. “I just—sorry.”
“S’okay,” he tells her. Addie wonders if it is. If she’s remembering that article correctly, Bryan is just two years older than Eli’s brother was when he died.
Jill calls first shower back at the station so once Addie’s turnout gear is stowed she stumbles up to the bunks, not particularly caring how sweaty and smoky she is, that she’ll have to wash the sheets as soon as she touches them. She just wants to crash out for a minute, to shut her eyes and close herself off to the rest of the world. It’s too much, all of a sudden. This whole summer has just been too much. She’s so out of it she doesn’t realize Eli’s following until the door clicks shut behind him.
“I love you,” he says, when she looks.
Which, what the fuck?
“No, you don’t,” Addie counters automatically, her heart tripping over itself inside her chest at the look on his face, serious and patient and dark. He hasn’t showered either. Her voice sounds panicky even to her own ears. “I—what? No, you don’t.”
“Yeah, I do.” Eli takes a step toward her, then another. “Addie-girl. I love you.”
Addie takes a step back, instinctive. The backs of her knees hit a metal bedframe. “You definitely don’t.”
“I do,” Eli says calmly. “I love you. And I’m not gonna stop saying it, so you’re gonna have to shut me up some other way.”
“That’s not funny.” Addie shivers. The AC is on full blast in here, the sweat starting to dry all over her body. “We’re at work. You just got divorced.”
Eli blinks. “I’ve been divorced for over a year,” he says, nonplussed. He’s right in front of her now, close enough that Addie can see each line around his eyes when he frowns. “And besides, how much I love you has nothing to do—”
“It does though,” Addie insists. “You don’t love me, you love your wife. Come on.” She holds out her hands, palms up. One of them is going to see sense. “You haven’t moved on yet, Eli. You’re just saying it because of the fire.”
“I haven’t moved on yet?” Eli laughs, cupping her face. His hands feel hot, still bleeding heat and flame from the arson. Addie shivers again, like someone is walking over her grave. “You’re something else, princess,” Eli tells her, grinning. “You’re so fucking spoiled.” Addie opens her mouth in indignation, but he talks right over her. “No, shush. I love you. I’m the one who gets to say so.”
“You don’t,” Addie tries again.
Eli nods, calm and agreeable. She can smell him, sweat and salt and smoke. “I do,” he repeats, tipping his face down close to Addie’s. It occurs to her to wonder if the door to the bunks has a lock. “I do,” he murmurs quietly. His mouth, when it lands on Addie’s, is hot and familiar and dry.
Addie whimpers then, involuntary—she missed him, oh God, it’s been over a week and it’s like she didn’t let herself feel anything like wanting until right now. There’s a low stubborn ache in her hips. “You don’t,” she mumbles against his mouth, Eli coming after her to bite at the very edges of her tongue, stinging and insistent. She’s not sure if she sits down on the bed on her own or if he pushes her that way.
Either way, she brings him with her, both of them landing on the thin, cheap mattress in a tangle of limbs and dirty station gear, the flimsy springs screeching at their combined weight. “Shh,” Eli mutters into her neck. He’s sucking there at the pulse point, hard suction like possibly she’s not the only one who’s missed the contact these last few days. Addie’s hands scrabble through his thick curly hair, anxious. His scalp is damp with sweat.
“It was Bryan,” she says, voice cracking. The words slur into his jaw, like she’s murmuring endearments instead of horrible truths.
“I know,” Eli tells her. “Shh, I know.” His fingers are travelling, waist-boobs-neck, like he can’t get enough or decide where to settle. “When you went in there—God, Addie.”
His hands are under her shirt now, investigating the band of her sport bra. “It’s my job,” Addie tries to tell him, but he’s biting her tongue, sloppy, desperate kissing that’s more teeth than mouth. Addie whimpers. Both of them try to yank her station shirt over her head without unbuttoning and it gets caught inside-out at the neck, Addie’s cross pulling at her throat. They’re on the fourth lower bunk on the left, Addie’s favorite because it’s partly tucked into an alcove, not visible from the windowed door. Still, if anyone comes more than five steps into the room—
“Here.” Eli undoes the top three buttons and strips the whole mess up her arms, sport bra included, leaving it in a tangle around her wrists. Then he ducks his head back down to bite.
“Eli.” Addie tugs, but there’s too much fabric around her arms. They’re stuck up over her head, everything pulled tight and exposed. She glances toward the door nervously. “I can’t get—”
“Uh-huh,” Eli mumbles into her damp, sweaty skin—first o
ne side and then the other, fingertips pulling roughly when his mouth’s otherwise engaged. Addie arches. “I know you can’t.” His free hand sneaks up, circles her cotton-covered wrists and holds even tighter. “Just for a sec.”
“I—okay. Yeah.” Addie tips her head back and lets him lick the salt all off her body, wrapping her leg behind his and yanking ’til he gives her some of his weight. I love you. Jesus Christ, he’s totally lost it. Adrenaline, maybe, the thrill of the fire and—
“OhmyGod, Eli.” Addie loses the rest of her thought in a gasp, his teeth sinking into the soft underside of her breast deep enough that she knows she’ll be able to see the mark in the mirror. He’s got one thigh between hers, insistent, pressing until she gets the message and grinds. He’s working himself against her that way too, how hard he is against her hip right through his thick work pants and hers. For a second she wonders if she could finish him this way, dumb high-school grinding like she never actually did when she was sixteen.
That is—yeah. That’s not how Addie wants to finish him.
“Help me,” she mumbles, bumping her trapped wrists against his arm insistently. When Eli doesn’t listen right away, she bites back, nipping at his ears and sooty neck. He only groans louder, moving his hips in stuttery thrusts. It occurs to Addie that maybe he thinks she wants him to stop.
“Come on,” Addie whines, yanking on his hair. She’s heavy between her legs, swollen and aching. Her breasts actually hurt. Then, “I swear to God, Eli, if you come before you fuck me, I will kill you.”
That works. “Shit, Addie-girl.” Eli practically rips himself away from her. For a second he holds very, very still. “Shit. Are you serious?”
Addie watches him. Soot is smeared across the lower half of his face like a streaky five o’clock shadow, darker and thicker than any facial hair. She wonders if her mouth is blackened. “Want you. To fuck me,” she instructs, enunciating clearly. She isn’t even embarrassed. If he’s going to say bullshit like I love you, then. “Want you to. Right here. Fast.”