Out of the Blue (2 page)

I felt Jake’s presence before I heard him. I knew he stood outside the shower and watched my shadowy form. I’d always been able to tell when he walked into a room, always sensed when he was near, even when I couldn’t see him. Ever since the first time I saw him on campus over nine years ago, the awareness had never gone away. And after almost ten years, my heart still skipped a beat every time I saw him. Every time.

I heard Jake’s footsteps a second before he opened the shower door and climbed in behind me. I didn’t move. Jake wrapped his body around mine, pressing his sculpted, hairless chest to my broader back. Tightening his arms around my waist, he rested his cheek against my shoulder blade.

“Hi,” he whispered. “Bad night, huh?”

I didn’t say anything. My voice had left me, and all I could do was hang my head lower and release a quiet sigh. Grabbing one of his hands, I entwined our fingers together, letting them rest on my flat stomach. Jake held me for a long minute, and I relished the feel of his body against mine. Jake sighed and tried to release my hand, but I didn’t want to let go—he’d always been my anchor and I needed his touch to ground me.

“Let go, Romeo. I’m not going anywhere, just let me take care of you before I go to work.”

I held on for a second longer, then let go of his hand and placed mine back on the tile. Jake grabbed the washcloth and shower gel, then kneaded my aching neck with one hand and washed me with the other. He took his time, never rushing; he knew I needed this to calm down enough to sleep. Jake skimmed his hands down my body, up to my biceps, and back down to my lower back, all the while chasing the water with little kisses to my heated skin.

Jake washed my ass thoroughly. He often told me it was my best feature, and sometimes I even believed him based on the way he worshipped it. Bringing the washcloth to the front of my body, he washed my cock and balls slowly as he massaged my ass cheek with his other hand. His touch was gentle as he kissed my shoulders and the back of my neck with barely there touches, like a butterfly had briefly landed on me and was tiptoeing across my sensitive skin.

Grabbing the shampoo, Jake washed my hair, his fingers lingering on my scalp, and I leaned backward against him, reveling in his touch. He applied more pressure with his fingers, hitting all the tight spots, and I groaned as the residual tension left my body.

After what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few minutes, Jake’s arms came around me as he helped me step out of the shower. He toweled me dry with soft, even movements, then draped a towel around his waist. With an arm around my waist he guided me to the bed he’d recently vacated, and it looked so inviting, even without him in it. Pulling the covers down on my side of the bed, he then fluffed the pillows for me, and I climbed in and closed my eyes, tugging the covers up high.

Exhaustion dragged me under, but not before I felt Jake’s lips at my temple. “I love you, Romeo. Sleep well and I’ll be home after work for the blowjob you owe me.”

I heard him snicker as he walked back to the bathroom to dry off. Smug bastard.

I couldn’t remember what I’d been dreaming of, but I jerked awake and threw the covers off me. My skin burned and my heart thudded against my ribs. I turned to look at the bedside clock. Eleven thirty. Still morning. What the hell woke me up? Shit, I was dripping wet and when I glanced at the clock again, my eyes landed on the photo that sat on Jake’s bedside table.

It was a photo of us taken last summer at his aunt’s winery. It had been a little after lunch and the sun was hitting the vines just right, causing short shadows on the freshly cut lawn spread out before us. The sky was clear and blue, not a cloud in sight. Jake and I stood next to an old limestone pillar, one of the few structures that remained from the original homestead, our arms around each other’s shoulders as we leaned our heads together and looked into the camera. The sun was at the right angle that made all the colors look that much brighter, and it emphasized his dark brown hair and brilliant, luminous blue eyes.

He looked just like James Montague.

I had my first nightmare two days after the accident and it had been a killer. My dream started the same way as the freeway accident—until I got to the passenger in the back. Then it wasn’t a ten-year-old boy with large blue eyes. It was Jake. His dull eyes looked right at me, and I could see the question behind them.
Why didn’t you save me?

My blood froze, my knees buckled, and my heart stopped. In the dream I didn’t say a quick prayer for the victim like I had the night of the accident, instead I pulled Jake out of the car and cradled him in my lap while I rocked and cried to the night sky. I had just lost my best friend and soul mate.

I woke covered in sweat, screaming Jake’s name. I struggled to breathe, and I smelled the gas fumes and death all around me. I was emotionally wrung out and the pain and loss followed me like an ominous dark cloud.

Tired and irritable, I snapped at Jake when he came home from work, and when I saw the hurt and confusion on his face, I apologized quickly. “I’m sorry, babe, you didn’t deserve that. I’m just a little tired, I think.”

Jake raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve been a little strung-out these last couple of days. When I start day shift, my body will get back into the swing of things and I’ll be back to normal, you’ll see.” Jake’s expression said he didn’t believe me. We hadn’t seen much of each other lately, which was the biggest reason why I hated night shift. He was sleeping as I was working and vice versa. I’d be walking in the door as he was walking out. We would have brief conversations but our interaction was minimal at best and at the moment, I welcomed it. I didn’t know how to tell Jake what I had witnessed.

I couldn’t find relief from the images in my head. I thought I just needed sleep. I thought if my body wasn’t so tired after a run of night shifts, I would feel better and the images in my head would, maybe not go away, but lessen some. It wasn’t unusual for images to stick around for a little while after a bad call, but they wouldn’t usually affect me for more than a couple of days.

There were a lot of calls I never told Jake or my parents about, and some of the images still lived inside my head. I wanted to protect my family from the world of suffering and pain that firefighters see every day. Jake knew there had been an accident on the freeway and that some people lost their lives in the pileup. It was on the news so I couldn’t hide it from him, but I never went into specifics, like ages or injuries. Who wants to hear about how a kid died? Jake didn’t need to know what burning flesh smells like, and I wasn’t going to tell him. What I
could
hide were the graphic images that played in my head day in and day out.

I was a SFFD Firefighter, for Christ’s sake. I’ve been called a hero, but in reality I was just a man doing his job. My job just happened to be saving people’s lives.

So why did the image of this young boy, James Montague, make me breathless with fear? Yes, he looked like Jake, the one man I couldn’t live without, but he wasn’t Jake. Logically, I knew that. But when I closed my eyes, it wasn’t James Montague in the car with a piece of metal protruding from his neck.

During our brief conversations, I struggled to get Jake to see reason. We didn’t need a car. Anyone who lives in San Francisco will tell you, you don’t need a car to get around. Buses, trolleys, and cabs can get you anywhere you need to go. Jake walked to work most days and took a trolley when it rained. I walked to the fire station, and some days I would run if I wanted an extra workout. There were a couple days where I would drive but only if I was running an errand on the way to or from work.

Our car cost us money sitting on the street. Sure, we used it when we went shopping—it was handy to put the bags and boxes in the trunk—but stores delivered, right? Jake was stubborn, though, especially when it came to seeing his Aunt Cece in Napa.

For the time-being the car stayed. I just wouldn’t let him drive it.

We shared breakfast before Jake went to work and I went to bed and when I looked at him, a smile would play across his lips when our eyes met, but I would ruin it by turning away. I had trouble meeting his gaze. I could tell it confused him, and although he hadn’t commented yet, I knew it was only a matter of time.

A couple of nights later as I walked to the fire station in the early evening, my heart beat quicker with each step I took. By the time I got to the station, my throat had closed and I was sweating bullets.

I stood at the entrance, my feet rooted to the spot, and I couldn’t make myself take that final step over the threshold.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

It didn’t make any sense, I came to the station all the time and this was no different from any other day. What had me so freaked that I had goose bumps at the thought of going to work?

Fear slammed into me, knocking the air from my lungs.

What if I was called to a vehicle accident? What if it was Jake? What if it was my parents? What if I couldn’t save someone I loved? And why was I having these thoughts now? Thoughts tumbled around in my head like they were clothes on a spin cycle.

Jake was at home, I’d just left him as he was finishing his dinner.

I knew he was concerned about me and that I had been acting a little weird these past couple of days, but I shrugged his worries off, telling him I was getting old and my body couldn’t keep up with the demands of night shift anymore. He didn’t seem to buy it, but he didn’t question me further. He just kept looking at me like he expected something to happen.

Nothing happened, though. I kept it together and hid the worst of my thoughts and fears. I wasn’t going to show Jake any weakness. He needed to see me the way he always had: brave, strong and together.

I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to Mom making sure she and Dad were fine. Sure enough, my fast-fingered mom texted back within seconds, reminding me of my sister Beth’s visit next month.

My pulse calmed and my breathing returned to normal after I convinced myself that everyone I loved was fine, just in time to feel Kris’s slap on my back. “Hey, man. What’re you doing out here? There’s hot coffee inside.” Kris chuckled and walked past me, mumbling about the day shift and their inability to make a decent cup.

I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and followed my co-worker inside the station. As I walked down the corridor to the break room, a flyer pinned to the bulletin board grabbed my attention:
Do you suffer from PTSD? Read below to find out more.

PTSD? Isn’t that what military guys got when they’d been to war? My interest caught, I read on.

Approximately 37% of American firefighters suffer from PTSD.
We did? I was sure some firefighters suffered but not that many. I didn’t put a lot of stock in the statistics.

Difficulty sleeping?
Sure, didn’t everyone at some point?

Difficulty concentrating?
Uh. No.

Do you have upsetting dreams about a traumatic event?
Well, yeah, I was a firefighter. It came with the territory.

I stopped reading and wrote it off as the government wasting time and taxpayers’ money on printing. I was sure there were some colleagues who had trouble with what they’d seen, and we had a department psychiatrist here at the station who serviced all inner city firehouses. But I didn’t know of anyone who’d been to the psychiatrist for anything other than a usual debrief or yearly testing. If they did, they didn’t advertise.

I hadn’t been acting normally and I was tired and irritable. But wasn’t everyone at some stage? Dreams and tiredness didn’t equate to PTSD in my books. Maybe I was just getting old, like I’d told Jake.

Jake

I walked the few blocks home from work and felt my phone vibrate in my pocket.

I thumbed the screen. “Hey, my sweet.”

“Ugh, Jake. Stop calling me that,” Caroline whined.

“Aw, c’mon, sing it with me. ‘Sweeeeet Caro—’”

She cut me off. “You’re an ass, knock it off. I’m calling to see if Cameron’s working next weekend because I need a shopping partner and I thought we could shop for the perfect wedding rings for you.”

Cam wasn’t one to shop, so Caroline and I made sure our trips coincided with his shifts. It gave me an outlet on the weekends he worked and also gave me quality time with Caroline. I needed her opinion on wedding rings as my tenth anniversary with Cam was a few months off, and I wanted to surprise him. Caroline was the only person that knew of my intention to ask Cam to marry me then.

Cam and I hadn’t talked seriously about getting married, but it was always something we said we’d do when the time came. But I couldn’t imagine my life without him in it. I wanted to wear his ring and be able to call him my husband.

“That sounds like a great idea,” I replied as I walked down our street. “Cam will be on day shift, so he’ll be working all weekend. Where are you thinking of going?”

Opening the door to our building, I made my way up the stairs.

“I don’t care where we go, but I need a new dress for a date.”

“A date, huh?”

“It’s Adam from work and I’ve been putting him off. I agreed to Saturday night because I had nothing else to do. He’s taking me to a new restaurant, and I haven’t got anything to wear.”

I half listened, something about her dresses being too revealing for this restaurant, as I smelled a familiar scent in the air. Bessie’s special meat sauce. The aroma floated down the corridor. His grandmother’s special sauce took hours to cook, and Cam only cooked it when he was trying to take his mind off something. I’d had it numerous times, usually after a bad shift, and it tasted amazing.

“Are you even listening to me?” Caroline asked, bringing me out of my thoughts.

“Uh, sorry. I’ve walked in the building and I can smell Bessie’s sauce.”

“Oh. Good luck with that. I’ll call you later so we can plan next weekend.”

“Yeah, sure.”

I unlocked the apartment door and was hit full force with the smell of tomatoes, basil and garlic and my mouth watered. I threw my keys on the table and dropped my bag onto the chair by the door. I rounded the corner and saw Cam in the kitchen, stirring the sauce and frowning at it.