Putting Out Fires
Authors: Marie Sexton
Marie Sexton
2
Putting Out Fires
started because of a pink envelope with Jared’s name on it.
It was a Friday night. We’d just finished dinner, and I was settling in on the couch with a cold beer. Jared was next to me, grading a stack of papers on the arm of the couch. The dog we’d adopted six months earlier from the Humane Society in Boulder jumped up next to me and lay down with his head in my lap. He was a complete mutt, with begging eyes and hound-dog characteristics, and Jared had insisted on calling him Scooby.
I reached for the remote to change the channel, and that’s when I saw the envelope. “What’s this?” I asked, picking it up off the coffee table.
The envelope was already open, so I pulled the card out. It had a huge red heart on it, the words “Be My Valentine” written in flowing letters across it. “It’s Valentine’s Day?” I asked.
not
something teenage girls let go unnoticed.”
Putting Out Fires |
Marie Sexton
3
I looked back at the card in my hand. I didn’t open it, partly because that seemed too nosy, but also because I didn’t really want to see what it said. I was afraid it would only annoy me more. “Who’s giving you Valentines?” I asked, fighting back the horrible feeling that welled up in me at the thought of anybody else wanting him.
student?
” I asked with far more anger in my voice than was warranted.
“No!” I said. We both knew I was lying.
“It’s not a big deal,” he said, turning back to his papers.
I knew he was right. She was a student, and too young, and female to boot. I knew she was absolutely no threat to me. Still, I’ve never exactly been rational when it comes to Jared. The fact that somebody else was giving him a Valentine annoyed me. “I don’t think you should encourage that kind of behavior,” I said.
Usually he found my jealousy amusing, but the look he turned on me was more annoyed than anything else. “It’s nice to feel appreciated once in a while,” he snapped.
What was I supposed to say to that? Did he think I didn’t appreciate him? If that’s what he thought, he was wrong, but it didn’t matter. Whatever I said now would end up sounding defensive and insincere.
We didn’t talk much the rest of the night. He was busy grading papers. I couldn’t tell if he was still mad at me or not, and I was too afraid to ask. I didn’t want to fight with
Marie Sexton
4
him. It wasn’t until we went to bed that I found out for sure. When I reached for him, he turned away without a word, and I lay on my side of the bed trying to decide what to do.
It had been three years since we met, two and a half since we’d become lovers, one since I’d given him the rings. After coming out to my parents, Jared and I had settled easily into our relationship. We were always happy together, but it was a low-key, comfortable kind of happiness. I worried now that we were doing as so many other couples did, taking each other for granted. For myself, I could honestly say I loved him as much now as I ever had—maybe more—but I wasn’t exactly an affectionate guy. Maybe I needed to do more.
I slept fitfully and my alarm woke me at 4:15 the next morning. I had to work the five-to-two shift. Jared was still asleep, sprawled out on his stomach in the middle of the bed like always. I pushed his hair out of the way to kiss the back of his neck. I slid my hand down his back and heard his breathing change as he started to wake. “Tell me you’re not still mad,” I said.
He sighed and said sleepily, “I’m not still mad.” “Are you sure?” I asked.
“I promise.”
“I’m sorry I’m a jealous asshole.”
“You’re forgiven,” he said. “Now go away so I can sleep.” “I’ll see you at two,” I said as I started to get out of bed.
“You won’t, actually,” he said into his pillow. “The student council suckered me into helping decorate for the Valentine dance tonight.”
Marie Sexton
5
“Bummer.”
“I was just happy to get out of being a chaperone.” He rolled away from me and pulled the covers over his head. “I’ll be home around five,” he said. “I hope.”
He said he wasn’t mad anymore, and I believed him. And yet, I couldn’t get his words from the night before out of my head.
“It’s nice to feel appreciated once in a while.”
I thought about it all day, and I could only come to one conclusion: Jared thought I didn’t appreciate him, and that bothered me.
My own insecurities were bad enough, but at the end of my shift, I walked into the locker room and found Grant Jameson. In theory, he was getting ready to start his shift. In reality, he was sitting on the wooden bench with his head in his hands.
Grant wasn’t exactly my favorite person. After the mountain biking trip with Jared, he’d become significantly more bearable. He’d quit referring to Jared as a pansy, and it had been months since he’d made any kind of sarcastic comment to me about my sexuality. Still, we both knew we weren’t ever going to be best friends.
“What’s up, Grant?” I asked, not so much because I cared as because it seemed like the thing to do. I was expecting one of the usual things: he was tired, or hung over, or legitimately sick. What he said surprised me.
Marie Sexton
6
“Connie left me.”
Grant and I worked together a lot. Even not being the best of friends, I’d heard enough about his marriage to know that it wasn’t perfect. Still, I hadn’t ever realized it was quite that bad, either. “What happened?” I asked.
I should have said something. I should have said “sorry”, or offered to buy him a beer after his shift. But all I could think about was the way those words seemed to keep haunting me. It felt like a sign. I had to do something for Jared, make some kind of gesture so he’d know how I felt. After all, it was Valentine’s Day. What better day to try to show him how much I still loved him?
I went to the grocery store after leaving work, not sure what I was looking for. The people who ran the place were nice enough to have all of the Valentine shit in one aisle, so I didn’t have to go far. The aisle was full of men scrounging for last-minute gifts. The selection of chocolates was dwindling fast, and it was only two o’clock. How many men hadn’t even realized yet what day it was? How many had no idea the peril they faced when they walked in the door empty-handed at the end of the work day? I pictured the aisle at five-thirty that evening, men scrambling for the last bouquet of flowers. It was like an article out of
The Onion
: “Desperate Men Battle Over Roses in Attempt to Prove Their Love.” I almost laughed out loud at the thought.
I surveyed the options: cards, flowers, stuffed animals, and heart-shaped boxes of chocolate. I thought about how it would feel to hand one of those things to Jared when he
Marie Sexton
7
walked in the door and felt my face turning red. He’d smile, of course, because he always smiled, but I could picture the amusement in his eyes. He’d have a hard time not laughing at me. And who could blame him? What guy wanted a box of cheap chocolates and a pink stuffed bear? A six-pack of beer and tickets to a football game, maybe. But not this Hallmark crap.
I returned to my Jeep in defeat. The traditional gifts were obviously out. Still, I had to do something. Football tickets would have been perfect, except the season was long since over. Arena football was in full swing. There was a team in Denver and another in Fort Collins. Of course, I had no idea when they played or if Jared would even care to watch a game. He’d never mentioned it before. That didn’t seem promising. There was hockey, but that would cost a hell of a lot more. There was basketball, too, and Nuggets tickets were dirt cheap because nobody in Denver gave a shit, but Jared thought pro basketball was horrifically boring, so that wasn’t much of an option either.
I was still contemplating the possibilities when I passed A to Z Video. I found myself slowing down. Maybe
that
was the answer: not anything fancy, but a simple night at home, watching a movie together. That was romantic, right?
The bell on the door of A to Z rang when I walked in. The only person at the counter was Zach, who threw me a friendly wave before going back to analyzing whatever was on his computer screen. I had hoped Lizzy or Susan or my mother would be there, because I figured they could have suggested a movie. Even Angelo might have helped, once he
Marie Sexton
8
quit razzing me. But there was only Zach, and despite owning the store, Zach knew jack shit about movies. Which meant that I was on my own. Which sucked since I had no idea what I was looking for.
Angelo couldn’t ever leave the movies in one place. He was constantly setting up different displays and moving things around. I thought it was counterproductive, because people had to wander around to find where their favorite section had gone. He said that was the point, because in wandering around, they might discover something new. I said that was manipulative. He said (predictably), “What the fuck ever.” Regardless of my usual annoyance at having to hunt for the “action” genre, I had to admit it helped me this time. He had a display right at the front of the store full of romantic movies for Valentine’s Day. And right next to it, another selection of low-budget horror movies that seemed to all take place on February 14th. Leave it to Ang to think of both sides of the coin.
The movies on the left were all things I’d heard of but never seen:
When Harry Met Sally, The Notebook, Pretty Woman
. I picked the first one up and started to read the blurb on the back.
“You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me,” Angelo suddenly said from behind me, causing me to jump about a foot. “You don’t want to watch that shit, man.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause it’s pretentious, sentimental crap.”
“But it’s Valentine’s Day,” I said defensively.
“Yeah. So what?”
Marie Sexton
9
I sighed and put the box back down. I liked Angelo. He was like a brother to me. Which meant that sometimes I wanted to punch him simply to prove that I could. “Can you give me a break, Ang? I thought it would be a nice thing to do, that’s all.”
“If Jared were a chick, then yeah, it would be a nice thing to do. But he’s not. Making him watch that’d be more like torture. Trust me.”
He cocked his head sideways at me, like he was sizing me up. Like he couldn’t decide whether to take me seriously or not. “You could come here. We’re doing Anti-Valentine’s Day. No chick flicks, no wine. We got beer and nachos and three different kinds of wings.”
“What movie are you showing?”
“
Goodfellas
.”
“That doesn’t sound very romantic.”
“That’s the point!”
not
helpful you’re being?”
am
bein’ helpful, man. You’re just bein’ a jackass.”
“Seriously, Matt, listen to me. You’ve let all those years of dating chicks warp your brain. Men don’t care ’bout Valentine’s Day. They only jump through the hoops to keep their ladies happy. But we’re lucky. We don’t gotta do that. That’s one of the many benefits of
not
bein’ straight!” I didn’t want to believe that just because my partner was male
Marie Sexton
10
instead of female, I was off the hook completely. Guys liked to feel appreciated too, right? Angelo must have seen the doubt on my face, because he sighed. “Look, man, I’ll prove it.” He turned around to call across the store. “Zach?”
Zach looked up from his computer. “What?”
“You know today’s Valentine’s Day?”
Zach stared at us blankly for a second, looking completely shell-shocked. “No.”
“Did you buy me anything?”
Zach’s cheeks actually started to turn red. He didn’t blush often, but Angelo’s question obviously made him uncomfortable. “Um… no.”
The relief on Zach’s face was almost laughable. “Thank God,” he said as he turned back to his computer. “Jesus, Ang, don’t scare me like that.”
Angelo turned back to me, grinning in that smartass way he had that was probably endearing when you weren’t the one it was aimed at. “See?”