Putting Out Fires (3 page)

“Shit!” I yelled.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Something next to me burst into flames. I turned to the stovetop in horror. I
still
hadn’t turned off that fucking burner, and I’d dropped my dishtowel when the lid exploded—right onto the bright red coil. The towel was on fire, flames licking merrily up to the blowing fan above the stove.

There were random wild thoughts in my head of what you were supposed to do—spray it with water or pour baking soda on it. Or was it baking powder? Did we even have any

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of those things? Maybe flour would work. If we had that. Maybe sugar? Or would that just burn? It felt like forever that I stood there trying to decide what to do, but couldn’t really have been more than a second. In the end, I did what I’d like to think any rational person in my situation would have done. I picked up the closest thing, which happened to be a bouquet of flowers, still neatly wrapped in their nice cellophane cone, and began to beat the flaming towel.

Plastic melted, petals flew, and flowers burned, but I got the flames knocked down enough that I could turn off the burner. I tossed the smoldering remains of the towel into the sink with the pan of broccoli, and then jumped out of my skin as an ear-piercing screech filled the house. It was the smoke alarm. A bit late, I thought, considering half the house was filled with black smoke. I went into the hallway and waved my hands at it in a futile attempt to get it to turn off. When that didn’t work, I resorted to more drastic measures. I ripped it off the ceiling and threw it across the room. The goddamn thing still didn’t quit beeping.

There was a scrambling at my feet, and I turned around to see Scooby heading past me to the living room. “Scooby?” I called, wondering if he’d somehow been burned or hurt in the chaos of the kitchen. He turned to look at me—

With a nice juicy steak in his mouth.

“Scooby, no!” I yelled, running toward him. He cowered a bit at my yelling, but he didn’t drop the steak. He was in the corner and had nowhere to go. “Bad dog!” I yelled as I grabbed the steak. “Bad,
bad
dog! Let go.
Let go
, you evil bastard!” But his jaws were locked tight. He wasn’t about to give up his treat.

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It occurred to me how ridiculous the entire situation was. The house was filled with smoke, the smoke detector was still issuing its shrieking warning from the floor in the corner of the room, and my dog and I were literally having a tug-of-war with a charred piece of meat.

That, of course, was when Jared walked in.

Our house had an open floor plan, so he could see everything from the door: the wreckage in the kitchen, the oven still issuing smoke, the beeping smoke detector on the floor in the corner, and Scooby and I both frozen, waiting for his reaction.

I love Jared, but if he had one major flaw it was that he often reacted before he thought things through. Unfortunately for me, this time was no exception.

“What the hell is going on?” he yelled. He grabbed the smoke detector from the floor and tossed it out onto the front lawn, then slammed the front door shut. Whether it turned off in the fresh air or not I didn’t know, but at least I couldn’t hear the damn thing anymore. “Are you trying to burn the house down? I could smell the smoke from the curb!” He went into the kitchen and slammed the oven shut. He turned off the broiler, and the last burner which was finally cooking the potatoes that were still ages away from being mashable. “What the fuck, Matt?”

I gave up on the tug-of-war and Scooby ran off in triumph with his prize. Even if I could get the damn steak back, it wasn’t like either of us would want to eat it now anyway. I followed Jared into the kitchen, where he was standing with his hands on his hips and murder in his eyes. My first instinct was to snap out a smart answer, but I bit it

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back, knowing it would be counterproductive. I didn’t want to fight with him. Not today of all days.

I sighed heavily and leaned against the counter, feeling completely defeated. I’d wanted to do something nice for him, and now he was pissed, and I was defensive, and I’d be lucky if we went to bed still talking. “I was trying to make you dinner,” I said.

I was surprised at how quickly his anger fell away. He looked around the kitchen at the one remaining steak, charred on one side, curled in on itself, revealing the raw meat underneath; the burned dishtowel and burned broccoli in the sink; the pieces of broken glass all over the floor and countertop; the potatoes on the stove, no longer boiling; the melted mess that had once been a cellophane cone, remnants of it still clinging to a bouquet of singed and wilted roses.

He turned to me with obvious surprise. “You bought me flowers?”
I felt like an idiot. I could feel myself blushing, and it was all I could do to meet his eyes. “Yes.”

“For Valentine’s Day?”
Jesus, this was embarrassing. “Yes.”

He closed his eyes for just a second, and I could practically see the wheels in his head reversing direction. When he opened them again, he was smiling at me, his eyes bright and blue and so gorgeous it hurt to look at him. “Thank you.”

At least he wasn’t mad anymore. At least we didn’t have to fight. Still, looking around at the mess I’d made, I couldn’t
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help but think it was a shallow victory. “I’m sorry I screwed it up.”

Jared shook his head, still smiling. He looked around the room again, his eyes landing on the open bottle of wine. It was the only part of dinner that wasn’t ruined. “You bought wine?”

I sighed, feeling like the world’s biggest fool. My words came out all in a rush. “Zach said it was good, and I wanted to do something nice for you. I had no idea what, so I went by A to Z, and—”

But he didn’t seem to care about the rest of my answer. He closed the distance between us with one step and kissed me, cutting my words off midstream. The kiss was shy and hesitant in a way that he hadn’t been with me in a very long time. It was sweet, and any anger or disappointment I had melted away. I pulled him tight against me and kissed him back, my urgency quickly overriding his unexpected hesitancy. When he finally broke the kiss, his cheeks were red, but he was smiling up at me. “Thank you,” he said again.

“I’ll clean up the mess,” I told him.

His smile got bigger. “Later.” He turned away from me and went over to the counter where the open bottle of wine stood. “Come on,” he said as he pulled the cork off the corkscrew and shoved it back in the bottle. “Let’s go out.”

“Out where?”

He didn’t answer. He grabbed the wine and two of the juice glasses I’d left on the countertop while searching for wine glasses. “Get your coat,” he said, and I didn’t argue.

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Jared led me out to the Jeep. He got in the driver’s seat and handed me the wine and empty glasses. He drove us down the street, past A to Z, and turned left. “Where are we going?” I asked.

He smiled at me. “You’ll see.”

There didn’t seem to be any point in pushing him, so I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. I thought about dinner and the fact that Scooby was probably dining on the second steak right about now. I realized I should have at least swept up the broken glass before we left, for his sake. “I burned holes in the linoleum.”

I was relieved when Jared laughed. “I don’t care. I’m sorry I flipped out when I came in. That was really shitty of me.”

It
had
been kind of shitty, but I knew Jared. I knew he hadn’t meant it. “It’s no big deal,” I said.
“I wasn’t expecting it,” he said. “We’ve never done anything for Valentine’s Day.”
“I know.”

“I didn’t get you anything.”

“I didn’t expect you to,” I told him. “I just….” It sounded so ridiculous, and I couldn’t look at him when I said it. “I wanted to do something for you.”

“Since when does Valentine’s Day mean anything to you?” he asked. It wasn’t an accusation. It was simply a question, and a valid one, since two other Valentine’s Days had passed for us without so much as a mention on either side.

“You said you didn’t feel appreciated.”
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He shook his head. “I was talking about at school. I was talking about my students.”

 

“Your students love you.”

He shook his head again. “They used to, but it’s different now. When I first took that job, I had kids who’d come to my house to be tutored. They’d all been struggling for so long with teachers who didn’t know what they were doing, and when I took over their classes, they were excited. They looked up to me.”

“They don’t anymore?”

“Those kids who knew me are gone. They’ve all graduated. Now I’m just another one of the mean teachers who give too much homework.” He sighed and waved his hand like he could push the thought away. “It’s no big deal. I’m just feeling sorry for myself.” He glanced over at me before looking back at the road. “Why would you think I meant you?”

He’d been honest with me. Now it was my turn. I took a deep breath and told him everything—my irrational jealousy over the Valentine, and Grant’s wife leaving him because she didn’t feel appreciated, and how afraid I was that he felt the same, and how I wanted to do something special. I felt ridiculous at first, but as I went on, I began to see the humor in it, especially when I told him about the aisle at the grocery store and stopping at A to Z, and my discussion with Angelo and Zach.

“I’m sure Ang thought the whole thing was hysterical,” he said.

 

“He did. He said I should just give you a blow job.”
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He laughed. “Well, I can’t say I’d object.”
“He suggested I buy a leather harness.”

Jared looked over at me with an appreciative glint in his eye that I recognized immediately. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“He also suggested eyeliner.”
Jared laughed. “That
is
a bad idea. I’m not into that.”

“Thank God,” I said, and he laughed again. “He said I should tie you down.”
“If you want.”

“Or that I should let you tie me down.”

 

He glanced at me sideways, grinning a bit. “You do have handcuffs, you know.”

“You’re saying you
are
into that?”
“I sure wouldn’t mind cuffing you to our headboard.”

I didn’t know why I’d never thought of that before. Now that I
was
thinking about it, I felt my blood stir. I loved it when Jared was aggressive in bed, and I could imagine how he would be if I was helpless underneath him. I thought about the things he might do to me, each one a bit better than the one before. It turned me on more than I would have expected.

I leaned across the seat and used a handful of his hair to angle his head away from me so I could kiss his neck. “I think I’ll let you.”

“Good,” he laughed. But he didn’t allow me to continue. He pushed me away. “I’m holding you to that when we get home.”

I definitely didn’t want to wait. I suddenly wanted very
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much to keep touching him, to get him off right there in the car, but I made myself move back to my own seat. After all, he was driving. It’d be pretty bad form if I caused him to wreck. I didn’t want to have to explain
that
to any of my fellow officers.

“Here we are,” he said.

I hadn’t been paying attention to where we were going, but now I looked. It was a place I recognized: a small dirt parking area next to a trail head. And even though I couldn’t see it, I knew that not far up the trail was a huge stone abutment. The Rock, as the local kids called it. And except for coming up here as a cop to bust a few teenage keggers, I’d only been here once: the day Jared and I met.

I looked over at him in surprise, and found that he was actually blushing. “It’s a stupid idea, isn’t it?” he asked. “No,” I assured him. “It’s not.”

The sun was setting, and we had our hands full of wine and glasses, and there were still small patches of ice and snow in places, so we didn’t climb the rock face as we’d done the day we met. Instead, we hiked up the side of the hill and then walked out onto the top of The Rock. We sat down on the edge, side by side as we’d been that first day. Jared handed me a juice glass full of wine, and we watched the western sky turn bright shades of orange and pink as the stars started to appear above us.

Three years earlier it had been spring, the day bright and warm, the valley below us green and alive. Now it was cold and brown, but it was beautiful nonetheless. I thought about how pleased I’d been that day, sitting next to Jared on the rock. I’d known right then I’d found somebody who could

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be a friend, somebody who might be a kindred spirit. But I hadn’t dreamed how important he would end up being to me. He had become my best friend and my lover and my savior, and I could only marvel at how fate had led me into his family’s auto parts store that day to ask about the Jeep for sale out front. What if I’d never gone in? Coda was a small enough town that we would have met eventually, but somehow I knew it wouldn’t have been the same. The magic of sitting in this place with him would never have happened. I would never have admitted the secret I’d buried in my heart for so long—that I was attracted to men, that I had no idea how to truly love a woman—and I would have gone on forever dating girls, trying to make my father happy and failing, watching my mother linger in an unhappy marriage.

And it wasn’t just my own life, or that of my parents, that had been affected. Jared’s life had changed too. If we hadn’t met, he might still be working at his family’s shop instead of teaching, as he’d really longed to do. If he’d stayed there, the shop might not have closed. We would never have met Zach and Angelo at all.

Our entire life together seemed to hinge on that moment when I’d seen Lizzy’s Jeep for sale. I’d decided on a whim to ask about it, and he’d been the one behind the counter.
Everything
that I cherished was a result of the simple fact that I’d met him and that he’d brought me here to this place, for some reason I didn’t exactly understand even to this day.