Chapter Twenty-Four
Angela
We end up having to spend three days at the Cataluna Hills Hotel until the fire is under control and the air is clean enough for classes to resume.
All our professors email us reminding us to keep up with assignments.
The message is clear: This is law school, folks, and we don’t stop for natural disasters.
Brady and I study on the beach. He turns out to be a lot more effective study partner than my official study group, always having answers to my hypos or coming up with his own.
“You’re really good at this law stuff,” I tell him as we lie out on our hotel towels on the beach, books and highlighters open.
“It’s growing on me,” he says.
“I’ll bet whoever you marry will appreciate it,” I say. “It’s not like people worry about their lawyer spouses when they go off to work.”
He throws me one of his shit-eating grins. “I’m marrying you, Pines.”
I throw one back at him. “Then stick with firefighting, McDaniels.”
He laughs and shakes his head. “Consider my balls officially busted.”
At night we sleep together in one of the beds. Brady’s body, otherwise known as the Last Temptation of Angela, is getting more and more difficult to resist. I don’t really want to resist. I’m pretty much dying to have sex with him. But he noticed my initial hesitation and isn’t pushing it.
“You bought condoms,” I say as his mouth makes its mind-blowing way down my body on our last night in the hotel. I saw him buy them at Target when we picked up a few things I hadn’t brought with me.
“Yeah,” he says, pausing, bringing his mouth back to mine. “Just, you know, in case.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s cool.”
“Technically we’ve had like fifteen dates, Pines,” he says, smiling.
“You’ve shown heroic restraint.”
He laughs. “I actually like the whole taking-it-slow thing.”
“I take it that’s a novel concept for you.”
“A body I want to spend every second of every day getting to know is a novel concept for me,” he says, but then he decides to use that chatty mouth for other things.
When it’s time to leave the next morning, Brady checks us out and has his car brought around. It still has a coating of dust. Black ash is caked around the windshield and side mirrors, and the interior still smells slightly of smoke.
He holds my hand as he drives.
“Hey, you know, your place might not be there anymore.” He says it gently, but it’s jarring nonetheless. It doesn’t seem real.
“Yeah,” I say. “Right. I know.”
He squeezes my hand and doesn’t say anything else about it.
As we get closer to Dos Torres, the ravaging path of the fire is visible everywhere. Large swaths of land along the freeway are charred black. The air smells heavily of smoke, though not nearly as bad as when we’d left.
“They got this contained fast,” says Brady, surveying the landscape as we drive. “This could have burned for weeks if the winds hadn’t died down.”
There are still barricades up at the entrance to my street.
“What’s the address?” asks the firefighter on duty.
He looks at his clipboard when I give him Lizette’s house number.
He shakes his head. “There was extensive damage to that property, ma’am, I’m sorry to say. Don’t go near the structure, okay?”
I nod, unable to say anything.
“Do you want to go?” asks Brady.
I nod again. Brady drives slowly down the street, avoiding debris.
The house next to Lizette’s and the house across the street are burned to the ground, as though the wind had pushed the fire along randomly.
Lizette’s is still standing, but it’s charred in places and the windows are broken.
Water is everywhere. I look at my apartment.
The roof is gone and half of it has caved in.
“That’s from the firehoses,” says Brady in a low voice. “It wasn’t fit to live in, Ange.”
I swallow back a sob and brush tears away from my eyes. There’s nothing to salvage.
“We should go,” I choke out.
He turns the car around, and we head to his apartment. I text Lizette with shaking hands. Are you okay? Your house is still standing.
She texts back, I was there this morning. I’m fine, a little worse for wear. I guess you saw the apartment is gone. Do you have somewhere to go?
By now I’m shaking too much to type. I just close my eyes and lean back against the headrest, feeling numb and sick to my stomach. I don’t even realize we’re not driving anymore until Brady opens my door for me.
“You okay, Ange?”
I will myself to get it together and get out of the car. I grab my backpack and tote, but Brady takes them from me. “Let’s get you upstairs.”
Once we’re in his apartment, I lie down on the sofa and close my eyes.
“Your hands are cold,” he says, warming them between his. “You need to eat something and rest, okay?”
I fall asleep on his sofa as soon as we’ve finished lunch. When I wake up, the room is dimly lit and there’s a blanket covering me. My head rests on a pillow on Brady’s lap, and his hand lightly strokes my hair while he watches a baseball game on low volume. I sit up slowly.
“Hey, princess,” he says, muting the game. “You feeling okay?”
It strikes me suddenly that my home is gone.
It was a total piece of shit, but I found it by myself, made it livable, kept it clean, and paid the rent with my own money that I earned at my own job.
Most of my clothes are gone. Most of the few things I brought from home are gone.
The tomatoes and geraniums I planted and cared for through the endless desert summer are gone.
I didn’t have much, but now I pretty much have nothing.
“Yeah,” I say, not entirely sure what to say or do. I want to curl up and cry somewhere, but I don’t have my own space to do that anymore.
To my surprise, Brady wraps his arms around me, pulls me onto his lap, and holds me against his chest. I’m not used to that kind of spontaneous affection, and I feel stiff and awkward at first. But then I let myself relax into him, aided by his Brady smell, and warmth, and strong arms.
“Stay here with me,” he says.
“I don’t really have a choice at the moment.”
“I mean, like, don’t go crazy looking for another place right now.”
“It’s a little soon to move in together, wouldn’t you say?”
I feel his sigh against my hair. “We’ve got that dead end ahead of us. I kind of want to enjoy the ride as much as possible, you know?”
“And then what? You’ll kick me out?” I breathe in his boy-next-door smell. “I’m still getting used to the idea of being your girlfriend. I can’t put myself out there like that.”
“You can kick me out. And I’ll transfer to Columbia. You want a contract?” I nudge him. “I’m serious,” he says. “I’ll move out.”
“I can’t imagine you having a secret that would make me want to throw you out and send you packing back to New York,” I say.
“Well, imagination isn’t really your strong point, is it? You’re more of an analytical, data-driven kind of girl, right?”
I laugh softly in spite of myself.
“So here are some facts,” he says, shifting us so that he’s lying on the sofa with me on top of him.
“You can’t move back to your old place for a while, if ever.
It’ll be tough to find someone willing to rent you a place with so many code violations that it’s affordable.
I’m gonna kick ass at this whole boyfriend thing—”
“That’s speculation, not fact.”
“Work with me here, princess,” he says, then continues. “You’re too busy with work and school and volunteering to look for that needle in a haystack shithole. And we were pretty good roommates the last three days. So everything points to you staying here.”
“Let me think about it.”
“Let me help you deliberate.” He takes my face between his hands and kisses me.
My body comes out of its sleepy haze, sparking to life and crackling like fireworks.
“Sofa’s not going to work,” he rasps between kisses.
He stands up with my legs wrapped around his waist and heads to the bedroom.
We fall onto the bed, and I’m on top of him again, pulling his T-shirt up his body and drinking in the sight of him.
He makes quick work of my flowered, button-down, sleeveless top, practically ripping the buttons off in his haste.
He pauses just to take in the sight of my lacy pink bra, but then that’s yanked off, too, along with the rest of my clothes.
He flips us over, discards the rest of his clothes, and presses his body against mine. His fingers travel down my body, along my legs, back up to my thighs. His teeth graze my tattoo.
“What did you do with those condoms?” I breathe, my heart rate in a full sprint, my entire body trembling with need and apprehension.
“There are some in the nightstand,” he says, but he doesn’t move to get them.
“What are you waiting for?”
“You, princess.”
“I’m ready.”
“Not for our first time, you’re not.”
I stiffen. Holy shit. Does he know? “Wh-what do you mean?” I stammer out.
“I mean it’s been a really rough few days for you. I don’t want you to do it because you’re not in a good head space, you know? I don’t want you regretting anything.”
“All I’m hearing is ‘I don’t want you.’”
He rolls us over and wraps his hands around my wrists.
There’s no humor in his eyes. They’re wild.
“I want you more than I’ve wanted anyone in my life.
I dream about you, Angie. I dream about fucking you.
All the time. I just need to think about how your hair smells and I get hard.
It’s happened in the middle of Property class, for Christ’s sake.
But I want to show you I can do this. I can wait for you.
I can wait for a day that we didn’t see your burned-out house three days after escaping from a burning town.
I want you, but I want you happy and not stressed out and not just looking for a way to get out of your head. Okay?”
I stare at him for a few seconds, kind of stunned. I thought sex would just be sex for him. It had never entered the realm of possibility that he thought about it on this level. An emotional level. Wow.
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Okay,” he says and touches his forehead to mine. Then he kisses me, and his smiling eyes are back. “Now go the fuck down on me, please. I’m dying over here.”