AJ’s Fire (Hampstead Valley #3)
Prologue
Jackson
I’ve always known guys are hot; I mean, objectively, a big dude, wrapped in muscles and not much else, that’s attractive, right? Everyone thinks so, right? It doesn’t mean I don’t want to go out every chance I have with my best friend to play the game. You know, find a willing partner, take her home, and have some fun? It doesn’t mean I’m not straight, does it?
I’m a firefighter, for Christ’s sake. Not saying all firefighters are straight, far from it. I might not be as tall, or broad, or as toned as some of my fellow crew members, but I am around them all the time. I have been around them for the past five years, whether it’s just hanging out at the station on a slow day or straggling in after a four-alarm blaze to shower up and crawl into the bunks, tired from my hair to my toenails to my drained emotions. If I were really into guys, don’t you think I would have noticed, with all the time I spend around them when they are glistening with sweat or soapy in the shower or …
I shower with them, for God’s sake!
I sleep with them. Well, not, you know, sleep with them. But I’ve spent the last five years sharing a bunk with my best friend. Wait, no, not, you know, sharing. We sleep. Him on the bottom, and me on top. In bunk beds! At the fire station!
Guys are hot, and I hook up with women. End of story!
And if it were up to my parents, I was about to be thrust into the spotlight with a woman on my arm. No big deal, she is a friend and has been for years. And since I was such a big fan of women, maybe it’d even turn into something more. Not that I want something more. I love playing the field. Hanging out with my best friend, AJ, and hooking up … with women; not with my best friend, with women. Lots and lots of women.
I grew up in the suburbs of New York City. My parents had both grown up there as well, modestly middle class. They met in college, and in those early years, when new technologies like the personal computer were booming, had obtained degrees in computer science, starting a company that moved them out of their parents’ homes and into West Side penthouses, Scarsdale mansions, Hamptons beachfronts, and Vail ski chalets. And that’s just a list of their domestic real estate holdings. My New York upbring was very different from that of my parents as they became part of the upper class, so rich they looked down on the one percent.
My life was boarding schools, multiple homes with staff, a Jeep and a sports car for my sixteenth birthday, and an Ivy League education, bought and paid for by the Dorso fortune. And I rode the wave, a good but not-great student who got by, first at boarding school and later in New Haven because I was Riley Jackson Dorso the Second, son of Riley and Mandy Dorso and heir to Dorso Electronics.
My parents’ recent obsession was show business, and they’d been in discussions with the vaulted Wyecrest Entertainment in the hopes of joining forces to create a digital studio that would focus on film, video games, and other entertainment attractions. So on top of everything else, my famous parents were dipping their toes into the Hollywood scene as well, which made my lifelong friendship with Emily Wyecrest suddenly extremely important to my mom and dad.
My parents’ path for me had been clear as I was growing up. They encouraged me to pursue business in college because while Dorso was still ostensibly a technology company, my parents’ holdings were vast and diversified. I wouldn’t need to grow Dorso Electronics. I would just need to not fuck up the Dorso holdings and investments. Mergers, like the one they were hoping for with Wyecrest Entertainment, happened all the time in my parents' world, and my parents were grooming me to take over and juggle those partnerships.
And that was my hang-up. Whenever we talked about my future and the daughter of so-and-so, who would make a good match for me, it wasn’t really the daughter part that tripped me up. What I really couldn’t imagine was coming home in a business suit, tearing off a restrictive tie, and kicking off shoes shined so brightly they reflected light.
That was the life I didn’t want, the future that kept me up at night, worrying about confessing a deep dark secret to my parents. I was so afraid to tell them that truth that I made it through a master’s program in business administration before finally working up the courage to do it.
The summer after I received my MBA, I spent much of my time with my grandparents at their cottage on Cedar Lake. It was a favorite place of mine. The lake house was an hour or so north of New York City, and I found I couldn’t wait to get there every weekend after putting in my time as a junior associate at my parents’ company.
One weekend, as I pulled onto the meandering two-lane road that would lead to the cottage, my heart caught in my throat as not one but three fire engines sped past me. Our family’s cottage was not the only one down that lane, but I still felt a sense of dread and panic as I recklessly sped up and followed the emergency vehicles.
The panic increased as they bypassed the few off-shoot roads to continue toward my grandparents’ cul-de-sac, and I nearly screamed when I first saw the smoke billowing. I was stopped by a fire marshal from turning down my grandparents’ street, after which I parked my Jeep on the side of the road and bolted through the patch of woods that led behind their home.
As the woods opened up near the private dock on their property, I actually fell to my knees since in front of me, their cottage stood, safe and sound. I scurried up and ran to find my grandparents standing in their driveway, watching in shock as the home across the way was engulfed in flames.
“Gram! Gramps!” I yelled in desperation, hugging them both to me. My grandmother held on to my waist as we all three turned to take in the scene.
“They're not here,” my grandfather said. “No one should be inside. We called 911 when we saw, but …” He gestured to the property. “It was already …” He didn’t say anything further.
We stood and watched as these courageous people, this synchronized team, went to work. I know I shouldn’t say it was a beautiful thing to watch, when you consider the destruction we were witnessing, but seeing those men and women working in harmony, braving the inferno in front of them to contain the destruction, was mesmerizing.
We stood out there for a long time, exhausted, just watching as the fire was eventually contained. The dance didn’t end there, though, as the team continued to work, making sure the flames were all out and beginning basic cleanup.
My grandparents ordered stacks of pizza for us and for them. As we passed the food around to a group of grimy, sweaty, drained individuals, the thought popped, fully formed, into my head: This is what I want to do .
In my lake cottage bedroom later that night, with the smell of smoke still permeating the air, I tried my best to dismiss the notion. “Firefighter” is not something a grown man with an MBA says he wants to be; it's the answer a five-year-old gives to the question, What do you want to be when you grow up? And of course, many grown adults become firefighters, but how could I? Just imagining the conversation with my parents had me in fits of laughter in the quaint cottage bedroom.
I left my grandparents’ cottage early Monday morning to head back to the city and went through another week of mind-numbing meetings, nonstop emails, and spreadsheet revisions. The only camaraderie I felt at Dorso Electronics, aside from my relationships with my parents, was the occasional message Emily would send from her office in LA, a joke or a funny meme to break up the monotony. By the end of that fateful week, I knew for certain I had to get out.
Was it the ennui of a spoiled rich kid? It might very well have been. But I began researching how to apply for and train to become a firefighter, and within a year, I was running into my first burning building. My parents didn’t understand it, but they tried to accept it, and I quietly accepted that I had made myself “the other” in their social circle, the odd man out.
“You have to be careful, Jax. Living in Brooklyn. Working with …”
“Mom!” I warned, but she went there anyway.
“Well, they are, Jax, they’re middle class at best , and if they knew your net worth … I still don’t understand how a man in his mid-twenties just decides to throw away an MBA to play …”
“Mom,” I tried again, and she shifted gears.
“You can’t possibly plan to keep running into burning buildings for the rest of your life, Jackson. We just worry. About your safety and your future. If they knew, Jackson, they would take advantage!”
“I know, Mom.” I couldn’t keep a defeatist tone out of my voice. No matter how many times I explained that my friends in Brooklyn weren’t like that, that they wouldn’t take advantage of me, Mom and Dad still worried. I pictured my best friend, AJ Gordon, and really, really wished I could make them understand what I knew down to my marrow, that the man would never do anything to hurt me. Instead of saying all that to my mom, I took the easy route and simply agreed with her. “I know you worry about someone taking advantage of me, Mom. And I appreciate that, I really do.”
“It would break my heart if some woman”—it was always a woman in my parents’ examples, but why wouldn’t it be?—“were to break your heart. It would break mine, sweetheart. It’s not even about the money, Jax. There are prenups for that.”
“Mom, Dad,” I implored, hoping my until-then-silent father might rescue me from our broken-record conversation. “I’m not seeing anyone; there’s no one I’m interested in. Can’t we save talk of prenups for, I don’t know, until after I’ve had a second date?”
My parents looked at each other in that way I knew communicated volumes. I sometimes felt like I’d never have that connection with a woman, but I did have it with my best friend, who also happened to be my partner at the firehouse, so I understood it.
“If you’re not dating anyone else, then what about Emily?” Mom tried for a casual tone, but it felt forced.
“You know she’s moving back from LA to head up the New York division of Wyecrest Entertainment,” my father contributed.
“We’re still in touch, Dad. Still friends. I know that.”
“I just thought …”
“We’re just friends, Dad. Is this about Wyecrest-Dorso Digital?”
“Yes,” my father stated.
“No!” my mother insisted.
My father was generally the practical one.
“You’re not seeing anyone. You and Emily have known each other for years. And if it helps us convince her father and uncle to collaborate on a digital division with us, what’s the harm in that? We need to think about the future of Dorso Electronics and the foundation. You need to think about those things, Jackson. Your mother and I would like to retire someday. You and Emily … It just makes sense.”
“Mom. Dad. The Wyecrests are professionals. Whether Ems and I are friends, or dating, they’re not going to be influenced by our relationship where your merger is concerned,” I said with conviction, but the way my parents were pushing, I wasn’t so sure. “Trust me on that. I’m not a corporate executive. I tried, remember? Running DE … that’s just never going to be who I am, and I wish you’d accept that.”
“We’ve accepted your job, son, but you can’t fight fires for the rest of your life,” my mother repeated, like she could make it true by repetition. “I mean, eventually …” I think my mom saw the hurt in my face at the tone she’d used on the word “job.” She dropped that sentence but not the sentiment as she continued. “I mean, it would make sense for you two to run the companies together.”
“Mom,” I tried for a third time.
“I don’t know why you can’t see it! You and Emily are perfect for each other. It’s just safer if you date in our social circle. It just is, dear. And of course, it makes sense for the companies as well, once the merger is finalized.”
I sighed, thinking about my practical yet caring parents. “I’m not … I don’t want to date, not Emily, not anyone. And I’m not going to do so as some publicity stunt for Dorso Electronics or as a part of some backdoor deal for the merger. So please just drop it. And if I do meet someone … You have to trust me. I know our name, and the money, make it a challenge, but if I meet the right person, if they’re really the right person, it shouldn’t matter, should it?”
“I know it shouldn’t, honey, and I really hope that’s the case, but that’s not the world we live in.” My mom couldn’t keep the sigh from her voice. That sigh held years of history about my life choices.
So if I occasionally think guys are hot , it continues to be something I keep to myself, something I fight to ignore even as I begin spending most of my time with the hottest guy I’ve ever seen.