Chapter 18
“What a riveting way to spend our Saturday,” Warren grumbled, dabbing the sweat on his brow.
He and Nate had been sentenced to autumn festival duties – code for standing around and impressing sugar-fuelled kiddies with the fire engine – which wouldn’t have been too bad if not for the fact that they were roasting alive in their turnouts, midday sun beating down on them.
Nate, on the other hand, was having a whale of a time, munching on shortbread kindly given to them from Morag at the tearoom while socialising with anybody who walked past. He smirked at Warren’s foul mood. “You’re just sad to be public enemy number one.”
Also true. He’d been chastised by several disgruntled parents this morning; they hadn’t been impressed to hear about his fire safety talk, much to Nate’s amusement.
“I think they’re building an army against me. Maybe there’s an I Hate Warren club.” And Eiley was no doubt the leader. Really, did he deserve this amount of vitriol for doing his job? When Bonfire Night came around and he was there to keep them safe, they’d be bloody thanking him. Or should be.
Nate brushed the biscuit crumbs from his palms. “Don’t let it bother you, aye? They’re not a bad bunch.”
“Are they?” Warren spat out. If he wasn’t in the middle of his big project, he would have fled already. He didn’t linger where he wasn’t welcome, and almost everybody had made it clear that was the case.
“Jeez, if you think this is bad, you wouldn’t have lasted an hour in my old village.” Nate leaned against the truck, looking out at the town with unexpected melancholy.
Warren frowned. “It was that bad?”
A shrug. “It was survivable until I came out as trans. After that, half of them wouldn’t talk to me and the other half pretended it hadn’t happened. Even after I started transitioning, they’d misgender me.”
Warren pursed his lips. Nate probably thought he was a right arsehole, complaining about a bit of flak from overprotective parents when he’d grown up without the acceptance and understanding every person deserved. “I’m really sorry, mate. I didn’t know.”
“I wasn’t saying it to make you feel bad. Just to put things into perspective,” Nate said. “As far as communities go, this one could be a lot worse. They’ll get over your wee blunder as long as you don’t traumatise their kids again anytime soon.”
“I don’t think the chief would dare let me back into the school after this.” He gave Nate a friendly nudge. “I’m glad you could get out of there, find a place where you can be yourself. I bet the rest of Belbarrow is, too.”
“Cheers, Warren.” Nate’s cheeks swelled with a grateful smile, the kind that made Warren hate the people who had made his journey harder than it needed to be.
The aunt he’d lived with in his teens was queer, so he’d seen firsthand how ignorant people could be, even in the city.
But he’d never witnessed the problem here.
Pride flags were still tacked in half of the shop windows on Main Street, long after the annual summer celebrations were over.
Maybe, then, he was the problem. Maybe he had gone too far at school. Again. Why did he always have to say what he thought? Maybe he’d better start working on his apologies, or better yet, improving his filter.
He lifted his chin, hoping to look a wee bit more approachable as the festival goers wended up and down the stall-lined road.
The town was a bustling stream of colour, a dozen or so wooden cabins selling everything from cheeses to hand-carved figurines.
The latter, he’d pointedly avoided, as the man behind the table was none other than Eiley’s surly brother, who had already flashed him a warning glare.
He placed his helmet on the scarecrow strung to the nearest lamppost, an attempt to get into the spirit of the day.
“Weren’t you on a night shift last night, anyway?” Nate enquired, offering out another shortbread from the Tupperware container.
He pinched a slice, powdery sugar clinging to his fingertips. “Aye, and?”
“Do you ever, like, sleep?”
Warren plopped the biscuit into his mouth, the sugar lifting his mood. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” he said through a spray of crumbs.
“You sound like my dad.”
“There’s not much else to do round here, is there?” He pinched two more biscuits. Maybe he’d been wrong to favour Bel’s Brews and Pam’s Pies when Morag’s baking was this good.
Not that he’d visited either recently. In fact, he’d been avoiding the bookstore and its neighbours since overhearing Eiley ripping into him in the tavern. He was done trying to change her mind about him. If she wanted to make up reasons to hate him, she could.
Sleazy jobsworth . His blood boiled at the mere thought of those words.
The statement would have been laughable if not so infuriating: she acted like he wasn’t good enough for her , but it was beginning to feel like the other way around.
She was the sharp-tongued one. All he’d ever done was try to help.
And kiss her, a bit, but that had been a one off … and she’d started it.
“We might be properly busy soon enough.” Nate squinted up at the sky. “There were a few moorland fires across Cumbria recently. It could be us next if we don’t get rain soon.”
“Aye, it’s too bloody dry.” The summers had been chaos in recent years: fires started by twits who thought it a good idea to light barbecues on bone-dry grass in thirty-degree heat.
Farmers stubble burning despite the regulations in place.
Water rescues when people jumped into lochs only to end up with cold water shock.
No wonder he was restless come autumn. Being a firefighter meant either barely having time to catch a breath or sitting around waiting for a call to come through, but never an in-between.
A wee lad with orange and black-striped face paints came to roar at him, and Warren jumped back into FNF mode – Friendly Neighbourhood Firefighter.
He wasn’t entirely oblivious to the mother’s lingering glances and intense interest as they chatted to both her and her son, showing them around the fire engine.
Since she was one of the few who didn’t hate him around here, he worked his charm.
When she left, Nate jabbed him in the shoulder. “You never give it a rest, do you?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Warren lied, collapsing onto a hay bale with an exhaustion he hadn’t felt in a while.
Maybe he had overdone it recently, barely sleeping between his shifts and construction work.
His brain needed an off button, but it had always been the same: noisy, unable to quiet.
The only way he could sleep was if he worked himself to exhaustion, otherwise there would always be a voice in his head urging him to do more.
“How is it you’re still single?” quipped Nate with a poke to his shoulder.
Warren wondered how honest to be. Women seemed to see him as an interlude between “real” relationships.
A passing fancy until Mr Right came along.
Since turning thirty three years ago, he’d begun to take dating more seriously, imagining finding a person to build a home with – but it never worked out, no matter how much effort he put in.
His last girlfriend had blamed his unpredictable work hours for their breakup, which was fair, aye, and when he’d tried to be more present, more open, with past partners, it was back to that old chestnut – he was too direct, too much.
It felt safer to answer with sarcasm. “It’s a mystery.”
Nate hummed. “So, are you seriously not going to indulge me, then?”
“With what?” Warren shielded his eyes from the midday sun, brushing a crumb from his jacket.
“With whatever went down between you and Eiley.”
His muscles contracted as though the mere mention of her wielded some ominous power over his body. “Nothing went down.”
“Oh, come on. I saw you two in the shop. And you stormed out of the pub after your little conversation the other night.”
“Didn’t feel like sticking around.” Just as he didn’t feel like rehashing the insults he’d overheard, even if they played on a loop in his mind.
Nate narrowed his eyes curiously, but his interrogation was suspended thanks to a wee boy wearing headphones approaching the fire engine. Warren froze when he recognised the rosy face and chubby cheeks. Sky. Eiley’s son.
He just couldn’t get away from her and that family of hers, could he?
He clenched his jaw, pushing aside the bitterness to kneel beside the lad. When Sky clutched his beloved octopus closer to his chest, Warren shuffled a few paces back, remembering how shy he’d been at school.
“Hello, Sky. You all right, buddy?” Despite the dread that came with the thought of seeing Eiley, he glanced around. It wasn’t like her or her family not to be right behind, but he saw no sign of them in the crowds.
“How’d you know this handsome fella?” Nate asked, going to pat Sky’s shoulder. Sky flinched with a noise of discomfort.
“He needs a wee bit of space,” Warren advised. “Where’s your mum today, Sky?”
Sky pointed at the truck again, then flapped his hands keenly.
“Would you like to see the fire engine?”
He nodded, sliding his green headphones down to rest around his neck. When he smiled, all gums and crooked baby teeth, Warren saw his mum’s dimples; remembered that, like Sky, they were a rare occurrence, something that had to be earned.
Something he never would see from her again.