Chapter 59
Emmett
“How long does she have to do that?”
Tristen looks at me across my mother’s body, a tube of something that he’s injecting into her IV in his grip and a softness to his eyes.
“It’s just for a little while.”
I nod and nibble on my lip, watching him as he goes about checking her over with a steadiness to his hands and a deliberateness to his movements.
Would he be as gentle with her if he knew the truth?
I’m not sure why I bother to watch him take Mother’s blood pressure, how he times her pulse despite the machine hooked to her finger.
Just like I can’t explain that I know he doesn’t need me to hover, to observe him the way that I am …
I just don’t know what else to do. Where else to be. How to … feel about it all.
Looking at her now, I see some of the color has come back to her face, just enough to stop looking grey beneath the low lights. But otherwise, my mother already looks like a corpse.
Just like she has since I was four.
It was just a walk to the playground, something we used to do when she didn’t have to work, and I wasn’t with whatever random sitter she could find.
But that day was different than any other before we even left the house.
For the first time, she’d had the TV playing one of her shows, my aunt laughing in her ear over the phone.
It was so … light. Joyous. The first and only memory I have of my mother being happy.
So, when she asked me what I thought about one of the characters in the show I can’t remember, I was honest.
I’d said he looked beautiful.
I don’t think that’s what she meant to ask me, or was expecting me to say, but I was never good with understanding people.
She agreed.
She agreed.
With a smile and laugh.
We went for our walk after that instead of doing my homeschool lessons.
To the neighborhood school playground where I found a boy with broken wings and a busted arm.
He laughed, too, even though he should not have been.
I remember seeing the bone poking his skin in a way that almost made me throw up all over him and the mulch that covered him.
But he was beautiful, too, and alone like me.
It was the perfect day. One I wanted to relive forever.
Until it wasn’t.
“Bub? You okay?”
The whole-body jerk feels like I’m being slammed back into my body, to the here and now, and I snap my sight up to crash with Tristen’s.
“Huh? Yeah. No.” I shake my head and swallow hard. “Yeah.”
His brows climb up his forehead, his head cocked. “You didn’t hear a single word I said, did you?”
I pull my hood tighter around my head and something on his face falls.
“I’m so—” I yank my sleeves over my fists and bury my covered hands in the kanga pocket of my hoodie. Tristen’s hoodie.
I’m still wearing his hoodie.
The breath I draw is shaky. “I’m listening now?”
“It’s okay,” he murmurs and comes around to my side of the gurney. “Come make dinner with me.”
“O-okay,” I whisper, and follow along as he tugs at my sleeve and leads me into the kitchen.
He doesn’t let go until we’re in front of the fridge, and my stomach drops when he reaches for the handle.
There’s nothing in there—
“Spaghetti okay?” He pulls out a bag that’s familiar, but not one I put in there and my brows pinch tight. “It’s hard to fuck up.”
“Y-you … know how to cook?”
The way he moves about, pulling out pans and unloading the bag onto the small counter has my stomach doing some kind of whooshing thing that doesn’t make sense.
“Yeah. I work in a firehouse.” He chuckles like that’s supposed to mean anything other than running into fires and saving kittens from trees.
“But what do kittens have to do with cooking?”
Back muscles flexing, tattoos peeking out from his tank top, Tristen busts into laughter loud enough that I jump.
“Good one, bubs.”
“I … don’t know what that means.” I pull in a breath and go to the sink, pushing back my sleeves just enough to wash my hands.
“Don’t you dare touch that,” he says in that commanding tone that makes my stomach do all kinds of funny shit when I reach for the onion.
What is he gonna do with an onion?
“O-okay.”
I step around him and pick up the wooden spoon to poke at the sizzling pan.
“That either.”
My face goes hot.
“What am I supposed to do then?”
His chuckle is deep and I feel it vibrate down my spine. “Stand there—” he points next to him, “—and look pretty, baby.”
The thing in my chest thumps wildly, my skin tingling.
“O-okay.”
“Firefighters don’t just save cats from trees and shit,” he continues, chopping as he speaks, as if we never strayed from my statement of uncertainty. “It’s the running joke, though, that’s all the job is.”
“But you’re not … you’re not a firefighter?”
He dumps the onion into the pan of browning meat, his gaze flicking to mine from behind those thick glasses. “I am.”
“Your uniform, though.”
“I’m an EMT, too. And Hat’s a paramedic.”
I nod, though I don’t know what the difference is, my chest going tight.
“So, you run into fires, even when everyone else is running out.”
He pushes up his glasses, his smile is somber. “Yeah, I do.”
“And you also … patch people up?”
The tug of his lips gets a little softer. “Yeah, I do that, too.”
“Why?”
There’s a snort, but it’s quiet as he stirs his concoction on the stove and grabs another one he fills with water.
“Why not?” he counters, and I purse my lips.
“It’s dangerous and people might worry about you?”
That soft smile becomes a smirk, and he leans close to me, his nose nearly touching mine. “You worry about me, bubbles?”
“Yes.”
The flick of shock across his face disappears fast, but the redness that appears next doesn’t.
“See? Sweet.” His lips press to the tip of my nose quickly before he turns to find a jar of sauce, muscles flexing as it pops open.
Why is it so easy to watch his back?
Even through the tank top covering his torso, I can see the definition of his shoulders, the teases of ink staring back at me.
But so are the scars.
There’s not a ton, not severely noticeable ones, but they’re there, woven in between the greyscale as if he meant to draw the art around them.
Like maybe … he embraced them.
I tug my sleeves down farther.
Swallowing hard, I trail my gaze up to the back of his neck, little red spots dotting his skin.
“What’re—” I reach up and run my covered fingers over the soft scab. “What’re these?”
I should probably clean them for him since there’s no way he can see those. Did he even know they’re back here?
“You,” he answers finally, his tone caged, his grip on the oven handle tight.
I jerk my hand back.
“What?” It comes out like a squeak, my stomach dropping.
“It’s from the other day. It’s no big deal.”
The way he pushes off from the stove—and away from me—makes my heart thunder painfully in my chest, an apology thick on my tongue.
“Don’t. It’s okay, I promise.”
It’s not okay. It’s not. But I don’t want to argue, or cry again, so I drop it and my gaze.
What else can I do?
“Okay.”
“Bubbles, look at me.” I do through my hair, and he’s got another one of those soft smiles playing on his lips as he steps closer, the tip of his finger touching the bottom of my chin. “Is it okay to kiss you?”
My eyes flare wide, my face hot.
I nod.
The smile on his face spreads as he leans in, touching it to my lips, and I kiss him back.
It’s just the pressed together kind, and yet … my inside feels like they wanna jump to the outside. Maybe get in line to be next.
Too soon, Tristen pulls away just far enough to rest his forehead on mine, the sides of our noses touching.
“I’ve never wanted to get on my knees more than I do right now.”
A heat I don’t understand pools low in my stomach and on my face.
“What?” The one word barely eeks out past the building thickness in my throat.
“Would you let me, Emmett?” He steps closer, his body heat like a caress to my entire front, his actual hands coming to rest on my shoulders. “Let me taste you? Not right now, but some day?”
Taste me? Like …
I swallow hard at the way his breath shakes from him and washes over my face, my own steadily speeding up.
“I-I-I don’t k-know.”
He smiles anyway, even though I feel like that’s not the right answer, and kisses me again. It’s quick. Soft. But then he’s gone, turning back to the stove and messing with the pans on top of it.
I take a long breath. Like I’m coming up for air.
Maybe … maybe there is no wrong answer to that.
“You wanna grab the garlic bread from the freezer?”
I nod to his back and pull the box out. It’s the only new thing in there. The only thing edible.
“Thanks, bubs. Now come back to your spot so I can do this and see your face at the same time.”
Listening to his soft order is easy, watching him even easier.
Every so often, he pushes his glasses up, and I can’t tell that he doesn’t realize he’s doing it as he moves until his hands are full and he looks up at me with them halfway down his nose.
“Lil help?”
My face flushes, I can’t explain why, and I reach to touch the thick frames. He moves his head toward me, placing them just right with my assistance, and that heat I felt low in my stomach flares again.
“Thanks.” He flashes that crooked tooth. “It’s almost done.”
It smells just like that night at the firehouse, the first time he took me with him, all fresh herbs and tomato sauce.
It’s just as overwhelming as it was that day, but tonight … it feels more … right. Like the scents aren’t as bad as the first time and that maybe life isn’t as bad as I thought it was then.
Tristen’s still here after all. That’s gotta say something.
He tilts his head, and I just know that he’s inviting me to grab plates, to eat with him, and it feels good.
Not wrong or terrible.
Just … normal.
It’s the first time I felt normal in this house.