Chapter Twenty-Four Max
Jase is humming.
Not a song exactly, just a sound, low and tuneless and continuous, something between contentment and the absence of thought.
He does it while he makes coffee, while he wipes down the counter, while he stands at the window looking out at the street, his mug in both hands, his shoulders loose, his whole body carrying the particular ease of someone who slept well and woke up better.
I watch him from the kitchen table and say nothing.
Evan emerges around seven, and he pours himself coffee and leans against the counter, and the two of them exchange a look that lasts about half a second and contains something I can’t read.
I look between them.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing,” Evan says.
“Nothing,” Jase agrees, and goes back to looking out the window, still humming.
I drink my coffee.
Brielle comes out twenty minutes later in a grey sweater and dark jeans, her hair down, and she goes straight to the coffee maker without looking at anyone, which is not unusual, except that when she turns around and finds all three of us in various positions around the kitchen, her face does something quick and involuntary before she gets it under control.
Color, high on her cheeks.
She looks at her coffee.
“Morning,” she says to the mug.
“Morning,” Jase says, and there is something in his voice that makes Evan look away toward the window, and I watch his shoulders move with something he’s keeping to himself.
I look at Brielle, who is still looking at her coffee, and then at Jase, who is now looking at his, and then at Evan, who is looking at the street outside with his mouth pressed flat in a way that I recognize as active suppression of something.
I put my mug down.
“Alright,” I say.
All three of them look at me.
“I’m going to the station,” I say, and I pick up my jacket from the back of the chair and leave them to whatever this is.
The morning is cold and clear, the sky a pale blue of October that makes the city look clean, and I walk the four blocks to the station with my hands in my pockets, my mind working through information methodically until it arrives somewhere.
Jase humming. Evan up early. Brielle’s face when she turned around.
I am not an obtuse man. I have been a firefighter for twelve years, and a lieutenant for four, and I have spent the better part of those years learning to read situations quickly and accurately because misreading them gets people hurt.
I am good at this. It is one of the things I am genuinely good at, and I apply it here the same as anywhere.
Something happened.
I knew something was going to happen eventually.
I have been watching it build for weeks, the four of us in an apartment together, Brielle in the middle of it all.
I have been watching and filing and moving on, and now something has happened, and I walked out of the kitchen before anyone could tell me what, which means I am going to spend the morning thinking about it.
This is fine.
This is completely fine.
Weston is already in his office when I get to the station, which means the budget conversation is happening today, whether I’m ready for it or not.
I knock on his door, and we go through it for an hour, back and forth on the allocation numbers, and by the time we’re done, I have redirected my attention sufficiently that I feel like a reasonable approximation of a functional person.
Dispatch comes through at eleven with a structure fire two miles east, and I gear up and go.
The building is a four-story walk-up on a corner block, and the smoke coming from the second-floor windows is the dark, rolling kind that means something structural has caught fire, not just furniture.
Two other engines are already on scene when we pull up. I’m out of the truck before it fully stops, crossing to the lieutenant from the first engine, who meets me halfway with his radio in his hand and soot already on his jaw.
“Second floor rear apartment,” he says. “Fire started in the kitchen, spread to the hallway. We’ve got the stairwell still, but not for long. Third-floor residents are refusing to come down, two adults and at least one kid.”
“Ladder truck?”
“Called. Eight minutes out.”
“Too long,” I say. “Who do you have on the line?”
He points. I look. I make three decisions instantly.
I put Rory and two from the second engine through the front entrance with specific, fast instructions, because vague instructions at a structure fire are how people get hurt.
I position Zack in the northwest corner with the hose because the smoke is thickest there and the wind is pushing it east, so the fire is following it.
I get back on the radio and push for the ladder truck because eight minutes is eight minutes, and I want it here in six.
“Redwood.” Zack’s voice crackles through. “We’ve got a woman on the third floor window. She’s got a kid with her.”
I look up.
She’s there, leaning out, one arm around a boy who is maybe seven or eight, his face pressed into her shoulder.
She’s not panicking, which is good, and she’s not trying to climb out, which is better.
She sees me looking, and her mouth moves, and I can’t hear it from here, but I read it clearly enough.
Please.
“Tell her to stay put,” I say into the radio. “Ladder’s two minutes out. Tell her two minutes and mean it.”
The two minutes become four.
The ladder truck arrives, and the crew moves fast, and I direct from the ground, watching the angle, watching the smoke, watching the window where the woman is still holding the kid.
The ladder goes up, and the firefighter on it reaches the window and says something I can’t hear, then the woman passes the boy across first.
The boy is wearing a dinosaur t-shirt.
He comes down the ladder with his arms around the firefighter’s neck, and his eyes squeezed shut, and when they reach the ground, I’m right there, and the firefighter hands him off to me without ceremony and goes back up for the mother.
The boy opens his eyes.
He looks at me for a second, taking in the gear, the helmet, the general situation.
“You okay?” I say.
He nods. Then he looks at the truck. Then at me.
“Is that your truck?” he says.
“It is,” I say.
“It’s big,” he says.
“It is,” I say.
He’s quiet for a second, watching the ladder come back down with his mother on it. She reaches the ground and goes straight to him, wrapping both arms around him, and he lets her, his face going into her shoulder the same way it was in the window.
She looks at me over his head. “Thank you,” she says, and her voice breaks on the second word.
“You did well,” I say. “Staying calm up there. It helped.”
She nods, not trusting herself to speak.
The boy pulls back from her shoulder and looks at me again. “I’m going to be a firefighter,” he says. “When I grow up.”
His mother laughs, wet at the edges.
I crouch down to his level. “Yeah?” I say.
“Yeah,” he says, with absolute certainty.
“Good,” I say. “We need more of them.”
He nods seriously, satisfied with this answer, and then one of the EMTs from the unit parked at the curb is there with a silver thermal blanket and a calm voice, guiding them both toward the ambulance.
The boy goes without argument but turns back once to look at the truck, and I watch him go and then stand up and go back to work.
By the time the building is handed off to the investigators, the sky has gone the grey of early evening, and the street smells like smoke and wet concrete. I check in with both crews, confirm the equipment, and sign off on the incident report that Rory has already started filling out.
Then I walk home.
***
I turn onto our block and see the light on in the apartment window and smell garlic from the street, which should not be possible from four floors up and yet somehow is, and I think that whatever is waiting for me up there is a very different thing from what I left this morning, and I take the stairs.
Inside, Brielle is at the stove with a dish towel over her shoulder, and her hair pulled back, and the sleeves of her sweater pushed to her elbows.
She hears me come in and looks over her shoulder. “You’re back,” she says. “Good. Sit down, it’s almost done.”
“You cooked,” I say.
“I followed a recipe,” she says, turning back to the stove. “There’s a difference. Sit down, you look tired.”
I sit down.
Jase is at the table with a glass of water and his phone face down, which means he’s been put to work at some point and has been demoted back to sitting.
Evan comes out of his room when he hears me come in and drops into the chair across from mine, props his chin on his hand, and looks at me with an expression that has something underneath it, something that has been sitting there all day waiting.
“Good call today,” he says. “Heard it on the radio.”
“It was fine,” I say.
“Third floor evacuation in under twenty minutes,” he says. “That’s not fine, that’s good.”
I look at him.
He looks back at me, and something behind his eyes shifts slightly, and I decide that now is as good a time as any.
“You want to tell me something,” I say.
Evan picks up his water glass. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Jase was humming at the window this morning,” I say. “You were up at eight on a day off. Brielle walked into the kitchen and went pink at her coffee.” I rest my elbows on the table. “I’ve been doing this job for twelve years. I know when something happened.”
Nobody says anything.
“Evan,” I say.
He sets his glass down. “Jase was with Brielle last night,” he says. “I heard something, went to check, walked in on them.” He pauses. “And then I stayed.”
I look at him.
“She was fine with it,” Jase says, from across the table. “More than fine.”
“I’m right here,” Brielle says, to the stove.
“You are,” Jase agrees.
I sit with it for a moment.
“Are you angry?” Brielle says. She still hasn’t turned around, her back straight, both hands on the dish towel.
I push my chair back and stand.
I cross the kitchen and stop directly behind her. Close. Close enough that I watch her shoulders come up, and her hands go still on the dish towel.
I brace my hands on the counter on either side of her, caging her in. My chest is almost touching her back. I lean down until my mouth is right beside her ear, my hips pressing firmly against her ass so she can feel exactly how hard I already am.
“Not angry,” I murmur, low enough that only she can hear. “Just wasn’t invited.”
Brielle’s breath catches sharply. Then it comes out in a soft, shaky pant. I can feel the heat of her body through her clothes, the way her ass presses back against my cock slightly, involuntarily. The scent of her skin is driving me insane.
It is taking every ounce of willpower I have not to bend her over this counter right now, yank her pants down, and have her while Jase and Evan watch.
I want to hear her moan my name the way she moaned theirs last night. I want to feel how wet she still is from them. The image is so vivid that it makes my cock twitch hard against her.
I stay there one long second longer, letting her feel the full length of me pressed against her ass, then I straighten up, walk back to my chair, and sit down as if nothing happened.
“Invite me next time,” I say to everyone.
Jase exhales, and Evan has the same hungry look in his eyes.
Brielle turns around from the stove. Her cheeks are flushed dark, her lips slightly parted, and she clutches the dish towel as if it might save her. She has nothing to say.
She serves the food, and it’s genuinely good. The four of us eat, but the air at the table has changed. Every time I look at her, my thoughts turn filthy.
At some point, the food is mostly gone, and the table has that end-of-dinner quality, the dishes pushed slightly aside, and the candle Brielle lit at some point is burning low, and the four of us are settled into our chairs with the unhurried looseness of people with nowhere to be.
She’s sitting across from me with her sleeves pushed up and her hair coming loose.
The wide neck of her sweater has slipped off one shoulder, exposing the soft curve of her collarbone and the faint shadow between her breasts.
I stare at that bare shoulder and imagine dragging my tongue along it, then lower, sucking one of those tight nipples into my mouth while she tries not to moan at the dinner table.
She’s talking to Jase, her hands moving animatedly, and when she laughs, her breasts shift under the thin sweater.
I picture her on her back on this table, legs spread, my mouth between her thighs while Evan and Jase hold her down.
I picture her riding me right here in this chair, that loose sweater pushed up so I can watch her tits bounce as she takes every inch of me.
She catches me looking. Her words falter mid-sentence. Our eyes lock across the table, and the tension snaps tight between us.
“Sorry,” I say, which I don’t entirely mean.
“Don’t be,” she replies, her voice a little breathless. She says it the same way I did.
Evan reaches for his water glass, takes a drink, and looks between us with the expression of a man watching something he saw coming from a considerable distance.
“Oh,” she says, reaching for her water glass. “Before I forget. I'm going to Callie's film set tomorrow. Brighton Beach.”
Jase looks up. “The acting?”
“Yes,” she confirms.
“Finally!” Evan says, and means it.
“I know you’ll do well. Have fun while at it too.”
I sure will.
She looks at me briefly, something warm moving through her face, and then she looks at Jase who is already grinning at her across the table in that way he has that makes people feel like whatever they've decided is exactly right.
I say nothing.
But she glances at him, just once, and I watch him watch her, steady and unhurried, and I think that silence from Max is not the same as indifference, and that she already knows that.