Backdraft…

She had a fully-stocked fridge for living all by herself. It was kind of nice, actually. A fireman’s utopian paradise of fresh veggies and a freezer full of vacuum-sealed meat perfectly portioned for a single person.

She had a little bit of everything and I had some ideas of where to go with it. I pulled out some chicken and got some water going in the sink to rapid-thaw it. She had another, what looked like a mini-fridge, at one end of her kitchen and curious, I opened it up. It was a climate controlled mini-wine cellar and for some reason, I wasn’t surprised she favored whites over reds. Worked for me. I selected a chardonnay and decided to wait a little bit longer to open it, until either she got out of the shower or I needed it for the sauce I had planned.

I wasn’t big on carbs, but one of her cabinets had an assortment of pasta and that pretty much clinched it. Chicken in a white wine sauce was easy enough and she had everything for it, including shallots, which I found tucked away in one of her crisper drawers. I had planned on making do with onions, but that was a fantastic find.

I set to work peeling and chopping, getting everything prepped that I would need. She was taking a long time, but I resisted the urge to go check on her. It was totally cool if she wanted to run on girl-time. Nothing could be worse than Torrid’s version of it. I honestly hated how late that woman had made me to more than a few things, and I was talking like a minimum of an hour late, each time.

I shook my head and banished all thoughts of my ex. That was over and done. I was also lying to myself about being cool with the ‘just friends’ with Lil. I mean, I was cool with it for now, and if she wasn’t interested, for always, but I really hoped she was interested, too. That at some point, things could and would, evolve.

Soon would be nice, before your dick falls off from spanking it. I chuckled to myself, twisting the knob on her cooktop to get the pan heating.

“Wow, smells really good,” she said and I smiled, concentration on the butter, shallots, and garlic in the pan.

“If it’s one thing fire guys know how to do, it’s cook. This is going to be a total cheat meal but worth it.”

She laughed and said, “I didn’t know you were watching your girlish figure.” I looked up as she went to move around me and damn near had a heart attack. She was beautiful and her version of ‘comfortable’ knocked it out of the park.

She had on this light peachy-pink, satin nightie-thing, edged in cream lace under a long satin cream robe and it did fabulous things around her figure, clinging to her lush curves; her nipples were erect and pressed tight against the thin cloth. She brought the two sides of the robe together and overlapped them, belting it at her waist, and I caught her blushing.

“Sorry,” I said and put my eyes back in my head.

“Told you my pajamas were, um, embarrassing.”

“Not how I’d describe them,” I said with a smile and ladled some of the juices from the bottom of the pan over the chicken breasts I’d laid inside. I’d turned on the oven a minute ago and was waiting for it to preheat. It looked like, from the display that it was just about there.

“Good to know,” she murmured and I wasn’t about to press it. So, she liked to wear pretty things that made her feel good, what was so embarrassing about that? I filed the question away for later. It was one that I for sure wanted to try and get an answer to eventually.

“I’m surprised Jaspar and Marigold haven’t come out of their hiding place to bug you. You’re in the kitchen.”

“Haven’t seen them yet,” I confessed. “Can you grab me the bottle of Chardonnay on the top right? Is it one you mind opening?”

She went to the wine-cooler-thing and opened the door, selecting the bottle I’d picked.

“Good choice, how much you need?”

“Half a cup or so.”

She opened it, brought down a couple of glasses and measured me out some in one of her measuring cups. I added it to the pan, steam billowing and the wine sizzling.

“You really have this stuff down. I would have burnt myself by now, having you watch me. I’m a nervous cook.”

“How come?” I asked.

She hesitated, and finally took a deep breath and spit it out, “Alcoholic perfectionist mother.”

I winced. “Perfectionist or narcissist?” I asked and she blinked at me, startled. Nailed it. It explained the confidence issues.

“Nailed it,” she said, a straight echo of what I’d been thinking. Great minds think alike. She asked, “How did you guess?”

I shook my head, “Seen it myself. Best friend growing up had a dad that was the same way.”

“Youngblood?” she asked, and I shook my head and got quiet for a second. She'd showed me hers; I could show her mine. I took a deep breath and spilled.

“Youngblood is my best friend now. A couple years back it was another guy. He and I grew up together, joined the fire department together, but for some reason, the good lord didn’t see fit that we die together.”

Her face crumbled into lines of deep sympathy and she said, “I’m so sorry. If you don’t mind me asking…” She trailed off and I finished for her.

“What happened?” She nodded and I put the chicken in the oven and set the timer. “We were working a fire. The brick façade of the building came down. A bunch of us managed to get out of the way. He didn’t. Neither did another one of our guys; got burned real bad in that fire, took a spinal injury and had to give up firefighting. It was a total shit-show.”

I tried to banish the haunting image of Corbin’s face as we’d pelted back from the falling bricks. He’d been right beside me, and yet somehow, I’d gotten clear and he hadn’t. I’ll never forget it. Watching him, seeing him there, then all those falling bricks and then ‒ nothing, he was gone. That look of sheer panic and terror on his face in that one split second was burned into my fucking brain forever. The last moment I saw my best friend alive.

She nodded and said, “Thank you for telling me. I won’t pry anymore. I can tell you don’t like talking about it.”

I tried to breathe through the heavy somber pall that descended in her kitchen, and tried to haul it back in, end-over-end, like one of our hoses, saying, “I don’t, but it’s good, you know? Something I should do every once in a while.”

“Is that the tattoo on your side?” she asked. The mood was beginning to ease up and lighten again, slowly but surely.

“Yeah, he died on his birthday, so I got his name and the date.”

She made this face somewhere between a grimace and a wince. “Oh his birthday? Really?” I nodded. She sighed and the sadness on her face made me adore her even more. She had a real gift for empathy. It didn’t surprise me in the slightest that she was an introvert. That shit had to be exhausting, feeling everything from everyone around you, as they were feeling it. I couldn’t do it, but some people, like Lil, didn’t seem to have a choice. She wore the burden like a pair of wings, though, graceful and pure. She said, “I didn’t get a good look at it in the pool.”

I turned into the light cascading from the recessed portals in the ceiling and lifted my tee all the way up on that side, turning so she could see it.

She lightly touched the edge of it and I jumped, her stormy blue eyes flicking from the ink to mine as gooseflesh swept out from her fingertips and across my chest. I felt my nipple harden and I fought down the image of her running her mouth over every inch of my chest and stomach, of those pouty lips of hers going around my – get a fucking grip, buddy!

She traced the lower edge, the curve of the flames and smoke around my dead best friend’s name and I shivered, then forced a laugh.

“Ticklish,” I lied and she smiled, taking her fingers away.

“Sorry,” she murmured shyly and picked up her wineglass from the counter, taking a generous swallow. I followed suit. I needed the fortitude to keep my hands and mouth to myself, repeating just friends, just friends, just friends, over and over again like a mantra in my head.

“Smells really good,” she said, changing the subject.

“Yeah, super easy,” I said. “You had everything for it, too. Including the heavy cream.”

She smiled. “I like it in my coffee in the morning, better than half-and-half. Makes it richer, smoother.”

“Coffee addict, huh?”

“Guilty,” she said, with a little smile that echoed the sentiment.

“Kind of had to expect it,” I said. “The whole ‘writer’ thing maybe tipped me off.”

She laughed a little and asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Nope, I’ve got it. You could cue up the Netflix, though. Find us something to watch.”

“Okay.” She took her wine and went around the counter, past the dining table and down the step into the sunken living room. I watched her move and watched the echoing reflection of her in the darkened glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows beyond her. She picked up the remote from the modern glass coffee table, switching on the flat-panel TV bolted to the wall across from the overstuffed plush sofa.

She cued up the streaming service and I went back to dinner, dumping linguini into the boiling water and checking on the chicken in the oven. It looked ready to go, so I brought it back out onto the stove top. I removed the chicken and set it aside before adding the heavy cream and grated cheese, stirring it slowly, bringing up the sauce to a simmer, being careful to make sure it thickened without breaking – err, the oil separating out from it.

I got the broccoli steaming and pretty much lost sight of her momentarily as everything on my end came together and when I looked again, she’d quietly moved around me in the kitchen, staying out of my way, to retrieve dishes and silverware and set one end of the table for the both of us.

I liked that, that we could occupy the same space and move in perfect sync without once getting in each other’s way. It wasn’t often you found people you jived with that completely, so it was really nice that we did.

She brought down a serving dish for me and I dumped the drained pasta into it, threw in the perfectly-steamed broccoli, cubed the chicken and dropped it in and doused the whole mess generously with sauce. A few tosses with some tongs and it was good to go.

“Voilà,” I said and she giggled. “What?”

“That’s French, not Italian.”

“So?”

“So in Italian, I think that’s 'ecco'.”

“I don’t know what either means,” I said truthfully, and she smiled wide, blushing.

“They mean ‘here’, as in ‘here you go,’” she said.

“You speak both, don’t you?” I asked.

She laughed outright and said, “No, well, a little of both. I took French in high school but I know a little Italian because I had a character speak it once and had to find someone who was fluent in it to get it right.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, Google translate isn’t actually all that reliable. Single words here or there, sure, but entire sentences?” She made a face, like a scared grimace almost, but comical. “I made that mistake ‒once. Turned out, I had a few readers in the country of origin and I got it all wrong. They weren’t happy, and rightfully so. I was both lucky and blessed that they were willing to help me fix it so it read correctly. I pulled that book from publication, fixed every bit of it according to a local to the language, and we all lived happily ever after.”

We’d taken our seats at the table and I laughed at how she put it. It was absolutely fucking adorable.

“I think the world needs a whole lot more ‘happily ever after’ in it.”

“I one-hundred-percent agree,” she said, and raised her glass.

“To ‘happily ever after’s,” I said.

“To ‘happily ever after’s,” she murmured and we clicked our glasses, which rang a little too clear to be glass. My guess was, it was probably crystal. Another thing I liked about Lil, she had expensive tastes but it didn’t seem to really mean much to her in the long run. Like she’d just as happily trade it all just to make someone happy. Like the smiles were far more important to her than the cash. That wasn’t something you found in a lot of rich people. At least, not the way the media portrayed them. Lil was probably the first actual rich person I knew but she was just so down-to-earth it was like all this money wasn’t even there.

We each sipped our wine from the perfectly pitched and sparkling crystal, (that probably cost more than my last paycheck for the one glass,) and tucked into our food.

“Hmm,” she hummed out in pleasure, closing her eyes and chewing slowly, savoring the bite of broccoli she’d put in her mouth. “This is amazing.”

I smiled, “Glad you think so.”

The conversation was smooth and natural, flowing back and forth between us like water in a tidal basin. I gleaned little bits of information from her here and there about her life. She didn’t have a good relationship with her mother, though she was too embarrassed to talk about it. Her cheeks flushed all through the topic and she couldn’t look at me. Instead, she studiously fixed her eyes very solidly on her plate and the food she pushed around on it. We moved to the topic of my parents; I’d had the all-American-boy upbringing and a good relationship with both my mom and dad who lived nearby and were contemplating retiring to Florida. She had no siblings, I had one asshole brother.

Her cats finally came out to visit just as we were clearing our plates from the table, I now knew why she’d shuffled a couple of small chunks of chicken to the edge of her plate. Before she rinsed her plate at the sink and put it in the dishwasher, she took it over to the end of the kitchen where the kitties’ food bowls rested and knocked a piece of chicken each into their waiting wet food dishes.

“This is Jaspar,” she said, scratching the behind of a white cat with washed-out tabby blotches on his coat. “And this is Marigold,” she said giving the striped ginger kitty some lovin’s. “Jaspar’s my good boy and Marigold’s my special girl.”

I smiled. “Looks like the perfect ‘crazy cat lady starter set’ to me.” She scoffed and I laughed. “What, I thought it was some kind of rule that if you’re a writer or author that it at least required two to start.”

“Let me guess,” she said, narrowing her eyes in suspicion, “You’re one of those dreaded dog people.”

“‘Dreaded!’ Dreaded? Oh, I see how it is.” I turned back to the sink to hide my stupid smile and rinsed the pan I’d used to make the chicken, mumbling, “Dreaded, ha!”

“Well, I won’t be explaining to these two your reasoning, that’s all you.”

“Okay, okay, I see how it is,” I said and we finished up cleaning the kitchen together, laughing.

“What do you feel like watching?” she asked.

“Let’s see what they got listed.”

We went over to the couch which was easily long enough to seat, like, seven people and I was pleased she was comfortable enough to sit close. I took off my boots and crossed my feet at the ankle on the chaise end of things, tucking myself into the corner while Lil curled up like a cat, her legs up under her, next to me. She spoke into the remote, bringing up Netflix, and I paid attention to her viewing habits as we scrolled through trying to settle on something.

“You watch a lot of true crime,” I remarked.

“I do! I tend to put it on in the office while I am writing as just sort of background noise. I don’t always listen to music. Sometimes I need a break from it.”

“What did you watch while writing Hallowed Be Thy Light?” I asked and she smiled.

“Mostly fantasy movies on repeat.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I got attached to a couple of songs from the movies and played those on repeat when I didn’t feel like having the TV going.”

“Huh, I wonder if that’s an author thing or just a ‘you’ thing.”

“I think it’s a little bit of both, I’ve heard of other authors writing to the same song playing over and over for hours on end because it captured the essence of the character or the scene they were working on so well.”

“I wonder what my song would be if I were a character in one of your books,” I said with a grin and she smiled back.

“I’ll get back to you on that, not that I’m writing you into a book, or anything! That would be weird. That ‒would‒ be weird, wouldn’t it?”

I laughed and nodded, “Maybe just a little weird, but I think I’d be honored if I were romance-novel material.”

“‘Book boyfriend’, that’s what we call them. I think you’re definitely book boyfriend material.” Her face got one of those priceless looks and she said, “Oh, God! That sounded totally corny, didn’t it? Like, holy hell; that was really embarrassing!” She covered her flaming face with her hands and shook her head back and forth.

I laughed, I couldn’t help it, but I hugged her around the shoulders and said, “No, it wasn’t that bad, I promise you.”

She shook her head again and took her hands down from her face, which was a brilliant bright pink, and groaned. “Oh, God, please just save me from myself and pick something to watch, already.”

I took the remote and asked, “Have you watched this yet?” to make her come out from behind her hands, which she had gone back to hiding behind again. She peeked between her fingers and lowered them, shaking her head.

“No, but I’ve been meaning to when I haven’t had my nose buried in a computer monitor and could actually focus on it.”

“Alright, Sci-Fi adventure it is!” I cued up the show and she put her hands onto her cat, Jaspar, who had jumped up into her lap demanding love. Marigold jumped up on her other side and looked at me warily, before curling up against her mama’s hip.

We settled in to watch and I couldn’t ever remember being this content with Tori, or anyone else for that matter, doing anything so simple. It was super nice and something, hopefully, I could get a lot more of in my life.