Things You Save in a Fire(2)

“Not in a good way.”

“You need to stop living like a nun,” he said. “What if I’m the cure for all your loneliness?”

That got my attention. I stabbed a carrot in my salad. “I’m not lonely.”

He frowned like I was certifiably insane. “Guess what? You’re the loneliest person I know.”

To be honest, that smarted a little. I pointed at him with my fork. “I am self-sufficient,” I corrected. “I am independent. I am in charge of my own life.”

“You are also in need of some…” He gave a meaningful pause. “Company.”

I refused to take his meaning. “I don’t have time for company,” I said. I had my shift at the station, my second job as a self-defense instructor, ten hours a week of volunteering with Big Sisters, a marathon to train for, and weekends helping my dad build an addition to his house. I barely had time for sleep, much less “company.”

“Whose fault is that?” Hernandez asked.

Was that a real question? “‘Company’ is not a priority for me. I’m not romantic.”

“This is not about romance. It’s about warmth. Connection. Human closeness.”

“Sounds like romance to me,” I said.

“Call it what you want. You need some.”

What was happening? This was Hernandez. There was no way he could be serious. And yet his face looked so earnest. I kept scanning for some tell—maybe a little side smile, or a spark of mischief in his eyes—but all I could find was that intense, unwavering, weirdly earnest gaze.

I hesitated. “You are kidding, right?”

He had to be kidding.

It was beyond off-putting for this person I’d been in mutual disinterest with for so long to suddenly, out of nowhere, claim to be interested. It was as if we’d agreed to play checkers and he suddenly announced it had been chess all along.

He lifted his hand to the edge of the table and absentmindedly touched his finger to my unused knife handle. “What if you’re wrong about your entire life?” he asked then, lowering his voice almost to a whisper. “What if I’m exactly what you’ve needed all this time? Don’t you want to find out? Won’t you always wonder if you don’t?”

I repeat: This was Hernandez.

This was the guy whose favorite joke was to try to throw me on the couch and fart on me. There was not one moment that had ever passed between us that could be classified as flirty or suggestive—or even personal. But now he had me locked in this crazy conversation. His intensity with women was a famous hypnotic force. I’d seen him use it on countless targets with near-perfect success. He’d just never tried it on me.

I should have been immune. But I was a little off-balance, in this fancy hotel, anticipating walking up on that stage. It’s a hell of a thing to be recognized, to be honored, and it was clearly stirring my emotions in unexpected ways. And truthfully, Hernandez wasn’t a hundred percent wrong about me. Despite everything I knew about him, and life, and firefighters, and myself, I confess: Something about his whole shtick right now wasn’t entirely not working.

I guess you can’t keep your guard up all the time.

Maybe I was lonelier than I’d realized. Maybe I did need something more. Maybe nothing in my life was quite what I thought.

The problem was, he’d just said things that were surprisingly true. Which seemed unfair—to know me so well and then use it against me. Trapped in this strange moment, I was suddenly blinking at my entire life through a different lens. Was he right?

Maybe I didn’t even want to play checkers.

It was the strangest moment of all the time I’d spent with him. Stranger than the disco party, and stranger than the pie-eating contest, and stranger even than the karaoke night that went off the rails.

Hernandez. Of all people.

We both watched his finger on the knife handle. He pushed it closer to me. “You’re tempted.”

I wasn’t. Or maybe I was. Just a microscopic fraction. I thought about my sad, spartan apartment and its neat little row of herbs on the kitchen windowsill. I thought about my bed, always made with military precision, hospital corners and all, and how I’d never once had anyone in it besides me in all the time I’d lived there. I thought about how quiet it would be when I got back, just the tick-tick of the kitchen clock.

I knew exactly what going home to that apartment tonight would look like, and feel like—the slight tightness I always felt on my face after I’d washed it with soap, the whiff of my laundry detergent as I slid my pajama top over my head, the sound of the sheets as I pulled them back and slid between them and tucked them carefully under my arms. The same bedtime routine, over and over, endlessly—as safe and repetitive and dull as always. I could play it out to the minute in my head.

I could even tell you what I’d think about as I fell asleep. The same thing I always did: I’d imagine making chocolate chip cookies, each step in soothing detail, from mixing in the butter to adding the vanilla, from cracking in the eggs to stirring in the chips. I’d watch the mixer blades spin, and scrape the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, and scoop the dough with little half-sphere tablespoons, dropping them one by soothing one onto the cookie tray in neat, perfectly spaced rows.

I hadn’t baked cookies in years. But I thought about doing it every single night.