Things You Save in a Fire(28)

“You can call me by my name, if you like.”

He hadn’t been on the crew list I’d studied. I didn’t remember his name. “I think I’ll stick with ‘rookie.’”

“Okay.”

I asked, “What temperature would you guess it is?”

“Sixty?” he guessed. “Sixty-five?”

“Kind of on the chilly side.”

“For sure.”

“What’s your clothing situation?”

“Just—” He hesitated. “Just, um, boxer briefs.”

So. Not naked. Relief.

But still pretty close.

I tried not to picture him in his boxer briefs, but my mind seemed bent on conjuring the image. He wasn’t a real firefighter yet, but he sure did look like one. An image of him with his sandy blond hair falling over his forehead—longer in the front, shorter in the back—just drew itself in my mind, despite every protest. In some ways, even as a total beginner, he fit in better than I did. Everything about his tall, broad, earnest demeanor shouted “helper.” He looked the part. He’d grown up in this culture. He was so … male. Even his Boston accent—mah-ket, gah-den, disappeah—was right out of Central Casting.

Not cool. And now my mind was drawing him shirtless. “Not even a T-shirt?” I asked, hoping to be wrong.

“Nope,” he said, awfully cheerful for a person who must have been covered in goosebumps. “But at home I sleep naked, so the underpants feel like a lot.”

Perfect. Now an image of him asleep in his bed at home, naked, curled up in his sheets, popped into my head. I squeezed my eyes closed to blot it out.

What color would those sheets be, anyway? I found myself wondering. White? Heather gray? Maybe like a faded blue chambray?

Just then, an upstairs window slammed open and the guys hurled a blanket down toward us—though it landed a good two feet away.

We both stood staring at the blanket.

“What do you think the chances are,” the rookie asked, “that the guys’ll come down and move it a little closer?”

“Nonexistent,” I said.

So near, and yet so far.

“I think we should work our way down to a sitting position,” I said, after a while.

I could feel his shoulders shrug. “Okay,” he said, and I felt him bend his knees.

I bent mine, too. Our shoulders pressed and rubbed against each other as we worked our way down the pole, finally getting seated on the concrete down at the base. The cold concrete.

“Are you cold?” I asked when we were settled. Somebody was shivering. I just wasn’t sure which one of us it was.

“Just my butt,” he said.

“I think I can reach the blanket,” I said, stretching my leg out sideways.

I managed to pinch it with my toes.

“You are amazing!” the rookie said, as I pulled it closer.

What we were going to do with the blanket, I didn’t know, since our arms were duct-taped at our sides. I pushed it toward the rookie until he was able to grab a corner of it with his fingers.

“Don’t you want it?” he asked.

“You take it,” I said.

“But you’re the girl.”

“But you’re the person in nothing but underwear.”

“I’m serious,” he said.

“I’m serious,” I said. “You’re way more naked than I am.”

In the silence that followed, I wondered if I could have phrased it better.

Then the rookie had a bizarre question. “Are you wearing a shirt?” he asked.

“What?”

“Like, a T-shirt?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“Because I’m not. So they duct-taped me right to my skin.”

“That’s going to be a bitch to take off.”

“But I’m thinking you’re probably wearing a shirt of some kind. And maybe the tape is just on your shirt. Which means you might have a better chance at wriggling.”

At wriggling? “There’s no way we’re escaping. If there’s one thing these guys know, it’s duct tape.”

“But you might be able to work your way around to the pole to get closer to me.”

A beat. “Why would I want to do that?”

“For warmth,” the rookie said.

“Are you seriously proposing that we snuggle?”

I could almost see his frown. “I wasn’t going to call it that.”

“On our first night here? Do you realize we would never live that down? Do you have any idea how much crap those guys would give us if they came down in the morning and found us snuggled together?”

It hadn’t occurred to him. “I was just trying to think of ways to keep warm.”

“I’d rather freeze to death,” I said. “And trust me: so would you.”

When I was quiet for a minute, he said, “So, you’re saying no?”

“Let me put it to you this way, rookie,” I said. “Is there anybody else on this shift that you would offer to do that with?”

“Um…”

“Would you snuggle with Tiny? Or the captain? Or up against Case’s big belly?”

Now he was smiling—I could hear it in his voice. “You might be the only one I’d enjoy doing it with…”