Page 86 of The Fireman and the Flirt

“How’s your finger?” I went to lift his hand, the ring finger swaddled in a bandage, but he reached for his glass of orange juice instead.

“Good. Fine. It was only grazed by the blade. It’ll heal nicely.” Cary took a tentative sip of his drink. Tension stifled the room. Something wasoff.

Flashbacks rocked my head. This was how Paula acted the final few months of our marriage. I was too tired, too busy, too willfully ignorant to see the signs, but they were there. The distance, the coldness, the mood swings. Her attitude toward me would change on a dime. Things would be fine until I set her off for some unknowable reason. She would be polite but not much else until she was tired of even doing that.

Was that how things would be here between us? Cary would act like he loved me one night and then push me away in the morning?

“I’m going to get showered and dressed,” Cary said, not meeting my eyes. He went to leave the kitchen, but I blocked him with my arm thrown across the entrance.

“I’m not moving my hand until you tell me what the hell is going on.” I was too old, I’d been through too much, and fuck, I was still too tired to deal with this shit.

“Nothing.”

I shot him a steely look.Don’t you even give that passive-aggressive bullshit.

“Cary, I had one of the best nights of my life with you. And I know you had yourself a good time, too. If I did something wrong, we can talk about it. But right now, I am really fucking confused.”

He sighed, as if the energy to play this game was wearing him out. He removed a piece of paper from the pocket of his robe and handed it over.

That was when I realized it wasn’t paper. It was a napkin, a familiar napkin.

“Shit. Where did you find this?”

“It fell out of your coat pocket. I wasn’t looking for it.”

The crude gearhead drawing stared back at me.

“I didn’t draw this.”

“Then why was it in your coat pocket? Why were you holding onto it?”

“A guy on the hockey team drew it when we were out. I grabbed it?—”

“Why was he drawing it?”

“He was being an asshole.” Hank, Bill, and Des had each texted me to apologize about the other night. They’d seemed sincere, but I wasn’t sure if I could let it go.

“You said you weren’t joining the hockey team, but you went out drinking with them?”

“It was before—one of them brought up—but I shut it down.” I couldn’t unravel the story in my head. Words failed me. Cary’s questions were sharp pinpricks keeping me on edge.

“What did they say?” He was a cop grilling a witness, wanting to get every detail. “Let me guess. I was that weirdo who fucked a car. Because my fucking reputation always precedes me. And there was probably a team member who didn’t know who I was, but wanted to hear the gearhead story because it’s so crazy. And what better way than using visual aids?”

“I told them to shut up! I told them it was bullshit. I ripped this out of their hands the second I realized what they were doing,” I said of the napkin, balled in his fist. “I would never make fun of you.”

“If you heard about this story back in the day, you would have.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t. I don’t know what I would’ve done, and neither do you. But you keep bringing that up like it’s some trump card you can use to push me away when you get scared.”

I wanted to believe I would’ve stood up for Cary in high school. We weren’t in that timeline, though. We were here, in this moment, and right now, I was watching the man of my dreams pulling away.

Cary shook his head, his jaw tight, fury blazing in his eyes. I’d never seen him angry like this, like all his nervous energy had caught on fire. “Still. Twenty years later. This story, this lie, is my scarlet letter, and no matter what outfit I put on, it’s there, following me around. I can tell people the truth. I can laugh it off and play the good sport. I can tell people to shut up. It doesn’t matter because it doesn’t go away. Even after I found someone, someone who made me start to believe I wasn’t meant to be alone…the scarlet letter remains.” Cary waved the napkin in the air, almost as if it were a white flag.

“I’m sorry, Cary.” I wished I could take this pain away from him. I wished I could endure it for him. “I would never let anyone talk about you like that. Please believe me.”

It was like I was stretching my arms as far out as they could go, but he was just out of reach. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“When you look at me, do you think of gearhead?” he asked, his voice raspy with old wounds infused with new pain.

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