Page 163 of Burn

Deciding I need to distract him, I set my cupcake aside and then straddle him. “Why? So you can watch the footage of you fucking me on my new desk?”

The unease falls from his face easily. “Damn right.”

And then I’m carried over to my desk for a proper christening of my new office.

Occupancy

Zoning and safety code term used to determine how a structure is permitted to be used and occupied, which in turn dictates the necessary safety structures and procedures.

2 months later

When I leave the station on a call, I know there’s a very good chance something will happen and what I’ve seen that day will eat away at my soul. Mentally preparing yourself to face death, disfigurement, madness and disease becomes the norm, while working or not, it becomes normal after a while.

Unfortunately for firefighters, it tears at our humanity, our compassion, and our ability to love freely and without guile. It destroys our abilities to have normal relationships, to tell someone you love them or give them the relationship they deserve.

It doesn’t mean we don’t want to. It’s just because we’re feeling impending doom will always blind our words, consciously or subconsciously, and we act like tough guys to hide it.

Some of us joke about the dead and make small talk of the mentally unstable ways we deal with it to disguise our hurt with bravado. The rest of us just cope and get through each day the best we can.

Firefighting is more than a way to make a living. It’s a way of life. I know better than anyone nothing in life comes without consequence.

“I no longer think about tomorrow. It doesn’t feel right. I think about right now and this moment because tomorrow I might be gone. I hate even planning for tomorrow because I’ve been let down so many times.” Jacey looks down at her newborn son, Easton, in her arms. Bringing his tiny hand to her mouth, she kisses his baby-soft skin. “But with him, I look forward to tomorrow.”

I don’t think I ever thought about it until now—until seeing Jacey become a mother—but we’re all here for relationships and what they give you. We never really know why that is either. I don’t think we’re supposed to. Regardless, we’re born, we experience, and then we die.

In that time, when we’re here for the relationships, attempting to make them work, every part of our being longs for love, we wish we had more time and ultimately, we fear death. It’s only natural.

Jacey, and even me, two people who have experienced death so often, we don’t fear it anymore and time, it means nothing; it’s just a passing of experiences. We fear not making relationships work. But you know, I’ve come to realize no one person has it all figured out.

Nothing’s elaborate about Easton Jacob Ryan coming into the world. He comes with a sense of peace, blissfully, tenderly, delicately played in his mother’s arms like the precious gift he is to her. It’s as if he’s placed directly in her life from heaven.

A gift from Evan. A piece of himself he could never give her when he was present her life but holds significance now that he’s gone from it.

Jacey wipes away her tears and then glances up at me, her eyes distant, and it’s like she’s falling through the sky with happiness but swimming in the ocean of guilt. She’s reliving a memory, silently, but mourning the loss of missing a future with my brother. She’s healing and breaking all at the same time.

Wrapping my arms around her, I hold her close to my side as she cries, mostly from the hormones surging through her, but mostly becausehecan’t hold her right now, and it’s the right thing to do. It’s what he would have wanted.

When Evan died, I was angry that he left Jacey. He obviously had no control over it, but I was pissed that her happy ever after was destroyed. So yeah, I was angry.

Seeing her now, holding her newborn son in her arms, maybe this is her happy ever after. Maybe Evan dying was her only way of getting it because we all know he would have fucked something up along the way.

My mother had a garden growing up, always had, and she’d spend hours out in that garden tending to her vegetables and flowers. She used to save our leftover food and turn it into compost and I’d get so grossed out by it. “Garbage in a garden? Fuck that. I’m not eating anything from that garden,” I would tell her. Maybe not those exact words, but then again, maybe so. I’ve always had a mouth on me.

She’d tell me, in her mother-loving way, “Caleb, even compost is beautiful. From this garbage comes growth and new life, a fresh beginning. Even in the worst of circumstances, there’s something beautiful. You just have to look past what you think it is—garbage—and see it for what it really is.”

I was still grossed out by it, and I doubt I ate much of anything from that garden growing up, but I see her point now.

Like I told Mila, happiness is accepting the fact that not all tragedies end in devastation. Sometimes new beginnings come from the embrace of forgiveness.

Some things in our lives test our courage.

Some test our strength.

Some define our destiny.

Mila walks into the room. Her eyes fill with tears as she looks at Easton in Jacey’s arms.

My chest tightens when I see her It wasn’t long ago I was holding Mila like this, covered in bandages from the fire and the day I finally told her I loved her.

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