Page 85 of Smoke and Fire
“Now that you’ve let me meet your family, can I share something with you?”
I nodded, desperate to get out of the spotlight. A rush of gratitude followed. Let her take the metaphorical wheel and decide what needed to be said next, because I had no idea.
“That guy at the Frolicking Moose yesterday was Jakob, my ex-boyfriend.”
A hundred thoughts swirled through my mind like little tornadoes, eating up the anxiety centered around Nessa and Dad. Dahlia’s voice settled them down.
“Six months ago, we broke up," she continued. "Mutual, for the most part. He started talking about it, and I realized he was right. We really weren't doing much. Sort of roommates, living our lives together but not . . . not really in love anymore.”
Her voice had become unmistakably soft, filled with a gentle pain. The distant kind. The sort of pain that you look at from the power of perspective.
“When we broke up, I gave up everything. My job as store manager at his company—a hardware supply chain he inherited from his father—outside of LA. Our shared apartment, which was ten minutes away from my family. My friends, my life. Everything. I just . . . I'd lost myself somewhere in the routine. When our love sort of died, I felt awful. Betrayed, relieved, confused."
Her shoulders dropped with a long, long breath. She relaxed further against me, her cheek resting on the side of my arm. I didn’t hate anything about this scenario, except her tone of regret and pain.
"After I'd graduated with my associates degree in general studies at college—which is where Jakob and I met—I started to work for him. Everything in my life after college began and ended with him. Everything. So when we broke up, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. So I . . . did the only thing that felt good.”
“What was that?”
“I sold everything I owned except a suitcase full of clothes. I kept my truck, which wasbarelybig enough to tow an RV, cashed out my savings, and bought my own place. Then I traveled the US for four months visiting family. Sione came with me. In April, he went to Adventura. In May, I started to work at the Frolicking Moose. I've been trying to figure out what I want to do with my life next in the meantime. Then, Jakob showed up yesterday."
She tucked herself under my arm when I lifted it up and settled it around her shoulders. Something about her warmth at my side felt like a drug. I absorbed the feeling until it could have controlled me if I let it and curled her closer to me.
The caveman inside my chest wanted to immediately reject the idea of Jakob anywhere near her. Dahlia wasn't mine. No matter how much I wanted it to be different—and how much sense did that make?—we didn't know each other well enough for that.
Instead, I let the quiet ride until I couldn’t anymore. "What did Jakob want yesterday?" I asked.
"Closure," she murmured. “He left. He’s back in California now.”
“Oh.”
“I tell you all that,” she continued after a pause where my thoughts became a weird mess, “because you revealed yourself today in a big way. I appreciate the vulnerable position it must have been for you and I wanted you to know my heart, too. Fair's fair. I think we're all a bit of a mess inside.”
She’d offered a gift. Transparency for transparency. On impulse, I leaned down, pressed a kiss into her hair, and whispered, “Thank you.”
She stayed at my side as I lifted my arm back over her shoulders and reached for the gear shift. We pulled away from Dad’s, homeward bound.
This time, not alone.
LATER THAT NIGHT,I stared at the laundry twirling in the dryer, my own thoughts a jumbled mess.
The latest briefing on the fire played in the background, complete with a weather report. Outside Dad's house, wind brushed against the windows with angry bursts of attitude.
My brain registered the words of the incident commander as he appeared on the screen, but not what they meant. Didn’t matter. Tomorrow was my last day of our break before I had to head back out there. My fingers flexed against my palm, less eager than they’d ever been to get back to the fire.
Dahlia’s hand in them, however . . .
I slammed that thought closed.
No, I didn’t know what to think about Dahlia. Although the day had been fun, the opening of wounds had come at a cost.
By the time we finished eating harissa at an Armenian restaurant, we both seemed ready for a break. I’d felt a twinge of regret letting her go back to her RV, but shucked it off to focus on all the things I had to get done. Laundry. Bills. Errands. Nessa needed more oil paints and canvases. Dad probably needed some more clothes and his favorite shaving cream.
Grungy yellow shirts and dark green pants whirled around each other in the dryer as I stood there and thought about Dahlia. A whole new aspect of her had cracked open and spilled fresh light. It only gave me more to tumble over.
The ring of my phone startled me out of my thoughts. I accepted the call without checking the name.
“Hello?”
