Page 77 of Not For Keeps
A tear slips down my cheek, and I don’t bother wiping it away. “I moved into the dorms, but we were still close. Every Sunday, I took them to lunch. I never missed a single one. AndMaribel? She was the team’s little sister. Everyone loved her. And she loved telling them embarrassing stories about me.”
I laugh, a short, broken sound.
“And then one night…I got a call. Two in the morning. Unknown number. I almost didn’t answer.”
Analyse’s grip tightens around mine. I can feel her breath catch me, like she knows what’s coming.
“It was a fire. At my parents’ house. They think it started from an old outlet. The house was old. There wasn’t a working smoke alarm. It should’ve had one. I should’ve checked. They were sleeping. My mom. My dad. Maribel. They were sleeping and they…they never woke up.”
The words hang in the air like smoke. Heavy. Suffocating. I’ve said them a thousand times in my head, and somehow, they still knock the breath out of me.
“No,” I whisper. “They couldn’t be gone. I had just seen them. I got in my car and drove there anyway, still convinced it was a mistake. But when I pulled up…”
My voice tremblers. “The house was still burning. Flames everywhere. Firefighters were trying to control it. I got out of the car and tried to run inside, screaming that my family was in there.”
I shake my head, the memory hitting me like a punch to the gut. “It took three grown men to hold me back. I fought them with everything I had. I begged. Ibegged. But they wouldn’t let me in.”
Tears pour down now, hot and relentless. I can’t stop them. I don’t try to. “I just stood there and watched. I watched as my family burned.”
My whole body shakes. The pain crashes over me in waves. “I should’ve been there,” I whisper. “I should’ve protected them. I could’ve saved them.”
I say it again, louder. Desperate. “I could’ve saved them.”
And again. “I could’ve saved them.”
The sob rips from my chest before I can stop it. I feel Analyse shift, and then she’s wrapping her arms around me, pulling me tight against her. I collapse into her, shaking, sobbing into her shoulder like a child.
I bury my face in her neck, clinging to her like she’s the only thing keeping me from falling apart completely. “I’m sorry,” I choke out. “I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she whispers, her voice shaking. Her fingers run through my hair, slow and soothing. “You were a kid, Mateo. A kid. You didn’t fail them.”
I shake my head, but she holds me tighter.
“You loved them,” she says. “And I know they knew that. I know they were proud of you. Are proud of you.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. The grief has taken over.
“I finished college because it’s what they would’ve wanted,” I eventually say, voice barely above a whisper. “And the day I graduated, I went back to that restaurant we always went to. I sat at our table. Waited for them to walk through the door.
“I couldn’t bring myself to go to the cemetery after the funeral,” I admit, eyes trained on the floor. “Not once. I know where they’re buried. I know I should’ve gone. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t face the headstones. I couldn’t face that they were really not here anymore.
“So I just kept…going back to the restaurant instead. Like maybe, if I just sat there long enough, they’d walk in. Mami in her Sunday dress. Maribel bouncing beside her. Papi with that same old baseball cap.”
Silence.
“They never came.”
Analyse presses a kiss to the side of my head. Her tears mix with mine.
“I left California the next day,” I say. “The sun felt like it was mocking me. I needed cold. Pain. Something else. I packedeverything and moved here. Picked Lake City off a damn map. I became a firefighter because I swore I’d never let anyone else lose their family the way I lost mine.”
I pull back just enough to look at her, my hands still trembling. “I didn’t think I’d find a family again. I didn’t think I’d find you. But you…Lyse, you make me feel again. Like I’m alive. Like maybe it’s okay to want something more. To have something more.”
A small smile tugs at her lips through the tears.
“And Maya…” My voice breaks. “God, I love her. She reminds me so much of Maribel. The same light. The same stubborn streak.”
I pause. Then say softly, “It’s like the little pieces of you both…they’re stitching my heart back together, one thread at a time. You two are saving me. Every day. Every second.”
