RICHARD (A BAD BOY ROMANCE) (20 page)

“Sounds
like my kind of party,” I said, my leg jumping up and down with anticipation.
All the pleasures and bullshit of life faded into the background. They couldn’t
hold a candle to the thrill and the adrenaline coursing through me. There was
nothing I loved better than fighting a fire.

Chapter 2

Tanya

The
moment I first smelled the smoke would stay with me forever.

You
see fires and stuff on TV. Not just the news, either. Dramas, movies, stuff
like that—an out-of-control fire is the perfect plot device. It’s full of
tension. Heroics. Tragedy, too. Sometimes it’s a great metaphor for change or
destruction. Passion.
Romance.
However
it’s used, it’s certainly a thrill—a symbol our guts
immediately recognize, something even our DNA recalls from the dawn of time.

But
it’s not real. And I don’t just mean that in an “it’s on TV” way. What I
experienced that day in my apartment isn’t something that will ever be shown on
TV or the big screen. No one will ever capture the sheer terror of those
hopeless moments the way my memory did. And I’ll never be able to forget.

I
was in the kitchen when it started. My apartment was on the sixteenth floor and
it was kind of a shithole, so of course while the lower floors were burning,
the alarms up by me weren’t going off. I was microwaving one of those Lean
Cuisine dinners wearing nothing but some tiny pajama shorts and a tank top when
the first curl of acrid stench went up my nose.

Huh,
I thought.
Maybe I put it in for too
long.

Obviously,
that wasn’t the case. I’d checked, though. Wasted precious seconds trying to
figure out if the microwave was on the fritz. I even texted my landlord to see
when he’d be able to get someone up here to take a look at it.

Now,
just minutes later, I was thinking something totally different.

I
was thinking,
I don’t want to die.

Once
I realized the smoke was billowing up from under my door, I’d made it out into
the hall, but the smoke was way thicker out there. People were running,
tripping over each other, trampling others just to get to the stairwell. Kids
were crying. A couple of people were shouting just trying to keep everyone else
calm. It was chaos. I couldn’t see a thing. My eyes burned. My lungs ached.

In
just a few minutes, that narrow hall was packed with people. It was getting
violent. I closed the door and ducked back inside. I figured I’d just break my
window and removing the outer bars to get to the fire escape. It never occurred
to me to think about why nobody else had tried to get out that way.

You
were supposed to be able to twist a knob on the inside and then lift the bars
up individually to take them out, but the knob was gone and the bars were
stuck. In fact, it looked like someone had welded them into the holes.
Shit. Fuckin’ Vinnie.
My landlord was a
paranoid piece of shit who didn’t listen to anyone about anything, much less
young women trying to educate him about the city’s fire codes.

“You
want burglar to break in?” he’d repeated to me every time I tried to explain
why bars on the fire escape windows were bad news. That, or he’d say, “No, no,
no. Fire escapes are crime magnets. I’ve seen the
Law & Order
. Is better this way.”

Fuck Vinnie, and fuck
Law
& Order,
too.

By
the time I realized it was a lost cause, the smoke even in my apartment was
dense, like fog on the streets in the winter. I tried to get out the door
again, but the knob was so hot. It seared the flesh of my palm; the smell made
my stomach turn.

“Shit.
Shit!”

I
stuffed anything I could under the door. Towels, clothes, whatever I had handy.
I got on my cell phone and dialed 9-1-1, returning to the window to look
outside and watch the fire engines pull up.

They
were just getting here. They hadn’t even got the hydrant going yet. My pulse
pounded in my ears, deafening everything else except for the roar of the
flames.

“9-1-1,
what’s your emergency?”

“Please,”
I managed, but devolved into a coughing fit a second later. My mouth was dry.
My throat was ragged. Everything ached and burned. The window wasn’t helping
filter out the smoke anymore. I ducked low, eyes stinging. “I’m in the Parker
building. The one that’s on fire. I’m on the sixteenth
floor_.
_._._”

“Yes,
ma’am, we are aware of the fire and have dispatched units to the scene. Is
there a way you can exit the building?”

“No,”
I choked. “The windows are barred. The fire’s in the hall already.” As I spoke
the words, I realized how bad they sounded, how screwed I was. I swallowed a
throatful
of ash and continued, “Please. Someone has to
know I’m up here. You have to tell
them_.
_._._”

I
put my face to the floor, covering my eyes with my arm as the emergency
operator droned through a script meant to keep me calm. My muscles were
starting to spasm. It was getting hotter in my apartment. Too hot. Painfully
hot. Yet I felt cold inside, melting and freezing all at the same time.

That
was when I heard them. The other people who were trapped on my floor.

They
were screaming. Oh, God, I’d never heard sounds like that before. I didn’t know
people were capable of making such raw, animal noises. Each one was a blade in
my heart, a keening wail that only just rose over the snarl of the flames
growing steadily closer, closer.

“Oh,
God,” I breathed into my cell phone. “Oh, God, no. No. There’s more of them.
More of us. Up here. Please, you have to tell
them_.
_._._Oh,
Jesus, I think I hear a kid!”

There
was a baby crying. And then, just like that, I was crying too. Crying because
she was going to die before she’d even got to live. Because I was going to die,
too, before I’d had a chance to do anything right.

“Fire
rescue is on the scene. I’ve advised them there are residents trapped on the
sixteenth
floor_.
_._._”

There
was a sound like something fluttering by overhead, and despite my teary,
smarting eyes, I looked up. Fire crawled along the ceiling, liquid and
terrible, like lava spilling out on Pompeii. Pieces of ceiling crackled and
rained down on me. I crawled feebly under my kitchen table.

“
Help_.
_._._” I whispered. It was all I could say. I couldn’t
stop coughing. I was getting dizzy.

So, this is really it,
I thought very dimly past the panic and the fear.
I’ll never have a
husband .Never
have kids.
Never have someone who actually fuckin’ loves me. I don’t even get to say
goodbye_.
_._._

There
was a brilliant flash in my mind’s eye: a projector stuttering, flaring to
life, playing the story of my life to a symphony of dying screams.

There
was that time I’d baked cookies with Mom, my little, chubby hands making a mess
of the flour back when she was still healthy—before the cancer came and sapped
the life from her bones.

There
was her wake, too, where I’d locked myself in my room and sobbed for three
straight hours until my stepfather stopped knocking and everyone downstairs
went away.

Jim
pushing me in a swing. God, that had to have been way back. I
was_.
_._._ten, I think. My stepbrother was sixteen or so.
Funny that in these memories, I didn’t think of “steps.” Jim was “Daddy.” My
daddy, pushing his little girl higher and higher, touching the
clouds_.
_._._

Boyfriends,
long past. First kisses, and better ones. The day my stepbrother left us, years
after Jim took to whiskey like every other mean drunk did. God, so
stereotypical. Why couldn’t it have been something cool? Absinthe. Now there’s
a classy
liquor_.
_._._

The
look on both their faces that day was branded into my brain, into my eyelids,
into every optic nerve I had. But now the fire was consuming them too, the
projector screen fraying at the edges, burning, blackening, curling inward.

Words,
blurry and shivering, fading into black:
The
End.

Oh,
God. I couldn’t even hear the screaming anymore.

There
was an explosion then, as I was slipping into death’s cool embrace, and then
someone had their hands on me, yanking my shoulder, flipping me onto my back,
checking me for a pulse.

Through
soot-heavy eyes, I saw his face mask, his respiration, the red and yellow of
his gear. I wheezed, trying to say something. I’m still not sure what. Maybe it
was a laugh. I was too tired to be properly hysterical.

So
very, very tired.

He
drew his fingers away from under my jaw and picked me up, flinging me like a
ragdoll over his shoulder. Blood rushed to my head and the fireman slung his
arm beneath my thigh, his other shoulder bearing the weight of my torso. He
drew my arm across his throat and held my hand by the wrist, but for a second,
just a little one, our fingers touched through his glove. And I remember
thinking, very clearly, how thankful I was for that. I wasn’t alone.

Even
if I died now, at least it would be with someone beside me. With him.

He
turned, steps hard and heavy, to the broken window. “No,” I tried to tell him,
but the word wouldn’t form. My lips were numb. My eyelids were leaden. I was
passing in and out of consciousness, and the rest of what happened was a blur.

One
moment, I was over his shoulders.

Then
on the table, sprawled, gasping. Fish out of water.

Then
noises
like_.
_._._screeching. Banging. Metal on metal.

My
gorge rising as the fireman picked me up again so effortlessly, positioning my
body across his broad shoulders again, carrying my weight
like_.
_._._like
I was nothing. And yet somehow, everything. At the same time.

He
was saving me. Taking me into the light. Was I dying? I was dying. Surely.

So
bright. So cool.
So_.
_._._heavenly.

And
then_.
_._._air.

I
coughed and gagged. Gagged so hard I almost threw up. I choked on my bile, on
the oxygen flooding my nose and mouth. Blinding—the light was white-hot,
burning like the flames
but_.
_._._distant.

Too
bright. Too much.

My
lungs bloomed with agony. I tried to swat at my face, but whatever was clamped
over it wasn’t budging. Something was holding me still. Someone.

I
let my eyes flutter just a little more open, even though it hurt. Even though I
wanted to scream, though I couldn’t. My throat was too full of needles. Too
swollen and raw.

Every
breath was a labor. I could hear screaming again. No, not screaming.
Screeching. Like sirens.
Firetrucks
.

The
world came into focus around me, which only made the pain worse. I shut my eyes
again and writhed and heard a muffled voice say, “Breathe. Just
breathe_.
_._._”

It
was so soothing. Those low, dulcet tones made my rigid muscles relax a little
and I let go of the hand on top of my face. Awareness seeped in slowly—that
hand was clamping an oxygen mask over me, bestowing the gift of sweet, sweet
air I’d been denied in my burning apartment building. It was the firefighter.
He’d saved me. And now he held me in his arms, bringing me back to life.

“Others,”
I whispered and wished I hadn’t.
Fuck,
Tanya. For once, look after yourself.

“Just
breathe,” he replied. Then louder, and not to me, “Will somebody get EMS the
fuck over here, please?”

Something
about him, even through the haze of pain and possible brain damage, seemed so
familiar to me. Maybe I was making bonds where there were none. After all, he’d
pulled me out of the fire I should’ve died in, and people got attached to
heroes all the time.

But
the feeling that I knew him, that we’d met before, just wouldn’t leave me. When
I heard him strip off his face gear, I opened my eyes.

He
was slow to come into focus. My mind was still a mess, twisting light and
shadow and color into some dark dreamscape where nothing made sense. But with
each breath I took, my vision became sharper, and soon I knew exactly who I was
staring at.