Blue Smoke

told herself. Civilized and mature. She got out a pot, took it to the sink to fill with water. “I’ve made more than enough if you’re hungry.”
    “Sure. Reena, are you chilling me here because I got in your way last night?”
    “You shouldn’t have.”
    “When somebody I care about starts to do something reckless, something dangerous, I get in the way.”
    “I’m not reckless.”
    “Not as a rule, I wouldn’t think. But he got under your guard.”
    “You don’t know my guard.” She carried the pot to the stove, turned on the burner. “You barely know me at all.” And went very still when he put a hand over hers, when he turned her around to face him.
    “I know you’re smart. I know you’re dedicated. I know you’re tight with your family, and when you laugh your whole face gets into it. I know you like baseball, and where you like to be touched. That you like lemon meringue pie and don’t drink coffee. I know you’ll walk into a fire. Tell me something else, then I’ll know that.”
    “Why are you here, Bo?”
    “To see you, to talk to you. And I’m getting pasta out of the deal.”
    She stepped back, picked up her wine. “I assumed after last night you’d be uncomfortable.”
    “With what?”
    “Don’t be dense.”
    He lifted his hands. “Trying not to be. Uncomfortable . . . with you.”
    She gave a little shrug, took a small sip.
    “And I’d be uncomfortable with you because . . . Okay, no multiple choice,” he decided when she said nothing. “Because we had a fight about you heading out alone? No, that’s not it, because I won. Because I had to stay out of the way? Can’t be because I’m not with the police or fire departments. You’re stumping me here.”

    “You didn’t like that I went in.”
    “Into a burning building?” He made a sound, a kind of spitting laugh. “Fucking-A right. I’m supposed to like it when you run into fire? Problem there, then, because that’s never going to happen. Adding to that it was my first experience with it, I think I behaved myself. It’s not like I ran after you, tackled you and dragged you away. Which did buzz briefly through my mind as a possibility. Is liking the risks you’ve got to take part of the requirements of us?”
    She stared at him. “God. I am a pessimist.”
    “What are you talking about? Can you please translate your strange female language into words I can comprehend?”
    “Do you want to be with me, Bo?”
    He threw up his hands, the image of a frustrated, baffled male. “Standing right here.”
    She laughed, shook her head. “Yes, you are. You certainly are. I’m going to apologize.”
    “Good. Why?”
    “For assuming you were a jerk. For assuming you were breaking things off because you didn’t want to deal with what I do, with what I am. For working myself up so I wouldn’t care if you did. I didn’t get there, but I was putting some effort into it. For being mad at you when I was the one who wasn’t dealing with it. I’m beginning to realize I have issues in this area—the relationship area.”
    She stepped to him, put her hands on his cheeks, pressed her lips warmly to his. “So I apologize.”
    “Are we over our first fight now?”
    “Apparently.”
    “Good.” He put his hands on her cheeks, kissed her back. “That one’s always the tricky one. Let’s talk about something completely different while we eat, which I hope is soon because all I had tonight was a peanut butter sandwich.”
    She turned away to get the pasta. “This is going to be a lot better.”
    “It already is.”

FLASHOVER
    The final stage of the process of fire growth.
     
    About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night.
    —Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21
    “I want to know more about this girl you’re seeing.”
    Bo continued to hammer out the new garden shed Mrs. Malloy insisted she needed, pausing only to shoot her a wink. “Mrs. M., don’t be jealous. You’re still the love of my life.”
    She sniffed, set the fresh lemonade she’d made him on a sawhorse. Her hair remained a brilliant red, and she was wearing trendy amber-lensed sunglasses. And a floral bib apron.
    “You got a look in your eye, boy, tells me I’ve been replaced. I want to know about her.”
    “She’s beautiful.”
    “Tell me something I couldn’t figure out for myself.”
    He set aside the nail gun, picked up the lemonade. “She’s smart and funny and intense and sweet. Her eyes, they’re like a lioness, and