Blue Smoke

cute guy who claimed to be crazy about me.”
    “Since I can’t be the first to make your dreams come true, I’ll try to make this one memorable.”

    “You are the first.”
    “Get out.”
    “No, back when . . .” She stopped herself. “Just how many of my deep, dark secrets do I expose?”
    “All of them. Back when?”
    “When I was eleven, I was so sure when I got to be a teenager, everything would fall into place. My body, boys, my social skills, boys, boys. Boys. Then I got to be a teenager, and it didn’t all fall into place. Part of it, I think part of it goes back to the night of the fire at Sirico’s.”
    “I heard about that. People in the neighborhood still talk about it. Some guy had a grudge against your father and tried to burn you out.”
    “That’s the short version. Things changed for me that summer. I studied, I badgered John—John Minger, the fire inspector who handled our case. And I hung around the fire station. By the time I got to high school, I was, well, I was fairly geeky.”
    “No possible way.”
    “Oh, so possible. I was studious, athletic, obedient, shy around boys. I was a guy’s dream lab partner, his study buddy, his wailing wall, but not the girl he’d think to ask to the prom. I aced my way through high school, graduated third in my class, and could count the number of actual dates I had on one hand. And I yearned.”
    She laid a hand on her heart, gave an exaggerated sigh. “I yearned for the boy who plopped down beside me for help with a chem test, or to tell me about the trouble he was having with his girlfriend. I wanted to be one of those girls, the ones who knew how to stand, and talk, and flirt, and juggle four boys at once. I studied them. I was a born observer, a cataloger. I studied, documented, practiced in the privacy of my room. But I never geared up the courage to take my show on the road. Until that night with Josh, the night you saw me. I finally got there.”
    “He saw what the others had missed.”
    “That’s a nice thing to say.”
    “Easy, because I saw it, too.”
    By tacit agreement, they turned at his house. “After Josh, something closed off in me, at least for a while.” She stepped inside when heunlocked the door. “I didn’t want a boyfriend anymore. Fire had tried to take my family’s treasure, its heritage, and now it had taken the life of the first boy who’d touched me. I bore down then. For months I didn’t do anything but study and work. When I was in the mood, I scooped up a boy, enjoyed him. Let him enjoy me. Moved on.”
    She moved into his living room, no longer sure how her light reminiscence had turned so internal, and so serious. “There weren’t many, and they didn’t mean anything. I didn’t want them to. I wanted the work, the knowledge of how to do the work. Grad school, training, field work, lab work. Because the fire was in me, too, and it wouldn’t let anyone get too close.”
    She let out a breath. “There was another guy I felt a little spark with. We were just circling around what we might do about it. And he was killed.”
    “That’s a rough knock. You’ve had more than your share of them.”
    “It was. And I guess, if I think about it, it soured me. Start to get too close to having someone mean something, and I lose them.”
    He sat with her, picked up her hand, played with her fingers. Playing with fire, he thought. “What changed?”
    “I’m afraid it was you.”
    “Afraid?”
    “A little bit, yeah. It’s only fair to tell you that because things have changed, or may be changing, what’s happening between us is going to have to be exclusive. If you want to see other women, it’s not going to work for me.”
    He lifted his gaze from her fingers, met her eyes. “The only one I’m looking at is you.”
    “If that changes, I expect you to tell me.”
    “Okay, but—”
    “Okay’s enough.” She swung around so she straddled his lap. “Let’s leave it at okay for right now.”
    I t looked like a typical kitchen fire. Big mess, smoke damage, minor injuries.
    “Wife cooking dinner, frying up some chicken on the stove, leavesthe room for a minute, grease flames up, catches the curtains.” Steve nodded toward the scorched counter, the blackened walls, the charred remnants of the curtains at the windows.
    “Says she thought she turned it down, but must’ve turned it up, went to go to the bathroom, got a phone call. Didn’t think about it until she heard the alarm go off.