Page 3 of Floodgates

“I want to come home.”

I cleared my throat, and when I did Katie drifted away from me across the room, giving me space. “I heard you’ve got a nice place in Pacific Heights with your new salary bump. Why would you want to come back to Noe Valley with me?” I sounded petulant I was sure, but my arm hurt.

“You know why.”

And I almost got sucked in; I was that close to tumbling into the trap of the same old argument, the familiar back and forth, all over again. But I stopped myself before it escalated. “I don’t think—”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

He diverted me, and I let him because it was the polite thing to do and I was my father’s child. “I’m fine,” I soothed him, lying, my voice cracking a little with how scared I still was. The adrenaline had left by the time the police arrived, and I couldn’t seem to stop shaking. “No worries.”

He huffed out a breath. “But I do worry. I’ll leave for the airport now and—”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Chicago; I’m supposed to be here until Friday, but—”

“Are you there on business?”

“Of course I’m here on business!” he snapped defensively, and that was new. It had never happened before I came home early from my five-day family reunion in June and found him fucking his friend Sean Granger on our couch. I had left my dad and my brothers in Tahoe because I had missed my boyfriend. He hadn’t been able to get the time off—an ER doctor’s schedule was not his own. But it turned out he had the weekend off. My fairy tale had ended right that second, and now all I could think about was how beautifully it had begun.

People were forever looking at us, the gorgeous hot blond doctor and his… assistant? No one ever looked at us and thought, Oh yeah they fit, they’re a couple. On some couples it was easy to spot the connection, but not us. And I loved that. I loved the way eyebrows would raise when the most breathtaking man in the room passed everyone else up to reach me. I got a charge out of it every time. Sometimes after a few drinks—bravery by bottle—we would get asked. How? What made Breckin Alcott ever stop and look at a plain guy like Tracy Brandt?

“He had to stop,” I always said. “I was bleeding, after all.”

“No.” Breckin would grin—the one that made his eyes sparkle—and then run his fingers through my hair. “It was his sense of humor. I’m a slave to his laugh.”

My sense of humor runs to the absurd, and it was that, above all else, that drew him to me. I had never stopped traffic; I did, however, stop Breckin Alcott in his tracks.

I was on my way to work, late, as usual, with the four other people I carpooled with, when we were hit by another car. It was one of those accidents where the person at fault is easily recognizable, as well as the victim. In our case there were five of us. The car rolled over what felt like seventy-five times but I guess was actually only once. We ended up on a hill.

Now the “hill” part is relative when you’re talking about San Francisco. People call them hills, but they go straight up and straight down, so the angle can be more precarious than the word “hill” implies. Everyone got out but me and my friend Matt. That was okay with me as he was, and is, one of my favorite people in the world. The two of us were on the crushed side, so we were pinned in there pretty good. I heard him start to breathe a little weird, so I asked him if this little fix we were presently in was going to keep him from his hot date later on.

“Oh shit,” he swore from the front seat. “I do have a date tonight, don’t I?”

“Yes,” I reminded him, putting the leer in my voice, “with the hot sportscaster.”

“Tracy, honey, that man is so fine.” He sighed, turning his head around to look at me. “And the package was lookin’—oh, Jesus, your eye’s bleeding!”

I shook my head at him slowly, wanting him to be less screechy—small area and all that. “It’s, like, my eyebrow or something. Don’t worry about it. Just tell me about this guy. Hell, we’re gonna be here awhile.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?” His voice was rising again, sounding worried.

“Absolutely,” I assured him even though my right wrist was going numb. Better numb, though, than the shooting pain that had been happening before. “Hurry up and talk, though, so I don’t fret back here.”

He nodded. “Okay, so, we met at Spin and he just walks up and—”

“Morning, folks,” came the interruption as a man poked his head in the broken-out window.

We both looked at the man at the same time, and he started laughing. Breckin told me later he had never seen two people who were trapped inside a crushed car look so annoyed. It was completely unexpected and refreshing. I suppose most people would panic even after they had been assured by several firemen that they would not be blowing up or rolling anymore. We knew we would get out; it was simply a matter of when. I trusted firemen. They weren’t like policemen, who had a difficult reputation. Firemen were always there to help; they didn’t hand out parking or speeding tickets or scare you. So when one of them came to the door over and over and told you that they were working on it, I just figured, yeah, they were working on it.

“Our understanding is that it’s tricky,” I told the stranger in our midst. “If you pull Matt out it puts some strain on where I am and I get crushed, and if you pull me out, the same scenario plays itself out for him. Is that the gist of it?”

“Yes,” he said cheerfully.

“Okay, then,” I sighed, then took a deep breath. “So what’s the plan?”

“I’m not sure; I’m not with the fire department.”