Page 7 of AJ’s Fire

I was sprawled out on one of the couches in the lounge, watching a bunch of idiots with one shoe and one sock off, passing a ruler around. I had my phone in hand. A text from my stepmother asked me if I had any time off for the Thanksgiving holiday, and it stared back at me as if it could mimic Nat’s intense gaze. Separately, Jamie had texted and begged me to take time off so that we could both head north to our father and stepmother’s for the long weekend.

Jamie: If you have to work, Nat will make them come down here.

Then before I could even respond:

Jamie: ALL OF THEM, AJ!

Jamie: I know you have vacation you never use. TAKE THE WEEKEND OFF! Hell, take a day off. I promise to do all the driving.

I didn’t mean to string my brother along by not answering, but my best friend started hobbling toward me, one boot in hand, a ridiculous smile on his face.

The thing was, I hadn’t seen that smile all fucking year, and watching him waddle toward me made this strange feeling well up in my chest. It was relief and joy, like seeing him happy was the most important thing to me, like it was the beating of my heart itself. My chest tightened, and my stomach swooped as his eyes danced and his grin widened. I had really been missing my best friend.

He plunked down on the far end of the couch, where my feet were propped, and got to work putting his sock and boot back on.

Jackson's blond hair was shorn close, having recently been cut, but he ran his hands through it as if it still had that length to it that used to flop in front of his eyes. The thought of him yanking his hair back the way he used to when he was chatting up a girl at the bar, that shy smile and eye-dancing charm that won people over wherever we were, brought a smile to my face and ignited the swooping feeling in my stomach all over again.

He was a little shorter than me and slight for a firefighter; I remembered thinking he wouldn’t make it as he and the chief walked toward me on his first day. In his mid-twenties, he had also been older than most probies on the day we met. But his handshake was confident, and his skills were well honed. Jackson was eager to learn and humble enough to understand that he needed to if he wanted to make it as part of Battalion Five. Jackson generally exudes an air of calm, which had served him well over the five years we’d worked together at that point. Seeing him quietly distressed, as he’d been for months, was a departure from the friend I knew.

He tapped one of my boots to get my attention.

“Freeda, by the way.”

“Huh? What about her?”

He nodded his head in the direction he’d just come from.

“She’s the winner. She gets out of truck-washing duty for two weeks.”

I shook my head at my friend and laughed.

“You’re headed home for the holiday, right?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Jackson nodded, then lowered his head and his voice to say, “We’re going to the Hamptons house this year. My parents are throwing a fundraiser the weekend before, so I’ll be on leave for a few days. We’re just going to do Thanksgiving there at the beach house. It’s nice that we’re off schedule for once. Are you going up to Hampstead?”

“Yeah, yeah. My brother’s pestering me already about driving up.” Jackson smirked at me.

“What?” I implored.

“You know.” He smiled. “You bitch about that family of yours, but I know you love spending time with them. You’ll have fun. Meanwhile, I’ll be shoved into a suit, shoved next to Emily, told to smile, and instructed to avoid questions about my life.”

Much as Jackson and I had clicked from that first unexpected handshake, he had kept his family life fairly private for the first year or so that I’d known him. Then one night we followed these two women out of one of our favorite haunts, O’Doyle’s, and they insisted they wanted to go to a trendy club in Manhattan.

When we got there, the line was around the block, and I suggested someplace a little more low-key, but Jackson walked us past the long line of people, whispered something to the bouncer while he shook his hand, and we were immediately let in. After a few drinks, as we sat watching our dates out on the dance floor, I asked Jackson what magic he had pulled to get us in, and in his drunken state, he confessed to me that he was in fact a member of the Dorso family, as in Dorso Electronics.

The club wasn’t my type of place, all pulsing music and trendy clothes, but the women had fun, and, if memory serves, both Jackson and I didn’t go home alone that night. The next day at the station, I dragged Jackson downstairs to an empty classroom in the fire hall and made him fill me in on his parents, his ivy league education, and how, after receiving his master’s and spending one excruciating summer working in the Dorso corporate offices, he’d given it all up for a different type of education, training to become a firefighter.

I hadn’t interacted with members of Jackson’s family at that point in our friendship, but he told me that his parents were disappointed in his choice to become a firefighter.

“I’m supposed to be the head of this multi-million-dollar enterprise, and I came home one day and told them I was over it, moving to Brooklyn, and training to become a firefighter. I’m the only child of only children. Dorso Electronics belongs to me,” he said with a weighted voice. “I think they want to be supportive, but DE is as much their baby as I am. Their loyalties are split.”

“Jax, come on. That can’t be true.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before now?” I asked, and Jackson paused to think about it. It was one of my favorite things about my friend. He rarely gave flippant answers unless we were joking around.

“I don’t want everyone treating me differently, Aje. I don’t want people looking at me and seeing dollar signs.”