Brushfire - 2. Chapter 2

What I hate about this the most is that Michele was always good to me. You couldn't ask for a better wife. And she's beautiful on top of it. And little Scotty was always worth coming home to. Damn, I love that boy...

Spilled milk, I guess.

By late July Fitz was dropping by campus once or twice a week. I was teaching classes during summer sessions; the extra pay helped. A couple of afternoons during any given week, Fitz would stop by my office around three. Sometimes to talk about going back to school, sometimes to play basketball. And at least one night a week Denny and I would stop by our watering-hole after work, and invariably Fitz would be there too.

After what I told you about that first day at the gym, you probably think I'd finally gotten honest with myself. But I'm here to tell you that even by the end of July, I was still pulling the wool over my eyes.

But it was pretty much a sham. By that point, on some level of consciousness I couldn't escape the realization that there was something growing in the air between the two of us. Intensifying, I guess you'd say. I guess maybe we both knew it, and I think we both knew I didn't care, either. God only knows if he did.

But we never acknowledged it. Hell, I never even acknowledged it to myself. Not at that point.

From time to time I'd catch a curious glance from Denny, who seemed to be on his way toward becoming a third wheel. Not that I'd intended it that way; it's just that Fitz and I were in such perfect sync, Denny sometimes seemed to gum up the works. I guess it's cold, but I didn't care about that either. I mean, nothing had changed externally. Denny was a great colleague and a good friend. And I liked drinking with him. But he could have moved to fuckin' Maine at that point, and I'm not sure it would have fully registered with me.

One Thursday after hoops in the gym, I left Fitz towel-drying his hair in the locker room as I went on ahead to catch up with Denny. The three of us usually grabbed a few beers before we went home on Thursdays after basketball. Denny was about twenty steps ahead of me, but I pulled up even with him by the time we reached the foyer.

"Dr. Gray," I said, trading high-fives with him. "Good game. That final three from the edge, that was a thing of beauty, man."

He laughed. "Yeah, I was in the zone the whole time today, right?"

"Absolutely," I replied. I made a show of looking at my watch. "Beer-thirty, man; first round's on me."

He shook his head. "Can't, bud, I gotta get home. Janis had to work late tonight and I gotta pick up Kyle from the babysitter's."

"Too bad," I said. "I'd buy one for him too."

"Yeah, you'd do it," he said, grinning. "But look at it this way: Your money'll just go farther with only two to buy for."

He pushed the glass door open and headed outside. I followed him back toward Science and Math, where our cars were parked.

As we walked, we chatted about the upcoming fall semester. We were working on a joint class, an upper-level seminar on chaos theory. It was my first chance to teach something besides the obligatory algebra and calculus that the new guy always gets loaded down with. We talked about that for a while, then shifted to the home-and-family stuff. I got caught up on his domestic scene and he got caught up on mine.

We got to his car; he put the key in the lock and paused briefly, looking into my face.

"Jeff...."

He stopped, unsmiling.

"What?"

Another long pause. His eyes never left mine.

Weird.

"Look," he finally stammered. "Just...just use your head, man. Be careful. Don't be stupid. Think about everything you stand to lose."

And just like that, the interior denials collapsed, and all the scary stuff I was feeling, all the scary stuff I was intending, buried just under the topsoil..all of that rose up and fuckin' roared.

Here we are, motherfucker. Nice try, stuffing us in the closet.

I blanked out momentarily; there was no time to deal with it, Ice hung in the torrid air, and I was expected to say something.

But I'd vote Republican before I'd admit to anything.

So I swallowed hard and went with, "What are you talking about?"

He put a hand on my shoulder. "You know what I'm talking about; don't make me say it."

He saw me shudder. It was involuntary, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it. I was about to open my mouth to try, but before I could, he opened the car door and said, "Look, forget about it. I won't bring it up again. Just think, okay? That's all I'm sayin'."

He smiled a little, and gave me two quick slaps on the shoulder. "I gotta go."

And with that he got in, shut the door, turned on the ignition, backed out of his parking space, and drove off.

Can't say you haven't been warned.

That's what rolled around in my head as I headed toward my car.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I hadn't gotten out of the parking lot before my air conditioning gave out.

Perfect. I needed cooling-down six ways to Sunday; I'd put a lot of sweat into the game at the gym, and I'd taken an extra-hot shower.

And the scene with Denny had left my face burning; How the fuck did he know? What the fuck did he know?

And now this.

Sweat dripped from my forehead.

It's hot; it's so motherfuckin' hot, why the hell does it always have to be so hot?

I grimaced, clamped my eyes shut, and banged my head against the dashboard four or five times, as frustration blazed away inside and realization broke loose like all hell.

I tried for ten years. I did what was expected of me. The heat never left me, never left me alone. But I maintained, dammit.

And just like that--right in that moment in the car, alone and sweating like a pig, a/c all fucked to hell--the fire inside kindled into a rage.

Dark; smoke-black.

Blind and driven and set on destroying something.

I was tired of fighting it, tired of turning away from it, tired of trying to save the people around me from it.

And so I stopped. Right then. It's really the only excuse I have for myself, and I know it's a piss-poor one. I don't care anymore, I found myself thinking. Fuck it all. Burn it all.

Fuckin' bring it. Leave me charred and ruined on the side of the road.

For a few minutes, I made a half-hearted attempt to fight the nihilism. I'm a decent guy, I said to myself. I've done pretty well. I don't really feel this way, and I'm just gonna go have a beer and relax with my new bud a little before I head home.

But I knew it wasn't true anymore. And somewhere in the previous five minutes I'd stopped caring that it wasn't true.

So I decided I could at least have enough fucking integrity to own up to what I intended:

I intended to break my marriage vows.

With a man.

I don't give a shit. Motherfuckin' heat won't let up? Good. I want heat. I want to burn in hell. I want a goddam inferno. I want a bonfire that destroys everything. Fuck the straight and narrow. Straight and narrow never give me any goddam break from the heat. I walked away from it once. For all the good it did.

I was done with this good-boy shit. I knew we had some kind of connection, me and Fitz. He probably wasn't like I was...but for whatever reason, I had a hunch it wouldn't take much. I thought about bringing our two naked bodies together. Combining fire, and fluid, and passion, until the heat burned out the thinking cells and nothing remained to navigate but insatiable demand, unquenchable thirst.

Fuckin' Fitz, man. I'd been doing fine. No worries. No problems. And I was a good boy.

Then he had to show up and disturb my predictable, happy life with his catastrophic, incendiary beauty.

In the moment, I hated him a little bit.

I kept thinking about exploding into him, years of frustrated need slamming into him as my stuff jetted into his insides and my body left his body raw. He'd awakened this ravenous monster in me that had slept, not always peacefully, for a decade. I wanted retaliation. As sweat covered my skin, I reached over and rolled down the passenger-side window.

You don't want retaliation. You want to fall asleep in his arms after you've fucked like animals. You want to feel what it's like to be loved by him. How queer is that?

My eye stung as a salty drop of sweat fell into it.

Goddammit, will this fuckin' summer ever cool off?

* * * * * * * * * * *

The fire had died down a little by the time I reached the bar. I don't know how, but Fitz had gotten there ahead of me.

He was drinking Blue Moon with an orange twist, and when I walked up he smacked the bar stool next to him with an open palm and said, "Sit your ass down here. I'm two beers ahead of you."

"Negra Modelo," I said to the bartender.

We started talking a little about my upcoming semester. Right about the time the bartender slid me my beer, Fitz looked toward the door. "What happened to Denny? I wanted him to tell me more about this multiverse shit he was talkin' last week."

"He had to go home. Duty called," I said. "You Air Force boys ought to know something about that, right?"

"I'll never tell," he said, smirking.

"I guess I'll never ask then," I responded, oblivious to any subtext. That is, until I saw his grin falter.

And then I realized what I'd said.

I could feel myself blush. A good five seconds of silence passed as he looked into my face, apprasing.

He took in a breath, let it out slowly, and shook his head as he said, "Well, your call. Whatever you need, hoss."

What?

Before I could get a handle on the moment, though, he laughed and said, "Anyway, it's his loss; I was buyin'."

With that, he launched into a story about a girl he'd picked up earlier in the week--and fucked--in an elevator.

We drank. We recapped the basketball game we'd played. We talked long and loud. Laughed. Drank some more. He slapped me on the back a couple of times. The heat surged, the heat ebbed. In certain spaces, it felt like regular good times between two regular guys. But then then this unbearable intensity would roll over me, maddening in its inconsistency; flickering, alternating, one feeling replacing the other one and being replaced again, sometimes within the space of a minute.

He had a way of making his whole life sound like a comedy routine as he talked. Even the hard times and disasters he'd faced, he managed to find the weird humor in all of it.

Back and forth the conversation went. Occasionally we'd look up at the baseball game on the screen and talk about it; then we'd then head back into the next subject. The rhythm and the flow and the wash of good feeling--and the beer, I'll admit--had taken the edge off.

He was self-effacing and confident all at the same time, and at first the combination only served to stoke the coals for me, but as time went on, I was so busy drinking and smiling and laughing and feeling completely at ease with him, I'd distanced myself from the urgency and tension just below the surface.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

It happened in the middle of all that, during a natural lull in the conversation. You know, one of those quiet places between remarks that feels perfectly comfortable when you're good friends.

I was drumming my fingers on the bar, in rhythm with the drumbeat on an old Whitesnake tune--"The Deeper the Love"--coming from the speakers.

I looked up from my beer and saw him staring into my face.

As I started to speak, he touched my hand with his; pulled away a little; then, tentatively, he brought it back and let it rest on top of mine.

When he finally spoke--so low I could barely make out the words--all I could think of was acres of burning scrub.

"Look, Jeff...don't you think it's time we got real and owned up to we don't wanna keep our feet on the brakes?"