Something Worth Saving Page 2

  Nodding, I poured my own cup of coffee. We sat there listening to Gracie talk about Bubble Guppies and how she wanted her very own Bubble Puppy – whatever that was.

  With a smile of utter amusement at our daughter, Jace took one hand and wrapped it around my waist, pulling all four of us together.

  It always worried me when he came off a shift and went right back on duty. Never mind the fact that he was already tired. If he was feeling the effects of the job, he wouldn’t lead on.

  Keeping his eyes low on the kids, he whispered, “Call my mom and see if the kids can spend the night tomorrow.”

  He didn’t have to ask me twice. Ask any parent out there, and they’ll tell you when the kids make a trip to the grandparents, two things happen: sleep and sex. I planned on doing both.

  “Okay,” I agreed with a nod, inwardly smiling.

  Jace leaned forward to kiss my forehead. “I’ll drop the kids off with Lauren on my way to the station.”

  Lauren was my younger sister. She graciously watched our crazy brood while I was at work. She had a five-year-old son of her own, and I had absolutely no idea how exactly she managed this without drugging them during the day.

  I loved my kids dearly, but dropping them off at daycare sucked ass.

  Having never been very clingy to me, they always were when it came to dropping them off. That activity was full of screaming and crying and snot . . . and then there were their reactions, which were very similar. Most of the time you couldn’t drop them off without bribery.

  Kissing the kids and their chubby little cheeks with maple syrup all over them, I wrapped my arms around Jace’s shoulders, leaning my chest into his back.

  I whispered into his neck, “Be safe.”

  The hardest part for me was not knowing if he was going to return home to us. I found myself memorizing his smile, his eyes, and the last words he said, wondering if it would be our last.

  I didn’t like to think that way, but it happened, and was a reality of this life.

  “Always,” he whispered, turning his head toward mine.

  I maneuvered my way to the front door of our apartment and took one last look at my little family.

  Jace sat down with both kids now in his lap. His tousled black hair, which matched Gracie’s, fell against his forehead and shadowed his eyes nicely. As if he could never really tame it, the front kicked out at an odd angle. Not quite a cowlick, but just messy. Usually he kept it short and cut close, but lately he’d let it grow.

  As Jace held our son, my beautiful little boy grabbed at him when he reached for his coffee, trying desperately not to be put down but instead in his daddy’s lap where he wanted to be. He loved to be held.

  And our daughter, bouncing thick dark curls that cascaded down her tiny frame, laughing, her arms locked around his shoulders, enjoying her time with him.

  It was days like this when I wanted to stay there with them.

  If only, right?

  The reality was quite a bit different, because there’s this thing called money. And everyone needs it in order to live.

  It was also days like this that I worried where our relationship was heading. Like this morning, the interruptions we had, they came often these days. Back when we first started dating, it didn’t matter if we had time. We made time. And being interrupted didn’t matter because it made life that much more exciting.

  Sometimes I missed the newness that came with those first few months. Where did it go? I missed the butterflies and the teasing. I missed the “can’t wait to see you” and the part where we ripped our clothes off at the door.

  Where did it go? Oh, right. We had kids.

  Part of me didn’t think it was all that.

  After a while you get comfortable, words and motions get familiar, and before you know you assume that they know and feel the same way, and you stop saying what needs to be said.

  I could tell you a story here about a couple and what they went through in a matter of just a few months. But those few months were a small fraction of what our life really was.

  Station 10 to dispatch.

  Station 10 . . . go ahead.

  Ladder 1 en route.

  Engine 10 responded.

  Engine 10 on location.

  * * *

  Aubrey

  I RAN my own business, Wicked Wonders, something I loved. There’s just something about owning your own business that makes you feel independent, and for once, I enjoyed going to work because I felt like I was creating something special.

  When I got to the shop, Shanna, my co-owner at Wicked Wonders, was there waiting with a mocha for me. She knew the way to my heart. Or at least she knew how to put me in a good mood.

  Leaning against the side of the building, I had to laugh. It was the middle of November, and she was wearing flip-flops. She hated shoes and refused to wear them. Unfortunately for her, she had to keep real shoes in the back for when OSHA came so they wouldn’t realize she was working around chemicals and hot wax with flip-flops.

  “You’re late,” she said, eyeing my outfit of skinny jeans, a black sweater, and mid-calf boots. Shanna wasn’t exactly what you’d call a fashion snob, but she was pretty close. You’d never catch her shopping at Wal-Mart or even Target, but instead at the high-end shops in downtown Seattle. “Hot date later?”

  “Shut up. I was trying to get some.” After unlocking the door, we both shuffled inside, flipping on lights and the heat.

  “And how’d that work out for you, Mommy?”

  “You know what? Just leave my sex life alone.” Shanna and I constantly had this debate over the passion in a relationship after children. She had no kids, been with Rusty for probably six years, and still had passion. So she said. I had a feeling Rusty just didn’t put up a fight. Shanna was all feisty and didn’t take shit from anyone. I bet if he said no, she’d knock his lawyer ass out. As if to tease me, she’d go on and on about them having sex in all these public spots around the city, but if you asked me, I’d say that was just asking for a police record. Not that sex on the pier didn’t sound great, but I wasn’t into getting arrested for it.

  Shanna laughed, moving from the display windows to the back to get the pots warmed up. We had about ten custom orders to fill today, and our doors opened in about ten minutes. Though we didn’t have an ideal location and drug deals transpired frequently on the corner, we had a loyal customer base.

  Our shop was located across the street from Firehouse 10, where Jace worked. It wasn’t always there, it used to be located in Pioneer Square until January of 2008. And it was perfect timing. When you have an open flame under apartments, it was kind of nice to know that the firemen were just around the corner. Because of what we did in the shop, chemicals and flames, it was nice to know that if we did catch something on fire, they were so close.

  Speaking of an open flames and candles, that’s how Jace and I got together . . . again.

  I met Jace when I was six – the first day of kindergarten, actually. He stole my red crayon. I remember dates. Always have. To me remembering a date shows significance. The day was important enough that it’s carved in your memory. I don’t remember all dates. Just the ones where my life was changed by a moment.

  I met him on September 7, 1989. I have a thing about remembering dates, too. It’s almost like an obsession to me. You’ll see.

  Offended that he’d stolen my crayon, I ripped the crayon from his hand.

  He took it right back like he owned it and started to draw a picture on the blank white paper in front of him.

  “If you’re going to draw something with my crayon . . . draw something beautiful.”

  I was into flowers and fairies and all that girlie shit. I was sure this little boy with black hair and too-blue eyes wasn’t good at any of that. I had standards even for a six-year-old.

  There was something about the way he looked at me that dumped my six-year-old ass on the floor. He had determination.

  Thick black hair fell into his eyes
. Glaring, a glare I still remember today, he swept it from his eyes with the back of his hand. Then he smiled, his head down, intent on his drawing. I watched his flushed cheeks and freckled nose, brow scrunched in frustration.

  A few minutes later he produced a drawing of a stick figure putting out a fire with a hose.

  I looked at it for a moment and then regarded him with my own glare. “What’s that? I said something beautiful.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He rolled his eyes, shrugging. “It’s something worth saving.”

  And from then on Jace Kenneth Ryan held my heart in more ways than one.

  Young and innocent, we were the kids who passed love letters and walked home from school together. First kiss, hand holding, partners in dodge ball, all that. He wanted to be a firefighter and talked endlessly about following after his dad and becoming a captain someday. Courageous, insistent, and extremely independent, Jace had more motivation than most, and without a doubt I knew he would succeed. But in his plan was always me. He’d tell me that we’d get married someday and I believed him. I was a kid. I didn’t know any better.

  My future was set until my vagrant lack-of-commitment mother decided to uproot me when I was eleven and my younger sister who was six at the time, forcing us to finish out school in Boise, Idaho.

  I was devastated, as was Jace. We stayed in touch for a while, but with his football once he got into middle school and my mom moving from apartment complex to trailer and then in with another boyfriend, we eventually lost touch.

  Now, you’re probably wondering how we got back together, right?

  When I was eighteen I moved to Portland, intending to start my own life and go to college there. Hated it and moved to Seattle the following year.

  Honestly, my heart belonged to that city. I loved Seattle. Not the traffic and not the rude superficial people crowding the streets, but the city itself.

  I loved the rain and the cloud cover. The buildings, Pike Place, the underground music, and the fact that Starbucks was on every corner.

  When I got to Seattle, part of me thought about tracking Jace down again, but the other part was still licking the wounds left behind by my high school boyfriend, who’d broken my heart. We’ll get to that later. It’s a long story.

  Anyhow, there I was, flunking out of college, ready to become an alcoholic and wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life, when I met Shanna Wright in the summer of 2003. She had this self-directed, persuasive but fun-loving type of outlook on everything, and we eventually put our heads together and came up with the idea of Wicked Wonders, a place where we would sell handmade candles and rustic décor. Starting out in the garage of her parents’ house, we sold at bazaars and on eBay, and then we eventually moved to a shop in downtown Seattle off Washington Street in 2006.

  We struggled in the beginning with high overheads, having to ship most of our supplies across the United States, but eventually we started making our own wax and scents, and shopping locally for our primitive arrangements. Within another year we had a business that we could make a living from. Which was good, because I’d been sleeping on her couch for far too long, and it was time to start hauling my own weight.

  This might all be useless information, and part of you is probably thinking, “How is this relevant?”

  It is. Here’s where.

  When did I run into Jace again?

  Funny story behind that. January 19, 2008. A date I will always remember. See? I have a thing about dates.

  Not only did I set the candle shop on fire that day, but that’s the night I found him. In a city with a population of nearly 630,000 people, we found each other.

  You see, Shanna did most of the candle making, and I did the decorating of the shop. And choosing the names—we had fancy names for every scent we created—but one night, a night she regrets, I decided I would try my luck at making a candle. Bad idea.

  I wasn’t good at it. Just wasn’t.

  Shanna had – on more than one occasion – tried to teach me, but it always failed, or should I say, I failed. There was definitely a science to it, and I soon found that out. It was two weeks before Christmas when I caught our candle shop on fire. Literally.

  The science behind candle making was that wax has a flash point. As in, when the wax catches on fire.

  So I caught the wax on fire, the pot, the stove, the wall, and, soon enough, the ceiling.

  Before the entire building and the apartments above caught fire, I called 911, and the Seattle Fire Department showed up in less than two minutes.

  Thankfully.

  I felt like an absolute asshole when the floors above us had to be evacuated, and all Shanna could do was laugh at me for even attempting to make a candle. From then on I wasn’t allowed to make them, or even attempt to. I was actually banned from that part of the shop.

  But as I sat there on the curb across the street, sulking, the scene before me filled with four fire trucks, police, and the residents of the apartments around me, a young firefighter came up to me and handed me a blanket.

  I couldn’t look up at him.

  Either he was giving the blanket to me to hide my embarrassment, or I looked cold. Probably both. I took it, putting it over my head in denial, when I heard him laugh. Ripping the blanket from my head, I remembered that laugh. It might have been ten years since I last saw him, but I knew that laugh.

  “We managed to get the fire contained and only in the kitchen. But it looks like you’re gonna have to repaint, honey,” he said, looking down at me, his face smudged with black streaks of soot, those too-blue eyes boring into me.

  When I saw his eyes, that’s when I knew for sure it was Jace Ryan.

  He had me again. There was no red crayon this time, but he saved my shop.

  Here I’d just had a traumatic experience, and this firefighter was flirting with me. I knew it. What I didn’t know was if he knew it was me or not.

  Call it shock maybe, but I didn’t say anything to him, and he didn’t say anything more, other than a wink, and walked back toward the truck.

  He went about his night, cleaning up my charred mess, and I thought maybe that would have been the last time I saw him. Unless of course I started another fire, which was completely possible if it meant I would see him again.

  The thought did cross my mind.

  Securely on my curb still, I watched him closely for a few moments. The feeling sank in further when I saw his dad commanding the scene as he always had. Jace had followed in his dad’s footsteps as he always wanted to.

  Once the fire was contained, they left, and it was just me and Shanna at the shop looking over the damage, which really had been kept to the kitchen in the back.

  “Who was that guy who handed you the blanket?” she asked, shaking her head at the once gray walls, now black. “He’s hot.”

  I hadn’t seen Jace since he was twelve, but now he stood taller, leaner, eyes more blue, but what got me was that smile and the voice, a chalky rasp that went with it. The years had done him well.

  My smile couldn’t be helped. Wrapping the blanket around my shoulders, I curled into it, leaning against the crispy wall. “An old friend . . . I think.”

  It was if I was daydreaming, and she didn’t miss it.

  “Did you start this shit on purpose?”

  “No! I swear, I didn’t!” I had to defend myself here, but when you looked at my goofy grin, you’d think I was some kind of pyromaniac.

  “Yeah” —she nodded— “sure.”

  I’m wasn’t sure if Shanna ever believed me, even to this day, that I didn’t start that fire on purpose, but she eventually gave up wondering, I guess.

  The very next day, Shanna and I showed up at the shop, preparing ourselves for a busy day of cleanup and insurance investigations, when we saw a note on the front door written in red crayon.

  I didn’t start any more fires, but I did go by the station to return the blanket. After all, that would be the nice thing to do, right? Return borrowed prop
erty?

  He was there, naturally, all smiles and waiting. “Took you long enough. I’ve only been waiting ten years.”

  The very next day we started dating. We’d been dating about a year when I got knocked up with Gracie. I thought for sure Jace would propose after I told him I was pregnant, as did everyone else, but he didn’t, and I never questioned it. One thing I knew about Jace was that he never did what everyone else expected him to do. Ever. Determined, stubborn, with a contentious nature, that was just him and essentially what defined him. Nobody questioned him.

  Sure, it threw me for a loop, and yeah, I wanted to get married. Even more so after our second child, Jayden, was born. We were not expecting him.

  But still no proposal. We hadn’t even talked about it unless someone else brought it up. Which they did a lot.

  His brother Kasey, of all people, would take jabs at him, saying things like, “When are you going to make an honest woman out of her?”

  “She is an honest woman,” he would say, his insistent side coming out.

  Argumentative in certain situations, he always had a comeback, but never one with an actual answer. And I never pushed it, because if I did and he left, then what?

  I thought for sure if you suffocated the flame, the fire would go out.

  “STOP DAYDREAMING and help me with this shit,” Shanna said just before we opened the doors for the morning. She had her hands full with about ten different bottles of dye and a bag of wicks.

  I grabbed the wicks from her and tossed them on the counter, then hurried to the front. Fixing the display of our newest scented pinecones, I then sprinkled a few more shelves with hay before flipping the “Open” sign around. With just a week before Thanksgiving, we were in full festive mode and getting ready to switch everything over from fall to winter the day after Thanksgiving, which happened to be our biggest day of sales every year.

  The day was going by rather slowly for a Thursday afternoon when I started thinking about Jace again. Mostly because I heard the sirens as they headed out on a call. It was never easy, knowing that any one call could take him from me.