“Tim,” I said as I stepped around him to get to my locker. Taped to the front was a picture ofChip ‘n’ Dale, those little cartoon chipmunks.
“That’s you and your boyfriend,” he said as he straightened. My brain short-circuited. “Come on. Are you telling me no one has clocked it yet except me? Did you know that chipmunks love nuts?”
I yanked the printout down, wadded it up, and threw it into the trash can in the corner.
“Chip and I aren’t boyfriends.” The lie was as bitter as grapefruit.
Tim looked at the crumpled paper in the trash can. The smirk was still on his face, but something underneath it was off—a fraction too still, like he’d wound up for a follow-through and then thought better of it. He cleared his throat.
“Look, I’m not trying to—” He stopped. Whatever the end of that sentence was, he pulled it back, and the smirk came all the way back up to cover the gap. “You’re just really obvious, is all. About the kid.”
I stared at him. “Was that almost a human moment, Pegg?”
“No.” He picked up a coffee mug. “Forget it.”
I would have pressed him on it, but the rapid tones cut the conversation clean in half.
Station Eight, Ladder Ten, Hazmat Four, all units, respond to a two-vehicle MVA. Intersection of Alexander Street and South Avenue, commercial tanker involved, reported acetone, possible leakage. Time out zero seven fifty-three hours.
Super. I’d not even gotten a cup of coffee yet. I’d just put the groceries for beef stew for dinner into the fridge. Tim and I let the chipmunk shit drop. The call would require all of us to be on our toes. Acetone was highly flammable. This kind of motor vehicle accident always involves multiple units.
We were on the truck in under a minute, belted in, and on our way to the South Wedge neighborhood. Everyone was in specialized chemical-resistant suits and self-contained breathing apparatuses with air-monitoring equipment. There was no bullshit or goofing around on the way to the accident. Any kind of call was deadly serious.
When we arrived, two other engines were already set up. The incident commander, a tall man named Burke with Hazmat, directed us to surround the spill with special absorbent socks, bright yellow for high-vis, to soak up the acetone leaking from the overturned truck. Another unit was clearing the surrounding neighborhood. All of us were kitted out with non-sparking gear to avoid any chance of this pool catching fire. Chemical spills were dicey things.
Gathering up the tightly wound coils of polypropylene, Tim and I headed one direction as Morgan and Courtney went the other. People were standing on rooftops and fire escapes with their phones held high, even as police and fire were instructing them to vacate the area with haste. Some people made me scratch my head. Was getting a video more important than their own safety? Tiny bits of sleet started to fall from the slate-gray sky, adding to the dour mood of the situation.
The socks were flexible, making it easy to lay them along the ever-increasing puddle of acetone. I was glad to see that the car and tanker involved in the accident were empty. The leak in the tanker was sizable. Other firefighters were hustling to block off manhole covers and street gutters with spill-barrier berms. Several people were standing over us, two men yelling down at Tim, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying over my breathing apparatus. I glanced up at the two guys hanging out a window, waving what looked like plumbers’ wrenches over their heads. Tim was tucking his length of sock against the curb when one of the two men in that third-story window shouted something and dropped his wrench.
Steel. Cement. Not good. Not good at all.
“It’s going to light!” I bellowed then dove at Tim, knocking him over the length of sock as the wrench fell through the air. We rolled over each other and hit a brick wall near a doorway when the wrench struck the sidewalk with a clang. The steel sparked just once. That was enough. The acetone flared to life like a demon bursting from the depths of hell. I moved to jerk Tim into the entrance a moment too late. The concussive force shoved us face-first into the narrow shelter. Thank all the gods for polycarbonate visors that could withstand some tremendous force, or we’d have been huffing heat laced with deadly fumes. The impact stunned me for a moment as I slid down the bricks to my knees, landing beside Tim, who was also badly jarred. The shouts coming into my helmet sounded like Dothraki to start as my head spun. When the worst of the vertigo had passed, I nudged Tim. We flattened ourselves tightly against the bricks to shield ourselves the best that we could. This had gone from bad to worse in the span of a second, and we were left sheltering in a doorway, our suits scorched, staring at each other in obvious shock.
“You good?” I shouted. Christ, this was a shitstorm of biblical proportions. Swallowing roughly, I managed to keep from vomiting, just.
“Yeah, I’m good,” he answered. I was sure it was a lie. “You?” I nodded and then wished I hadn’t, as that simple movement made me more nauseous. Wobbly as newborn colts, we pushed to our slightly melted boots to face down a fire that was about to kick our asses.
“Thanks, Dane.”
Huh. Dane. He never called me that unless he was being a dick.
“Sure.”
We took a moment to gather our scattered wits then ran back out to face down a fire that was now several tiers of nightmarish. The pot of stew I was going to make for lunch would be extremely late.
Ireallywished I’d kissed Chip this morning.
Chapter 11
Chip
This morning wasan optional skate before tonight’s game against the Norfolk Barracudas, the last before the All-Star break. I had some time off after skate on game day, which I’d been holding in my head because it meant nine days of no travel, no game-day routine, a schedule with white space, and a set of new hours to fill with training and anything else I wanted. Dane had four-day stretches off in his rotation. He and I had aligned three of those days with three of mine, giving us seventy-two consecutive hours, give or take a shower, that we hadn’t figured out what to do in.
“Cornish.”
Coach Ronan was at my stall. He had his coffee in one hand, his clipboard in the other, and his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead.
“Coach.”
