Ember (The Everyday Heroes World) - Jo-Anne Joseph Page 0,1
suppose when life fucks a man over the way mine did, it’s inevitable.
I shrug. “It ain’t about me. Pres is like my brother, you all are. He needs me, and I’m gonna show up. It’s what we do, right?”
He pats my shoulder. “It sure is. See you tomorrow, bro.”
He swaggers out of the bar. I should go home too, drag myself into bed, and sleep the storm of emotions brewing inside me. Instead, I order a few shots. The barman passes it to me. Looking over at Hannah, her gaze meets mine across the room, pleading for me to call it a night. She should concentrate on the guy whose lap she’s sitting in. He is far more likely to give her what she wants, what she deserves.
Hannah spent too many nights dragging my drunk ass to bed, leaving hangover concoctions on my bedside table with a bottle of water. She’d get barmen to take my keys and call her to pick me up. Hannah is a good one. She was right to walk away.
I give her a smile, and she returns it with one of her own. I call an Uber, raise a hand in farewell, and walk out into the chilly night.
Aidan and I sit with Preston in his backyard. It’s the middle of winter, and we have chairs out on the snow-covered lawn, drinking cheap whiskey out of flasks. Not because we can’t afford the good shit, but because this kind of liquid really kicks, and we need that kind of poison on a night like this when the wind whips around us. We sit in matching black suits that don’t do much to keep us warm.
The light from his kitchen window behind us is the only thing keeping us from being bathed in complete darkness—shadows of the people moving inside pass over us every now and then. Voices drift in and out of my mind. Maybe they’re laughing, talking, crying, who knows. It’s fucking cold, the bitter kind that seeps into your bones and clings there. The whiskey helps, though, as long as you keep sipping. It warms those icy crevices and does something to your state of mind. There is something therapeutic about letting the cold burn your skin. Takes your mind off the real pain that exists inside you, in the places you don’t want to show others.
“You know what the worst part is?” Pres looks between Aidan and me; his eyes narrowed into slits the way a drunk person usually does when they’re trying hard to concentrate. Preston never drinks; he’s the designated driver, the man you call at two a.m when you’re plastered and can’t see straight. So seeing him like this would be amusing if it wasn’t so fucking devastating. “Her death date is before her birth date.” He laughs, and we laugh along with him, but I know none of us actually feels it. We take another sip of the hurt fuel, as we call it. Then we fall silent, each of us retreating to thoughts of our own. Pres sniffs, and I know he’s crying. The kind of cry that makes your heart hurt in places you didn’t quite know existed.
None of us are strangers to loss, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s fucking savage.
“That’s pretty funny, if it wasn’t so sad,” I slur, and we all remain quiet.
“Fires are our lives, yeah?” He turns his head, looking at us both. As firefighters we are used to it right? But it’s different when a piece of your soul is being charred to ash.”
I think about it and feel the tears slip down my cheeks, and I reach out and place a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it so hard he winces.
Aidan reaches out and does the same, then we sit in silence, cold air coming out of our mouths and noses in puffs, disappearing into the night.
EARLIER THAT DAY
Pres’s baby girl was stillborn, full-term. I stand outside the crematorium with the crowd of mourners waiting for Pres, and his wife, Bronwyn, to emerge from the doors. The couple is in a small room at the back of a chapel—a room with two large furnaces and nothing more.
I think about them standing in there. What should be the happiest day of their lives is being spent here, in this graveyard amongst people who offer placating words that make no sense to me. I say let them be angry, let them hurt, let them feel everything. They’re standing in