Page 11 of Scorched Hearts
After moving to Forest Vale, she’d gotten so sucked into work that she could barely find time for any semblance of a social life, much less sitting for hours to stir sauces and watch pastries grow in the oven. Sometimes, Sylvia would bring her university friends over for baking parties, or at least to drunkenly try making pizza from scratch.
Maya hated the mess they’d always make, but undeniably, she also felt a pang of jealousy that those days were long gone. And, piled together with the feeling of an irreversible loss of the chance for a slower life lay the uncomfortable fact that she had not been in love since Elle. No torture method could make Maya admit that to anyone, especially not to Elle herself.
She’d dated other women, sure, but it had never gotten to the point where she could say they were in love.
After splitting up with Elle, she was so full of rage and hurt pride that she’d quickly plunged into a “glow-up phase,” at least as much as her job allowed her to. She got a Jane Birkin inspired hairstyle (which, she learned, was entirely impractical for a surgeon due to the fringe and had to painfully wait for it to grow out), a new wardrobe, and new friends. She felt hot, she felt daring, she felt as if she’d wasted her whole youth dating one person.
But that phase had quickly passed. Maya had learned that most people her age were looking for quick hookups or non-committal relationships, and she really wasn’t made for that. Her enthusiasm quickly burnt out, and once again she became completely engrossed in her career. She took on additional hours and limited her outings to a small bunch of friends. In Forest Vale she dated a few women, but the relationships alway dissolved quickly, and she realized how limited the lesbian dating circle was in a smaller town.
The sound of her kitchen timer rang out, pulling her out of the stream of thought.
Enough reminiscing, she declared, digging a fork into the sauce-covered squares.
5
ELLE
The kid just did not want to get down.
Elle’s department had been called in to rescue a little boy stuck in a tall tree. At first, Elle thought it was a joke. Nothing like this had happened in her whole career. Roofs? Yes. Absolutely. A tree? That sounded like another made up story of firefighters rescuing a cat.
When they got on the scene, though, Elle understood the problem. The tree looked enormous, and the first half of it had no branches on w hich to climb.
“How did he even get up there?” she asked, half-amazed, half utterly surprised.
His shaken mother rushed in with explanations, while Captain Hunter organized the ladder to be put against the tree. There was some issue with the placement of their truck due to the neighboring houses standing very tightly knit.
“He and his sister found an old, wooden ladder in our garage, but when he let go of it after climbing up the tree, it fell and broke in half.” She pointed to the broken ladder lying in the corner of the garden.
“And what were their parents doing while the kids nearly got deadly injured?” Chastising irresponsible parents had to be Elle’s favorite leisure activity. “Why was the garage even left open for them to access?”
The mother furrowed her eyebrows, offended. “Well, I don’t know whether you have kids of your own, ma’am.” She looked Elle up and down. “But it’s not that easy keeping a 24/7 watch over two kids under five.”
“But you could close your garage, no?” Elle pointed to it still being open. “Or do you want us to come in next time to extinguish your burning house after one of your kids plays around with the gas bottles over there?”
She shook her head, leaving to join the team trying to convince the small boy not to wriggle around and let them do their job. His face was twisted with terrible fear, and he refused to do anything besides clutch onto the tree. O’Malley finally got close enough to capture him, but the challenge then lay in the boy not jerking away. Elle had no idea why Hunter had chosen O’Malley, as she had no skills with children whatsoever. The moment Elle thought this, the child started wailing so loudly even Hunter was clearly questioning her choice of firefighter for the job.
“For fuck’s sake.” She sighed, eyeing the parents angrily.
Finally, O’Malley managed to take a firm hold of the child. Everyone began clapping, relieved. The boy, having no other choice, clung close to her chest, and they both safely got to the ground.
The team worked smoothly to get the ladder back down and safely loaded back into its place on the truck.
“This has been the worst mission of my life,” O’Malley muttered under her breath when passing Elle.
“Good job,” Elle shouted, and mounted her seat as the fire truck’s driver. “Let’s go, everyone!”
Elle always liked driving the truck. It took real skill to drive a big truck at speed and avoid others on the road, and Elle prided herself on doing it well.
The four of them were quickly on their way back, apparently in a very talkative mood. Captain Hunter, Chief Ramirez, O’Malley and Elle. The day had a lazy feeling to it, and the clear sky put everyone in a good mood. Elle laughed heartily, though at the back of her mind swam something darker.
“You should never have kids, O’Malley.” Chief Ramirez shook her head. “They’re worse than a thousand fires.”
Ramirez had two of her own, now well into adulthood. Sometimes her daughter would bring pastries to the station. She worked as a pastry chef in a local bakery. Easy to say, she was the delight of the entire station.
“Yeah, Chief, next time you try grabbing a crying, wriggling, snot-covered brat from a tree, we’ll see how that goes.”
“Oh, love, I’ve done that many, many times.” Chief laughed, effectively shutting O’Malley up. The whole exchange didn’t fail to make Elle laugh again.