Page 52 of Teach Me To Sin
My heart stops as I look up at the fire. The flames are large, but mostly centered on the far side of the building. Even so, twenty minutes is far too long for exposure to such thick smoke.
“He can’t still be in there,” Victor snaps. He’s shaking, and his eyes look glassy like he’s in shock.
“Unless he passed out,” I argue.
“The fuck are you going to do about it?” he snarls. “If he did, it’s too late.”
This is wrong. It’s against everything they teach you about safety. It makes the firemen’s jobs harder. They’ll have two bodies to drag out instead of one.
But I don’t give a fuck. That’s me, selfishness all the way down. If there was half a chance in an infinite universe of possibilities that I can find my Benji, I think I’d do anything. I don’t even know what’s driving me. I’ve never felt it before, something so primal it overwrites everything I thought I was.
I shove Alek into Tate’s arms. “Keep him here if it’s the last thing you do.” Pulling off my windbreaker, I rip one of the arms and wrap it around my face. Once I’ve secured my only pathetic concession to safety, which I’m probably not even doing right, I take off toward the building.
Benji
It hurts.
“It” being everything. “It” being Bennett Atwood’s body. His throat, his nose, his eyes, his skin. Throbbing, prickling, sore.
My body.
I can’t hear anything but a beeping like the background of every movie scene ever set in a hospital. On and on. One, two, three, four, five, this person is alive.
I open my eyes, my breath shaky with pain. Nothing happens. I can’t see.
When I try to reach for my face, my arms won’t move properly. I’m dizzy, even though I’m horizontal in the dark.
If I try to remember, I can get as far as the party. I remember running into the swim center with this idea in my head that I’d find Alek’s locker and steal one of his shirts to take with me. By the time I finally found the supply closet in the dark, I was crying again. The door wouldn’t open, so I yanked on it a few times, then sat down and cried some more. Maybe I fell asleep. Then…nothing.
“Hello?” My voice only works in the faintest whisper, no matter how hard I try. No one can hear me like this. I try to stretch out an arm, even though my body’s not working. Someone will take my hand. Someone’s there. They have to be. But nothing happens.
Neither of them are here. But I sob their names anyway.
Alek
“Gray’s flying up from Iowa.”
Victor makes the announcement like it means anything at all. Squinting into the cold, wet wind, I hug my coat closer around me. It’s one of those dark days, where the clouds hang so low you’re not sure the sun ever came up. A strip of caution tape flutters between us and the men in protective gear stacking half-burned pieces of our life on the sidewalk–singed boxes full of documents, the computer from reception, random bits of swimming gear.
“What’s the point?” I ask sharply. “Unless he’s an insurance adjuster or a builder, I don’t know what the hell he thinks he’s going to do.”
“You don’t need to be a nasty bitch about it,” he mutters, shoving his unkempt hair out of his pale face. We’re both too intense, unable to process grief or trauma, and we’ve been at each other’s throats the past two days.
“Whatever,” I mumble. “I’m sorry.” Of course a lawyer will be useful. I’m just a jealous piece of shit. Gray is one of Victor’s rocks, a man who has stood by him through everything. Victor will sit on his back patio with Ethan and Gray tonight, drinking and talking, while I lie in bed and try not to see orange light flickering across my ceiling. I guess the loneliness is my fault–after Benji and Colson were both safely pulled from the burning building, I let Benji get shipped off to some hospital under the care of his family and told Colson to try and catch his boat. There’s no point in fighting for anything else. We’re three strangers held together by lust and a tower of lies that just came crashing down. All we can do now is try to escape the wreckage.
Swiping rain out of my eyes, I stare at the unrecognizable skeleton of the Lang Aquatic Center. Even though most of the exterior is sturdy brick, all the upright pillars and ceiling beams were wood. Because the fire spread unnaturally fast and concentrated on the most important structural features, the police have opened an arson investigation. Before the firefighters could quell the flames, most of the interior walls burned, while two exterior walls and half the roof collapsed inward on the pools.
No one knows how long it will take before we find out what can be saved and how much it will cost. I still can’t decide if the only good thing I’ve ever done is in ashes because I wanted to teach a boy to swim, or because I’m the one the universe chose to pay for the sins of my family.
The head fireman on site–a huge, kind man with steel gray hair and a beard–hikes over to the barrier and looks down at us sympathetically. “We’ve pretty much cleared everything,” he rumbles, obviously sorry for how pathetic we look. “We’ll hand these boxes to the police to check for evidence, then release them to you.”
I clear my throat. The rain has dampened down any lingering smoke, but something sour and raw still hangs in the air. “Thank you. What comes next?”
He frowns, like he’s unhappy to deliver the news. “The building needs to be inspected for structural integrity. If any of it is safe to keep, you’ll have to work with your insurance to get it stripped down. I’d say you’re looking at two months or more before you’ll be ready to start planning a rebuild.”
Victor gives a dry, bitter snort and walks away without a word, pulling his hood up.
“Okay,” I sigh, shaking the man’s hand. “We appreciate it.”