Fanning The Fire Marshal's Flame

Truce

She reached for the bags of food and unlatched the handle to her car, noting Diarmid had been watching her through the living room window. He’d been out while she’d taken her bath and gotten her s**t together and then she’d gone down the street to pick up the Chinese take-out her father had ordered. She had volunteered to go so she could call Naomi. He must have come back while she’d been gone. She didn’t note a car and wondered if he was using public transport.

She was still thinking of it as she entered the house and considered if he didn’t have a car in the yard, she wouldn’t know if he was there or not. She debated making him put a sock on the door like she’d teased her father the night before. She needed some kind of warning system.

Her father came down the stairs, “I hope it’s not cold. You were out there forever. It’s October, Lita.”

She held up the thermal bags, “I took your special takeout bags, dad. People look at me like I’m working for those food delivery services when I go in, but I knew you’d be cranky if the food got cold. Heaven forbid your chicken balls are not piping hot.” Her father took the bags and stomped off and she shook her head, “someone’s hangry.”

“Lita, can I talk to you a minute? Before we eat?” Diarmid’s voice carried from the living room.

She turned to see him watching her with a sad expression. She wanted to roll her eyes, flip him off and go smash her face into the fried rice but instead she shrugged out of her coat and hung it in the entry and then followed him into the living room. Suddenly the way he was standing in her living room, huge and imposing yet slightly nervous reminded her of the time when she had been a little girl and she’d dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood. She’d had the great idea her father could be the hunter and Diarmid could be the Wolf, but she’d made him the wolf in the granny clothes. He looked just as ashamed now as he did when he wore her grandmother’s nightdress with a half wolf-mask.

“I owe you an apology,” he said before she could speak. “I never considered the impact my thoughtless words had on you, especially when you were so raw. What I said was careless and my only excuse was I didn’t know what to say so I spouted the first thing to come to my head. It was so full of toxic masculinity it is no wonder you hate me. I am incredibly sorry, and I promise, if I’m ever in a situation where I need to be more delicate, I will weigh my words far more carefully. While it wasn’t my intention to hurt you or cause you more harm, I did, and I am deeply sorry.” His eyes were soft, and he stared at her as if waiting for her to fly off the handle at him again.

She nodded at his words. To say she was surprised he was taking ownership of the situation was an understatement and she blinked unsure of what else to say other than, “thank you.”

“I talked to your dad. I think it best if I take a hotel for a couple of weeks. I do not want to cause you to have a setback with your PTSD. If my being here is a catalyst to you feeling anger or it puts you back on this sofa and feeling vulnerable, then it is the last thing I want for you. I’m sorry to have put you in this situation at all. I just want you to know it was never my intention to hurt you then or now. Your dad said you told him I should stay but I don’t feel right hurting you more than I already have.”

She shook her head, thinking of his investigation, or it was what she was going to tell herself. His sweet heartfelt apology was not making her waver, “no, you should stay. You’re my dad’s friend and you have lots to catch up on. I told dad having you here might make me face some of the things I still hadn’t dealt with. Exposure therapy if you will. I’ll just use you,” she winked at him suddenly trying to be more playful than she was feeling inside. “I have to get rid of the anger. It serves me well sometimes to feel the rage but there are some things I need to let go. Seeing you here made me realize I’m still not better and I have room for growth and more healing.”

“I’m not even remotely good as a therapist,” he shook his head, hope in his eyes, “and any girl I have ever dated would tell you I’m usually so buried in my work I forget to speak in anything other than grunts but if you need to talk, I promise to listen and to keep my mouth shut with the platitudes.”

“Then you admit you’re a caveman?” she lifted auburn eyebrows.

“I’m afraid so. I even have a club, well it’s more a stick and a cave.”

“How big is the club?”

He c****d an eyebrow at her, “it’s a tool I use to push debris around when I’m doing an investigation. Dirty mind, much?”

She gave a shrug, “And you have a cave?”

“Yes,” he chuckled, “my condo in Boston. I have an office in it. My ex said it reminded her of a cave and she used to complain I needed to open the curtains more or turn on some lamps but when you’re trying to stay focused, letting the light shine on all the other things you could be doing, like enjoying the great outdoors is too much a distraction.”

“You work a lot,” she asked curiously.

“I do. I love my job. I’m good at it. I might not be good at other things, like figuring out my girlfriend is a psycho or reading emotional cues in vulnerable young women,” he smiled sadly at her, “but I’m really good at my job.”

She gave a small smile at his words.

He paused, “are you sure you don’t mind me staying. I can expense two weeks in a hotel to my boss.”

“No. It’s fine. Really."

He extended his hand, “truce?”

Lita let his oversized hands engulf hers and shook his hand, “truce.”

“If you need to yell at me more or get anything off your chest –” he started but they both jumped at the noise of her father yelling in the other room.

“Dinner’s getting cold and I’m eating your shares if you don’t get in here!” her father bellowed from the kitchen.

“He seriously needs to get laid.” She grunted as she led the way to the kitchen not finishing what she was about to say.

“The bartender was hitting on him hard last night. If he had suggested a quickie in a bathroom stall, she would have been all in.”

“Ick,” she made a face over her shoulder and caught the lopsided smile on his face. “You said that to gross me out.”

“I did,” he tugged her hair as he walked past her. “Who were you talking to in the car? You were all smiles. The guy from this morning?”

“God no,” she made a face, “I called one of my friends and her kid wanted to talk to me on the phone. Typical kid, when a parent is on the phone, the kid always wants to say hi. She’s eight pushing eighteen and they have their hands full. I guess she saw her mom in the shower this morning and told her, her other mother could do better.”

“Naomi’s kid?” Conor asked with a laugh, “she’s hilarious.”

“She’s a s**t. Reminds me why I like to babysit other peoples’ kids but never have one of my own.”

“You don’t want kids?”

She swallowed as she sat at the table and met her father’s gaze with surprise, “you never told him?”

“Wasn’t my place.”

“One of Reardon’s condoms didn’t hold. I left that night losing my dignity, my virginity and with the gift of an unwanted pregnancy.” She rubbed her fingers on her lap as she revealed to Diarmid information very few people ever knew.

“He got you pregnant?”

She watched with interest as Diarmid’s fist clenched on the table around his fork. “Yes. I was given the option to have an abortion but then I miscarried before I even had to decide. I realized when I was pregnant it wasn’t I didn’t want to have his kid or because it was the result of a r**e, I just didn’t want kids, period. The doctors here in the US thought I would change my mind and would regret it so nobody would do anything permanent. Suggested IUDs or birth control. When I was twenty-one, I went to a doctor in Europe and got my tubes tied.”

He sat back, “not though it’s any of my business but why? It’s a huge decision to make at twenty-one. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

She scooped rice to her plate. “I like kids. I could have been a science teacher even, which is why I like working with them at the shelter, but the idea of having to take care of a living breathing creature freaks me out. I’ve never even had a pet goldfish. I remember once we were tasked in elementary school to bring home the class bunny for a weekend and I was up all night both nights thinking the damn thing was going to die on me. Having an unplanned pregnancy really solidified my view.”

He gave a nod, “I talked to a doctor about five years ago about getting snipped because I always said I was married to my work, and they talked me out of it. Said I’d change my mind by the time I was forty. I didn’t realize it was common practice for doctors to talk you out of it. We have a weird healthcare system.”

“We really do. Bet you wish you had gotten another opinion after the clusterfuck in your condo right now,” she mocked him openly.

He groaned, “she called my old boss today and said I’m ducking out on my responsibilities.”

“Could she be pregnant? You said she tampered with the condoms,” Conor asked as he shoved an entire chicken ball into his mouth, red sauce dripping down his chin.

“Classy dad,” Lita threw a napkin across the table, and he winked at her and wiped his chin after trying to lick the sauce off first.

“Nope. If she’s pregnant, it’s not mine. The day she told me she was pregnant, I started sleeping in the spare room.”

Lita watched as his cheeks grew pink as he tucked into food. He was very uncomfortable with the conversation. She was enjoying his misery.

“Why?” Conor asked, “it wasn’t like you were going to get her pregnant twice.”

“In this case he could have,” she giggled over a mouthful of low-mein noodles.

Her father high-fived her and they both looked to Diarmid curiously as he scowled at them.

He tugged the collar of his t-shirt in embarrassment.

“Come on, spill it.” She encouraged him, “in the name of our truce. I told you of my secret. Give us yours.”

He gave them both looks as if to tell them they were pushing too hard and then he leaned back and rubbed his forehead, “Something felt off. I don’t know. I was angry. Really angry. If the birth control failed, then it was what it was, but I was so careful and I had expected she was as well with her pills. I just felt like it wasn’t right. Truthfully, my first thought was we needed DNA testing because there was no way it was mine. It was a horrible thought and I felt guilty for it, but I just couldn’t even look at her without feeling revulsion. So,” he reached for his beer and stared at the bottle, “I lied and told her I looked it up online and found out it was too risky in the first trimester. Said we should wait until she had the ultrasound and all clear. When she tried to start something the very same night saying it would be fine, I went to the spare room.”

“You lied? The horror!” Lita mocked him as she lifted a box of noodles and dumped some on her plate.

“Thank God, I lied. She put pinholes in my condoms. Pinholes!”

“So, you didn’t,” Conor made a suggestive move with his eggroll earning him a kick from his daughter under the table, “for three months?”

“Six weeks. From the day she said she was pregnant until the ultrasound it was six weeks. The day of the ultrasound was the day I started to breathe again because I had just been given a get out of jail free card but then she went crazy.”

“You didn’t go back for one more?” She asked curiously, “isn’t it a thing with couples. There’s always one more roll in the hay after you break up.”

“No. Hell no. Not when the woman admitted in a room with an ultrasound tech and a security guard who had to come with a doctor to try to control the out of her mind woman, how she had lied, plotted, and intended to trap me. No sir, my d**k and I had a very clear agreement she was never seeing it again. Nope,” he looked down to his crotch, “neither of us were ever so desperate, thank you very much.”

Lita laughed at his actions, “well, imagine! The caveman and his club, have brains.”

“Hey!” he threw a packet of soy sauce at her across the table, “me and my stick are highly intelligent.”

“Can we not talk about Diarmid’s d**k while I’m eating. Also why are you calling it a club.” Conor sneered, “and specifically why is my daughter calling it a club?”

“Don’t worry dad, it was only Diarmid admitting he is a caveman. I’ve never seen his stick.” She met his eyes laughingly, “and I have no intention to. He has enough drama in his life with one crazy woman. He couldn’t handle me in addition to it.”

“You underestimate my crazy-woman handling abilities,” Diarmid said and then frowned as he realized what he’d said.

The table grew quiet, and the silence was awkward until her father asked if anyone wanted to go to the hockey game with him later in the week.

Lita considered maybe Naomi was right. Having the guy, she’d crushed on as a kid living under her roof now might not be the best idea in the world.