Electrify Me (The Fireworks Series Book 1) (2 page)

“Oh, hi,” he says after a moment. “This is Baxter from Seattle. Branch thirty-two. Our power’s gone out. Can you route our calls to another branch until further notice? Yep. I’ll call you back when it does. Thanks.”

“Well,” Baxter says to the four of us as we nibble on our plates of food in the weak glow of Lou’s phone. “That’s irritating.”

Though I would never admit it, I’m relieved. I mean, I’m actually kind of scared of the dark, and I really did want to help some people tonight. But maybe this is all the New Year’s Tricksters have in store for me this year. A power failure. A few hours spent in the dark with some like-minded misfits. It could be a lot worse.

Chapter Two - Charlie

I’m pulling out of the drive-through with two apple pies and what I’m sure will be terrifying coffee when my phone rings. I could drive and talk, but I can’t drive and talk and eat a pie and drink coffee, so I pull into a parking spot next to a giant yellow minivan.

“Yo!” I say, before testing the burnt tongue factor of my coffee.

“Charlie! The power went out at Saint Patrick’s on Broadway. You know where that is?”

“Yeah.” I don’t actually, but that’s what smart phones are for.

“They’ve checked the fuse box. We’ve checked the grid. Looks like it might be a busted cable on site. Can you check it out?”

Saint Patrick’s is not that hard to find once I locate it in Google Maps. Five minutes later, I’m licking apple pie filling off my lips as someone opens the door to the church basement for me. It’s completely dark, except for a couple of iPhones casting a dim blue light.

“You guys don’t have an emergency generator?” I ask, letting my vision adjust. As a lineman, I have to have good night vision, but it takes a second or two.

“Nope,” a man’s voice says.  “It died last year and they never replaced it.”

I take a flashlight out of my toolkit and pass it to the nearest set of hands. I can just see a woman’s face. When her fingers brush mine, they are ice-cold. “Are you scared of the dark?”

“No,” a little voice says. She turns the flashlight on, lighting up her face. I try not to smile too much. She’s so obviously freaking out that her eyes look like giant silvery marbles. I wonder if they’re dark blue or green or grey, resisting the urge to shine my own flashlight right into her face to find out.

“I’m going to go check around the hook ups outside. It’s actually lighter out there because of the street lights and the moon. Do you want to come with me?”

“Yes!” she says. “I mean. Sure. Let me get my coat.”

Once we’re outside, I can see that she’s actually really pretty, and under her puffy coat, she has nicely shaped legs in black tights with knee-high boots–a look that’s always done things to me. Bad things. Like I can’t get up to give my history report things. It’s not so bad now that I’m a grown man, but jeez. Black tights should require a content advisory.

Dirty little secret? I fantasized about black tights pretty much the whole time I was in Afghanistan. How sad is that? That’s what happens when the only women you see for eight months are wearing fatigues.

“Wait. Why are
you
following
me
?” the girl asks, turning. “I don’t know where the thing is.”

“Uh, right. Let’s start around the back where the power poles are.”

Nicely done, Charles. She probably thinks I was looking at her ass. Which I was.

We creep around the side of the church, me leading with my flashlight, her clicking along behind me in those killer boots. I have a sudden vivid fantasy about her standing with one of those boots on my chest that makes me laugh and get insta-hard at the same time.

“What’s so funny?” she asks.

“Nothing. I just…thought of something.” Then I think of my grandmother’s toenails to make Mr. Boner go away.

When we get to the back of the church where the power cables come in from the mains, I find the problem straight away. The mangled branch of a giant hemlock tree has fallen right on the junction box, tearing it from the pole. There are wires hanging and sparks flying everywhere.

“Whoa.” I block the girl from getting any closer. “Stand back. I’m just going to get up the pole and disconnect a few things. Wait here.”

Luckily the pole has built-in foot holds. I pull my tool belt out of my toolbox and strap it on before climbing easily up. A quick couple of plugs and switches later and the danger of imminent electrocution to anyone passing by is considerably diminished. Before beginning the climb back to earth, I look down at the girl. She stands with her arms crossed, gazing up at me, her face lit by moonlight.

Christ. She’s really cute. And from this angle, I can see right down her top. She’s wearing a lacy bra.

“Is it the apocalypse?” she yells.

“No. Just the hemlock-alypse.”

She giggles the whole time I’m shimmying down the pole.

“What’s your name?” I ask when I reach ground level.

“Gloria.”

“Do people sing that U2 song to you?”

“
All
the fucking time,” she says. “Excuse my language.”

“No fucking problem.”

We both bust out laughing.

“What’s
your
name?” she says, as her giggles subside.

“Charles. Charlie. And people always say, ‘Oh, like Charlie Chan?’ Like that’s funny. You know, because I’m Asian.”

“I wasn’t going to say that, I swear,” she says, becoming serious. “I was going to say like Charlie Brown? Or maybe Charlie Chaplin.”

“Charlie horse?”

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?”

“Charlie’s Angels?”

“Charlie Bit My Finger?”

We walk back down into the basement laughing like lunatics.

“Bad news. Your junction box is fried,” I say to the dark. “A tree fell on it.”

All I can see of the guy who answers is his rainbow t-shirt. “When can we get it fixed?”

“It’ll be a few hours at least. We only have a skeleton crew on tonight for emergencies, and since this isn’t a public danger situation, your priority is going to be low.”

“Can we get to another center?” a girl’s voice asks.

“It’s in Olympia. But they only have enough set-up for their staff.” Rainbow Man steps into the circle of light, and I can see he’s a buff black dude in leather pants. “You can’t fix it?” he asks me.

“Sorry. We need a cherry picker and parts that I don’t have.” I become aware that Gloria has been rather quiet. When I turn to look for her, she’s nowhere to be seen. I swing my flashlight around a bit but can’t find her. “Can you excuse me? I’ll just go and put in the service call for you. Has someone got a cellphone number I can give them?”

Rainbow Man, whose name is Baxter, gives me his card. “
Father
Baxter Jefferson.” I’ll be damned. I wonder what the pope would have to say about those pants.

Gloria is outside, standing under the street lamp, her hands tucked into the sleeves of her puffy coat. I quickly dial Dispatch and put in the service call before joining her. “You
are
scared of the dark, aren’t you?”

“Only in the sense that it makes my heart race and gives me chills,” she says. “How long before the lights come on?”

“I’m afraid it will be hours. I take it you don’t want to wait with them in the dark. Can you get home? Do you have a car?” I’m hoping she’ll say no, so I’ll have an excuse to offer her a ride.

“I have a car but…” She looks back at the church, uncertainly.

“You don’t have a party to go to or something?”

She takes so long to answer maybe I’ve hit on some sore spot. Like she doesn’t have any friends or she just got dumped yesterday or she’s got social anxiety. But none of those seem very realistic for such a funny and cute girl.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” I ask, on impulse.

She sighs and puts her hands in her pockets, looking back at the church. “No…despite my best effort, I am currently un-escorted.”

“Good. I mean…uh…look.” I backpedal a bit, trying to be much cooler than I actually am. “Why don’t you tell your people inside you’re going to bail until the power comes back? Then you can ride with me. Dispatch will tell me when the box is fixed, and I’ll bring you back here. Sound fun?”

She smiles that kind of half-face smile that always gets me. The smile that says, “You’re talking crazy talk, but I like it.”

“That
does
sound kind of fun but I probably shouldn’t.”

“Why shouldn’t you?” I ask.

“It’s kind of hard to explain.”

I stand there, trying to look harmless, in the hopes that I won’t have to get on my knees and beg this girl to save me from another boring New Year’s Eve spent working alone. Because that would be really weird, especially since we just met. “Come on,” I say instead. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

She starts to laugh. Like
really
laugh.  I laugh with her, though I’m not really sure what’s so funny.

“Let’s go tell them I’m leaving,” she says at last, wiping tears from her eyes.

I try to be chill about it but I’m pretty sure I grin like a baboon.

When we break it to him, Father Leather Pants doesn’t seem too worried about losing one of his staff, and the other people appear to be having some kind of bacchanalian feast. Only one of them manages to even say Goodnight and Happy New Year. And that’s with half a quesadilla in her mouth.

Gloria and I practically run to my truck. She throws her giant purse into the back with my tools and buckles in like she’s eager to get moving.

“So, where are we riding?”

“Dispatch wants me to check a power surge in Ballard.”

“Ballard? God, won’t that be a giant party?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing!”

She thinks about it for a minute, then reaches back for her purse. “I better put on lip gloss.”

Wow. Her lip gloss smells like root beer. I think I might be falling in love.

Chapter three – Gloria

Okay, so my 24th New Year’s is looking up. I’m probably not going to save any lives, but now at least I’ll have a couple of hours in a relatively unthreatening situation with a really cute guy. Maybe the New Year’s gods have something else in store in Ballard, but how bad could it be? I have a legit electrical wizard with me. At least I’m not likely to get electrocuted.

“So what’s the deal?” Charlie asks, once we’re on the road. “Why was a young single girl giving up her New Year’s to…what was that anyway? A soup kitchen?”

“Suicide help-line.”

Charlie drives in silence for a moment. “Jeez.”

“I know. Buzz kill, right? The thing is I always have such bad New Year’s Eves when I try to have a good time, I thought if I did something a little less shallow than a beertini party at the Pike Brewery and you know, tried to help someone, things might turn out better for me too.”

“And how’s that going so far?”

I smile out to the road ahead of us. “Pretty good so far. I mean, this is already more fun than either counselling suicidals
or
a beertini party at the Pike Brewery.”

Charlie grins. He’s got a lovely smile–straight white teeth and kissable, bee-stung lips. Did I really just think the word “kissable”? That’s just sad.

“What is a ‘beertini’ exactly?”

“You don’t even want to know.”

Ballard, as I suspected, is buzzing, already well into the throes of a burn-it-all-down New Year’s riot even though it’s only just after 9PM. We pull up across the street from a kind of run down but obviously partying house, and I can smell what I suspect is the skunk-scented cause of the power surge before we even get out of the truck. To make it even more obvious, there’s a pile of empty plastic flower pots in the recycling bin.

“Ah, shit,” Charlie says. “I hate doing this.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We have to call the cops. And I hate it because they come and arrest everyone. Even people who are just here to chill with a little weed.”

“I thought it was legal here now.”

“Not home grows. And anyway, from the power surge, they’re probably stealing power too for their grow lights. So, you know, they’re jerks. But their friends are just having a good time.”

Charlie looks up at the house, frowning. There are people on the porch drinking beer and smoking various things. They look pretty harmless. Stoned but harmless.

“Why don’t you put your light on?” I’d noticed the yellow light on top of the truck when I got in.

“Why?”

“You know, like flash the lights, and then everyone will be like, ‘It’s the fuzz! Cheese it!’ And then when the cops arrive, there won’t be anyone here to arrest.”

Charlie looks at me, his eyebrows raised. “Cheese it?”

“Admit it; it’s a good idea.”

He shakes his head, reaching over to flick a switch. Yellow lights begin to flash all around us. Sure enough there are several cries of “shit” and “whoa” from the house, and then vast throngs of wasted hipsters pour onto the street, disappearing into the shadows on foot, bike or skateboard. It’s like the migration of the caribou. Beautiful. Almost sad.

Once almost everyone has left, a tattooed guy appears on the porch, yelling. “Hey! Who the fuck are you?”

“Oh, shit,” Charlie says. “Let’s cheese it!” He peels out, dodging hipsters as he careens away from the house.

When he pulls over a minute later, I have to stifle my laughter in my lap while he calls in the report. Then we hit a drive-thru for celebratory smoothies.

“Hey! I just thought of something!” I say, through a mouthful of mango froth.

“What?”

“I might have just saved someone’s life after all.”

“How so?” Charlie pulls out into the sparse traffic on Market Street as I explain.

“So someone at the party might have gotten the book thrown at them. I mean, maybe they had a previous arrest or something so they would end up doing hard time. Or they might be a good kid with a scholarship and everything that getting arrested would destroy. And that would mess them up so much, they might just think of ending it all.”

“And no one would answer their call for help because the power is off at the help-line?”

“Exactly! But we changed all that. We saved them.”

Charlie nods, thoughtfully.

“Wow,” I say. “I changed someone’s future.”

As we tap our smoothie cups together, I think maybe that was the magic spell to break my New Year’s curse. Maybe I had to save someone’s life. Isn’t that how spells and curses work?

Charlie drives us over the bridge and takes the exit onto Emerson, then down to the Fishing terminal on 20
th
. There are quite a few boats on the canal and some festive music drifting over the water as we finish our smoothies in a comfortable silence. Maybe, just maybe, this New Year’s is going to be the awesome one I’ve always hoped for. But then I realize I’m getting ahead of myself. I don’t know anything about this guy. He could be a serial killer, for all I know, or a Republican.

Or married. He’s not wearing a ring, but…the last married guy I met wasn’t wearing a ring either. I didn’t think to ask until it was too late. I won’t make that mistake twice. “Are you married?”

Charlie chokes on smoothie. “Married?! Uh, no I’m not married. I’m only twenty-one.”

Twenty-one is a bit young, but he does have a good job. And the way he’s sitting right now, I can see he seems to have a rather nice package in his work pants too. Uh…shit…eyes up, Gloria.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No,” he says, smiling. “My last girlfriend dumped me, took the cat and moved to Timbuktu.”

“Timbuktu? Really?”

“No. I’m just kidding. It was Toronto.”

For some reason I find this hilarious. He laughs along with me so he’s clearly not all that cut up about it. I slurp the last of my smoothie and set the empty cup into the cup holder.

“So,” I say, looking to the dark back seat of the truck. “Have you ever had sex in here?”

What. The. Fuck.
Did I say that out loud?

Charlie, bless him, tries to make a joke out of it. “Not yet this shift. But you know, the night is still pretty young.”

“
You’re
pretty young.”

“I am? How old are you?”

“Nearly twenty-four.”

He sits back and looks at me appraisingly. “I thought you were younger than that.”

“That’s because my life is a disaster. I seem younger than I am because I haven’t got my shit together yet.” Yeah. That was a dumb thing to say. “Is it bad that I’m older than you?”

“No. Is it bad that I’m younger than you?”

“No.
You
seem to have your shit together.”

We look at each other, and I know I have a stupid smile on my face. I’m sure it’s one of those smiles that says, “If you so much as compliment my handwriting. I will suck your cock until you beg for mercy,” but I don’t care. Charlie just smiles back at me.

And smiles back.

And smiles back.

My friend Amy told me about this mythical creature once: the “wants-you-to-make-the-first-move guy.” She says they’re mostly to be found in Canada, but occasionally you might encounter one south of the border. Amy says if you meet one, you might assume you should approach it quietly, gently, like you might try to hand feed a wild deer, but in fact the opposite is true. Apparently you need to be aggressive with them. You need to take control of the situation and not give them a chance to ruin things with their manners and courtesy. Amy says when it comes to men, manners and courtesy are only a short taxi ride away from apathy. And nothing kills a night of hot sex faster than male apathy. It’s like anti-Viagra.

I can’t quite believe it, but I think I have found myself an honest-to-goodness wants-you-to-make-the-first-move guy.

“Are you Canadian?” I just need to confirm he’s the genuine creature.

“My mother is. How did you know?”

I don’t answer. I grab him by the front of his blue work shirt and pull him forward into a kiss.

For a courteous guy, he kisses like a god. After only a second’s shocked hesitation, he wraps his hands around my back and pulls me across the center console until I’m practically in his lap, the gear shift jamming into my hip. He slides one hand into my hair and one, oddly, down my leg to rest on the top of my boot. His thumb does little maddening circles over my tights. Our tongues touch–he’s a little tentative at first, but after a second he’s holding my head so tightly, pressing our mouths together so firmly, I couldn’t escape even if I wanted to.

And I don’t want to.

He tastes like strawberry smoothie and it’s a revelation. I realize I’ve never kissed a guy who didn’t taste like liquor or smoke. Often both. Kissing Charlie feels
healthy.
Nutritious even. As though I’m getting vitamins and minerals and will wake up with thicker, shinier hair and skin that’s twenty-five percent more luminous.

He slides the boot hand up around my ass and moves me again, but this time the steering wheel crams into my back. I make a strangled noise.

“What?” he says.

“Steering wheel. Spine. Pain,” I manage.

Charlie feels around the side of the seat for a second. There’s a loud click, and the backrest falls so quickly we’re both practically catapulted into the back seat.

“Sorry.” He helps me clamber into the back beside him. We kiss some more, as somewhere, from one of the boats, the music from
Frozen
is playing.

I pull back an inch and look into his dark brown eyes. “Do you have a condom?”

Safety Girl. That’s me.