{Flames}: From Embers to Infernos

At 3:38 A.M., insomnia made itself Evie’s unwelcome bedfellow. For the second night in a row, she awoke charged, as if she had had hit the mattress for 12 hours and pounded a cup of hyper-caffeinated coffee upon waking, and not—as was her reality—as if she had gone to bed 90 minutes earlier.

After 15 years of sleepovers, she expected sleeplessness.

From the time she was young, she had always struggled to sleep anywhere but her own bed, unable to find its safety or comfort anywhere else. She planned to be bedridden the day after an overnight stay with friends, and for it to take at least three days of vacation to get used to the hotel mattress, lumpy or not. Her dorm room bed took a solid two weeks. In comparison, night two in this Airbnb bed wasn’t too bad.

All the same, with no amount of forced yawns or lavender spray spritzes soothing her to sleep, she groaned into her memory foam pillow, imagining leaving a perfect mold of her frustrated grimace in the malleable material for the next guest to find. It brought a flicker of a smile to her face, vanishing as the itch of restless energy climbed up her limbs. “Get up. Get moving. There will be no more sleeping tonight,” the insomnia told her, and she believed it. It hadn’t lied once and it wasn’t about to break its streak now, not when her mind couldn’t stop its one-person race.

Evie threw back the plaid sheets, slipped on her moccasins, and as quiet as one could in a creaky log cabin, tiptoed down the hall. The noises of the night had receded, peals of laughter and boisterous conversation now muffled behind closed bedroom doors, along with others she’d rather not hear, even dulled.

She crept down the stairs into the living room, the glow from the adjoining kitchen offering acting as her guide. When her friend, Monica, had first proposed the trip, Evie had questioned why she chose a log cabin in the woods. Yes, her skepticism may have been partly because it reminded her too much of every horror movie she’d ever seen, and between the amount of alcohol to be consumed and debauchery sure to ensue, Evie saw this trip as a dead ringer. But, it was also that it was remote, which would’ve been fine if their small town of 2,000 people didn’t already have that covered.

As soon as she stepped inside the house, though, Evie understood.

It had a fireplace constructed of individually laid stones, clawfoot tubs in each of the three bathrooms, richy-rich appliances, a hot tub overlooking a forest dense with conifers, and 14-foot ceilings made of pine timbers, some built low enough for the home’s owners to twine fairy lights between them. In other words, it was gorgeous, like something out of HGTV Magazine, and she found it even more so knowing they got it for a steal.

Aside from a statue of a prancing deer on the coffee table, the living room was unoccupied. Swiping the sherpa blanket from the back of the couch, Evie wrapped herself in its warmth, and bent in front of the fireplace to add to it. A copper basket beside it contained everything anyone would need to start a fire: logs, old newspapers for kindling, and a chrome lighter looked like it had beamed out of the future rather than the 2020s.

Pulling a stack of logs from their pyramid, she arranged them in the fireplace the same way her mom had taught her when she was five: build the logs into a hut, and stuff the kindling into its base, as if they were the mattress of this wooden tent. With a press of her finger, a small flame appeared at the end of the lighter, and quickly expanded once it met the paper, licking through stories on rising housing prices and crime, lower politician approval ratings, and mediocre films playing at the cinema.

Sentences became fragments then syllables then ash.

She scrolled through her phone until she found her 1980s’ classics station, and for a while, as she listened, just sat and watched the flames, stoking them with more kindling when needed. For as long as she could remember, she had been mesmerized by fire, the way the flames changed color—bright orange to white hot—the way they shifted shape—up and down, expanding and contracting, as if they were dancers, contorting their body to the beat of the fire’s snap, crackle, pop, changing their costume to fit the atmosphere. She found it incredibly interesting how something so small could grow to do terrible damage, how something that could save lives with its warmth, could take them with their destruction. Flames were a lot like most things in life, capable of good and bad, depending on their usage.

“Hey.”

Evie vaulted from the floor, wielding the lighter like it was a dagger as she swung towards the voice.

“Woah. Please don’t start me on fire.” The culprit shielded his face with his hands, but from behind them, Evie could hear laughter. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Oh I’m so sure.” Just in time for her to whip a pillow at him, the culprit, Arlo, lowered his hands, getting a faceful of olive green fringe. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”

As her friend—strike that—best friend, Arlo was well aware of Evie’s fear of becoming horror movie fodder.

He had seen it develop on multiple trips to the movie theater, both of them dragged there by his younger brother, Matthias, who fed off jump scares the way she did beautiful poetry: voraciously.

Evie and Arlo had met at high school orientation freshman year. His parents moved to Huntington Grove as an escape from the high-pitched hum of city life. His mom, a painter, wanted fresh air for creativity to bloom, and his dad, an IT manager, wanted to be able to look out the window and not stare at brick and metal and cement, but trees and skies and wildlife. They had planned to try it for a year. Seven years out, they had yet to leave.

“Were your parents time travelers who liked The Good Dinosaur or something?” she had asked them when they first met, referencing the Disney Pixar film that had a dinosaur bearing the same name. At 14, she hadn’t quite developed a filter for her curiosity that could sift out possibly offensive inquiries and leave only the inoffensive. It functioned even less when she was feeling anxious and awkward, both of which she was.

The truth was, she thought it was unique and wanted to understand where it came from, and she thought if she asked by cracking a joke, it may help him because he seemed uncomfortable, too. She could imagine how much more severe his had to be in a new place, with people who had known each other since they were old enough to swing at the playground. If it was her, she would deem this experience one of Dante’s Circles of Hell.

Arlo blushed through the tips of his ears, bright red against his toffee hair.

He shrugged, his shoulders reaching so high, he nearly brushed his chin against the cotton of his cyan tee. “No, they just have a really good gauge for cool,” he deadpanned, and it was with that delivery she decided she wanted to be his friend. She would decide later that whatever the origin story of his name (his parents liked that it conveyed strength and individuality), what she liked the most about it was the way it flowed with hers. Evie and Arlo. Arlo and Evie. They rang together in a beautiful chorus, even during times when they felt like they had become discordant chimes.

Grinning, the 22-year-old Arlo before her bent to pick the pillow off the floor where it landed. “Yeah,” he said. “You know, you’re the only person I know whose body believes it’s capable of getting only two hours of sleep and still functioning.”

“Says the guy who’s up, too.”

“Says the guy who’s up but his body knows it is setting him up to fail.” He tossed the pillow to her like a frisbee, and she caught it, clamping it between her empty palm and the lighter. “There’s a difference.”

“Is it that my body is superior to yours?” She asked, cocking her head and receiving a laugh as Arlo crashed onto the couch behind her.

“No, it’s that mine has self-awareness.” He lengthened his legs out along the cushions, tucked his hands behind his head, the image of oh-so-comfortable. She tried to not notice the way his sweatshirt stretched along his shoulders, or peeked up over his hips, and succeeded only if she didn’t count her peripheral vision.

The attraction between them had been almost immediate, and within three months of meeting, they began dating.

Three months later, they broke up, romance fizzling out. Laughing over drinks one night a couple years earlier, both of them said they couldn’t remember who initiated the conversation. But Evie was lying. She remembered vividly asking him if he thought they were better as friends, motivated by a shift she had felt between them, not necessarily back towards platonic, but towards something more, something else, something that scared her 15-year-old self, and continued to scare her at 21. Arlo had agreed with her, and that was that. They were friends again, and she felt relief in the expected, the comfortable, the pivot back towards what she knew.

It was one thing she could thank their younger selves for: their ability to call it off before their entire relationship went up in teenage drama flames. It was a small, actually, quite a large, miracle, and she was grateful for it every day. Almost.

Until there were times like this, 3:00 A.M. chats induced not by tequila shots but getting drunk on each other, that she had to remind herself that she was grateful for it. That she didn’t regret that choice or wonder what they would’ve become if she had kept her mouth shut.

Crossing to the couch, Evie smacked his legs with the pillow, before pushing them aside to create just enough space for her to fall onto the seat. “You’re self-aware? When did that happen?”

“Right when I woke up actually. I’m pretty sure I was rebooted.”

She snorted and spread the blanket over them, giving more to herself obviously. “Ah, that would explain the robot noises I heard coming from your room. I’m glad it was that and not something else,” she said and he laughed, dimples cratering into his cheeks. “But anyways, reboot aside, why are you up? You could be getting—,” she looked at the clock on her phone, which read 4:06, “—at least five more hours of sleep.”

Arlo’s gray eyes swept over the ceiling and landed back on her, his lips settling into that soft smile that he gave her when he was a) really tired and or drunk; or b) really at ease. Her stomach did a back handspring. She hadn’t seen it enough lately, college separating them by hours instead of minutes, the distance physical and emotional. This was the first time they had been together since the start of the winter semester—yet another reason she agreed to the horror cabin—and she could say with absolute certainty that FaceTime didn’t do Arlo’s smile, or maybe Arlo just in general, justice.

“I was half awake and heard someone come down here and could smell the fire. I figured I should make sure no one was trying to smoke us out, and then I saw it was actually you and thought I’d come down. Tell you to turn off this cheesy ass music.”

His toes bumped into her thigh.

Her mouth dropped. “Excuse me, since when is “Eternal Flame” by The Bangles cheesy?”

“Since it came out,” he answered with side-eye, as if everyone knew it, and she did agree somewhat. She also somewhat felt like the lyrics hit way too close to home.

“Sacrilege,” she tutted, tying her lemon hair up in the messiest of messy buns. “So you came down to mock my awesome taste in music?”

“That and I’ve missed you. Wanted to hang out with you.”

They shared that feeling. Their communication had been less frequent as of late, going from daily texts, down to sporadic ones throughout the week. The calls were fewer. Yes, she knew that they were busy with their classes. She was working on her senior capstone projects for art curation and business, and he was deep into his internship writing code for an upcoming social media platform. She knew the social lives they had to balance on top of that. Still, she worried what that might mean for them. If they were finally outgrowing each other, and based on this, she thought he may feel the same way.

“We’ve been together all weekend,” she said, hoping that warmth she felt radiating inside wasn’t showing out the outside. From her phone, The Bangles crooned, “Close your eyes, give me your hand. Do you feel my heart beating?”

“It’s not the same and you know it.”

“I do.” There were things they wouldn’t talk about, ways they would act in a group of people, even if said group was their friends. One-on-one was like feeling that ease in his smile, and the heat of the fire in the same breath. It was well, like seeing the Mona Lisa with no line, or to hear Maya Angelou in person perform And Still I Rise just for you. 

Magnificent, deeply personal, other worldly. 

You couldn’t beat it. She wouldn’t trade it.

Arlo’s toe began tracing figure eights into the fleece of her pajama pants, and while she didn’t mind, Evie recognized it as the pattern he tended to make when he had something on his mind. “What are you thinking about?”

He continued the motion as his dark gaze settled on the arm rest next to her, his pensive expression enhanced by the angles of shadow falling over his face like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. “Nothing. I just, okay, I have plenty of friends at school—”

“So you’re thinking about how popular and cool you are?” she asked.

“What? No,” Arlo said, his toe stopping its outline to jab her. She laughed and feigned pain. “What I was going to say is that I have these friends at school, and we can hang out and we have a great time, but it’s never been like this, like how you and I are together. It never feels like that. You know how many times I’ve thought to myself just in the past month ‘I wish Evie was here’? Like more than I could count.”

“Hence the missing?”

“Hence the missing,” Arlo nodded. “What we have, it’s rare. Fucking rare.” For emphasis, he pressed his finger into the leather cushion, once for each word.

“I agree,” she said, and glanced at the fire, trying to tame the hope building within her, and looking at him, Evie couldn’t help but hope.

Do you understand? Do you feel the same? Am I only dreaming?

If Evie really thought about it—which she frequently did—she and Arlo were not too dissimilar to the flames in the fireplace. Powerful on their own, beautiful even, but burning brighter and mightier together. “I think the same thing when I’m at school.”

He smiled, but not that easy one, but one that looked like it was caught between relief and reluctance. “Don’t think that might mean something?”

Yes. “Like what? That we’re great friends.”

Slowly, he shook his head, and his eyes dropped to his sweatshirt. In her chest, she felt the omnipresent, often overlooked thump of her heart. Don’t have any expectations. It’s probably not what you think. “Like that we should be more?” he said, speaking so firmly that if it weren’t for the upward lilt at the end, she would’ve been telling her it should just be so.

The flush reached Evie’s cheeks.

Despite Arlo addressing her long-held hope when neither of them had spoken it out loud, the first thing that came to mind to say was “oh,” but luckily she was able to stop that from leaving her lips, and swap it out for the truth. “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Arlo pushed himself up, his toes leaving her side and the blanket, scooching back until his knees were under his biceps. “Want to elaborate on what you think during those ‘sometimes’?”

To open this door was to never close it again, she knew.

This wasn’t high school, when most relationships had less of a shelf life than organic milk. They were on the verge of real adulthood, which came with heftier decisions, heftier consequences, and their relationship would come with deeper feelings and deeper hurt. There were no absolutes. Like the flames, they were capable of good and bad.

But to keep it closed meant maybe they’d never open it again either.

To be or not to be… Which would she regret more? Which would be more bearable?

Shifting towards him, she scooted across the couch until they were knee to knee. “That if people can be meant for each other, I think we could be meant for more,” she said, speaking slowly, annunciating every syllable, as if that would make them easier, less scary, to speak. “What do you think?”

The right side of his mouth tugged up, as his fingers brushed hers, sweeping over the top of her hand softly. “I think so, too.” They reached up, tracing the line of her chin. “I really do.”

If they were flames, then they had been them at all stages, tyros, wavering with the elements, trying to sustain themselves; embers burnt down to almost nothing but still alive with heat; and budding infernos, growing, building, rising in temperature, ready to experience what it feels like to burn brighter than they ever have.

Close your eyes, give me your hand.