Mike got into bed and tried to cuddle his girlfriend, but she rolled away from him. And a few minutes later, he heard the shower running. “Honey, can we talk?” he asked, when she got out of the shower. Exhausted from fighting fires all night, he desperately wanted to sleep; but he also desperately wanted to make amends with Rachel.
“Talk about what, honey?” She said ‘honey’ like it was a bad word.
“About how you continue to put your job before me? About how every time I make plans for us to do something together this summer, you end up working all night? Is that what you want to talk about?” “But Rachel, you know I have no option. I’m a firefighter. When a fire breaks out, I have to fight it…”
He was still trying to reason with her when she walked out the door. She never told him where she was going, and he’d given up asking. He knew she wasn’t going to work because she hadn’t worked for months. She found it difficult to work as an actor, and Mike suspected that she wasn’t very good at it. Fortunately, she could afford to be mediocre, because he made enough money to support them both. But the job that was supporting them was also destroying them.
It was an unfortunate coincidence that since they’d started going out the previous summer, more fires had broken out in the locality than ever before. Mike blamed climate change, and the resulting rising temperatures, while his fire chief blamed human activity, which was in fact the cause of most fires, whether accidental or intentional. But whatever or whoever was causing the fires, Mike was paying the price in his relationship.
After a restless sleep, he went into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. On the table were two place settings and a note from Rachel that said, “Happy one year anniversary. I love you but I don’t know how much longer I can do this.” On previous occasions, he’d placated her by buying her something extravagant, like a pair of diamond earrings or a designer handbag. But this time he’d missed their anniversary. He felt like the worst boyfriend in the world.
A week later, Mike was having a cup of coffee before work when he saw a pile of newspapers on the kitchen table. Rachel had circled a number of adverts for acting jobs, but also for apartments. She was obviously planning to leave him. Beside the pile was a brochure for Maui, with a resort circled. So Rachel wanted to go to Hawaii, too... She’d probably been planning to discuss it with him at their anniversary dinner, the dinner he’d ruined. But maybe, just maybe, if he took her there, she wouldn’t leave him, thought Mike. The resort she’d circled was extravagantly expensive, but he could use the extra money he’d made from working overtime that summer to pay for it.
That night, he reserved a week off at work, and the next morning, after he got home, he reserved the flights and the resort online. When Mike told Rachel what he’d done, she forgave him for everything. Prior to their trip were by far the best six weeks of their relationship. The fires stopped and he returned to working normal hours and he happily paid for all Rachel’s new vacation clothes.
They were on their way to the airport when he stopped at the local hardware store to buy a lock for their baggage.
“What are you doing?” asked Rachel. “We don’t have time!”
“I’ll just be a minute,” he replied.
He was leaving the store when the manager stopped him. “So it worked! You’re our local hero!” he said, shaking his hand.
“Excuse me. Do I know you?”, said Mike.
“Your girlfriend told us about all the great work you were doing, fighting fires by night and volunteering by day to organise controlled fires to stop them from spreading. She’s been coming here all summer to buy the gasoline you needed. And it must have worked, because we haven’t had a fire in weeks.”
Mike was still trying to make sense of this when he returned to the car, only to find it surrounded by police, and his fire chief. It turned out that Rachel was a better actor than he’d suspected, pretending to be angry at him while going out every day and starting new fires so he would make enough money to buy her all the expensive things she wanted. Rachel was a fantastic actor and an even better arsonist, Mike thought. But she was by far the worst girlfriend in the world.