Are You Sure? (Marina)

Forty-One.

Maya

"Frida! Frida please! Baby please wake up, please come back to me!" The fire was palpable in the air as the smoke and ash sank into the ground around me. I looked at the man clinging to his fiancé's gurney. She laid there cold and covered in burns, unresponsive, dead.

"Andrea isn't answering my calls." Carina's voice pulled me back from my memory. She clicked the button on her steering wheel, ending the call as her brother's voicemail echoed through the speaker. "I didn't see him at the hospital. Now he's not answering."

"Maybe he just needs space." I said as I picked up my phone to scroll through my emails, waiting for the chiefs reply. After all it was his hesitancy to call for back up on a house fire that made search and rescue nearly impossible. Had he called us earlier, we wouldn't have lost that young girl before she had a chance to walk down the isle.

"Should I stop by?" Her voice rang in my ear and I frowned as I exited the application when I saw the only email I had unopened was Sanchez requesting time off.

"I think you should give him space. He's a grown man." I put my phone down and leaned back into the seat, my eyes stayed on the street we were driving through. It wasn't my intention to dismiss her worry, but her 30 year old brother was probably just dealing with his heartbreak.

She didn't say anything, I glanced over at her and she was clenching her jaw together. We pulled into the structure and we silently went up the elevator towards the apartment. When we walked in, the apartment was quiet and Carina went straight for the kitchen to grab something to drink.

Meanwhile I headed to the room and opened the door to find satin sheets and candles, with a bouquet of flowers sitting on the dresser. I had completely forgotten about the evening we had planned. "I set this up before everything but I will change them." She squeezed passed me to start peeling the sheets off the bed.

This could be what I need, to get lost in the intimacy of our connection. To let her pull me back from the pool of doubt I found myself swimming in since she told me she didn't see herself marrying me. What was this relationship to her? I walked over and stopped her before she pulled anything else off. I spun her and started on her blazer, undoing the buttons to reveal her silk blouse. "Maya." I looked down her body and released the material from her trousers to snake my hands under and feel her skin only to find more fabric. "Maya."

"Is this not what you want?" I said before moving behind her to undo the buttons the shirt held behind her neck. I pulled her shirt up and she turned around as I threw the fabric to the side, finding her torso delicately covered by lace. Her fingers circled my wrists before I could open her pants.

"Not like this." She put her hand on my face and I wanted to shake off her warmness. I wanted to pick her up and throw her on the bed with her hands pinned to the bed so she wouldn't disarm me with her touch. To fuck her and feel nothing but casual desire. Become so detached from the feelings her presence gave me that I could afterwards get up and move on without a second thought to how cold I had treated her since we left the station.

That was impossible, her thumb scrolled over my cheekbone and her beautiful brown eyes burned into mine. The ache for casual desire faded, replaced only for the lust I had to feel her love burn into my skin with every kiss and touch, for her voice to ring into the brain already consumed by only thoughts of her. I knew the only way to detach myself from Carina was be removed from this life. "I'm right here." I didn't want that, I wanted more life, more of her, of us- I needed her to save me from myself.

Her eyes glimmered as she understood the phrase, the hand on my face pushed under my hair and pulled gently on the back of my neck, "Vieni qua."