carl@fire

Annie Strickland sat at her desk in the English workroom of Lincoln High, alternately eating lunch and grading a series of reading quizzes from her fourth period class. It was fifth period now, which was her lunch time. She always attempted to take this as a free period when class scheduling time came around; occasionally Carl would duck out of work to bring her lunch or flowers during his own lunch breaks, and it was more convenient for him to be able to visit earlier than later. Sure, he was stopped at the security gate out front near the metal detectors and not allowed entrance, but he'd been there enough times by now that the guards called her directly instead of going through the main office.

She smiled a little as she marked an obviously-fabricated answer as incorrect on one of the quizzes. Carl's the best.

And he was. He continued to be. She'd taken a chance on him all those years ago, and she'd never regretted it, even when he chose to use his time to teach their daughters social engineering.

She rolled her eyes. Is he fucking serious with that? Like they need more help getting what they want.

They really didn't. She couldn't even remember the last time he'd told either one of them no and meant it. Sure, he'd backed her in saying no to Bobby's sleepover idea for the coming Friday—which she'd mostly done because she'd anticipated that Becca would end up staying over despite her protests—but she had already seen the look in his eye. He's gonna want to talk about it.

Annie sighed and took a bite of her hastily-assembled tuna salad. I get that he wants Bobby to be able to have fun playing games like he did when he was younger, but it's like he's living vicariously through her at this point. Almost want to just tell him to order a fucking brain link thing so he can play with her already. He's more than mature enough to manage his time effectively now.

The thought was not new. Carl was everything she'd ever wanted in a partner. He'd willingly given up nearly everything to be with her. She'd been suspicious at first, thinking that he was lying—as others had before him—but it was like the idea of doing so had never even occurred to him. She'd come back on that memorable Tuesday, expecting to walk right back out to where Cheryl was waiting in her car, but instead…

A memory came back to her.

"I'll wait here for you," Cheryl said, giving her a reassuring hug. "Be strong, okay? Don't take any shit from him."

Annie exhaled deeply. Her hands felt cold and clammy, and she felt the same nervous energy that she'd felt the first time she went on stage for her first play in eighth grade. "I… He'll pick me, won't he?" she asked, knowing the answer.

She loved Carl. She really loved him.

He was the best.

He remembered birthdays, and anniversaries, and special days, even making calendar entries in his schedule for them to ensure that they would be blocked off and nothing could possibly conflict.

He randomly dropped by the school she was teaching at, even though he knew he couldn't get in to see her, just to drop off flowers or special lunches he'd picked up, always managing to somehow know when she was having a rough day or week.

When she told him she wanted to talk, just to have someone to vent to, he listened. He really listened. He didn't try to fix her problems, he didn't try to mansplain what she was doing wrong, he just listened. And he gave her great backrubs while he did it, too.

He got along with her parents, secretly preparing himself ahead of time to talk in-depth about financial topics with her stepfather that she'd never even heard of before. He even managed to somehow reach an uneasy truce with her annoying little sister, Becca, who drove her crazy.

One time, he'd even driven all the way down to Los Angeles to pick her up when her flight had been canceled and the only alternative had been to drive an hour back to her parents' house and stay another day with Becca constantly needling and annoying her.

And he was great in bed too, which was a requirement for Annie. She'd always had a strong sex drive, and having a partner who could not only keep up, but who was attentive and cared enough to figure out exactly what she wanted had gradually led to her being much less inhibited than she had in the past with her previous lovers, who she'd been worried would think of her as easy or a slut. Carl not only did the job, it was like he triple checked to make sure he'd really done it.

But now she was about to go back to see Carl after having given him an ultimatum, and she was reasonably sure he wasn't going to choose her if the other option was his hobbies.

Annie hadn't wanted to force him to make the choice. She tried so hard to give him everything he wanted. He did make a sort of reasonable amount of money, and it was great that he was always around if she had a day off or stayed home sick, but she was twenty seven now. She couldn't imagine not being with Carl, but she also couldn't imagine raising a family with him as he was.

With their combined wages and her student debt, they would never be able to afford a house. It wasn't economically feasible now, and it never would be given how little teachers were paid. How could they raise children without a house? She would never let her children grow up as she had, living crammed into a tiny apartment while she worked multiple jobs just to keep them fed. She would not, however, compromise her dream job for it; being a high school teacher was a low-paying, thankless job, but she believed she could help the kids she taught, giving them the critical thinking skills that she'd wished she could have had when she was that age.

The skills she'd wished her mom could have had.

Carl's hobbies were dragging him down. He was so smart! It was one of the things that had first drawn her to him when he'd shown up for a couple days at the school she was teaching at to repair some computer problem or another. She'd come around a corner, and there was this giant of a man looming over her suddenly. But he'd been witty, and funny, and charming—all in very Carl ways—and she'd asked him out for coffee on the spot, having been a bit pent up herself. One thing had led to another, and now it was two years later, and she would have to break up with him rather than let their relationship slowly decay into bickering and apathy as it surely would.

She loved him too much to let that happen.

"I'll be here for you," Cheryl said again, looking away because she didn't want to say what the obvious result of Annie's impending brief trip back up to her apartment would be.

Annie knew that in a few minutes, she'd come right back out the door she was staring at. Tears would be leaking out of her eyes, her nose would feel stuffy, her lips would be locked into a deep expression of unhappiness, and they would go back to Cheryl's where she would cry until she fell asleep.

It was a familiar path for her. She'd had a nearly identical experience when she and her mother come home one day to discover her father's girlfriend, who had a much bigger and more expensive engagement ring on her finger than her own mother's had been.

Also the other woman been pregnant.

Annie had gone with her mother to their new, tiny apartment, where she'd cried for an entire week with her mother attempting to console her.

This would be similar, but different.

With Carl, there was no other woman. There were just his hobbies, which served no purpose other than to waste his time and allow him to continue being mediocre.

Annie had felt what mediocrity was like. It was killing her to watch someone as talented and smart as Carl settle for less than he was capable of.

She nodded to her best friend, then got out the passenger side of her car and headed towards the door to the apartment building they lived in.

Annie was strong. She wouldn't start crying now.

No, she refused.

She would go up to the second floor, she would open the door and see that nothing had changed, she would close the door and come back down to the car, and only then would she allow herself to feel the crushing disappointment she'd known was inevitable two weeks ago the last time she'd left this building.

She took the stairs. It was slower, especially as slowly as she was taking them, but that was fine. It would be the second-to-last time she would climb them, the last being when she returned in a few days to retrieve all her possessions with how flaky the elevator in their low-cost apartment building was. Cheryl had agreed to let her move in for a couple months until she found a new place to live, though it would be a tight fit. She was lucky that Ted was deployed, or it wouldn't even have been a possibility.

She stood in front of the door to their apartment with her key out, shaking. She just had to put it into the lock and twist. The door would be locked, obviously.

Carl always locked the door.

She'd just…

Annie sniffled. Yup, she'd just put the key into the lock…

The key bounced off the slot again, and she grabbed it with her other hand to steady it.

She wasn't going to cry now.

Finally, the tip of the key went into the lock. She slid it in slowly, feeling her eyes start to burn.

She sniffled again.

It was okay. She would be okay. There were plenty of other guys out there, and even girls, and she would—

The door opened, wrenching the keys out of her hand and the thoughts from her mind.

Carl stood in the doorway, towering over her. He was wearing khakis and a dress shirt. And a tie. His hair was combed, and now, rather than the lazy stubble he tended to accumulate, he had what could reasonably be called a beard.

Annie stared.

"Come in," Carl said, stepping back to stand next to the door and gesturing inside.

She hesitated. This was…

"I vacuumed and cleaned up a bit," Carl said.

Carl? Vacuum? And clean? Sure, he did those things, but not outside of their scheduled cleaning days, and those only happened at the end of the month…

Annie slowly walked inside their apartment.

The carpets were clear, free of the random debris that tended to accumulate.

She continued forward, and the door closed behind her.

The couch was where she remembered it next to her old armchair, but nothing else was as it had been. Gone were the racks of movies, games, and anime that had lined the walls. His game systems were nowhere to be seen, his posters were gone, and the cooler that he'd been using as a footrest since they'd moved in was gone.

She turned to Carl with widening eyes as he walked past her, feeling her heart thundering away in her chest. It couldn't be…

"I choose you," Carl said.

She tackled him onto the couch, where they remained long after her phone started and then stopped ringing several times.

Annie sighed contentedly, smiling as she always did when she recalled how amazingly unexpected the result was. After that day, she would have given him anything he wanted.

Carl, however, had treated every day after as though it had been a test of his devotion to her. He'd somehow managed to fast-track himself into a career just as she'd wanted, allowing them to move into a house years earlier than she'd ever hoped. He hadn't continued with AA like she'd wanted after the first time, saying it was a little too spiritual for him, but he'd still stopped drinking, seemingly out of sheer willpower.

And he'd completely given up his other useless hobbies, using the time instead to study for work, or read up on parenting, or just spend more time with her.

Carl's the best, but he's too wound up lately.