Whoops.
Hastily, I turn my attention back to Wordle. The S, O, and E of SMOKE are green.
S_ O_E.
SCOPE. As in, it would be so embarrassing if John thought I was scoping him out just now. We’re finally becoming friend-ish, I don’t want to ruin it by ogling him when I already know he’s not interested. Plus, I’m not interested in him. I just happened to notice that he smells really nice and his arms are really strong, that’s all. And if I’m feeling a little flushed all of a sudden, that’s just because it’s warm in here today.
Obviously.
SLOPE, I type into Wordle. As in, I need to be careful here, because this is a very slippery slope.
One by one, the letters turn green, as if Wordle is agreeing with me.
“You got it?” John asks, leaning closer to glance over my shoulder. And damn it, that smoky smell really is enticing.
“Got it.”
“That’s, what—three hundred and nine days?”
I smile a bit unsteadily. “Yep.”
“Nice.” John hops off the desk and holds out his fist for me to bump, which could not be a more obvious “just-friends” gesture and yet still somehow makes my heart beat a little faster. He shoots me a lightning-flash grin before he heads back to the garage, leaving me shaky and electrified.
The moment he’s gone, I thump my head down against my keyboard.
Uh-oh.
13
Okay. The important thing, I’ve decided, is not to make mountains from molehills. Yes, I find John objectively attractive. So what? This isn’t news. I thought he was hot when I first met him, until I found out about his personality (or lack thereof). And yes, I’ve come to realize he has abitmore personality than I originally gave him credit for, but he’s still Boring John. He still cares about cars more than people. He still answers half the things I say with an incredulous stare.
Honestly, I think this is more a reflection of how starved I am for a proper crush. Like, if you’re lost in the desert for a month, even a dirty old can of soda is going to look just as good as a strawberry daiquiri, right?
Okay, that was mean.
John’s not a dirty old can of soda.
But he also isn’t the kind of guy I want to date. I like really driven, outgoing guys. Like my high school boyfriend, who was class president and the captain of the soccer team. Or my university boyfriend, who was pre-law, or even my post-uni fling with that slightly eccentric (but very engaging) medical student. I like guys who want big things from life and who push me to want more from my own. What’s John going to push me to do? Work at the auto shop forever? Die with grease stains on my clothes?
. . . okay, that was also mean. There’s nothing wrong with working at an auto shop forever.
But it isn’tme.
Anyway. I slept on it last night, and I’ve decided the thing to do is just ignore my inconvenient physical attraction to John and focus on something else, like my Barrel Into Summer event.
On Wednesday, I design a flyer and use the auto shop’s printer to print off a prototype. John helps me change out the color cartridge, and I don’t pay any attention to how warm his arm is when it brushes against mine.
On Thursday, I make a list of all the places I can put the flyers up, and John and I practically die of laughter when the Wordle answer turns out to be FLYER. I definitely don’t notice how nice his laugh is or that he gets dimples on his cheeks when he laughs really hard.
On Friday, I walk into the break room to find him and Dave watching a YouTube video of some big crash in Formula 2, and when I comment that I thought it was called Formula 1, not 2, John subjects me to a twenty-minute lecture on all the different racing leagues on the planet. I don’t want to interrupt him, since it’s the longest he’s ever talked to me, which feels kind of nice, but it’s all incredibly confusing and more than a little boring. So really, you can hardly blame me for spacing out and getting lost in the honey-brown shade of his eyes.
Needless to say, by Saturday, I’m very glad to have some time away from the shop. I get up early and have a cup of coffee on the back porch, soaking up the warmth of the fragile May sun. At nine a.m., I head out to the breakfast date I’ve set up with Jim.
It isn’t part of my caregiving service, really, I just felt like he needed a little company this weekend. His wife’s birthday is next week—she would’ve turned ninety-four—and I can tell he’s really torn up about it.
I drive to the bakery downtown and buy a box of freshly baked cinnamon rolls and then head to his house. It’s an old-fashioned farmhouse that sits on the top of a hill, with a wide porch overlooking his neighbor’s farmland. We sit outside and have tea and cinnamon rolls and watch the neighbor’s horses graze. There’s a white one who I’ve decided is named Ghost, and a brown one I’ve named Epona.
I ask Jim to tell me about his late wife, and the memories roll out of him slowly. It’s less of a story of their lives together than a collection of unrelated snapshots. She always put a half-cup of sugar in her tea. She stepped on a snake once in the garden and hollered so loudly that the neighbors came running over. She didn’t like to drive. She cooked chicken and boiled potatoes on Sundays.
