“Thanks for all your help today,” I say as we reach my car.
“No worries.” He pulls his car keys from his pocket. “It was fun.”
“I told you, barrel museums are super cool.”
John chuckles. “‘Super cool’ might be a stretch.”
“Extraordinarily cool, then.”
“Passably cool,” he counters.
I grin. “I’ll take it.”
A little silence falls between us, but for once, it doesn’t feel awkward. If anything, it feels sort of charged. Like the end of a date, almost.
I bite my lip. I’m tempted to say something flirty to keep the conversation going, but that would be stupid. This isn’t a date, and I don’t have a crush on John.
“Well, night,” I say hastily.
“Night,” he says. Then, as I open my car door, “Don’t start Wordle tomorrow without me.”
My heart does a stupid flip-flop inside my chest. “Or what?”
“Or nothing,” he says. “Just don’t do it.”
He shoots me a grin after he says it, and I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t do seriously twisty things to my insides.
“We’ll see,” I retort. Then I get into my car and let my head drop onto my steering wheel as he walks away.
I hope tomorrow’s Wordle answer is MORON.
15
I have to say, I’ve picked averyinconvenient week to suddenly become attracted to John. After more than a year of basically ignoring me at work, all of a sudden he’s at the front desk, like, every five minutes. By five o’clock on Monday, we’ve spent an hour adjusting the shop schedule so he can fit in some appointments for his race car friends, a half hour figuring out how to order a tire balancer (I guess he finally convinced Fred to buy a new one), and then another hour at lunchtime doing Wordle (CHOIR, on the fourth guess) and talking about the Barrel Into Summer event. And that’s not even counting all the times he’s popped to the front desk to write out a receipt or double-check an appointment time.
What would be really helpful to dispel this teensy little attraction is some classic John behavior, like staring at me blankly when I make a joke or saying something snippy to a customer.
On Thursday morning, it seems like my wish might be granted. A middle-aged woman with very bright orange hair and slightly eccentric clothes has come in for a tire change, and while John is writing out her receipt, she asks him the same question no fewer than five times. Even I’m getting a little annoyed with her.
“So you’re sure the tires are onfirmly?” she says. “They aren’t going to fly off?”
I glance at John, waiting for the explosion.
“Nope,” he says.
“Because I read online that tires can fly off while you’re driving if they’re not put on firmly.”
“They’re on firmly,” John says.
She frowns suspiciously. “You’ve tested them properly? Not just by hand, but with a proper tire machine?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says. “We use the Tire Flex 3000 to check that all tires are on firmly. But,” he adds, as she snatches a breath to speak again, “I also used the Tirenator 4000 on your car, just to be extra sure.”
“Hmm.” The woman looks mollified. “Well, as long as you checked it on both.”
“Of course,” John says.
I run her credit card, give her a copy of the receipt, and bid her a good day, to which she responds with a pessimistic “We’ll see.”
