I'm pretty sure I'm witnessing what death by heat stroke looks like from the inside. Or maybe the outside? Is there a difference when your brain's melting? These are the thoughts of someone whose internal temperature has reached critical mass.
The oscillating fan on my desk does nothing except push hot air from one side of my face to the other in lazy intervals. I've got invoices spread out in front of me that I should be filing, but my brain's too melted to care. The shop's been dead for hours—literally no one in their right mind would bring a car in when stepping outside feels like opening an oven door and then climbing inside the oven and closing the door behind you and just accepting your fate as a baked good.
I lean back in my chair, unstick my tank top from my spine with one finger—the peeling sound is disgusting and satisfying—and consider just lying down on the concrete floor to absorb whatever coolness might be hiding there. Probably none. The concrete's probably hotter than I am. Everything's hotter than everything and we're all going to die here.
"I'm moving to Alaska," I announce to no one, to everyone, to the universe at large.
"You'd hate Alaska," Holt's voice drifts from under the Bronco he's been working on all morning, muffled but certain. "Too much snow."
"I'd learn to love snow. Snow and I would become best friends. I'd build snow a little house and we'd drink hot chocolate together and—wait, do people in Alaska actually do that or is that just what I think they do? I might be thinking of Canada. Is Alaska different from Canada?"
"You're rambling."
"It's the heat. My brain's melting. This is what liquified thoughts sound like when they leak out of my ears." I peel myself forward, rest my forehead on the desk, and contemplate death. "This is how I die. Not dramatically. Just... slowly cooking at my desk while pretending to care about invoices."
A clang of metal on concrete, the squeak of a creeper rolling, and then Finn emerges from under a Civic two bays over like a grease-stained gopher sensing opportunity. He's got a cherry popsicle in his mouth and he looks way too energized for someone who should be melting.
"That's it," he declares around the popsicle, standing up and wiping his hands on his jeans. Oil streaks everywhere. "We're closing."
I blink at him. "It's two in the afternoon."
"And it's a hundred and fifteen degrees, Scout. No one's coming in. We're dying. Holt's dying. You're dying. The cars are dying. Everything's dying."
"The cars are fine," Holt says from somewhere beneath the Bronco, which is the most Holt response possible—defending the cars while his business partner stages a mutiny.
"The cars are judging us for working in this bullshit," Finn corrects, pointing what's left of his popsicle at me. "Swimming hole. Lake. Body of water that is NOT the temperature of bathwater. We're going. Right now. This is happening."
Holt rolls out from under the truck, sits up, and fixes Finn with that look that probably worked in the Marines but has never once worked on Finn Weller. Watching this dynamic is like someone trying to discipline a golden retriever who knows he's cute. "We've got—"
"Nothing," Finn interrupts cheerfully, spreading his arms wide. "We have nothing. No customers. No emergencies. No appointments. Just three people slowly cooking to death in a garage." He looks at me. "Back me up here, Scout."
I glance between them—Finn wearing that trouble-grin, Holt's jaw working like he's trying to find a reason to say no and coming up empty, his shoulders already starting to drop in surrender. "I mean, Iamactively melting. That's not hyperbole. I think my organs are shutting down."
"See?" Finn gestures at me triumphantly. "Democracy. Medical emergency. We're going."
Holt stands, wipes his hands on a rag that's more oil than fabric at this point, and I watch him almost-argue before he gives up. The surrender. The acknowledgment that Finn's right and also that fighting him takes more energy than anyone has in this heat. "Half hour. I need to finish this brake job."
"Twenty minutes," Finn counters immediately.
"Forty-five."
"Deal!" Finn spins toward me before Holt can renegotiate or realize he's been played. "Go change. Bring a towel. Prepare for the best afternoon of your Arizona life, which I realize isn't a high bar considering you've mostly been sweating and fixing cars, but still. Life-changing water experience incoming."
I'm already standing because honestly? The idea of being submerged in cold water sounds better than every other option currently available to me, including winning the lottery or finding out I have a rich uncle who wants to leave me his fortune. Water. Cold. Now. "You had me at 'not bathwater.'"
Twenty minutes later—Finn's version of twenty minutes, which means actually thirty because Holt refused to leave the brake job half-finished—I'm in the passenger seat of Holt's truck with Finn crammed between us on the bench seat, windows down, country music playing low from speakers that crackle on the high notes. Finn insisted on the middle—said something about "optimal chaos positioning" and "being the fun buffer"—and now his elbow keeps bumping mine every time he gestures, which is constantly, while he works through some story about a regular customer who thinks her car is possessed.
"I'm telling you, Holt, she brought sage. Actual sage bundles to cleanse the alternator."
"Did it work?" I ask, my arm hanging out the window, hot wind whipping through my fingers, the air rushing past feeling like a hairdryer on full blast but at least it's moving air.
"Alternator still needed replacing," Holt says dryly, one hand loose on the wheel. "But she felt better about it."
Finn snorts, shifting to look at me, his knee bumping mine. "She tipped us in homemade jam. Which, to be fair, was excellent jam. Like really, truly excellent. I ate an entire jar with a spoon."
"You ate it with a spoon?" I twist to look at him. "Just... straight jam?"
"It was apricot. Don't judge me."
