Which, I was pissed at myself to admit, made me pleased too.
I looked around. Something about the area seemed so familiar to me. “I think I’ve been here before.”
“Oh yeah? Lately?”
I shook my head as Stick cut the engine and undid his own seatbelt. “No. Not lately. Maybe never. It’s just I—”
“What?”
My head shook, more strongly now. “Nothing,” I lied. I remembered now, and wished I hadn’t.
I got out of the car, liking how I had to pull myself up and out of the snug, perfectly ass-fitting seat. Almost lamenting leaving it, even for the short time to get to the driver’s side. I walked in front of the car, my hand gliding across the metal, which was both cold from the February air, and warm from the powerful engine underneath. I liked the pale of my hand against the deep black paint. Hmmm, maybe I would get black nail polish.
Stick stepped out of the car and held the door open for me. I slid in to the seat he’d just vacated, still warm from his body.
“You’ll want to…good,” he said as I found the seat adjuster myself and brought the seat forward. I was tall, but Stick was taller, both of us having long legs.
“Is that why you’re called Stick? Because you were as skinny as a stick when you were a kid?”
He rolled his eyes at me and closed the door, careful not to slam it. I knew my baby was in good hands with Stick, that he would treat her with kid gloves.
Oh, so now the Vette was my baby? And a she?
Stick got in the passenger seat and made a big show of snuggling into the seat. “I always said you had a smoking ass,” he said in reference to the seat being warmed for him.
“My old man couldn’t have splurged for seat warmers? In February?”
“Actually, she does have seat warmers. I was just pissed at you when we left Bribury so I thought I’d let you warm yourself up.” He rocked in the seat. “Which you did very well.”
Apparently Stick thought of my car as a “she” also. “Wait. What? Why wereyoupissed atme?”
He leaned over, stretching his arm to the back of my seat, just above my head. His face was very close to mine. “Because. Here you are given this amazing car…a gift. And all you can do is bitch about the type of car it is.”
“Just to be clear, this car is not a gift. It is a bribe, or more accurately, an opening offer.”
“To what?”
“More negotiations.”
“Again…to what? Orforwhat?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” Not wanting to get into it with him, and still not fully understanding what role he was playing that he’d be at my sister’s wedding and delivering me my new car, I changed the subject to something I knew would absorb him.
“So, seven-speed. What exactly does that mean?”
It worked. He spent the next twenty minutes explaining it all to me. He could tell I was itching to drive her (“her” slowly becoming “Yvette” in my mind), and finally waved for me to start her up. I put it in neutral like he’d explained and then turned the ignition.
The roar of her coming to life was powerful, and I placed both hands on the wheel to feel her vibrations run through me.
Stick smiled at my movements. “She’s something, isn’t she?”
In an odd way, I didn’t trust my voice to answer him, so I just nodded.
“Okay. So we talked about the mechanics of it, but you can’t really pick up the rhythm of her until you drive her yourself. And every car is different with their…needs.”
I looked over at him, raising a brow. “Needs? Really?”
“Definitely. What this baby—”
