“I need to phone my mom to come pick me up.”
“It’s back at the shop,” I tell her before I climb inside, “I’ll give you a ride. They can get you from there.”
She nods and dips her chin, but I don’t wait to find out what’s going on inside her head. I’ll get the car loaded and I can pick her brain on the drive back. It’s only five minutes, ten max, but we can take the long way round.
Once the truck is lined up, I load her car onto the bed and then walk round to the passenger door, opening it for her. She just stands and stares at me like I might bite.
I mean, I very well might, but she’ll like it when I do.
“Come on, princess,” I coax, offering a hand. She tentatively walks over and accepts my hand, the smoothness of it against the rough, dirtied callouses of mine jarring but I push it down and hide it, helping her up the step and into the truck before I close the door behind her.
She’s stiff as a board when I get behind the wheel and pull away from the sidewalk. I leave her to her thoughts for a second as I maneuver the truck through the streets, heading to the outskirts to take the long way back.
“What were you doing on this side of the tracks?” I ask her when the silence gets too much. It’s stifling hot inside the cab, even with the windows down and a glance over to Marly shows she’s feeling it too. The fine hair at her temples is wet with sweat and there’s a fine sheen of it on her brow.
“I was just driving,” She flicks her blues to me, that ribbon whipping around with the wind coming through the windows.
“With nowhere to go?” I frown.
“I just needed some air,” She shrugs, “I didn’t mean to end up here.”
“Or maybe you did,” I drop my hand to my thigh, steering the truck with the other, “Did you want to see me, princess?”
“Hardly,” She rolls her eyes.
I sink my teeth into my bottom lip, grinning, “I don’t believe you. You’re curious.”
“What’s there to be curious of?” She scoffs.
“Me.”
Her eyes dart to me and then drop to the scarring she can see on my arm. My spine goes stiff and my teeth snap together. At this point, I’m used to people staring at them but there’s something aboutherseeing them that has me going rigid. My fingers curl a little tighter on the wheel, ready for whatever question she’s going to throw at me but then none come – well none that refer to them anyway.
“Do you like working with cars?”
“Done it all my life,” I tell her truthfully, “It’s all I know.”
“Really?”
“I was tinkering with cars when I was five and my dad was still around, learned everything I know from my brother, but what do you do?” I change the subject.
But she shakes her head, “Nothing worth knowing.”
Interesting.
I turn the truck down an old dirt road, gravel and dust kicking up behind us and press a little firmer on the gas. I mean it’s an old truck, the shop does well, but notthatwell, and it doesn’t have much to it, but it speeds up and I watch her hands curl against the worn fabric of the seat.
A cute little giggle escapes her as the wind whips through the cab and rips the ribbon from her hair, blowing it down into the footwell beneath me though she doesn’t seem to notice as she tilts her head to the wind.
I keep the pace the whole way down the road, keeping watch out the corner of my eye. Her smile is wide, eyes bright.
The things I could show her, I just have to convince her to keep coming back.
Eventually, I must slow and make the turn to pull us up to the garage, bringing the truck to a stop in front of the shutter door that is covered in white and neon green graffiti. A neon green sign readingSinclair Motorssits above the reception door, a few gutted cars parked at the edge of the small lot out front.
Marly leans forward to look at it closer. The garage is set at the back of town, surrounded on one side by the forest, the creek only a short walk down and the other side is fields and dirt roads. It’s a way out for a garage but business booms for us, we are the only garage on this side of town and none of the locals here want to pay the premium prices the garages up town charge.
I keep my prices low, barely above cost to help out this community but it keeps it running and gives me a roof over my head, even if that roof is the very place I work out of.
