He winced. “Yeah, I know. You said that before, too. Start the car and let me listen.”
I felt some of the heat ebb out of me. “Ok, thank you.”
I had been correct in my suspicions: it was a bad timing belt but there was also good news. “This kind of engine will survive if the belt breaks. You’ll get stranded but you don’t have to worry about total destruction. Where do you live?” he asked me. “I can come by later.”
“No, you don’t have to. I only wanted to get a second opinion before I hire someone. I’m not expecting you to work on my car for me.”
“I think it’s the least I can do. You’re the only one who ever tried to help the situation for Eddie.” He waited and then prompted an answer. “Yes?”
“Yes, thank you.” I ended up skipping the gym and driving home. I went slowly and carefully, not to waste time but to protect my engine because I didn’t want to get stranded. Then I returned to working on my couch before deciding that Ronan probably wouldn’t notice the pillows or care that they were supposed to look understated yet curated. That was what one woman in a video had said about her collection, which she did call a collection.
I also took a moment to check how I myself looked. Not that it mattered, but I was doing better than my couch. Once I had reached about the seventh grade, I’d figured out that I needed to get a haircut from someone other than my dad, and I had also realized that I needed normal clothes that fit and not just what I’d found in the dollar bin or in a mystery bag at the thrift store.
It still hadn’t mattered to me how I looked—well, it hadn’t mattered too much, but I had become aware that other people treated you differently if you were pretty. I got a positive response when I was clean and styled and also wearing decent outfits (ones that went together better than the pillows on my couch). So, besides a period when I was sixteen, I had always made an effort with my appearance.
When I saw myself in the mirror now, I thought that I was ok. I didn’t have beautiful green eyes like others, but blue was also fine. I had blonde highlights in my hair that some people believed were fake because those looked nice, too. I was going to the gym so much that I could see a difference in myself, body-wise, and my features hadn’t ever embarrassed me. I was really fine.
I was opening the door to straighten the “hey, there” mat when Ronan showed up. He waved when he saw me and I watched him walk up the steps. “You’re early,” I said. He was dressed differently, no longer in the shirt with “Whitaker Automotive” embroidered on it and also looking a lot cleaner, totally grease-free and like he’d just bathed. That didn’t make sense, since he was about to work on my engine.
“I was in a hurry to get here. I love timing belts,” he said. “The thing is, it’s going to take me a couple of hours to replace that part. I was thinking that we could go to dinner instead and you can bring your car over to my house tomorrow. I have all my tools there.”
“I guess that makes more sense,” I agreed.
“I’m known for making sense, not just on the team and at the dealership but throughout northern Michigan. They call me the sensible one when they’re not saying that I’m the miniature golf champ.”
“I beat you,” I reminded him. I had the one-eyed crocodile to prove it.
“I don’t remember it that way.” He looked over my shoulder. “You have a nice apartment.”
“Do you want to come in?” I invited. I ended up showing him around, but there wasn’t much to see. One of his long strides brought him from the living room into the kitchen area, then another got him into the bedroom that accommodated a bed but not a lot else. It looked a lot smaller with two people in here, which had never happened before. It looked especially smallsince one of us was mountain-sized. The tour took less than a minute but Ronan said again that it was very nice, that he liked my apartment.
It was gratifying to hear. “And there’s no one in there with me,” I said with satisfaction as we went to his truck/SUV.
“You like being on your own?”
“Yes,” I answered. “I like knowing that no one will bother me, eat my food, or mess with my stuff.”
“Do you have brothers and sisters who did that crap? I grew up with eight other kids,” he mentioned, and I turned to him in shock.
“You’re one of nine?”
“Let me get this.” He yanked open the passenger door. “Yep, there were nine kids in the house, which is why I also love living alone. The last time I had a girlfriend want to move in, I told her no, I don’t do that. No girlfriends, no roommates, not even a pet. Just me. I’ll never forget my cousin peeing in the yard.”
“What? What does that mean?”
The other door worked well and he got in, too. “I have one brother by blood, but my parents took in everyone. My aunt had a lot of problems so my cousins lived with us, and our neighbor got sent to prison and we took in his three children.”
“That must have been chaos,” I mentioned.
“Yeah, it was. My parents were very generous and I know they loved us, but they weren’t good with stuff like rules or punishments. No boundaries. So, one of my cousins refused touse a toilet and he went in the backyard, even in the winter. The neighbor kid was selling drugs from our bedroom. He had kept up with his dad’s former connections,” Ronan explained. “My brother got the hell out as soon as he could but I made myself comfortable in my dad’s shop. When I got older, I slept there most of the time and that’s how I got started working on cars.”
“I guess the way you grew up had some benefits.”
“Sure,” he agreed. “Not just me learning a trade, either. I found out a lot about packaging weed for purchase and residential burglary. Do you have siblings?”
“No,” I said. “There’s just me. I have an aunt and cousin but we don’t ever talk.”
“You want to live alone because that’s what you were used to,” he extrapolated, but I shook my head.
