“No, I don’t want to. That’s my car,” he said, but he didn’t need to point it out. It was the same one I’d ridden in before, and I would have recognized the brown/silver SUV/truck. “Let’s go.”
I looked at him, at what I could see in our faint lights. He was a mountain-sized shadow, and then I looked down at my dirty foot. I considered returning to my apartment with the “hey there” doormat and the matching towels.
“I’ll drive,” I said. “You smell like you’ve been drinking a lot.”
“I smell like that because some girl poured her beer down my back. Does that sound familiar? Fine, you drive.”
But we encountered another problem when we got into my car. “Does this go back any further?” he asked as he yanked on the adjustment bar beneath the passenger seat.
“No, I don’t think so.”
He nodded and took that well, but his legs were folded so that his knees were up near my dashboard, and his head nearly brushed the ceiling. This vehicle worked ok for me but it was not made for someone his size.
I sighed. “We can take yours,” I said and he was obviously relieved.
“Great, we’ll do that.” But when we walked over to his two-toned thing, he went to the passenger side. “You can still drive,” he told me, and I figured that I’d been right. He was drunk but at least he was copping to it and not getting behind the wheel. Maybe the activity he’d planned was us getting coffee or performing another sober-up activity, although from what I’d seen of my freshman-year roommate, nothing seemed to work overly well. Her parents had lived within driving distance and she’d done a lot to try to get herself out of her usual weekend state before they’d shown up in the lobby of our dorm. Anyway, she’d moved out after a while and I hadn’t had to deal with her.
I also had to adjust the seat quite a bit, moving it forward so that I could reach the pedals and up so that I could see over the steering wheel. “Does this drive better than it looks?” I asked him.
“I happen to think that my car is beautiful and it drives great,” he answered. “Didn’t I just tell you that I was a mechanic?”
“Yes, but my dad was a welder and he never fixed anything for us, not even stuff that he probably could have done with his eyes closed.” That was why I had learned to do things myself.
“I never recommend welding blind and I do work on this car,” he said. “I rebuilt it.”
That explained the Frankenstein paint job. I started the engine and pulled out.
Ronan patted his seat with a hollow thump. “The engine’s great. The exterior could use some help, but I’ll get to that over the summer.”
“Won’t you be busy?”
“Yeah, I put in a lot of hours at the dealership,” he agreed.
I shook my head. “I mean, won’t you be trying out for the real Woodsmen team? Don’t all the Junior Woodsmen do that?” Ed had talked about the quarterback moving up, but the rest of the guys also had a chance.
But he was also shaking his head. “No, I don’t bother.”
I assumed it was because he knew that he wouldn’t make it, but I did ask. “Why?”
“It’s a waste of time. I’m fine where I am.”
With the rodents and the dirt? With the cold showers and the bad equipment, with the fully second-class experience? “I wouldn’t be,” I said. “I set goals for myself and I plan out how to achieve them.”
“Like what?” He pointed ahead at the road. “This comes to a dead end up here at the stop sign. Make a right.”
We were still in the middle of nowhere, but we had at least passed one other house and that sight reminded me of one of the goals I’d mentioned. “I wanted to have my own place, just mine and no roommates. Now I have that.”
“Nice.” He held up his hand and then cleared his throat. “I’m waiting.”
I slapped his palm. “I wanted to settle down and never have to move again. Getting the job with the Woodsmen was key, because they’re really into internal promotions.” Thatwas what everyone said in the employee lunchroom, where I eavesdropped. “I could stay there for my whole career.”
“That also sounds good.”
It did, didn’t it? I wondered why I wasn’t happier about achieving all that.
I made the choice not to delve into that issue at the moment. “What about you? Do you have goals?”
“I just said that I’m going to paint the exterior. I need seatbelts in the back, too,” he mentioned, glancing over his shoulder.
