Dad rocked back on his heels, watching me as I climbed over seats and ran my hands over every neglected inch of that car. “Lot of work, that’s for sure. Long days, weekends…”
He’d been hunting for a Spitfire for me since I was fourteen; we both had. We’d found some in good condition and others in better than good, but Dad always passed them by. It was because we wanted the project, the car that would require the two of us to work over every valve and hose, every bolt and seam. I wanted a Spitfire, but what I really wanted was a Spitfire to rebuild with Dad.
“But we can do it, right?” I slid out from underneath the chassis. “I mean, we can make her run again?”
“Yeah, we can make her run. Are you kidding? She’ll be perfect.”
The initial parts assessment was easy, since a lot of stuff was just plain gone or in obvious need of replacement. Once we really dug in, it wasn’t as bad as it looked. There was a lot that could be salvaged, and Dad was confident we could find the rest without completely draining my bank account. After that it became a question of when, not if.
I pulled the calendar off the wall and laid it on a worktable for me and Dad to see. I flipped ahead and circled a date.
“This is D-day. I will not ride my bike to a single day of my junior year. So, that leaves us…” I started ticking weekends off on my hand and adding in after-work hours. Dad still had his truck to finish, not to mention the Mazda and two other cars he’d gotten along with the Spitfire. I also had to factor in the inevitable problems we’d encounter along the way, and potential delays with parts…
There was no way. Maybe Dad would take pity on me and let me drive something with four wheels to school instead of pedaling something with two. I looked at the Spitfire. However many weeks it took, it was going to be worth it.
I started to close the calendar, but Dad stopped me. He tapped the same weekends I had before school started.
“The two of us working together. Shouldn’t be a problem. The others can wait.”
It took me a second to realize he meant his truck. And the Mazda. And the other flip cars. He was going to put all his projects aside—the ones that actually made us money—to help me with mine.
I looked up at him. “You love me a lot, huh?”
Dad looked like he might embarrass us both by tearing up, but fortunately the door chimed up front.
“So much that I’m gonna let you take care of the oil change that probably just walked in while I go grab an early lunch.”
“Fine, I will!” I called after his retreating form, grinning for all I was worth.
Only it wasn’t an oil change waiting up front.
It was my freshly battered neighbor.
And we froze; Daniel unable to step forward, and me unable to step back.
He was wearing sunglasses, but I could see the dark tinge of double black eyes protruding from around the edges. I pulled my lips tight looking at him, realizing how hard Sean had hit him. There was another bruise blooming along his jaw and my sadness bloomed along with it.
“Your face…” I took a step, but Daniel immediately backed up. And that was a good thing. It hurt, like a piece of metal flying from a bench grinder and embedding straight into my chest, but it forced me to focus on everything that had happened and not just him being hurt.
I wasn’t mad that Daniel had defended himself when Sean attacked, but he went so far beyond defending himself that just remembering it made me queasy.
All those nights on my roof, and that one almost kiss in the pool, that’s what I wanted to remember. I wanted to blot out the night he got drunk, to dismiss it as an aberration. Before that night, I never would have believed he could treat me so callously. Not when I was beginning to think I meant something to him, when I was beginning to want to mean something to him.
It all hurt so much that there wasn’t room left for butterflies. I missed the butterflies.
And I couldn’t decide if that meant I missed Daniel too or just the way I felt with him, because they weren’t the same thing.
I’d learned that with Sean. Even after everything with Mom had shredded my heart into teeny tiny broken pieces, I’d still missed Sean. I’d missed him enough to try and fix something that maybe was meant to stay broken.
And I knew that was messed up. All of it was.
“I’m sorry that happened.” That was as much as I could give. It felt like a lot and somehow not nearly enough.
Daniel slipped his aviators off and I sucked in a breath. Sean had hit him really hard, like burst-a-blood-vessel-in-his-eyeball hard. “Why did it happen?”
I couldn’t look at his face; I could not do it. It made me think of all the times it probably looked worse. And it made me think of Sean, who most definitely had fared worse in their fight. And the whole thing was awful. Even knowing why Sean had hit him and understanding why Daniel had hit back with such brutality, I couldn’t unsee it.
Daniel still didn’t know why he’d gotten in that fight. The reasons were little comfort to me, and I doubted they’d be any better for him, but maybe this could be the first of hopefully many things I got to be wrong about.
