Page 10 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Mechanic

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to kiss you.”

“Okay.”

“I won’t be good at it.”

“I doubt that very much.”

I kiss her. My hands are still rough from the shop, still smell like solvent, and she doesn’t care. She puts her hands on my chest and I feel every single finger through my shirt. The sound she makes against my mouth is soft and surprised, like even she hadn’t expected it to feel like this.

I’ve been wrong. This isn’t trouble.

This is a hell of a lot worse.

5

CALLIE

He pulls back from the kiss and his eyes are dark and a little wild, like he’s just done something he can’t undo and he’s not sure whether to be furious or grateful.

“Get in the truck,” he says.

“What?”

“I want to show you something.”

I should ask questions. Where are we going? Why? What just happened? But my lips are still buzzing and his hand is on the small of my back, steering me toward a black F-250 parked against the hillside, and the part of my brain responsible for rational decision-making has apparently clocked out for the evening.

I get in the truck.

It smells like him. Motor oil, metal, coffee. The bench seat is worn and the dashboard has a crack running across it and there’s a fire district maintenance log clipped to the visor. The truck is clean but not fussy. Organized the same way his shop is organized. Everything where it belongs because the man who owns it can’t function any other way.

He pulls out of the gravel lot and turns uphill.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” I ask.

“Up.”

“Up is not a destination.”

“It is when you live in the mountains.”

We leave Prospect Street behind. The road narrows, switches from pavement to gravel, and starts climbing through dense pine. The resort entrance passes on the left, but Beck doesn’t take it. He turns onto a service road with a chain across it, gets out, unlocks it with a key from his ring, drives through, and locks it behind us.

“You have a key to the mountain,” I say.

“I maintain the grooming fleet. I’m up here every couple of weeks in the off-season.”

“So you just…have access to an entire mountain?”

“Somebody has to.”

The road switchbacks through the trees and the air changes as we climb. Cooler, thinner, smelling like pine and snowmelt even in July. The town falls away below us and the sky opens up, huge and pale blue, streaked with the kind of gold that only happens at altitude when the sun is getting low.

Beck doesn’t talk. He drives the way he does everything else. Steady, focused, no wasted motion. But his jaw is tight and his knuckles are white on the steering wheel, and I can tell he’s holding on to his composure with both hands. Literally.

“You okay?” I ask.