Page 16 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Mechanic

Beck is walking through the courtyard with the same long, deliberate stride he uses in the shop. No wasted motion. He’s still in his work shirt, still has grease on his forearms, and he’s heading straight for me with an expression I can’t quite read.

“Beck, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I said I’m⁠—”

“I heard what you said. I also heard what she said to you, and I watched you leave my shop doing that thing you do where you smile like everything’s okay and none of it reaches your eyes.”

My mouth opens. Closes. He’s standing in front of me now—close enough that I have to tilt my chin up—and the courtyard is right there, tourists wandering past. Lea’s coffee smell drifts from the entrance, and this man with brake dust on his hands is looking at me like I’m the only thing in the frame.

“What thing?” I ask. My voice comes out smaller than I want it to.

“The thing where you make it easy for people to stop paying attention. You go bright and you go cheerful and you wrap it all up in a bow, and everyone walks away thinking you’re fine because you made it comfortable for them to believe that.”

The coupons are shaking in my hand.

“I know that move, Callie. I do it differently, but I know it. When somebody calls my shop, I pick up, I fix the thing, I hang up. Nobody asks how I’m doing. Nobody wonders what I want. I’m the guy who keeps things running, and as long as I keep doing that, nobody has to think about me as a person.”

“Beck…”

“You’re not taken seriously. I’m taken for granted. It’s the same thing. We’re both invisible to the people who should be paying the most attention.”

A tourist walks between us. Neither of us moves.

“Your mom is wrong,” he says. “Not because she’s mean. She’s not. But she’s wrong. Ski instruction isn’t a fallback. It’s not seasonal. It’s not a phase. You researched circuit boards on your lunch break because somebody mentioned a word you didn’t know, and three articles later, you understood it better than half the guys who bring me equipment. That’s not someone who’s wasting her potential. That’s someone whose potential is so obvious, it scares the people who settled for something safe.”

My vision goes blurry. I blink hard.

“You know what I see when I look at you?” he asks.

His voice is quieter now, but just as certain. The gruffness is still there. It’s always going to be there. But underneath it is something unguarded and raw. Something that I don’t think he shows to anyone, ever.

“I see someone who’s going to be on that mountain in November teaching people to love the thing she loves,” he says. “And she’s going to be incredible at it. Not because someone finally gave her permission, but because she never needed it. She just needed someone to stop pretending they didn’t notice.”

The coupons slip out of my hand. They scatter across the cobblestones and neither of us bends to pick them up.

“You notice,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Nobody notices.”

“I do.”

I step forward and press my face into his chest. Right there in the courtyard, tourists and cobblestones and coffee smell and all. His arms come around me, and they’re stiff at first because the man does not do public affection, probably has never done public affection, probably considers this a hostage situation. But then his hands settle on my back and he pulls me closer, and I feel him exhale like he’s been holding his breath since I walked out of his shop.

“You’re not just a tool in somebody’s toolbox,” I say into his shirt. “You know that, right?”

His arms tighten.

“I’m serious, Beck. You’re not just the guy people call. You drove me up a mountain to show me where I’m going to teach. You looked up my certification requirements. You upgraded a circuit board for a bike that wasn’t even yours to fix.” I pull back enough to look up at him. “That’s not a guy who fixes things. That’s a guy who pays attention. There’s a difference.”

His jaw works. For a second, I think he’s going to deflect. Make a joke, or as close to a joke as Beck Meyer gets. Say something about the brake job he’s not finishing.

He doesn’t.

“Nobody’s said that to me before,” he says.