Every war has collateral damage, doesn’t it, though?
The collateral damage of ours is her.
The girl I saw spinning on the playground when I was nine. The little blonde ballerina. The one who dances like a fairy and who stole my car when I broke her heart to hurt me.
She didn’t know what she was getting herself into. At the time I didn’t know either. I was high on my win, on the fact that I’d done the exact opposite of what my father wanted, of what my father had asked the previous night.
Yeah, I broke her innocent little heart in the process. But what do you expect of a villain anyway?
Not to mention, I defied him in style.
I won.
But somehow my father got wind of it, that a girl had stolen my car. Or maybe he was keeping better tabs on me than I’d arrogantly expected. And since he’d had it with me and my tantrums, he took advantage of the situation.
He used her to get what he wanted.
We Jackson men are real bastards, aren’t we?
I used her to win at soccer so I could piss off my father and he used her to get to me.
“Nice song.”
My thoughts break at the rough, gravelly voice and I pull myself from under the ’68 Chevy that I’m working on. It’s a sweet ride, or at least has the potential to be.
Right now it’s a dump though.
Salvaged from a yard, it’s all rusted and banged up. Needs a new engine, new tires, new paint job. It’s got alignment issues when you drive and the sound of it starting is like an animal being tortured.
But I’ve got plans for it.
Especially for that engine. I’m going to build it from scratch, rebore the cylinders, put in new pistons. It’s going to be fucking sexy when it’s done and it’s going to purr like a kitten.
And Pete knows that. The guy who just interrupted me.
That’s why he gave me the job even though I don’t work with him anymore. He knows I can make it run and look like a million bucks.
I press a few buttons on my phone and lower the volume of the song I’ve been playing. “Hey, what time is it?”
“Time for you to go home.”
I chuckle and get up and put away the wrench as I shoot back, “Which means it’s past your bedtime, isn’t it, old man?”
Pete is old, yeah.
He’s probably north of sixty and you can see every inch of that age on his ruddy face and his white beard. Pair that with a beer belly and the red and white checkered shirt that he’s wearing right now, Pete is a regular Santa Claus.
I met him when I was thirteen.
Back then I only knew him as the guy who was giving my dad trouble.
Since my dad has a habit of wanting things and acquiring things, Pete’s garage called Auto Alpha in Wuthering Garden, one of the towns that neighbors Bardstown, was in his sights. Pete was and is known, among other things, for restoring vintage cars and selling them for a fuck-ton of money.
My dad offered Pete a lot of sweet deals to give it up to Jackson Builders. My dad was going to turn it into a car showroom or something. Despite my dad’s intimidation tactics, a lot of them illegal, Pete never budged and my dad had to back off.
I guess Pete was the only man I ever saw who stood up to my dad.
Pete laughs at my comeback and offers me a beer. “So this song. Is it about her?”
Leaning against the Chevy, I was about to take a sip of the beer but I stop. “What?”
Pete has no problem sipping his beer though. He has no problem smirking either. “You’ve had it on repeat since you showed up at the shop.”
I showed up at the shop only an hour ago so I don’t know what he’s bitching about.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.
Especially because of where I’m coming from. Dropping her off at St. Mary’s after her midnight practice.
“And?”
He shrugs. “It’s got a ballerina in it. She’s a ballerina. I put two and two together.”
It’s the song that I made her dance to, that first time. And yes, it has a ballerina in it.
But so what?
It doesn’t mean anything.
I stare at him a beat before going ahead and taking a long gulp of the beer. “Your beer’s shitty.”
He laughs again, this time harder than before. “And you’re an asshole.”
Back when I came to see him for the first time, we struck up a weird friendship.
He was a lonely old man whose wife had just died and I was a punk kid who came to look at the guy who stood up to my father. I respected his rebellion.
Plus something about his garage, located off an isolated turn in the highway, surrounded by woods and cliffs, seemed like an awesome place to hang out. An awesome place to get away from my own house, my father, the town where he owned everything.
So I’d come here every chance I got.
Pete taught me everything I know about cars. He let me build my own car even.
Actually, I didn’t know it was going to be mine at the time.
It was the first car I worked on, my Mustang, and when it was done, Pete just gave it to me.
I refused; I told him that I could get a hundred cars like that. I could pay, could buy it from him; on top of my father’s wealth, my mother’s father had me and Pest set up with a trust fund that my own father can’t touch so money has never been a problem for the Jackson kids. I was only building the car because it was another way to piss off my father. Well, secretly.
For some reason, I never wanted to throw this in his face. I threw soccer in his face plenty but I couldn’t do it with my time with Pete. Maybe because I’d never met anyone like Pete, strong, proud, decent, and I’d never enjoyed anything — not even soccer — as much as I enjoyed working on cars.
Anyway, Pete told me to shut the fuck up, keep my trust fund money, take the car and start working on earning my own money for a change.
So I did.
I worked here all through high school. I earned my own money, which I started to spend instead of spending my dad’s money; another way to defy him. And slowly, this garage, Pete, working on cars, building them, became soothing to me. Relaxing. Since my mornings were busy with school, soccer, fucking around with friends, I’d come here at night.
I’ve never been much of a sleeper anyway and working here took away my stress.
“What are you doing up so late?” I ask him.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Going through the photo albums again?”
“Yeah.” He throws me a small but fond smile. “She was fucking beautiful.”
I chuckle; I can’t help it.
Pete is a lovestruck fool and he’s completely gone for his wife, Mimi. She died of a heart attack years ago and now he’s left behind, looking at her photos every night, missing her, telling everyone tales of their love story.
I don’t believe in love or whatever.
But I guess if I had to, I’d say that Pete’s probably got it.
“So are you going to tell me or not?” he asks.