We spend a couple of hours in companionable chatter while I sit at the shop desk. She works on that truck, Manuel is working on one of those dancing gerbil cube cars, and Reed alternates between glaring at me and puppy dog eyeing Erica. Oh, he works on another couple of cars too, but his eyeballs are getting more of a workout than anything, ping-ponging between Erica and me.
Erica’s head pops out from under the hood, and she goes to the door, leaning in to start the truck. It’s loud and growly, which seems to be what she’s looking for because she closes the hood and moves the truck out to the lot. When she comes back in, she leans over me to get an invoice. After a quick message to the truck’s owner, she gives me her full attention. “Lunch break?”
“Fuck, yes.” I don’t mean it to sound like I’m taking Erica upstairs for a lunchtime quickie, but I also don’t not-mean for it to sound like that.
Riiiip. Sorry, not sorry, Reed.
The immature shithead in me wants to give him a little wave as we go through the door into the breakroom, but I’m mature enough to keep my hands in my pockets and only throw a cocky smirk his way. As the door behind me closes, I hear his hissed, “Motherfucker.”
“What did you do?” Erica asks over her shoulder, not even bothering to pretend I didn’t earn that curse.
“Just smiling at watching your ass, that’s all.” Her harrumph says she doesn’t believe that at all, but it’s the set of her shoulders that I notice the most because they’re drawing up tight. I pull at her hand. “Hey, really . . . I’m not trying to make this harder on him for shits and giggles, but I still think it’s gonna be worse before it’s better. Maybe for both of you?”
She sighs, leaning back against the wall and crossing her arms. Only weeks ago, I was tasting her here for the first time. It seems like ages ago. I could draw that map of her freckles blindfolded, can tell you where the gold flecks in her eyes appear when she sits in her favorite chair by the window at sunrise, and know her heart is pure goodness, which means it hurts her to hurt Reed. “You’re right, and I’ve been trying to talk you up so he knows I’ve moved on and that he should too. He’s just not getting it. Or he doesn’t want to get it, I guess.”
I step up to the stair she’s on, caging her in. “He will. In the meantime, he doesn’t matter. Let’s eat some lunch, Lil Bit.”
She nods and lets me lead her the rest of the way upstairs to her apartment. I wish we had time for that nooner I was teasing Reed with, but really, we need to eat so she can get back to work. It matters that she sets a good example and doesn’t take two-hour lunches she would never allow her employees to take.
We make sandwiches, dancing around each other in the tiny kitchen space like pros. They’re nothing fancy but good and filling, and we sit down at the two-seater table to eat.
“Did you get that part for Todd’s Challenger?” I ask her around a mouthful of food. Most girls would probably be disgusted. But Erica’s doing the same thing.
She shakes her head. “No, he texted me and said never mind. I don’t know what he’s doing instead—probably saw something on a forum of armchair mechanics.” Her eyes roll, and she huffs around the sandwich she’s chewing.
“Is that like an armchair quarterback? Guys who think they know their stuff but are just yelling from their recliners with their sixth beer in their Cheeto-crusted fingers?”
Erica points at me. “Just like that.”
“You are so much better than that. I don’t know a damn thing about cars or engines, but even a dumbass like me can see that when you go to the track, they’re all looking to you for guidance and to make their cars be the best they can be. You’re good, Erica.”
“Thank you.”
Later, looking back, I’ll hear the hesitancy, but right now, it blows right over me and all I hear is an answer on automatic when I want her to see herself the way I do. Magical, powerful, fierce.
“No, really. I know you’re protecting your dad by staying quiet on the whole racing thing, and believe me, I get that secrets are sometimes in everyone’s best interests. But you have a real gift. It’s a shame you can’t share it with him when he’s the one who inspires you. He’s probably the one person who could most understand the miracles of engineering you’re working.”
I smile, hoping she hears just how amazing I believe she is. I’ve never met anyone like her before, so skilled at something that seems pretty straightforward, but for her, it’s pure artistry.
I’ve watched her tinker with parts downstairs and in a corner of the apartment where there are chunks of metal I can’t even identify strewn about the floor. But not only can Erica ID them, she redesigns them, reworks them, creates something from nothing. It’s amazing to behold, and I know enough about parenting from raising my sister to know that Erica’s dad would be proud as fuck to see what his little girl can do with her hands and her mind. Only the sheer force of physics holds her back.
Erica drops her sandwich to her plate, wiping her hands on her coveralls. “I told you why I can’t tell him.”
“I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s not sad that you don’t get to share that together anymore.” I can tell something’s wrong, but I don’t know what. Even so, I’m backpedaling, realizing too late that I’ve stepped into something I didn’t intend to. “But at least you have the garage, right?”
“This garage is everything to my dad, to me. It’s supported us my whole life, brought us together as a family.” The temperature in the room has dropped by degrees. Erica’s stony expression and crisp biting tone hit me like blades. She’s acting like I dissed the garage or its importance to her, which I definitely didn’t do.
“As it should be. You’ve created something special here.” Generic platitudes and walking on eggshells are what I’m reduced to?
No, fuck that. I’m not that guy, not gonna simper around every time she gets her feathers ruffled.
“I don’t know what I said, but I’m sorry.” I don’t sound apologetic in the least. I sound as pissed as I am. “I didn’t mean to upset you, was actually trying to give you a compliment. But I guess I fucked that up.”
Erica blinks at me, silent for the first time ever. Not threatening me, not joking around, not . . . anything. She’s completely blank and I can’t get a read on her at all.
“Maybe I should just go.” I get up, leaving my lunch on the table. I’m halfway down the stairs when she pulls on my arm, short nails digging into my overheated skin.
“You don’t get it. He forbade me. Racing is the one thing” —she holds up one finger and then swipes at the air, correcting herself— “the only thing he ever asked me not to do. Dad didn’t even argue about my going into the military as hard as he did about racing. He made me promise.”
“But you do it anyway because it’s what you love. It’s who you are.”
Fire flashes in her eyes. She’s angry that I see her, know her truth. I thought that sharing that secret with me meant something, but right now, I can see that it’s the opposite. She shared it with me because I’m not important . . . not like her parents, her sister, not like Reed.