“Yeah, right.” The sneer has spread through his voice. “What else did your brother have to say about my house?”
An uncomfortable tremor runs through me. Ethan had a lot to say as we drove past.
Losers.
Freaks.
House should be condemned.
I don’t know what shows on my face, but Anthony deliberately peels my fingers from his arm like he can’t stand my touch. “Yeah, I thought so.” He puts his hand on the gearshift. “Exactly what I expected.”
“Expected?” Surprise is making me slow to understand. “What does that mean?”
“Doesn’t matter.” He starts backing out.
“Wait!” I demand. Without thinking, I reach for the key and turn it off. The car jerks and starts rolling back.
“What the hell, Mai?” Anthony regains control and sets the car into park.
I grab the key before he can stop me. “Get your panties out of a wad, Anthony. I’m trying to tell you that I think it’s amazing you made all this. The fact that it’s made from junk makes it even more incredible. You’re an artist.”
He rolls his eyes. “Give me the key.”
“Will you listen to me?” I stick the key behind my back like a ten-year-old. If he wants to wrestle me for it, fine. From his eyes, I can tell he’s considering it.
Then he sighs. “What?”
“I mean it. This is sculpture, Anthony.”
“Great. Thanks. Can I have the key now?”
I grab his arm and dig in again.
“Would you stop with the nails?”
“They’re short and stubby. Don’t be a baby.”
He grits his jaw. “Now I’m a baby?”
“Yes. I’m trying to give you a compliment. And an apology.”
He shakes his head and runs fingers through his hair. A moment passes. Two.
“I mean it, Anthony. I had no idea.”
He sighs, and when he speaks, his voice has lost some of its edge. “Why would you?”
“Because you might have said, ‘By the way, Mai, I make stuff.’”
Something flashes in his eyes—a challenge. “By the way, Mai, I make stuff. Out of garbage.”
“Who cares what you make it out of?” I blink, trying to process his words. The tone. The tic in his jaw that’s pulsing again. His earlier words come back to me. Exactly what I expected. “Why did you bring me here anyway? Why show me this now?”
“You asked to see what I’m doing.”
“That’s not why, though, is it?”
He slides a hand through the steering wheel, his thumb working over a worn spot in the material. “I live in the junk house, Mai—your words. This is what I do in my free time. It’s weird and not very good, and it’s as close to a career path as I’ve got. So now you know. In case you needed another reason to walk away.”
My insides squeeze tight around my heart—or maybe it’s that my heart is suddenly ballooned to twice its size. The very last thing I want to do right now is walk away from this guy. “You could walk away, too. Anytime.”
“Maybe I will.” His eyes find mine, latching on with an intensity I meet with my own. Something passes between us, sparking just under the surface.
We’re daring each other to end this, make it easy.
I lick my lips. I say what I know I shouldn’t. “I don’t want to walk away, Anthony.”
He works his thumb over the steering wheel. “I don’t, either.”
My pulse beats high in my throat. There was one time in gymnastics that I got up on the big girl balance beam. It was too far to fall and not worth the risk, so I climbed down. This feels like that only multiplied by a million. I’m so scared, but I also can’t bring myself to climb down. “I lied earlier. I said your sculpture was good, but the truth is I don’t know anything about art. My only B in high school was in ceramics.”
He watches me from under lowered lashes. “You did not get a B in ceramics.”
“Fine. It was an A-minus, but that’s the closest I ever came to a B.”
He grins then—a tiny grudging scrap of a grin—but it’s enough. The tension melts like sugar in hot tea, leaving something sweet behind.
We’re both quiet, the world narrowing to this car. To us. To the lowering sun and another evening I want to spend with this guy. “Can I see what’s inside?”
“You still want to?” His smile is new. Different. Tender. An unexpected heat gathers behind my eyes.
He strokes my cheek with his thumb, and I want to lean closer, want to open like the purple flowers he put in my hand the other day. This is not supposed to feel like this. This is supposed to be temporary. This is not how temporary feels.
His knowing look says he feels it, too.
I exhale and shrug, too tired to figure it out now.
His dimple appears with a smile as light and sweet as taffy. “Panties in a wad, Mai? Really?”
Then he hits the garage door opener.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mai
Anthony’s garage is half the size of ours and has twice as much stuff. A small blue car takes up the left side, while the right side looks like the shop class at Cholla I accidentally wandered into once. There’s a long metal-top table, toolboxes sitting open on the garage floor, and a collection of tubs that hold…I have no idea what. I have no idea what most of the stuff is except for the gloves and safety glasses on the table. Those I’m glad to see. Oh—and an iPhone speaker. I picture Anthony out here, listening to music and doing…what?
“I feel like I’ve wandered into a torture chamber.” I hold up some kind of tool with a wicked-looking tip.
“Power drill with a sharp-tip point.” He takes it from me, setting it back on the table. He rests a hip against the side as I trail fingers down the length of metal. There’s something lumpy on the table covered by a towel. Beyond that, I pass a bucket of greasy rags and wander to the tubs against the wall.
“My junk pile,” he tells me.
I see what he means. Each tub has a mix of things—nails and screws, scrap pieces of metal, hunks of wood. In one, I see different lengths of metal chain and at least five or six round gears with sharply ridged edges. I flash back to my childhood, which is the last time I was on a bike. I may not be mechanical, but I recognize what this is. I frown as I suddenly realize where else I’ve seen old bike parts. “Your cuff.” I turn to face him, zeroing in on the metal he always wears around his wrist. “You made that from a bike chain.”