“Stay here, I’ll be back in a second,” I said as I leaned down and pulled the handle under the dash to pop open the hood of the car.
The rain had dissipated a little, but I was soaked by the time I rounded the front end of my well-used Hyundai. The battery was coated with an orange-tinged crust that I tried to pick off with my thumb and finger.
“Jax? That you?”
I startled and almost hit my head on the damn hood. Ethan Calloway rolled down his passenger-side window and smiled at me like I was the best thing he’d seen all day. Guy was weird if you asked me. He was always too nice to me. People usually avoided me. For one, I was kind of a dick. And two, what were people supposed to say to a guy who was almost thirty, living at home with his mom, working a shit construction job, and dated a girl who only stuck around out of charity. My life had stalled at twenty when I dropped out of college to help my mom. People can sense it, that hopelessness, it sticks to you like shit on a shoe.
“Hey, Ethan.”
“Need some help?” he asked, pulling his car closer.
“You don’t happen to have any jumper cables in there, do you?”
His nose crinkled as he bit his bottom lip. “I don’t, but I can give you and Jason a ride back to town?”
I stared at him, unsure. I didn’t know him all that well. He worked at Harley’s, the hardware store that neighbored my dad’s old pharmacy. When I first started at JW Construction he hadn’t worked there, they’d only hired him a year ago. The guys at work didn’t like him. Said he was too much of a pansy to work at Harley’s. I’d never noticed. It was a habit I had when dealing with men. I never looked too closely. And to be fair, the guys I worked with called everyone a pansy for one reason or another.
“I promise I’m not a serial killer.” He smiled, and his cheeks pinked when I laughed.
“Even if you were, it’s better than standing in the rain waiting for a tow truck. Let me grab a few things?”
“Sure.”
He rolled up the window as I shut the hood. When I opened the door, Jason asked, “Is he gonna give us a ride?”
“He is, buddy.”
“That’s lucky,” he said, and I saw a glimmer of the sixteen-year-old I used to know.
I had to clear my throat to speak. “Grab a few towels from the back, alright? I don’t want to ruin his seats.”
Jason grabbed two extra towels and handed them to me. He reached for his sand buckets, but I stopped him. “Let’s leave those. I’ll come back later with Mom when it stops raining, see if I can jump the car, if not, I promise to get your buckets.”
“Don’t forget.”
“I promise and when I promise…”
“You mean it.” His smile swelled.
“That’s right, Jay. You ready now?”
We both made a run for Ethan’s car. I opened the back door for Jason, laying the slightly damp towel over the cloth seats.
“Don’t worry about that. Get in before you get struck by lightning.” Ethan took the towel I’d tried to lay on the front seat from my hand and threw it toward the back. Jason caught it with a chuckle, wrapping it around his bare shoulders. “This is a Toyota, not a Porsche.”
“Thanks,” I said and shut the passenger-side door. “For giving us a ride.”
“I was headed home, it’s not even a big deal, and if you want, I think I might have a shirt back there somewhere, but it’s probably too small for you.”
Jason reached over my shoulder and handed me a green t-shirt. “That’s okay, I’m—”
“It’s fine, Jax. I don’t mind.” Ethan lifted his gaze.
I allowed myself to notice his brown eyes. They were a coppery sort of brown, light and warm. The type of eyes I would have loved to get lost in. My breath caught in my throat at the thought. I clenched my jaw and turned toward the windshield to pull on the shirt. It smelled like beach and salt, with a hint of men’s soap. My Adam’s apple bobbed uncomfortably in my throat.
“Fit okay?” he asked as he drove out of the parking lot.
It was too tight. I was taller and had way more muscle than Ethan, but I lied and nodded my head. “It works,” I said and snapped my seatbelt in place.
The storm had gotten worse by the time we’d hit the highway. I could feel Jason’s knee bouncing against the back of my seat. Music usually helped him during weather like this. The stereo was on, but the volume was too low. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I would have missed what was playing. “Is this ‘Group Love’?”
Ethan hit a button on his steering wheel, and the familiar song spilled through the speakers. “I love this song,” he said.
The scratchy vocals, the pop beat, I couldn’t stop my fingers from tapping on my knee. “I forgot how much I liked this song.”
“Turn it up,” Jason called from the back, and Ethan obliged.
The lyrics filled the car, the sound of it pushing my heart into an unsteady rhythm. When Ethan started to sing along, I almost did too. He drummed his hands on the steering wheel, looking over at me with a wide grin. I gave him a smile of my own and my cheeks ached with it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt like this, unworried and light, but as the song came to an end, the feeling faded with it.
Ethan lowered the volume as a song I didn’t recognize began to play. “I knew you weren’t always so grumpy,” he teased.
“You don’t know me all that well,” I said, more annoyed than I’d meant to sound.
I hated that I was such an asshole. I hated that I couldn’t be happy, singing in a car, with a friend and my brother. I’d paid my price, hadn’t I? When would it be my turn at happiness? I caught a glimpse of Jason in the rearview mirror and regretted the selfish thoughts.
“I’d like to.” Ethan kept his eyes on the road as he turned right onto Bell River Road. “Get to know you better.”
“Me and the guys from work shoot hoops sometimes over at the park. You’re always welcome to join us.” The words tumbled out of my mouth before I thought better of it. The guys hated him, and I didn’t need or want any friends. My girlfriend Mary was enough to contend with. I shouldn’t have invited him.
“I’m not much of a ball player,” he said, and Jason laughed.
“Nope. You were always the worst.”
“Jason,” I admonished. “That’s not a nice thing to say.”
Ethan’s laugh was as warm as his eyes. “It’s okay, he’s right.” He glanced into his rearview. “Though I’m surprised he remembers that…” Ethan’s smile paled. “With the accident and everything.”
No one ever brought up the accident. Everyone dribbled around it like Michael Jordan against a defensive line.
“I’m sorry,” he said so only I could hear. “I shouldn’t have—”
“No, you shouldn’t… but it’s kind of… I don’t know… refreshing? Maybe that’s not the right word... Everyone treats him like glass. He’s stronger than that.”
“You know Jason and I were in class together?”
I looked at Ethan again, but this time I assessed him in a way I normally would have given myself shit for. He was young but easily could’ve been around Jason’s age. His face was not familiar to me, not beyond Harley’s, at least. And why would it be? I was in college when he was a freshman in high school.