If I Fix You

Stupid me?

My sneakers squeaked loudly on the checkered linoleum as I crossed to the counter, but when the door chimed, admitting him, any lingering trepidation flitted away.

My first thought when I saw him was that it was actually possible for some people to look good in fluorescent light. Not Sean I-descended-from-Olympus good, more I’m-definitely-not-going-to-strangle-you-and-look-how-well-I-fill-out-this-T-shirt good.

I smiled; Neighbor Guy did not.

“What are you, like, the only girl in this city?” His dark eyebrows drew together. “Do you actually work here, or is this some kind of stalking game you’re playing?”

Blood rushed to my face and my jaw jutted forward. A litany of profane words in the most offensive combinations my short-circuiting brain could think of slammed into the back of my teeth. It was only respect for Dad and his shop that kept me from freeing them.

“Nice seeing you again too. I’m Jill, and this is my dad’s shop. I’m the one who left the coupon on your Jeep so you wouldn’t end up wrapped around a streetlamp when your brakes went out, but yeah, it was mostly so I could stalk you.” I might have let one totally non-customer-sensitive word slip after that.

He didn’t respond. At. All. I shook my head and leaned over the counter to grab the coupon he was holding, but he jerked it back. I placed both hands on the counter. “Look, I’ve got other people to stalk today.”

He rotated his jaw and looked fractionally less like a condescending jerk when he said, “Can I take back the stalking comment? I didn’t expect to run into you. Again. You’re kind of everywhere.”

“Yeah, my house, my work—that is everywhere.”

His hands mirrored mine on the other side of the counter, flattening the coupon between us. “How was I supposed to know you were the one who left this?”

I unzipped the top of my coveralls. Underneath I was wearing one of the many Jim’s Auto Shop T-shirts that I owned. It was identical, if in slightly better condition, to the one I’d worn on my roof. “I wasn’t trying to hide it from you.” I pulled the coupon from under his hand, brushing his skin in the process, flipped it over and read aloud what I’d written. “‘Free brake pad replacement. Welcome to the neighborhood.’” I looked up in time to see a ghost of a smile on his face.

“Yeah, I, ah, didn’t notice what the shirt said before.”

I could feel myself turning the same shade of red as my T-shirt. I vividly remembered his eyes passing over me last night. Not for reading purposes, apparently. I gave in to the impulse to zip my coveralls back up.

“Look, I’m sorry. You caught me off guard...Jill.” He focused on my name stitched onto my coveralls. “I’m Daniel. Or did you overhear that from your roof?”

I could tell he was trying for a less hostile tone, and I decided I could do the same, since I was more embarrassed than offended at that point. “No.” My eyes dropped to the bandage on his left hand. He’d wrapped his knuckles, but there were still raw-looking abrasions visible below the gauze. I forgot about him checking me out. “Is it broken?”

The smallest shrug. “It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” I stepped out from behind the counter. “Did you get an X-ray? It might be—”

“I know what broken bones feel like. It’s fine.”

I was about a foot away from him, my hand still outstretched toward his injured one. I was totally in his personal space, close enough to see a sliver of a scar in his right eyebrow and catch something lemony/minty coming off him. It made me want to lean in. Instead, I looked away, but not before noticing another scar disappearing under the collar of his T-shirt.

The lemony/minty scent grew stronger when he leaned closer, causing me to step back, but all he did was slide the coupon from my hand and hold it up between two fingers. “Why’d you leave this?”

I blinked and felt stupid for practically leaping away from him. He wasn’t staring at me like I’d done anything wrong though. He seemed genuinely curious. Daniel. I could stop mentally referring to him as Neighbor Guy.

“I meant it when I said you could forget about the window.”

Yeah, he had. But I couldn’t. And it went deeper than just owing him because I broke it.

Dad had tried to explain to Mom once why he was happy “just being a mechanic.” It wasn’t that he lacked ambition or aptitude or anything like that. It certainly wasn’t because he was content with “mediocrity.” He loved to fix things. To take something broken and neglected and make it new again. It wasn’t a glamorous job, and he’d never be rich enough to own half the cars he worked on, but he made things better. He said there was more satisfaction in that than anything else he might do. And whether Mom liked it or not, I was exactly like my dad.

I just liked to extend the practice beyond the garage when I could.

It was why I’d thrown the pop can. And why I’d left the coupon.

But that answer was way more than I was willing to give someone I just met, no matter how nice he smelled.

“It’s the mechanic in me. I might have exaggerated with the streetlight comment, but that grinding noise your Jeep makes when you stop? That’s not a happy sound. You really shouldn’t be driving it. You’ll end up having to get the brake rotors machined or even replaced. That’s a lot more expensive than new pads. And I’d have to break more than your window to give out coupons for that.”

He might have smiled. Maybe. His mouth definitely twitched.

“I don’t have time to replace them before we close today, but unless we’re crazy busy...” I glanced down the street at the three grinning idiots on the Pep Boys sign. “I can get to you tomorrow before lunch.”

“Tomorrow’s fine.” Daniel fished his keys out of his jeans, pulled one off and gave it to me.

“Hey, if you don’t mind hanging out for a bit, I can give you a ride home.”

Daniel turned back to me just as his hand touched the door. “I’m good, but thanks. And for the Jeep.”

With a last nod, he was out the door and gone.

CHAPTER 8 (#uca7d5d2e-0d22-5107-98c3-09c161cbdf4e)

I expected to find Dad scrounging for dinner when I got home, but the kitchen was empty. I was starting to wonder if he was sick and had gone to bed early when I heard his voice.

Dad was a big guy and he had the voice to match. I could hear him clear across the shop even when all the machinery was running. But at home he’d learned to tone it down. Not quiet, exactly—I don’t think he knew how to be quiet—but not his normal thundering volume either.

But this, this went beyond loud, beyond booming. I remembered this voice like it had been carved into my bones. I knew who he was talking to before I heard him say her name.

“What do you want, Katheryn?”

I backed up until I hit a wall, not that Dad could see me through his bedroom door, but it was an instinct I couldn’t control. It was only a small comfort to realize she was on the phone and not actually in the house.

It was like being doused with ice water, knowing she was talking to him. He was so big and strong, whereas Mom was such a small thing, and yet she destroyed him, destroyed us, as if she were a giant.

After months of nothing, what could she possibly want? She was never what I’d consider maternal, so I doubted custody was an issue at this point. I’d be eighteen in just over a year, and it wasn’t like she’d tried to take me with her before.

And yet, what else could it be? What else could she want? The house? The shop? She’d hated both of them. Whatever it was, Dad was more upset than I’d heard him since the day she left.

“You are unbelievable,” Dad said. “No, you don’t. You haven’t been here, watching her walk through the house like a ghost, and that’s when she can stand to be in it!”

I backed down the hall into the kitchen as Dad’s half of the conversation still thundered through the house. The words I couldn’t hear were chipping away at my bones like an ice pick. I lifted the kitchen phone from its base and pressed it to my ear.

Dial tone. He was on his cell phone, then.

Something about this one-sided conversation was so much worse than the months of fighting before she left, and it took me only seconds to figure out why.

They didn’t know I was there.

Dad didn’t know.