Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 113047 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113047 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
“Sure.” I follow him into the living room. “Let me give you my cell number. I called you from the shop phone before.”
“What’s your last name?” he asks as he adds me to his phone.
“Already have another Colin in there, huh?” I tease, but he just shakes his head. Jeez, this guy has no sense of humor at all. “It’s Mulligan.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll be in touch. I think this is going to be great.” He pats Shelby good-bye.
When he opens the door, I almost don’t want him to go. This is the first actual conversation I’ve had—one that wasn’t about beer, sports, or music—in… well, in I don’t know how long, and I want to give him… something.
“Listen, Rafael,” I say. “Thanks.” He looks down at me and his open expression encourages me. “For asking me to do this and—and for the other night. You were right. I was getting my ass handed to me.”
A real smile this time, lips and crooked teeth and warm eyes.
“You’re welcome. Call me Rafe. Only my mother calls me Rafael.”
Chapter 3
WE’RE ON for Sat. 10-1. 11th & Mt. Vernon. Park on Mt. Vernon if you drive. The kids are really excited, Colin. Rafe’s text comes in just as I’m starting my last job of the day.
“What’re you smiling at?” Brian asks, trying to look over my shoulder at my phone. I quickly shove it back in my pocket and swat him away.
“Can you do some work for once, dipshit? Clean that crap up.” I point to the corner of the shop where Luther knocked over a bucket filled with burnt transmission fluid and threw sawdust over it to deal with later. But now it’s later and he already left and I’ll be damned if I get stuck with it again.
“Hey,” I ask Pop as we jack up an Audi, “how did you start explaining cars to us?”
“When you were kids? Christ, I don’t remember. I talked out loud about whatever I was doing and you boys were always there, so you listened, I guess. Why do you want to know all of a sudden?”
I shrug, distracted by how he looks a little unsteady as he works.
“Hey, you feeling okay?” I ask him.
“Yep, just felt a little dizzy.”
“I thought Sam said you had a headache earlier.”
“Eh.” He waves a hand, dismissing the subject.
“Uh, hey, listen, Pop, I need to take this Saturday off.”
“Oh?” He wanders around the garage and fiddles with some odds and ends lying around, then wanders back to me.
“Colin,” he says seriously, looking me right in the eye, “you got some girl knocked up again?”
My face heats up instantly and my palms start to sweat just thinking about Maya. “No! Why would you think that?”
“Well, what am I supposed to think? You’re asking shit like how to teach a kid to fix cars and taking a Saturday off. I figure you’ve got some girl.”
“No, no. I just need the day, Pop, that’s all.”
“Yeah, okay.” He pauses and studies me. “You’re sure it ain’t about some girl?”
I shake my head.
“Huh. Too bad,” he says and leaves me to finish the Audi, heart pounding.
SOME GIRL. Jesus. Maya.
I was seventeen and every little thing that anyone did—the way they tapped their pencils or flicked their hair or cleared their throats; the way they said “hey” or fist-bumped or smiled kindly—stirred a rage inside me that was just looking for a target. And god help anyone who gave me one.
Brandon Starkfield caught me looking at him near the auditorium one day, so I kicked the crap out of him and he never made eye contact again. Mrs. Goldzer, the German teacher, offered to let me retake a test I failed and I called her a fat cow. In German. Girls would smile at me and I’d fix my expression into an uncaring neutrality so cold that I would watch them startle and look away. I hurt everyone around me. Everyone. But Maya was the worst.
I had sixth period free that semester so sometimes I’d cut seventh period study hall, leaving after fifth to wander around until football. In the previous few months, though, my grades had been shitty enough that I was worried I’d become ineligible to play, so I started doing homework in the library during sixth period. Maya always came in after choir. She lived in my neighborhood, so I’d known her awhile, though we weren’t really friends. We’d chat a little, or sometimes just sit at the same table doing homework. She was a pretty girl—dark skin, big hazel eyes, curvy, great smile. And somehow she didn’t trigger the furious reactions that I had so little control over with most everyone else. Because she was an exception in that way, I thought maybe she would be an exception in the other.
I spent a lot of time staring at her, not listening to what she was saying, just trying desperately to catalogue her physical attributes and figure out my reactions to them. I’d stare at her tits and appreciate how round they were, how soft they looked; sometimes I’d even pop wood because tits reminded me of sex and sex was… well, sex, and I was seventeen. I’d look at her mouth and recognize that her lips were full and she looked devious when she grinned, which was cool, but… it didn’t make me feel anything.