Page 64 of Rebel Summer

“At least.”

Dax smiled, popping his knuckles. “I would have had to go easy on him, then.”

I stood there entranced, watching his friends laugh together. Dax sauntered back over to a golf cart with a tool in his hand. From what I could tell, he didn’t hold any weight of the man’s opinion of him on his back. But the tension from the conversation had filled my stomach with lead. That guy hated him. He would probably leave Dax a terrible review online somewhere, and here was Dax, just laughing about it with his friends.

How did he do that?

To stand up for himself without apology? To act without giving a thought to what others might think of him? Dax defended me and spoke the same way to my dad as he did this man. Even in high school, he never allowed anyone to treat him poorly. Teachers were disciplining him and at the same time asking for advice on motors.

I wanted that.

I didn’t know how, but I wanted it.

Was there such a thing as a quarter-life crisis?

But how? How does one stop caring what people think? How do I stop caring that I’m disappointing my dad? How do I live a life on my terms?

I had no freaking idea.

“You still on the clock, Books?” Dax asked me a few minutes later, once the guys had left and I still hadn’t moved from my spot on the barstool. My thoughts were jumbled in my head, and that was exactly how they came out to Dax.

“I messed up on the Legos, and I have to go back fourteen pages. So I’m just going to sit here for another minute if you don’t mind.”

Dax stopped what he was doing to look over at me. “Wait. What?”

“I messed up. And I hate Legos. My last two days have been for nothing.”

He was silent for a long moment before he dropped his tool and walked over to me. “Show me.”

Without a word, I followed him into the other room and sat down next to him as he flipped through the pages.

“I didn’t realize I put this piece in the wrong way, fourteen pages ago. So now I have to rip this whole thing up and start over.”

There was not a day horrible enough on this earth for me to cry over Legos in front of Dax Miller. So I sucked up my last breath and pinched my leg ultra hard to give my brain another hurt to process.

After a minute, Dax began breaking apart my Lego pieces. He flipped to the page I needed to redo and began fitting Legos into place with the ease and respect of someone who had clearly loved them his whole life.

“Chin up, Books. One hundred and eighty more hours, and you’re home free.”

“One hundred and eighty-four,” I corrected miserably.

“Start organizing that pile over there. I’ll work on fixing this mess,” Dax said, nudging my foot with his leg. “The things you do to get me in here doing your work for you.”

He seemed so absorbed in the booklet and Legos that he didn’t seem to notice that I still sat where I was, my arms wrapped around bent legs, watching him.

“How do you speak your mind like that?” I asked, unable to help myself.

“Huh?”

“You almost got in a massive fight ten minutes ago, and now you’re sitting here helping me with Legos like nothing happened.”

“That wasn’t a massive fight,” he protested.

“It could have been. But you didn’t even flinch. You just told him off.”

“Yeah, because I didn’t do anything wrong. I quoted him a fair price, and he was trying to bully his way out of paying.”

“I know.” And I did know, I realized. Dax was a lot of things, but deep down, there was something so honorable about him. I must have been a glutton for punishment asking this question, but I really wanted to know how a person could just turn emotions off like Dax seemed to do. “But how do you shrug off his opinion so fast? My mind goes blank when people are mad at me.”

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