Page 21 of Speeding Hearts

In the evenings, after getting Dad sorted, I headed to Mom’s, where I was fixing up the bullet trailer. She had all the decorating stuff planned—had sewn curtains and gotten bedding and everything—she was serious about this thing. But she’d asked if I could set up an outdoor area. So, I was building a low wooden deck next to the door that looked out over the creek. I’d done a little research on vacation rentals on my lunch breaks at work and found Stella had been right—there was a ton of interest in these places. The nicest ones seemed to have fancy amenities like hot tubs and, in one case, an outdoor shower. There was a tiny built-in bathroom, in the trailer, but an outdoor shower would make it really special. So, that’s what I’d started putting together. With only a few hours of daylight each evening, it was slower going than I would have liked. But my time with Grayscale Contracting back in Jewel Lakes had made me efficient, and I had the deck done in only a couple of days.

Mom had been right that the inside of the trailer was in good shape. Everything worked—it just needed a bit of updating. She was all over that. By the time the weekend rolled around and it was time to meet Stella again, I was able to report that I thought the place could be listed as soon as next weekend.

“Next weekend, huh?” Stella asked as she strode past me to the stock car, snatching the keys from my outstretched hand.

For a moment I was distracted by the scent of her as she passed. She’d switched to something tropical. Pineapple and coconuts. It was fucking delicious. Shelooked fucking delicious, too. She’d pulled off her t-shirt a minute ago before putting on the new racing outfit she’d picked up this week. It would be too hot to wear the shirt under it, she’d explained. She stood there for a moment in her tank top. It clung to her form in a way that made my jeans go tight. I’d had to stride away from her, pretending there was something fascinating in the trees nearby.

“Dean?”

“Yeah?” Had she asked me something? I turned to look at her.

Big mistake.

She was braiding her hair into a long plait over one shoulder. Now that she was going at higher speeds, I’d insisted she start wearing a helmet, and she did this ritual every time she put it on, which nearly killed me. She’d tilt her head, revealing a long stretch of her neck and the pulse at her throat I wanted—badly—to rest my thumb on. More than that, I wanted to bend down and feel it with my lips.

My tongue.

For fuck’s sake.

I’d made a rule, early on, never to indulge in thoughts about Stella. I’d made that rule because those thoughts had been pounding at the door in my head from the moment I’d met her.

I hooked up with women here and there. I was human, after all. But Stella was off limits. At first, it had been because she was the mechanic I took the company cars to. I was a repeat customer, and I didn’t want to make things weird.

Not that she had a lick of interest in me.

But as time went on and talking shop led to talking about everything else, Stella became my friend. The more I got to know her, the more those thoughts kept popping up. But I couldn’t hook up with Stella. I couldn’t indulge infantasizingabout hooking up with Stella. Our friendship was the one good thing I’d done since… maybe ever.

But when I made plans to leave Jewel Lakes and go home to help Dad recuperate, I made the fatal mistake of lowering the barrier I’d set up in my head. I figured I’d probably never see her again, and as a way to combat the pit that carved in my stomach, I let myself indulge in thinking about Stella in ways I’d always fought off.

I started picturing every scenario we’d been in together ending in entirely different ways, mostly with us naked and sweating, her crying out my name.

I had no idea I was so goddamned creative.

I started dreaming about her. I woke up hard thinking about her. And then, bizarrely, my thoughts turned to other, more wholesome daydreams. Meeting my parents. Setting up my apartment with me. Eating ice cream in the square, going boating, and even hanging out with her on a porch swing, our hair gray.

It was pathetic. I knew, deep down, there was something fundamentally wrong with me. I poisoned good things. I couldn’t have nice things. I knew if I went down that path with Stella, it would be a slippery slope to losing her.

And I couldn’t lose Stella.

But my thoughts weren’t like a tap I could just turn to make go away. This faucet was on, and I didn’t know how to stop it.

“Dean!”

She was waiting for me to respond again.

“Are you okay?”

Shit. “Yeah, sorry. Just thinking about… my dad.”

My dad was the very last thing I was thinking about. But it did the job of killing whatever lustful feelings I was having about Stella with her right next to me.

“How’s he doing this week?”

I hesitated. I could just give her a pat answer, but why? She was my friend. Who else could I talk to about this? “Not great, actually.”

The other day, Dad had overdone it. He’d gotten pissed about how I’d rearranged his kitchen, and he’d reached up to move his cereal and ended up falling. He’d cussed me out, then himself out, and then me again when I told him we needed to check in with his doctor.

Overall, I thought he was still on the mend, but he was being a general pain in the ass about everything. He’d learned how to text on his cell phone, which was a new way for him to express his displeasure with everything from the lunch I’d left for him to what was on TV. Plus, he grilled me every night when I got home from the garage about how things were going.

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