Page 10 of Grease & Grips
From somewhere better.
Being stuck here’s already enough to carry. I don’t need the added weight of thinking for even half a second that maybe I deserve something good. My choices consist of closeted married guys and pump-and-dumps in a cornfield or some two-hour drive for an emotionless hookup in a motel parking lot to remind myself I’m still alive.
Gotta make do with the hand I’m dealt.
Literally.
He’s been gone a while.
Probably freshening up, but still I start to wonder if he bailed out the back. Snuck past the shelves, out the emergency exit, decided this town and this weirdo mechanic weren’t worth the wait.
Part of me would understand.
Most of me wouldn’t blame him.
I suck down the rest of my cigarette and stub it out in the gravel with the toe of my boot.
When I finally head back in, I don’t see him at first. Instead it’s a sight I’m used to. The same dim lighting, the same scattered tools and unfinished work orders, but then I catch him poking through my station at the far end of the shop.
His fingers drift over a few of the old photos, lingering on the one of me and the guys from my first month at the shop. All of us grinning like idiots, covered in grease, Julio flipping off the camera. Then he moves to the faded newspaper clippings tacked to the wall, yellowed with time, headlines like "Local Mechanic Shop Keeps Community Rolling."
Tacked to the board next to the emergency contacts, shop number, and gate code is a rainbow friendship bracelet. Gary’s kid made it. Never gave it to me, just left it sitting on my workbench like it didn’t mean much.
Out of the crap up there, it’s the one thing I’d grab in a fire.
He stops when he notices it, then gently lifts it off the board and turns it over in his hand.
“Do they know?” he asks from across the room.
“They know enough,” I say.
It comes out a little too fast, a little too flat. Not defensive, exactly, but definitely the kind of answer that doesn’t warrant a follow-up. He places the bracelet back like he knows better than to treat it like decoration.
“You make it?”
I clear my throat. “Someone gave it to me. Years ago.”
Like in the truck he doesn’t press. He gives me the space to say more and the safety not to and I don’t know why, but that’s worse.
“You probably wanna get to the hotel,” I say, hoping he’ll leave and release my heart from the vice he’s got on it.
“I’m still kinda wired. Is there anywhere around here to get a drink?”
My brain whirs through a thousand versions of what this could mean, but my feet move before I’ve landed on any of them. I don’t notice his doing the same. Not until we’re both walking, drawn forward like there’s a thread between us pulling tighter, dragging us into each other’s orbit.
Two magnets. One path. No escape.
“It’s a dry county. Closest bar’s probably forty-five minutes out of town.”
He winces playfully. “How do you live?”
“With a well-stocked fridge.”
His warm laugh reverberates through me. I take it in and beg that sound to settle deep inside me, hoping it roots itself so deep that any time I need to remember what joy feels like, I’ll have it close by.
With a few steps we’re toe-to-toe, surrounded by half-drained oil drums, cracked tool chests, and the lingering scent of grease, heat, and the shift blooming between us.
The excitement from before fades into something new. In its place is this low, humming pressure, heavy in my gut. It’s not nerves, not really. It’s more than that. It’s something working its way through me, setting my pulse into overdrive.
