Page 64 of Ice Darling
There’s more than enough room for me to inch away, but I don’t. “This wire here”—I point to a thin red one—“is normally attached to the left battery pole. Without it, even if I got all the other wires set back up, you couldn’t even start your car.”
He wears a serious expression as I explain all the wires and their functions.
“The oscilloscope is a high-tech scanner that allows you to see electrical signals over time. We use the data displayed to…”I twist around and see the glazed look in Renthrow’s eyes. My eyebrows pinch together. “Aaaand…I just realized that I’ve been talking for way too long. Please say something before I kill you with boredom.”
“It wasn’t boring…exactly.”
I snort. “That was a very natural performance. Almost like you’ve practiced acting interested in things you care nothing about.”
“Not to brag, but I do have a six-year-old who loves space.”
“Is it your turn to compare me to a six-year-old?”
He grins. “How’d you get into auto repair?”
“First, it was so I could fix my own bike. A lot of the mechanics who worked on it were over-charging because they knew my last name, but I still had the same problems when it left the shop. The mechanics who did good work were all booked for months. So I started tinkering on my own.”
“Impressive.”
“It’s really not.” I shrug. “Fixing a bike is one thing. Fixing a car is another. I enrolled in an auto-repair certificate program when I got started, but there’s so much that I’m picking up from April and Rebel. I’m not even half as knowledgeable as those two.”
“You’ll get there,” he says confidently. “You love what you do. It’s in your eyes.”
“You can read my eyes now?”
“I can read obsession. I was that way about hockey.”
“And now you’re that way about Gordie.” I twist two wires together and wipe the sweat off my face with the back of my hand.
“With Gordie, it’s different.” His smile turns proud. “I was obsessed with what hockey gave me. But now, I obsess over the life I can give my daughter.”
My heart skips a beat as his eyes catch mine. I can’t deny that his single-minded devotion for Gordie is very attractive.
Yeah, but no one else can compete with it. He’ll choose his daughter over any other woman in his life.
I break eye contact and glance down at the wires.
“It looks like you’re almost done,” Renthrow says tentatively.
“Yeah. I just need to test these to make sure that my repair job will hold. Then I’ll wire them properly with electric tape.”
“Mm. Tape. Wires. I understood all of that,” Renthrow says.
I laugh.
“I’ll bring us some lemonade. After all that talking, your throat must be parched.”
Aghast, I make a grab for the wires. “Should I yank these out again and letyouput it back together?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Thought so.”
“I’ll be right back with your drink,” Renthrow says, throwing a handsome smile over his shoulder.
While he’s gone, I focus on my task and feel my phone vibrating in my pocket. On instinct, I reach for it and then realize that my hands are incredibly dirty.
At that moment, Renthrow returns with tall lemonade glasses. He offers one to me, but I lift my hands to show him the dirt coating my palms.
