Page 1 of Grease Monkey
Chapter One
Teddy
January
“C’mon, baby, that’s it. You’re doing so well. I promise you’ll look so goddamn pretty when I’m done here.” My fingers slide soothingly along the outside of her body, caressing every dip and curve while I slowly twist the smooth metallic ball in place. It glistens in the fluorescent overhead light as I straighten, smiling at the beauty beneath me. “Good girl. I knew you were only teasing.”
Heat prickles my skin as laughter echoes around the front bay, and my head whips to watch Harry drag himself out from under a black Mercedes.
“Boss, there is something fundamentally wrong with your kid,” he yells, his lopsided grin pulling his face into what I can only describe as real-lifeDopeyfromSnow White.
“What?” I ask, grabbing a grease-soaked rag dangling over the edge of the cherry red 1971 Chevrolet C/K Action Line and wiping my hands.
“Do you whisper dirty things to all the cars you work on? Or just the ones that are a hunk of junk?”
My mouth drops in mock horror as I press the palms of my hands to either side of the bumper, just above the headlamps.
“Shh, asshole, she can hear you.” Leaning down, I keep my eyes on Harry’s as he shakes his head, biting back what I assume is more laughter. Narrowing my eyes at him, I whisper, “It’s okay, Cherry, you’re not junk.”
Harry pushes up from his mechanic’s creeper and swaggers over to the car, leaning his hip against it.
“Cherry? Couldn’t you come up with something a little more original?” He tweaks the dome nut I just fastened, along with a few others running down the side of the rocker cover. I shove him away, and he stumbles backward, snickering while rubbing at his chest.
“Don’t double-check my work, novice,” I say, checking that the nuts are still tight. I wouldn’t put it past Harry to loosen them off to fuck with me. He’s a shit hot mechanic—an apprentice like me—and the biggest pain in my ass. Glancing at the gleaming components nestled beneath the hood, I drum my fingers on the engine. “Mr. Hall named her, not me. Besides, it suits her.”
“He’s an oddball.” He scrunches his nose. “Actually, you’re both oddballs. I swear you’re one vintage car away from becoming one of those people who marries trees, or airplanes, or...”
“Whose marrying an airplane?” Dad asks, his tall frame eclipsing the doorway to the office. His huge, bearlike hand thunders down on Harry’s shoulder, making him wince as Dad kneads his traps.
“No one, boss, just your boy here.” He shrugs out of Dad’s hold and gestures to me. “He’s just got some weird obsession with cars.”
“Oh, don’t I know it. No idea where he gets that from,” he says, a mixture of pride and smugness donning his face. Humming, he runs a hand over his beard. “Never thought my youngest son would be a car perv, though.”
“I’m not acar perv,”I grumble.
Only a few people understand my obsession with cars, and coming from a long line of mechanics, it was inevitable. Engines make sense in a way I imagine the brain does to neurologists, and I wake up every day, longing to get to the shop and work on what I love. How many people can say that about their careers?
“Do you need anything, or are you just here to annoy me?”
“Aw, Son, lighten up. I’m only teasing.” I flip him the bird, and he winks. “If you’re a car perv, then I’m one too. I’m just thankful one of my sons took after their old man.”
And isn’t that the truth. Three boys; one a pilot, one a photographer, and then me, who was our dad’s shadow growing up, pretending to fix my toy car while he fixed real ones.
“Actually, I did need you, Teddy. You got a minute?” Dad tips his chin toward his office. I glance over my shoulder at theChevrolet sitting pretty with her impeccable engine on show, begging for me to touch her, finely tune her up just right so she purrs for me.
Fucking hell, even in my head, I sound like a car perv.
Dad chuckles, sensing the struggle with leaving a car half-finished for even a second. Father like son. “Don’t worry, it isn’t going anywhere.”
Harry sniggers as if I’ve just been caught cheating in class as I walk past. Tossing the oil-ridden rag I still have in my hand, it lands on his smug face, and I pointedly say, “You touch her, and I’ll cut off your fingers.”
The cloth hits the back of my head a moment later, dropping to the floor as I close the door. Dad leans back in his chair, the black leather creaking under his weight. He’s not a fat guy, not by a long shot, but he’s built like a fucking linebacker and as tall as one too. Running his hand through his salt-and-pepper beard, his eyes drop to the seat in front of his desk.
I trudge over, dropping my ass down and wait, glancing at the pictures lining the wall behind him. A dozen or so are of him working in Pop’s old shop when he was about my age, some from before he met Mom when Wyatt was just a kid—my grumpy half-brother scowling at the camera as Dad tries to entice him with jumper cables. The majority, though, are of the five of us; him, Mom, Wyatt, Bowie, and I from various family vacations. But it’s the candid ones of Dad and me, the ones we didn’t know were being taken, where we look natural—at ease—doing what we do best, that always catch my eye.
“How are you settling in?”
I frown. “Really, Dad? We’re going to have one ofthosetalks?”
