Page 59 of Grease Monkey
“Nah, I don’t need your sloppy seconds.” He laughs, handing me a beer and settling back in his seat. “Besides, when this comes to bite you in the ass, I want front-row seats with popcorn. Since you came back, the scandal in this town is off the charts.”
“Her limp-dick husband wouldn’t do anything. Not when he’s screwing some twenty-something intern at his office.”
Ozzy whistles, cracking into his can with a hiss and taking a sip. My eyes narrow as he laughs through a burp and stretches to punch my shoulder.
“What’s up with you?” I frown and wait for him to elaborate. “You’re more of an asshat tonight than your usual delightfully prickish self. Mrs. Phillips not live up to expectations?” He pauses, then jumps forward in his chair, joy spreading across his clean-shaven face. “Oh, oh, I know. Did little Teddy not live up to expectations? Mrs. P’s face wasn’t all blissed out like she’d had fun playing with her favorite toy when I met her as I was coming in.”
I take my shoe off and throw it at him, knocking the beer can from his hand.
“Hey!”
“First off, there’s nothinglittleabout me, Oscar. Secondly, why do you always need to make me sound like some perverted child’s toy?”
He shrugs. “Not my fault that’s the name your parents gave you.”
Reaching forward, he reopens the fridge for another can, the lazy bastard unwilling to get off his fat ass and get the one that rolled away. Instead, he lets beer spill across the floor. I sigh, leaning my head on the back of my seat and looking at the ceiling tiles dotted with damp patches.
I need to get that fixed.
“Dude,” Ozzy says, and I lift my head a little to look at him. Leaning his elbow on his knee, his face turns all serious and shit. I fucking hate it when he does that. Nudging my knee, he asks, “What’s up? C’mon tell me, I amthebest secret keeper.”
I arch a brow. “Says who?”
“Sierra, that’s who,” he says, his proud uncle smile lighting up his entire face. And I must admit, his niece is the cutest damn thing ever to be born. “Went to my sister’s last night, and she sat telling me everything. And I meaneverything,bro. Which of the girls in her class were the meanies, boys she had crushes on, and there wasn’t just the one kid either. And all because Uncle Oscar is the bestest secret keeper.”
I chuckle, swallowing the lump that always seems to form whenever I think of that kid. If I were ever to have a kid—fucking unlikely—I hope she’s like Sierra. “Your sister will have a little hell-raiser when she grows up.”
“Doesn’t she know it.” He laughs. Sobering, he knocks my knee again. “C’mon, dude, spill. What’s up your ass tonight?”
His eyes twinkle as I side-eye him, far too eager for me to share, and all I know is that this will be a bad idea. He might be a good secret keeper to a six-year-old, but that doesn’t mean he won’t use whatever I tell him to wind me up later. But does that stop me from opening my mouth anyway?
“It’s just something my mom used to say. That our gut knows things before our heads do.”
He hums thoughtfully, brows pinched together like a shrink listening to all my problems. I roll my eyes and continue.
“It just feels like—” I scrub a hand down my face, resigned to the fact that no matter how fucking dumb I feel right now, I’ve started, and Ozzy won’t let me stop until he gets it all out of me. “I dunno, like a bad omen or something.”
He’s silent for a while, his chin in his hand, fingers strumming against his cheek.
“It could be. I mean, you have been making waves withmarriedwomen and all. Or…” He holds his hands out. “Hear me out. Maybe, just maybe, you’re about to get your period.”
I laugh. Typical fucking Oz. “Fuck you. This is why I don’t tell you shit. What happened to guys being more open about their mental health and shit?”
“Okay, sorry. If you need real talk, I’m here. Tell Uncle Oscar what’s wrong, and I won’t judge.” Ozzy smiles, bringing his drink to his lips, but I quickly swipe it from his hand. “I was drinking that!”
“It’s your night to be on call, asshole,” I say, sinking back and kicking my feet up on the coffee table, conversation forgotten. “And you can’t exactly do that if you’ve been drinking.”
Making a show of the whole thing, I swallow some of his beer and then gulp down mine, sighing obnoxiously loud with a smack of my lips for good measure.
Ozzy scowls. “It’s one beer.”
I shrug. “No drinking when on call. You know the score. Don’t make me fire your ass.”
“We’repartners,” he reminds me, “you can’t fire my ass without my approval. Besides, you’d be lost without me. This gorgeous mug brings in all the ladies I so graciously pass to you.”
He circles his finger around his face. Poor bastard is delusional. We look at each other, expressions solemn for a beat, before we both erupt into laughter. God, I needed that. Oscar Ford has been my best friend since kindergarten and was just as devastated about the move to Old Greenwich as I’d been seven years ago. But the day I called him and said I needed a place to crash, he was there with open arms and his mom’s sofa. Then, after one too many beers and drunken scribblings on the back of a napkin, we had Grease Monkey Auto Shop mapped out. And the rest was history.
Slamming his boots to the ground, he stands, stretching his arms above his head with a yawn. Walking to his locker, he grabs his hoodie, an oversized gray thing with the shop’s logo on the back—a cheeky little monkey with a wrench in his hand—and pulls it on.
