Page 24 of A Little Christmas! Johnny
Me:
she threatened to turn it back on me. can she do that?
Daddy:
only if she wants Russel, the guys from the shop, my store, and half the police force on her bad side
I re-read his text feeling very confused. Russel I get. He’s very much my brother in Little-dom. I let him lean on Dexter a little bit, but we discovered that I am very possessive of my Daddy. So, naturally, Russ asks me if he can borrow his Uncle Dex when he needs a caregiver for things like getting tucked in or getting the right consistency for the macaroni and cheese. He’s absolutely right, too. Daddy makes the best mac and cheese.
I can kinda understand why the guys from the shop wouldn’t like her. They don’t really care for her to begin with considering how she talks down to everyone when I have her car in there for maintenance. No one likes a Karen, but Daddy makes it seem like the guys would be standing up for me and not just against her. I don’t get it.
And I guess the people at the grocery store like me well enough. Last time I stopped in while Dexter was working, everyone told me how nice it was to see him smiling for a change. I don’t get why they said that. Daddy always smiles around me.
Me:
the police?
That’s the one that confuses me the most. The only cops I ever talk to are the ones who call us to get the abandoned cars from the roadside or to clear up a wreck. Occasionally, I’ve worked with the DUI checkpoints, but mostly I leave those to the other guys in the shop because it’s just all night in the truck waiting for someone to either fail the sobriety check or piss off the cops. I can’t sit and do nothing for that long.
Daddy:
they don’t take kindly to people intentionally committing crimes and pinning it on someone else
plus, they like Russ and will follow his lead
Okay, that answer makes a lot more sense. From the way I’ve seen people interact with Russel when we go out, I get the feeling that he’s kind of important. I guess being a big shot lawyer will get you that kind of recognition even with the police. I thought he worked mostly with contracts, but I also have zero idea what that deals with.
I shrug my shoulders and text Dexter that I’ll see him in the morning. I don’t want to bother him any more at work, especially since he’s got six more hours to go. Plus, I’m about to relieve Steve so that he and his wife can take have a little time to themselves before her family descends in a couple of days. We’re getting closer to Christmas Day and I know that she is stressing out over having them all over to their place for the first time. The least I can do is take the graveyard shift for him tonight.
He looks up when I knock on the frame of the door to his office.
“Get your ass home to your beautiful wife before she threatens to withhold those brownies again,” I tell him as he stretches his arms above his head. He really needs a break. Itseems like since kicking me out from crashing here, he tried to take over all of the work I had been doing. During the times I was hiding the fact that I was living in my office, I took on a lot of the paperwork so that it would justify my being here so much. We are really going to have to get a better system going forward.
“I’m almost done with payroll,” he yawns and turns back to the computer.
Fuck this.
I march over behind his desk and physically pull him to his feet. He doesn’t struggle and barely seems to notice while I put his coat, hat, and gloves on him. It’s not until I put his car keys in his hand that he snaps out of it. The look of wonderment on his face has me cracking up while I push him out in to the hallway. Now, I understand why Daddy is always smiling when he gets me ready like this. I wonder if I look as funny to him as Steve does right now.
Oops. Need to lock the Little thoughts away until I’m either alone or home. I’m not ready to have that talk with anyone at the shop just yet. Until I figure it all out for myself, I don’t want to say something and have to face questions I don’t know the answer to.
“Okay, fine. I’m going,” Steve laughs on his way down the stairs. “Call if you need to.”
“I’ll call in Jackson or Ricky. I’m not losing those brownies.”
He thinks I’m joking, but those things are like crack. His wife got them from following some K-pop group or something and they are the best damn thing I’ve had in a long time. I want to get the recipe to make them for Dexter, but she’s refusing to give it unless I watch the videos of this group. I tried looking it up myself, but I can’t remember the guy’s name and K-pop and brownies brings up all of this stuff with this guy named Felix and that can’t possibly be his name, right? I mean Felix is definitely not a Korean name.
The sound of Steve’s car rumbling outside snaps me out of my thoughts, and I decide to work on the Jetta for a little while. It’s going to be a very long night, especially since the big shopping center where Walmart and the other major retailers are decided that they were going to go with a different company this year. For the most part, we’ve just been getting calls for dead batteries, running out of gas, flat tires, and other typical roadside assistance calls.
The shop isn’t doing badly, but we’re not exactly as flush as we were last year. I can still afford my house and my projects and everything, but I can’t keep letting my family bleed me dry like they have been. The guys at the shop aren’t going to take a hit financially because of this, and I sure as hell am not letting Steve cut back with a kid on the way. It’s no skin off my back to shave a little off of my own salary to take care of them.
I let my hands go on autopilot, removing the quarter panel that Russel dented to swap it out with a fresh one from the junkyard. I could pop the dent and all, but it’s easier to just swap at this point in the build. When it’s all done, I can tell the buyer that none of the body was scratched or dented this way and I can use the panel as something to let a new guy practice dent work on without risking a customer’s vehicle. Mike did that for me when I was still in high school, and I never forgot the pride it made me feel when I accomplished it on my own.
My phone is forgotten, sitting on top of my tool chest while I finish installing the new flat panel in the dashboard, having needed to do a complete tear out to replace the aftermarket CD player that was installed. I probably should have checked my messages before starting, but the only person I care to hear from anymore is Daddy and he would call the shop phone if something important pops up.
The pounding on the shop door hours later makes me smack my head on the passenger side dash when I try to sit up fromdoing the new wiring. At first, I have to wonder if I heard it at all. I have the music up pretty loud in the bay only because I know the shrill piercing ring of the shop phone can penetrate any sound no matter how loud it gets.
I grab my phone and pause the music that I was playing through the speakers in the shop. The pounding sound happens again. Groaning, I pull up the security camera app on my phone to see who the fuck is pounding on the shop door after two in the morning. I’m still ignoring the texts that came through while I'm working because the person at the door is none other than Paul.
