4. Gil
CHAPTER 4
GIL
S unday was my quiet day.
It was my day to sleep in, to drink two cups of coffee, and mindlessly scroll through my phone from the comfort of my bed until an angry stomach forced me into the kitchen. It was my day to eat leftover pizza for breakfast at noon or ice cream if I wanted it. Sundays were a tradition I’d started for myself after Philip and I separated, and even though being single meant every day could be like that, I liked the consistency.
I worked from home, had for years, thanks to the fact my job was computer-based and not people oriented. An extra bonus, considering that, beyond Jack, I didn’t care for people. I could log in from my laptop in bed if I wanted to rot, but most of the days were spent in the small back bedroom I’d converted into an office after Philip moved out. The room had the best light, but didn’t hold much more than a desk, a chair, and a small bookshelf. Sometimes on Sundays, I tucked myself into the worn-out wingback and read books until dinner time. Sometimes I stared at the wall. It really depended on my mood.
The gusty warmth of the tail end of the summer had me spending most of my free time in the garage, either working on my car or working on my bike. It was nice enough to ride without leathers, but I’d never go without a jacket, and the cool wind that whipped past me when I opened up the throttle was enough to regulate my temperature beneath the tight leather.
That Sunday, I’d gotten up earlier than normal, drank three cups of coffee, got bored of the internet, and decided to take a cruise up to the vista. It would have been a perfect date spot if I cared to date, which I didn’t. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop all the other people in Sweetwater who did date from coming up and ruining the view. I’d spent more than one night watching the sun go down while a car beside me rocked, the windows opaque with steam.
There had been a time when things like that sounded appealing, sounded fun…but I wasn’t that kind of person anymore. It felt childish to say I didn’t believe in love, but I had forty-two years of lived experience that proved to me it wasn’t a real thing. At least, not in the soul-consuming way I wanted it. It shouldn’t have been too much to ask, affection that bordered addiction, obsession. An all-or-nothing kind of thing after years of being given so much less.
None of that mattered.
I stayed alone up on the vista, out of cell phone range, until the churn of my hungry stomach urged me back onto the bike. Judging by the slow descent of the sun toward the horizon, it was nearly dinner time. I had spent far longer lost to the day up there than I’d planned, and by the time I made it back home, I was beyond irritable. I was hot from the leather, hungry from the lack of food, and annoyed at the loose rattling I’d heard from beneath the frame of the bike as I made it down to the base of the mountain.
It was the end of July and all the families who lived in my neighborhood were gearing up to get back to school. That meant lots of later nights, far more kids roaming the streets than usual, and the occasional ding-dong ditcher. All of it marks of kids trying to enjoy the last scraps of freedom before returning to the routine of school.
If only they could do it a little quieter.
I narrowly avoided running down a group of teenagers who thought it would be fun to shove each other into the street as I made the turn onto my block, and that adrenaline on top of my hunger was enough to have me seeing red by the time I pulled the bike into my driveway. Opening the garage, I cut the engine and rolled her in alongside my project car, flipping down the kickstand and climbing off. She’d need to cool down a bit before I could get in there to see what had come lose, so I stripped off my helmet and jacket, finding both to be heavier and stickier than I remembered. My white undershirt was damp, plastered to my skin, but I was just going to get dirty while I worked on her, so a shower would have to wait.
Instead, I went inside, pouring myself a glass of ice water, which I drank in one go. Immediately, I refilled the glass, then rummaged around the fridge to find something substantial to eat, only to realize going to the store should have been higher on my priority list than fucking off on the top of a mountain. I had orange juice, an onion, two carrots, and a takeout box of Chinese food all haphazardly spread out across the top two shelves of my fridge. The takeout smelled questionable, so I dumped it into the trash, ate both the carrots, then headed back to the garage.
The bike was still a little too hot, so I grabbed a wrench off the top of my box and leaned against the wall to wait. The garage door was still open to let a breeze through, which I didn’t intend to be an invitation, but it surely wasn’t a deterrent. I watched, flustered, as a gangly-looking red-haired kid with freckles dense as a patch of sand spread over his nose rolled his bicycle along the curb. He looked up when he saw my garage door open, and he angled the front wheel toward my driveway without asking.
“Hey,” the kid said, looking tired and dejected. Sweat beaded across his forehead, orange hair sticking every which way but up. “Can you help me?”
“With what?” I asked.
“My bike, the brakes…” he trailed off, frowning.
“Does this look like a bike repair shop?”
“No, but…” The kid tucked his hair behind his ear and fidgeted with his headphones. “My dad won’t know how and I…”
I swallowed, setting my water and the wrench down next to my motorcycle.
“And what?” I prompted.
“I need my bike to get to school when it starts and my dad just bought a house and I don’t want to ask him for money to take it somewhere.”
“Don’t kids your age get an allowance?” I asked.
“I did before, but we just moved.”
“No chores, then?”
He gave a lopsided shrug. “My dad is doing it all himself for now.”
“I’m sure your mom appreciates that,” I said.
“My mom’s dead.”
The kid said it so simply, so matter-of-fact, but his bland delivery wasn’t enough to stop the words from piercing through me like a blade.
“I’m sorry, kid.”
“I don’t really remember her,” he said.
“It’s still shit.”
The corner of his mouth twitched when I cursed, and I tried to imagine what the father of a bright-haired, sour-faced pre-teen would look like. Would he have a similar dusting of freckles, the same unruly kind of hair? Or was this kid a dormant trick of genetics, the only redhead in his family for generations?
“What’s your name?” I asked him, only after he’d walked his bike closer to my garage without asking, almost like he’d decided I was going to help him whether I wanted to or not.
“Fisher,” he said.
“Fisher what?”
“Fisher Verne.”
I snorted. “Didn’t your dad tell you not to talk to strangers? Like, don’t they teach stranger danger anymore?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“The school system is really failing the new generation,” I mumbled, shoving my own hair back from my face. The movement caught Fisher’s attention, and his stare flickered to the scar that split the right side of my face.
“How did you get that?” he asked.
“Motorcycle accident when I was younger.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Does it still?”
Without thinking, I pressed my fingertips against the bottom edge of the scar, just below my cheekbone.
“Sometimes.”
Fisher tilted his head to the side and sized me up in the scrutinizing way that only a teenager can, then having made some silent decision, he walked his bike the rest of the way up the driveway until we were less than three feet apart.
“So, can you help me?” he asked.
I had to give the kid points for his persistence, but his lack of self-awareness was going to get him in trouble one of these days.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“The brakes aren’t working.”
I hummed thoughtfully, gesturing for him to roll it into the shade of the garage alongside my motorcycle. “That sounds like a real problem.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, more chipper for having gotten his way. “Especially with all the hills here.”
“Let’s see what you’ve got, kid. Though it’s been awhile since I worked on this kind of bike.”
Fisher softly set his hand against the seat of my Triumph, patting it before thinking better and snatching his hand away.
“Do you like motorcycles?” I asked, giving the brakes on his bicycle a squeeze to check the pressure of the calipers.
“My dad hates them,” Fisher said, sidestepping around to get closer to mine.
“Your dad sounds smart,” I mused, squatting down and confirming one of Fisher’s calipers had come loose. “Can you get me the Allen wrench set from the second drawer of that red tool box?”
Fisher’s eyes went a little wide, but he went deeper into my garage until he reached my tool box. He opened the drawer and looked down. My knees started to ache from squatting.
“What’s an Allen wrench?” he called over his shoulder.
“Are you serious?”
He shot me a death stare.
“The Ikea looking one.”
“Oh.” Fisher turned back to the box and was quick to grab the bundle of wrenches. “Why didn’t you just say so?”
“I did,” I muttered, extending my hand to take them from him. He leaned against the wall and folded his arms over his chest, which had me stopping in my tracks. “Nuh-uh. Come over here.”
I put the wrenches back into his hand and scooted over to the side. Fisher grumbled under his breath, but came around to the other side of his bike.
“Earbuds out,” I said.
“I don’t have any music on.”
I blinked at him slowly. “I don’t care.”
With another stifled argument, he pulled both buds out of his ears and stuffed them into his pocket.
“You want to find the wrench that matches this hole.” I pointed to the rusted caliper that hugged his back tire. “See how the whole thing came loose? You have to tighten it back into place and you should be good to go.”
It took him three tries to find the right wrench, but once he found it, it look less than a minute for Fisher to get the caliper back into place.
“That was easy,” he said, trying to pass me back the wrench set.
I shook my head, rising to my feet. “You can put them back. You know where they go.”
The excitement from completing his bike repair was fleeting as it came with more work, and I called out to stop him at the back of the garage, “Get that oil can off the top while you’re there. You might as well give the lines a quick grease.”
I talked Fisher through how to grease the brake line and check the connection in case anything came loose on him again. He didn’t need to be told to take the can back to the tool box when we were done with it, and I smiled to myself at what a quick learner he was.
“There,” I said, tossing him a dirty shop rag for his hands. “You’re good to go.”
“Fisher!”
A terrified and desperate-sounding cry echoed from the end of the block, and instead of looking concerned, Fisher looked bored.
“Fisher!”
His name again, and Fisher pulled his earbuds out of his pocket and popped them back into place.
I looked past him, toward the sound of his name, when my stare landed on the man who must be his father. The genetics did not skip a generation because the man I saw power-walking down my block had the same bright red hair, the same dusting of freckles over his cheekbones, except he was taller and more muscular, but still on the small side.
“He’s here,” I called out with a raise of my hand to get his attention since Fisher clearly wasn’t going to make himself known.
Fisher kicked his kickstand and wheeled his bike out of my garage and down the driveway toward the man I assumed to be his father. The older redhead raced up my driveway, grabbing Fisher by both arms and giving him a shake before hauling him into a hug. His relief turned to concern, and then to anger when he saw me in the garage, arms folded in front of my chest.
He and I were opposites, me in my torn black jeans, black leather boots, and dirty white t-shirt. Him with his loose cotton chinos and tucked in, plaid short-sleeved button-up.
“Fisher,” the man said, eyes narrowed at me, even as they took stock of me from my boots up to my hair. “Are you okay? What are you doing here? I expected you home hours ago.”
“My phone died,” Fisher explained with a careless shrug. “And my bike broke. This guy helped me.”
“This guy.” He frowned. “That’s rude, Fisher. What’s his name?”
Fisher glanced at me over his shoulder. He’d never asked.
“Gil,” I said, before either of them could. “Gil Valentine.”
“Fisher,” he said to his son. “You can’t just…”
“He’s fine,” I interrupted, waving off the man’s concerns. “Just had a loose caliper on his bike and he didn’t want to bother you with it. He saw me out here working on my bike and I offered to help.”
Fisher rolled his eyes, both of us knowing that was a half-truth at best.
“Well, thank you,” the man said, still protectively patting his hands all over his son as if to check him for injuries. “We just moved to town, and…”
Apparently the man had as much of a problem stringing sentences together as his son did. The only thing he had going for him was he was very nice to look at.
“No harm, no foul,” I assured him.
My motorcycle was definitely ready to work on and seemed far more interesting than the lack of conversation the kid’s dad was trying to have with me, so I turned around and bent over to pick up the wrench I’d discarded on Fisher’s arrival.
The man choked a bit, clearing his throat when I looked over my shoulder at him.
“I’m Rowan, by the way. I should thank you properly for helping my son.”
“No thanks necessary, Rowan.” I waved him off and turned back to my bike because looking at him brought up too many dormant feelings that I’d long since forgotten. Feelings like interest, like curiosity, like arousal.
“I insist,” Rowan protested, but I wasn’t having it.
“Have a good night, Rowan and Fisher Verne.” Then I grabbed the garage door remote off my bike and closed the door on them both.