Chapter 25
L ucie slips from the driver’s side door of the tow truck in a pair of navy blue coveralls and I have to surreptitiously pinch the inside of my elbow to make sure I’m not in an exhaust-induced daydream. There were definitely some fumes . . . or something . . . when my car decided to go up in smoke. Maybe they altered my brain chemistry. Maybe they tipped me into an alternate reality. I didn’t think I had tow truck fantasies, but there’s something about Lucie walking toward me in steel-toed boots, a pair of gloves shoved haphazardly in her pocket.
“Of all the side streets in Baltimore,” she calls.
“Of all the tow trucks,” I shout back, a four-wheeler zooming past us with Usher blaring. When I called the nonemergency number and asked for a tow, I never considered that Lucie’s shop might be the one to send a truck. The universal forces I don’t believe in must be laughing at me.
She closes the space between us, eyeing my car and then me. “All good?”
I nod. As good as I can be with a car that started puffing out smoke while topping out at ten miles per hour on a crowded side street during the evening rush. Better now that she’s here.
She drops a clipboard on the roof of my car and props her hands on her hips. I am thoroughly distracted by the zipper of her coveralls. She’s only done it halfway, a gray shirt beneath.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at the station?” she asks, and I have to drag my eyes up from that tiny zipper. I want to dip two fingers into the opening of her uniform and tug her to me until we’re plastered together knee to neck.
I shake my head and then shake it again when her lips quirk up. “Not tonight. The BSO has a live performance and they stream it across multiple local channels. Maggie opts us in for it every year.”
I planned to spend the evening on my couch with a pizza, watching reruns of The Office while trying not to text Lucie. But given how the rest of the day has gone, I’m sure that would have lasted all of twenty-two seconds before I caved.
“Lucky you,” Lucie says, and it feels like a taunt. Like a dare dangled between us. Yeah, lucky me. Lucky, heartsick, painfully obsessed me.
“I’ve been told I’m a lucky guy.”
She snorts, her nose scrunching. Her long hair is twisted in a complicated-looking bun and the only thing I want to do is unravel it. I’ve been reduced to a series of compulsions around this woman. A lightning-strike sensation somewhere in the middle of my chest and in the backs of my knees.
A car lays on the horn as they maneuver around us. I hold up my middle finger without looking.
She tugs at my hand. “Put that away,” she says, amused. I shove my hand back in the front of my sweatshirt. She tips her chin up at my still-smoking Bronco. “What’s going on with your car?”
“It’s not working.”
Her smile tugs wider. “Yes, I can see that.”
I scratch at my neck, then toy with my thin gold chain. I drop my hand with a sigh. “It made a weird noise and started to get hot, so I pulled over to the side. The engine won’t start.”
“What was the weird noise?”
“What?”
“The noise,” she says, both eyebrows raised. She drags her clipboard closer to her and starts to make notes. I watch her hand scribble over the page, her handwriting a series of neat looping lines. She writes Aiden Valen at the top of the page. Lucie Stone right next to it under the label Technician .
“What did it sound like?” she asks again. “The, uh, the noise?”
She nods.
I make a gurgling clunking sound that’s a poor imitation of whatever the hell my car was doing twenty minutes ago. Lucie tries to tuck her face into her arm, but I can still see the way her shoulders shake. I narrow my eyes.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Absolutely not,” she says, still writing on her clipboard. Overheating , I watch her scribble. Transmission . “What do I have to laugh about? If I were laughing at you, I’d probably ask you to make that sound again.”
“Do you need me to?”
She lifts her face toward mine with a smile. “Not right now, but maybe later.” Another car honks and she rolls her eyes. “I’m going to get you loaded up. Is there anything you need from the car?”
Just the pizza in the front seat I’ve been attempting to keep hot with the seat warmer. I duck into the passenger side to retrieve it while Lucie sets to work getting my car hooked to the tow.
There’s something about her hands and the heavy machinery, I decide as I wait for her on the sidewalk. The confidence with which she maneuvers around my car. She’s quick and efficient, practiced and smooth. She hops back into her tow truck and backs it up to the bumper, one hand braced on the passenger head rest, her neck tilted gracefully toward the back window. I stare at her and remember the way her skin tasted there—the hollow beneath her ear, her fluttering pulse—and I have to shift on my feet and think about Jackson and his pudding disaster to avoid getting overly enthusiastic on a Baltimore side street.
While holding a lukewarm pizza box.
She kneels by the front wheel after securing the towing fork beneath the frame and I tilt my head back to look at the gray sky.
“You worried about your car?” she calls, mistaking my distress for something reasonable.
“Worried about my brain,” I mutter. I can’t believe I’m getting hard watching her load a tow.
“What was that?”
I drop my chin back to my chest. Lucie is squinting at me from the front wheel well of my car. “Nothing,” I call. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
“I’ll be done in just a second.”
“Take your time.”
When she’s finished, she meets me on the sidewalk, pink-cheeked with a spot of grease on her nose. I wipe it away with my thumb and she smiles. I feel like I’ve swallowed an entire swarm of bees. I add it to my list of ridiculous symptoms.
“Come on,” she says. “I’ll give you a lift back to the shop.”
It doesn’t feel safe to be in close quarters with Lucie, but I follow her dutifully to the tow and climb into the passenger seat, my pizza balanced on my knees. I clutch at it like a lifeline, harder when she slides into the bench seat next to me and swings the door shut behind her.
She tries to make conversation on the way to the shop, but I’m busy trying to figure out how to exist in the space next to her. I keep thinking I’ll have a handle on myself the next time I see her and I never do. I’m reading into inconsequential details, trying to make sense of it all. But nothing about the way I’m feeling makes any sort of sense. I’m not sure it’s supposed to.
My brain has been on a loop since I made her come in a supply closet. Her breathing in my ear. Her hips beneath my hands. The smile she gave me when she disappeared into the hallway. The way she laughed in the booth after. I’ve never had that before. The after. Getting to watch the blush slowly fade from her cheeks, her gaze climbing to mine and darting away while we sat side by side in the booth and pretended like we didn’t just deface station property.
I shift in my seat and the leather squeaks beneath me. I’ve been texting her every hour, on the hour, in an attempt to keep her mind on me as much as possible. I’m the toddler on the playground, tugging on her pigtails to get a reaction. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to want more. I don’t know what the rules are. I don’t know the next steps. I’ve never cared enough to figure it out.
Lucie stops trying to make small talk somewhere around the third red light and the silence makes everything worse. I try, several times, to think of something appropriate to say, but my mind is a blank slate. The harder I try to reach for something, the farther everything seems to float away.
By the time she pulls into the service bay of a mechanic shop, I have mangled the pizza box beyond repair and she’s frowning at her hands on the steering wheel.
“Give me a few minutes and I’ll drive you home,” she says, the truck still rumbling beneath us. “Just have to get your car off the lift.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I do, actually.” She laughs, but it’s forced. “If I leave your car on the truck, the door won’t close.”
“No, I meant you don’t need to drive me back.”
The shop is deserted, the lights low. She must have come to get me at the end of her shift. She probably wants to get home.
Lucie nods, eyes stuck on the steering wheel. “That’s fine.” Her lips twist down, and if I could punch myself in the face, I would. “You can grab a cab out front. I’ll be in touch about your car in the morning.”
She swings open her door, but I reach over before she can slip from the seat. I grab the handle and snap it shut again. I hold myself extended across the front of her, my palm braced against the window.
“Lucie.”
“What?” She keeps her face tilted away from me. As much as she can, anyway, in three feet of crammed car space.
“Look at me.”
“I don’t really want to.”
I sigh. “Please.” I let go of the door to touch my thumb to her chin. “I know I’m not doing this right. Please, Lucie.”
Her eyes snap up to mine. Our faces are two inches apart. I can see every shade of green that rings her irises.
“Hi,” I breathe, every other thought evaporating from my brain.
Lucie is unamused, her lips in a flat line. “Hello.”
“I’m not saying the right things.”
“That keeps happening, doesn’t it?”
“Because you’ve got me all twisted up,” I confess, hoping she can see the sincerity on my face. Maybe if I show her enough of myself, she can tell me what the hell is happening. How to do better. “I’m a mess, Lucie.”
“Because of the closet?”
“Because of a lot of things.” The edge of the pizza box digs into my side. The radio spits static. The truck rumbles beneath us and I have, once again, lost control of the situation. “Because of the closet. Because I kissed you and I want to kiss you again. And because I’ve been sitting over here trying to figure out how to hide the fact that I have a pineapple pizza on my lap, but it feels fairly obvious.”
Her eyebrows jump up. She glances at the box in my lap and then back to my face. “You have a pineapple pizza?”
I nod, annoyed with myself. “I do.”
“You said pineapple on pizza is disgusting.”
“It is.”
“Then why do you have it?”
“Because you said it was your favorite,” I admit. “And I want your favorite to be my favorite.”
Because when the guy behind the counter asked me what I wanted, I said “pineapple” without thinking. Because my brain has been rewired to only think about one thing, apparently, and she’s sitting next to me in a tow truck looking a combination of bewildered and bemused. I’m not used to letting myself feel things. I’m not sure I like it.
“Don’t look at me like that.” I groan. “This is why I was trying to hide it.”
“Look at you like what?”
I touch the edge of her smile where she’s trying to fight it. Poorly.
“Like that,” I tell her. I drop my hand in my lap.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just—” She rubs her fingertips across her lips like she’s trying to wipe away her grin. It is absolutely not working. “You are comically distressed about the pineapple pizza.”
“Because it’s embarrassing.”
“It’s not.” Her smile spreads wider. “It’s adorable.”
“Please stop calling me adorable.”
“Cute,” she adds. I groan and collapse back to my side of the bench seat. She shuffles closer and rests her chin against my shoulder. “You’re still crushing on me.”
I look at her out of the corner of my eye. “Obviously.”
She looks at my face and laughs. “Don’t look so put out about it.” She tries to firm her mouth into a straight line but her lips wobble. “You’re crushing on me and my pineapple pizza,” she singsongs.
I frown at her. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Sure.”
“I’m just testing a theory.”
“Absolutely.”
“It’s probably disgusting.”
She blinks at me.
“The pizza, I mean. Not—not how I feel about you.”
I could not sound more like a dumbass if I tried. Who is this person? Why can’t I connect my brain and my mouth? I talk to people for a living, but I can’t manage to string a sentence together when I’m alone with Lucie.
I drag my hand through my hair and anchor my palm against the back of my neck, staring at her. “I feel like I should probably stop talking,” I whisper.
Lucie still has her chin against my shoulder. Her eyes are warm and her smile is soft and she has some grease from the truck on the line of her jaw that I must have missed. I’ve been thinking about Lucie in the closet, but I’ve also been thinking about her like this. Quiet. Pleased. Her eyes on me.
“Please don’t. I like it when you talk.” She bites her lip. “Do you want to know a secret?”
I nod, not trusting myself to open my stupid mouth.
“I’m still crushing on you too.”
“Yeah?”
She nods, cheeks pink. “Yeah.” She presses her face into my arm briefly and then tugs herself back to the other side of the truck. I immediately want to tuck her back into my side. “Were you confused about that?” she asks, skeptical. “After everything that happened in the broom closet?”
“You mean when you rode my thigh until you came?”
Her cheeks flush a shade darker. “About that.”
Something hot settles at the base of my spine. “You have my full attention.”
She rolls her eyes at the way my voice drops. “While you were trying to conceal your clandestine pizza, I was clumsily trying to figure out if you had plans tonight.” She licks her bottom lip. “You know. Since you won’t be at the station.”
I stretch my arm out across the back of the seat and toy with a strand of hair that’s fallen out of her messy bun. “I was going to watch TV and try to not text you.”
She looks down at her lap, trying to smother another grin. Maybe Lucie doesn’t make me stupid. Maybe she just makes me honest. Everything sits right at the surface with her, waiting to bubble over. It’s . . . good. Strange. But good.
She looks back up at me and considers. “Maybe we could—” She shifts in her seat, watching me. “Maybe we could watch TV together? Maya is at a friend’s house tonight for a sleepover and— we could eat your pizza together. If you wanted. You don’t have to try not to text me if I’m right next to you.”
I can’t stop looking at her mouth. “Yeah?”
She nods, drifting closer. “Yeah.”
“That sounds good, but can I ask a question?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Why did riding my thigh make you think of pizza?”
“Well.” She shrugs, and her arm shifts against mine. We’re back to being plastered together on this uncomfortable seat. There’s a spring digging into my thigh, but I wouldn’t move for a damn thing right now. Not while Lucie is looking at me like that. “Pineapple pizza is borderline orgasmic.”
I cup my hand around the back of her head. My thumb traces the long line of her neck. “Is that so?”
“Yeah,” she breathes. “It’s really good.”
“I doubt it, but okay.”
“Stop hating on pineapple pizza when you’re the one who ordered it.”
I grin and drop my forehead to hers. “I reserve the right to withhold my judgment.”
“That’s fine,” she whispers, all breathy and soft. “But don’t cry to me when your world is rocked.”
Our noses brush together. “Oh, worlds will be rocked. And I don’t think anyone will be crying.”
“Hopefully.” She laughs, and I wish I could wrap myself in the sound. Carry it around with me for whenever I’m feeling hollow and defeated. “I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore.”
“You said you wanted to come over.”
“Right.” Her eyes shine. “Can I come over?”
I toy with the tiny metal zipper on the front of her coveralls. I’ve never made out with anyone in a car before. It suddenly feels like a crucial bucket list item.
“Yeah.” Our lips brush together and then slide apart. Too brief. Not enough. I abandon her zipper and rest my palm on the stretch of her thigh instead. “Yeah, you should come over.”
“Great.” Lucie leans back, out of my grip, and I watch with dazed, heavy eyes as she switches off the tow truck with a flick of her wrist. The rumbling abruptly cuts off beneath us, and Lucie climbs her way out of the driver’s seat. “I’m going to get you unhooked and then we can go.”
She disappears.
And I’m left sitting in the cab of the truck, staring dumbly at the space where she just was, smiling like an idiot.
COMMENT FROM BALTI-MORON96:
I don’t want to listen to Piano Concerto in F, I want to listen to Aiden flirt with Lucie.