Chapter Three
Ghost
I felt your grip on my keys as you watched me. I dared not move, watching you back like you were a fish, cautiously debating taking a bite of a lure, and I was a fisherman who hadn’t eaten in a week or more.
You stood there for a good minute, as if waiting for something.
A sign?
Permission?
…Me?
Did you need me?
I appeared in front of my hood, cautious as I offered my hand out to you. You looked at my outstretched hand as if taking it came at a price. I feared you wouldn’t take it if I let you think too long, that you would find another excuse.
I grabbed your hand, pulling you closer, taking away the choice. My shadow slid over your shoulders, wrapping around you like a coat.
You were so small. I’d never noticed that before, but standing this close, looming over you, I noticed now the narrowness of your wrist beneath my fingers, your head level with my shoulder. I considered shrinking myself to match, to make the difference between us less obvious.
I could have, but no. You didn’t need smaller. You needed someone stronger because you were tired of being the strong one.
You leaned into my touch.
The surrender was subtle. Anyone else might have missed it. A fraction of your weight shifting forward. Your shoulder easing beneath my shadow. The smallest exhale leaving you.
But I felt it. I felt all of it.
I opened the door for you.
Was it desperate? Probably. But I’d spent three weeks in this garage, and I was eager to see the skies again. I was eager to show you what a hundred and fifty thousand dollars had bought you.
“Sit,” I whispered against your ear, watching shivers run down your neck.
You laughed as you obeyed, a small gesture of regaining some control.
Carefully, you lowered yourself into the driver’s seat, your cane angled aside, your posture still stiff, your hands arranging themselves gingerly on the wheel as though it was your first time driving and you’d had ‘ten and two’ beaten into you.
I allowed you to have that little bit of control.
It was an illusion anyway, no matter how much you wanted to believe otherwise.
You could hold the wheel. You could sit in the driver’s seat.
You could pretend all decisions still belonged to you.
But I surrounded you completely. My frame held you. My shadow pressed close.
I wasn’t like Fox, sitting in the passenger seat to ride shotgun. My ghostly form melted into the driver’s seat, holding you in my lap; my arms rested over yours in a strange embrace. We could both drive.
I guided your hand toward the ignition, expecting resistance, and was pleasantly surprised when you let me lead you, your breath growing shallower as my fingers slipped over your hand, confirming once and for all that I had been right about you. I knew what you needed.
You needed me. You needed power.
I could give it to you.
We turned the key together, and my engine roared in response, my entire frame trembling with a wave of ecstasy.
The sound filled the garage, deep, violent, and alive, rolling through the concrete floor and up through your body.
I drank greedily, the slightly stale fuel spreading to my engine, pistons firing, building up power; after sitting for weeks, my engine block was cold and deafening, eager to snap loose and feel the heat of movement at last.
And all you had to do was ask me to unleash it.
You hesitated once again, but this time only for a moment; your foot pressed lightly against my accelerator, listening to my revs climb with each cautious tap. You inhaled deeply, leaning against my wheel, feeling me out in a way I could endure with some patience, though not for too long.
I listened to your heartbeat against the curve of my wheel; it was steady but slow, too slow for my liking.
I was almost offended by how unbothered you were by me.
I’d expected fear, excitement, something loud enough to match the roar moving through my frame.
Instead, you sat there breathing with infuriating discipline, your face controlled, your posture precise, as though the simple act of remaining calm had become a game you refused to lose.
It was frustrating, maddening, but I understood.
You weren’t scared of me. You were afraid of losing control. A car like me needed a whole lot of trust, and you were reluctant to give it over.
So I had to earn it.
“Al said I needed to relax,” you muttered, finally easing your rigid posture enough to lean back against my chest. The contact startled me more than it should have, but I embraced you immediately, my leather drinking in your warmth.
“He’s not wrong,” I answered, my fingers caressing your arm. “You’re stiffer than my suspension.”
You laughed, and even your laughter sounded restrained, careful. You were never like that with Al. Around him, your laughter flowed easily, bright as music. With me, it still felt formal, rehearsed.
I took that as a challenge, a wall to break down with all the patience and persistence of classic American muscle.
What I didn’t realize was that you had more than one challenge in store for me that night.
You had prepared for the drive, producing a cassette tape from your pocket. I was immediately intrigued; music mattered to me. Back when I’d first rolled off the assembly line and prowled suburban streets at midnight, it had been called rock. Now they call it classic rock.
They call me classic now, too, which did unpleasant things to my ego.
But nothing made me feel older than the sound that exploded through my speakers the moment the tape clicked into place.
A violent electronic pulse rattled through my frame, every synthetic beat vibrating offensively through my speakers, so loud it drowned out my cold–start engine.
DTS!
DTS DTS!
I was horrified. A Dodge Challenger was not built to be driven to–
DTS!
DTS DTS!
What even were these noises? Where were the instruments? The guitar solos? The soul? Where was the long, dirty opening riff that told a man in a leather jacket that he was about to make several poor decisions and enjoy every one of them?
This was not music. This was a medical emergency! Who could relax to this screeching, relentless assault?
You, apparently.
I stared in a mix of horror and awe as you finally took a deep enough breath to shed the rigid persona you were wearing. No longer the strung-out and stiff academic, you let me have a glimpse of the real you, hidden under responsibility and etiquette and all that exhausting self-control.
Unfortunately, the real you had simply appalling taste in music.
I was a patient car, but some things could not be forgiven. I flicked a switch from the cassette player to the radio. Classic Rock.
Your eyes widened. “I beg your finest pardon?” You demanded, agog at my audacity.
“You cannot act all prim and proper about my music,” I said, deeply offended. “Not after making me listen to whatever crime against sound that was.”
You turned and stared at the empty passenger seat, so I appeared there, ready to defend art, legacy, and the dignity of my speakers. I expected irritation. Perhaps a lecture. Perhaps you would storm out in a huff and condemn me to another week of garage dust, but instead…
You smiled.
The realization moved through me hotter than fuel. You liked that. You liked me taking control. So I pushed it a little further.
“Move.”
Your brows shot up.
I did not give you time to decide whether to be offended.
I reached for you, lifted you from the driver’s seat, and set you down in the passenger seat with as much care as my growing impatience allowed.
You made a soft, indignant sound that would have been far more convincing if your heartbeat had not immediately betrayed you, skipping in excitement as my hands squeezed around you.
I took your place behind the wheel.
Not because I needed to, not exactly. I was the wheel. I was the engine. I was the body wrapped around us both.
But I wanted you to see me there.
Your heartbeat had changed. Faster now.
You were excited.
That excitement, faint as it was, spread to me like an infection. Intoxicating. Dangerous. I felt it in my engine, in my tires, in the shadows curling around the edges of the cabin.
I revved hard. The sound rolled out of me, deep and pleased and utterly indecent. You leaned back in the passenger seat, gaze fixed on me. Curious. Alert. Still pretending you might stop me if you wished to.
You did not stop me.
Between us, tension tightened like a spring.
I knew you wanted more. The way your eyes traced me gave you away. Over my hands, my mouth, the shadowy shape I wore for your sake, the body I made because humans preferred bodies even when they were sitting inside something far more intimate.
I could guess what you were thinking.
Not here.
Not in this garage, not beneath these ugly lights, surrounded by tools, lesson plans, and the distant echo of other people’s expectations.
You needed to be far away from the school, from your responsibilities.
My engine roared.
The tires squealed against concrete as I rolled forward, slow enough to give you one final chance to object, fast enough that we both knew you would not.
Your hand curled around the edge of the seat, and your breathing changed, hitching and quick.
Good.
Tonight, I was going to make us both feel young again.