2. Parker
2
PARKER
W iping my greasy fingers on a rag, I unfurl myself from under the hood of the car I’m working on and groan as I straighten to my full height. Honestly, considering I’m so much shorter than everyone else who works here, you’d think bending over car engines all day would be easier for me, but it’s not.
Turning my head, I glance at the clock and swallow back a curse when I realize I should have gone home an hour and a half ago. Unsurprisingly, not a single one of the assholes around me bothered to let me know my day was over. Although, I bet they all noticed when the other guys who started at seven a.m. packed up and left.
Being a female mechanic sucks ass. My dad owned a garage, so I grew up around cars. While my sister refused to get her clothes dirty or risk ruining a nail, I loved learning about how the parts of the engines fit together to make it run. My dad and I spent hours in the driveway of our house tinkering with cars; it was our thing.
When Dad died, it made sense that I’d take over his shop—I’d been working there since I graduated high school. But unfortunately, despite how much the world has changed, and no matter how many times women have shown they’re more than capable of doing anything a guy can do, some stereotypes just don’t die. And cars being a man’s world is one of those things that hasn’t been rejected by societal standards yet.
Once folks realized my dad had passed and that I’d be the one working on their cars, they all suddenly decided that the overpriced subpar work at the other garage in town was a better option than me.
I clung onto the shop for as long as I could, but in the end, I had to admit defeat and pack up my tools. The only place I could find to hire me was a national garage chain that had a zero-discrimination employment policy—I asked. The company doesn’t care that I’m a woman as long as I show up on time and do my job.
Unfortunately, the other nine male mechanics I work alongside don’t feel the same way. They hate that I have a vagina, and although they’re not aggressively hostile, they’ve made it very obvious that they do not enjoy me being a part of the team.
Despite having already worked well past the end of my shift, I finish up the oil change I’m working on and file my paperwork in the office. Washing off as much oil and grease from my hands as I can, I grab my stuff and head out to the employee parking lot.
My 1972 Buick Gran Sport is parked at the back of the lot, as far away as possible from the other cars, and hidden partially behind an overhanging tree. It’s not that I don’t want people to know what I drive. It’s more that showing off my restored muscle car in a place where I’m so openly disliked doesn’t feel like the greatest idea. I refuse to allow my baby to become a target for my coworkers’ discontent.
My car was a barn find that my dad brought the week I was born. The moment I was old enough to pass him stuff, I sat out in the garage and helped him rebuild it from the wheels up. He didn’t have a chance to finish it before he died, but he left it to me in his will, and so I finished it just the way we’d been talking about my entire life.
It’s not the only car I own. I have several projects that I have stored in a warehouse, ready for when I have the time and money to get to them. But my Buick is my daily driver and will always be my pride and joy.
Unlocking the door, I strip out of my coveralls, shove them into the trunk, then slip into the driver’s seat, exhaling happily as the smooth leather hugs my tired body, soothing me like a warm fucking hug.
Closing my eyes, I push the key into the ignition, then turn it, feeling the smile spread over my lips as my baby roars to life. The purr of the engine vibrates through the car and right into my clit. Who the fuck needs a vibrator when you have a V8?
Exhaling tiredly, I let the feel of the car permeate through me. This right here is my favorite part of the day—well, almost my favorite.
When I gave up the shop, I couldn’t stand living in the small town I grew up in, so I packed up my stuff and moved to a bigger town about ten miles away. It’s not a huge distance, but it’s far enough that I don’t have to drive past my dad’s shop every time I leave my house.
I answered a roommate wanted ad and moved into a shitty apartment, in a shitty part of town, with a shitty roommate who upped and left three months after I moved in. When I told the landlord, he offered to let me stay, and it turns out my ex-roomie was stiffing me on the rent. So now I have a shitty apartment in a shitty part of town, all to myself, and it only costs me a little more to stay here alone than it did with her.
Just like every other time, the ride home is the high point of the day, and by the time I’ve swung through a drive-thru to grab a burger and fries, most of my work-related tension has slid beneath the wheels of my car. When I reluctantly turn off the street and pull my baby into the garage I rent off my neighbor, I’m relaxed enough to exhale a slow, contented sigh.
If I could, I’d give up work, jump in my car, and just drive with no destination in sight, but gas is expensive, so instead I enjoy the few miles a day I get to do and then park my baby up until the morning. Grabbing my food, I lock up the garage and set the alarm I had installed.
Dragging my feet, I climb the stairs to my front door and let myself inside. When Nell, my ex-roomie, left, she took her clothes and left pretty much everything else, so the place is furnished with a mixture of thrifted, borrowed, and maybe even stolen furniture.
It’s nothing like the house I grew up in. My mama is as house proud as they come. She’s never been here, but I know she’d be absolutely appalled if she ever visited. When I first moved in, it wasn’t my place to comment on the décor, and now I just don’t care enough to bother redecorating. I have a bed, a couch, and my gaming systems, and that’s basically all I need.
Closing and locking the door behind me, I carry my bag of takeout to the couch and drop heavily down onto it. I’m filthy and I need a shower, but right now, my empty stomach is more important than my desire to be clean.
Shoving the straw into my shake, I take a deep pull, grinning to myself when the cold vanilla goodness fills my mouth. When my stomach growls, I set aside my drink and unwrap my burger. There’s something about greasy burgers that’s like a balm on my soul, and as I take the first bite, I feel myself shaking off the last vestiges of my crappy day.
Popping the last fry into my mouth, I hum happily. Shoving all of my trash into the bag beside me, I shuffle down the couch into a more comfortable position. Allowing myself a moment, I close my eyes and enjoy the way the old couch cushions kind of swallow me.
When my cell beeps, I reach for it, pulling it from my pocket and glancing at the screen. Like always, there’re unread messages in the group chat I have with my mom and sister, but they’re not what makes a wide smile spread across my face. It’s the latest message that has me shoving my way out of the couch and heading toward the bathroom.
Danny: Hey Parks, you online?
Stumbling into the bathroom in my haste to get into the shower, I grab hold of the basin before I face plant into the mirror. Reaching into the stall, I hold my breath and pray to the god of cleanliness that my water decides to work tonight. When the shower spits and hisses, then bursts to life, I pump my fist in silent salute and start to strip out of my clothes.
My scalp actually sighs in relief when I pull the hair tie that’s been holding my long dirty-blonde hair up in a bun on top of my head all day. When I worked at my dad’s shop, no one cared that I was a girl, so I’d twist it into a braid or throw it up in a ponytail. Now that I work with a group of assholes who all hate that I’m female, I’ve found myself doing whatever I can to hide my feminine appearance. It sucks, but I need a job to pay my bills, and unless the world suddenly becomes anti-sexist, I doubt there will ever be a place where being a female mechanic isn’t an issue.
Massaging shampoo into my sore head, I wash my hair twice before I brush conditioner through the ends. Once I’m clean, I turn off the shower and wrap myself in my shitty towels. My mama has huge bath sheets that are so big they wrap all the way around me and are soft and fluffy. When I brought my own, I figured a towel was a towel. Boy was I wrong. The crappy towels I brought went hard after the first wash and are so small I can barely get them to close around my tits when I wrap them around me.
Doing the best I can to cover myself as much as possible, I shuffle out of the tiny bathroom and into my equally small bedroom. Rubbing myself dry with the small, rough towel, I wrap it around my hair and pull on silk pajama shorts and a strappy tank.
I’m not a super girly girl. I spend my day with grease on my hands and my head under the hoods of cars, but there’s something about silk pj’s that helps me reclaim my femininity, even if it’s only while I sleep.
I’d never admit this out loud, but I especially like knowing I’m dressed like a girl when I’m talking with Danny.
Danny Hoffman was the king jock of jock hill at our high school. He was the captain of the football team, captain of the basketball team, homecoming king, and all-around most popular guy in school. He graduated my freshman year, so I didn’t exactly know him, but it was impossible not to know of him in the small town we both grew up in.
He was friends with my older sister, Becca, but not the kind of friends that meant he spent time at our house; it was more like they just hung out in the same group. Until about a year ago, I’d never actually spoken to him.
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how we ended up friends on social media—although truthfully, I bet I was the one to follow him rather than the other way around. I don’t know when, but at some point, I posted about a game I was playing, and he commented. That single comment developed into us playing together online. After a few weeks, we started chatting online, then we exchanged numbers, and now it’s rare that a day goes by without us talking, either on the phone, online, or through texts.
Danny is the perfect guy. He’s funny and sweet, and he lives over two thousand miles away. In real life, I’m not great with guys. In high school, I had loads of guy friends, and I’ve had my share of boyfriends, but I’m short and kind of curvy, and that’s not everyone’s type. Add in the fact that I’m a mechanic and not super girly, and there hasn’t been a queue of guys banging down my door to date me the last few years.
I don’t think I’m ugly, in fact, I know I’m hot. I have a pretty face and a great rack, I just know that I don’t look like society’s version of beautiful. I’m not a virgin. I lost my V-card on prom night to my buddy after we agreed it’d be lame to graduate high school before we had sex. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t anything either of us was looking to do together again.
Since then, I’ve had a couple of longish-term boyfriends and some hot, fun, dirty sex. I just haven’t met a guy who I want, who wants me enough to put in the effort to pursue me.
Since my dad died, I’ve lost interest in dating, so the only guy I speak to on a regular basis is Danny.
Dragging a brush through my hair, I divide it down the center of my scalp and twist it into two loose braids. If I leave it to dry naturally, it’ll be a riot of messy curls that I will not have the time or energy to deal with in the morning.
Once I’m done, I grab my cell and type out a quick message.
Me: Getting online now. What are we playing?
His reply is almost instantaneous, like he was waiting for me to message him.
Danny: COD ? Zombies ?
Me: Hell yes!
A few years back, Call of Duty had a level where you could kill zombies inside a derelict house. The first time I showed Danny, he thought it was hilarious. Usually when we game, we play matches against other players around the world, but when either of us is tired or just not into anything serious, we suggest Zombies and enjoy a few hours trying to be the one to spill the most undead brains.
Grabbing my controller and headset, I turn on my game system and quickly log into the game. A request to private chat pops up on my screen, and I click on it.
“Hey.” Danny’s low voice vibrates through the headset.
“Hey,” I reply, trying to match his energy and not show how excited I am about playing with him.
“You ready to kill some undead?” he asks.
“Always.”
Neither of us speaks for a while as Danny sets up the match and invites me to join. Usually if there’s a prolonged silence in a conversation, I feel the need to say something to fill the awkwardness, but I’ve never felt that way with Danny. I don’t know if it’s because he’s so far away or because we only speak online, on the phone, or via text that it somehow makes it less awkward, but whatever it is, saying nothing with Danny is oddly comforting.
“Get ready,” he warns as the game counts down.
“Born ready.” I laugh just as the first zombie jumps around a box and tries to eat me.
We both get consumed by the game for an hour or so, and the only time we speak is to smack talk or randomly chat about the game.
“How’s work, Parks?” Danny asks out of the blue.
“Same as.” I chuckle. “It’s a job.”
“Fuck, it’s that bad?” he asks, and I can hear the sympathy in his tone.
“No, it’s…” Sighing, I try to decide how to stop making myself sound so pathetic. “I’m a female mechanic, I work with nine dudes who all think it’s weird that I’m a girl when they think working on cars is a man’s job. They don’t like me, and they haven’t hidden their feelings from me. It could be worse.”
“Can you speak to your boss?”
“My boss hates me too,” I say dryly. “I kind of forced his hand when I applied for the job, and he’s pissed that I quoted the corporate policies to him and basically made sure he couldn’t say no just because I was a girl.”
“Do you think they’ll come around?” he asks hopefully.
“I doubt it. I don’t care. It’s just a job. But I went from working in my dad’s shop and knowing all the customers to being forced to do all the shitty repetitive jobs because no one believes I’m capable of actually fixing anything.”
“I’m sorry, Parks, that sucks.”
“It’s fine,” I say, forcing a lightness that I don’t feel into my voice. “How’s your job?”
“It’s good, they just confirmed two more years of funding for us, so unless I quit, this is home for a while longer.”
“Are you thinking of quitting?” I ask, curious. In all the times we’ve spoken over the last year, I’ve always gotten the impression that he loved his job and Montana.
“Nah, this place is home. I’m even thinking about trying to buy some land so I can build myself a house. The row is great, but I don’t want to find myself homeless if we lose the funding.”
“Wow, so you’re seriously thinking about settling there? I guess I thought you’d eventually move back home, all your family is here.”
“I’ll still visit plenty, but Rockhead Point is home now. I love this weird fucking town and the crazy people that live here. You should come and see the place.”
“Nah, Montana’s not my thing,” I say quickly, stomping down the excitement that surges to life in my chest at his invitation.
“Oh,” Danny says, and I’d swear I can hear his disappointment.
“I don’t have any paid vacation, and I can’t afford to take any unpaid time off anytime soon,” I rush to say.
“That sucks, the winter is fucking beautiful here, there’s so much snow.”
“Maybe one day, I’ll get out there to see it,” I lie. I have no intention of going to visit Danny. He’s a great fantasy guy and a good friend, but I enjoy the pretense of believing that he could like me the way I like him too much to ever try and make it a reality. Right now, when I speak to him or game with him a few nights a week, it’s a fun game of make-believe, but if I were to see him in real life, I’d have to accept that someone as gorgeous and nice and sexy as he is will never be interested in me.
Not that I want him to be, not really. But since we started chatting, it’s been nice to flirt and lust over someone who’s so far out of reach. If I never see him in real life, this hope that I’ve created in my head will never be over. Danny and I have the perfect relationship right now, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to give that up for a slap in the face by reality.
After I yawn for the fifth time, Danny sighs softly. “I should let you get to bed. You’ve got to get up in the morning.”
“When are you back on shift?” I ask like I don’t already know the answer and don’t secretly have his schedule saved into my calendar.
“Wednesday. Fancy a few hours on Assassins Creed before I have to pack and get to bed tomorrow?” he asks hopefully.
“Sure, sounds like fun. Night, Danny.”
“Night, Parks.”