Chapter 18 #3
I step up to the stair she’s on, caging her in. “He will. In the meantime, he doesn’t matter. Let’s eat some lunch, Lil Bit.”
She nods and lets me lead her the rest of the way upstairs to her apartment.
I wish we had time for that nooner I was teasing Reed with, but really, we need to eat so she can get back to work.
It matters that she sets a good example and doesn’t take two-hour lunches she would never allow her employees to take.
We make sandwiches, dancing around each other in the tiny kitchen space like pros. They’re nothing fancy but good and filling, and we sit down at the two-seater table to eat.
“Did you get that part for Todd’s Challenger?” I ask her around a mouthful of food. Most girls would probably be disgusted. But Erica’s doing the same thing.
She shakes her head. “No, he texted me and said never mind. I don’t know what he’s doing instead—probably saw something on a forum of armchair mechanics.” Her eyes roll, and she huffs around the sandwich she’s chewing.
“Is that like an armchair quarterback? Guys who think they know their stuff but are just yelling from their recliners with their sixth beer in their Cheeto-crusted fingers?”
Erica points at me. “Just like that.”
“You are so much better than that. I don’t know a damn thing about cars or engines, but even a dumbass like me can see that when you go to the track, they’re all looking to you for guidance and to make their cars be the best they can be. You’re good, Erica.”
“Thank you.”
Later, looking back, I’ll hear the hesitancy, but right now, it blows right over me and all I hear is an answer on automatic when I want her to see herself the way I do. Magical, powerful, fierce.
“No, really. I know you’re protecting your dad by staying quiet on the whole racing thing, and believe me, I get that secrets are sometimes in everyone’s best interests.
But you have a real gift. It’s a shame you can’t share it with him when he’s the one who inspires you.
He’s probably the one person who could most understand the miracles of engineering you’re working. ”
I smile, hoping she hears just how amazing I believe she is. I’ve never met anyone like her before, so skilled at something that seems pretty straightforward, but for her, it’s pure artistry.
I’ve watched her tinker with parts downstairs and in a corner of the apartment where there are chunks of metal I can’t even identify strewn about the floor.
But not only can Erica ID them, she redesigns them, reworks them, creates something from nothing.
It’s amazing to behold, and I know enough about parenting from raising my sister to know that Erica’s dad would be proud as fuck to see what his little girl can do with her hands and her mind.
Only the sheer force of physics holds her back.
Erica drops her sandwich to her plate, wiping her hands on her coveralls. “I told you why I can’t tell him.”
“I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s not sad that you don’t get to share that together anymore.” I can tell something’s wrong, but I don’t know what. Even so, I’m backpedaling, realizing too late that I’ve stepped into something I didn’t intend to. “But at least you have the garage, right?”
“This garage is everything to my dad, to me. It’s supported us my whole life, brought us together as a family.
” The temperature in the room has dropped by degrees.
Erica’s stony expression and crisp biting tone hit me like blades.
She’s acting like I dissed the garage or its importance to her, which I definitely didn’t do.
“As it should be. You’ve created something special here.” Generic platitudes and walking on eggshells are what I’m reduced to?
No, fuck that. I’m not that guy, not gonna simper around every time she gets her feathers ruffled.
“I don’t know what I said, but I’m sorry.” I don’t sound apologetic in the least. I sound as pissed as I am. “I didn’t mean to upset you, was actually trying to give you a compliment. But I guess I fucked that up.”
Erica blinks at me, silent for the first time ever. Not threatening me, not joking around, not . . . anything. She’s completely blank and I can’t get a read on her at all.
“Maybe I should just go.” I get up, leaving my lunch on the table. I’m halfway down the stairs when she pulls on my arm, short nails digging into my overheated skin.
“You don’t get it. He forbade me. Racing is the one thing” —she holds up one finger and then swipes at the air, correcting herself— “the only thing he ever asked me not to do. Dad didn’t even argue about my going into the military as hard as he did about racing. He made me promise.”
“But you do it anyway because it’s what you love. It’s who you are.”
Fire flashes in her eyes. She’s angry that I see her, know her truth. I thought that sharing that secret with me meant something, but right now, I can see that it’s the opposite. She shared it with me because I’m not important . . . not like her parents, her sister, not like Reed.
All those guys at the track know and she calls them friends or buddies or even dumb fucks. I guess that’s what we’ve been all along, friends who fuck. And I’m the idiot who managed to catch feelings for her and think something deeper was going on.
Right as always, Dad. Love just means it’ll hurt worse eventually.
I can’t love Erica, but I do feel something for her. Obviously, or it wouldn’t hurt to have her dismiss me this way.
I shove through the door, stomping through the breakroom, and then shove the door to the garage open too. Reed and Manuel jump as the door swings back and hits the wall behind it.
Manuel reaches for the music, turning it down even though it’s already quieter than when Erica and I went upstairs because she’s the one who likes the blaring tunes. “You okay, man?” Manuel asks.
Before I can answer, Erica catches up to me.
“You don’t understand. This is enough. It has to be.” The doubt in her heart paints her cheeks pink, her eyes gold.
Gobsmacked, I look around the garage. “Understand this? Understand why the shop is so important to you?” I laugh, incredulous. “Fuck, I’m probably the only person who does, Erica.”
She scoffs, her eyes rolling as she waves her grease-covered hand.
Guess she didn’t wash up for lunch as well as she thought, and something about that is adorable, which only makes me madder.
The mannerism is dismissive, almost that of a bratty spoiled princess, something she’s damn well not. She’s also not correct in the least.
“Go ahead. Play the martyr no one is asking you to be. You gave up on me for Emily. You’ll give up on .
. .” I have the foresight to stop myself before I say racing, though it pisses me off that even as she’s killing me, I’m still protecting her.
“Give up on everything else even when it’s all you want. Wanna know where that gets you?”
I hold my hands out wide, letting her look her fill at me. Broken, angry, distrustful, with nothing but should-have-beens to my name.
Fire flashes in her eyes as they narrow down to slits.
“What am I looking at? A grown man with nothing to show for it? You don’t know what it means to give everything to your family’s legacy.
You work someone else’s land, no skin in the game, with pie-in-the-sky dreams of something bigger one day.
Tell me, what’re you doing to make that happen?
Because I am making shit happen.” She points at herself, her fingertip denting the delicate skin of her chest, which is rising and falling rapidly with anger as she fights dirtier than she realizes.
Sonofabitch, that hurts.
Mostly, because she’s right. I talk about owning my farm again, dream of the land being Tannens’ again, but I haven’t done a damn thing toward making that happen other than wish for it and want it.
It’s been a relief to be free of that responsibility, but it’s like a vacation, nice while you’re gone, but you know you’ll have to get back to work eventually.
I’ve been putting that part off, though, pretending that it’ll happen on its own somehow. It won’t.
Erica senses that she gained a foothold, digging deeper into that wound that I thought had scarred over. Her barbs are sharp as nails, though, freshly opening up my battered heart.
“My family depends on this garage, on me, to survive. I need to make sure that’s my focus.”
I think she’s telling me to leave the racing stuff alone, though I’m still not sure how this fight even really started. But now that we’re in it, I can feel the accelerant catching fire at every corner.
And that’s when I realize, she’s not telling me it’s the garage over racing. She’s saying it’s the garage over me. She told me she didn’t have time for anything serious, and I guess she’s making good on that right now.
All the fight goes out of my blood as it runs cold.
I’m losing something I didn’t even realize I had.
It snuck up on me, drip by drip like honey, and filled that gaping void in my center with warmth.
But the warmth dissipates too fast, unexpectedly leveling me.
I curl my hat in my hands and shove it back on my head.
I sigh, blinking hard as I try to focus.
Feet wide, hands on my hips, and voice steady, I tell her the truth she hasn’t quite caught up to yet.
I learned the hard way, and she will too, but there’s nothing to be done for it now.
“One day, when you’re all alone and wishing for someone to take care of you the way you take care of everyone else, I want you to remember this second.
The moment you shit on the one person who truly sees all of you and wants you for you, Erica Cole.
No restrictions, no expectations, no cages.
You are amazing, brilliant, beautiful . .
. but none of that matters if you stay in other peoples’ bubbles.
The worst part is that you . . . you let them keep you there.
And that is a damn tragedy. Goodbye, Erica. ”
I turn on my heel, eating the ground between her and my truck with fast strides. I slam the door shut with finality and pull out of the parking lot. I tell myself not to look back, but I do.
Erica is standing in the shop, right where I left her, arms crossed over her chest and jaw dropped in shock.
I feel the same way, Lil Bit.
I don’t know how we went from having lunch to a devastating blow-up fight, but some things are inevitable. I’ve always known that.
I guess I just hoped I was wrong.