Chapter 3 #2
He pulled his phone out, trying to play it casual about it, but I caught the shift in his energy. He sat up a little straighter as his thumb moved across the screen with purpose.
“Aight, check this out.” He turned the screen toward me. “This is a build I’m doing right now for a client named Tee. She came to me wanting to surprise her man Zo for their wedding anniversary.”
The photo showed a frame stripped down to the bones, sitting up on the lift in his shop, wires hanging loose where the doors used to be.
“I’m rewiring the whole door system,” he said, swiping to the next photo.
“Converting it to butterfly doors. They lift up and out instead of swinging regular.” He glanced at me to see if I was tracking, and when he saw that I was, he opened up even more.
“I had to redo the hinge mounts, rework the hydraulics, make sure the whole frame could handle the stress without warping over time. People think it’s just for show, but if you don’t engineer it right, those doors will fail on you in a year. ”
“That’s pretty damn cool, Bane,” I said.
He swiped again, pulling up a render. “And then the paint job is next.” He held the phone closer so I could really see it.
“She wants a reflective blue, but not regular blue. I’m talking ‘bout something that shifts depending on the light hitting it, almost purple in the shade, then this deep electric blue when the sun catches it right.” He tapped the screen as if he could already see it finished.
“I had to source a specific pigment for this, and had three different paint suppliers before I found one that could actually do what I had in my head.”
“How long does something like that take?”
“This one is probably six weeks total, between the bodywork, the door conversion, and the paint curing properly.” He shook his head slowly, already three steps ahead in his mind.
“Zo doesn’t know none of this is happening.
Tee’s been sneaking the car to me on her lunch breaks.
” He smiled to himself. “She wants to surprise him at their anniversary dinner.”
“Bane.” I shook my head slowly, looking at the screen. “That’s beautiful. The fact that you can take a regular car and turn it into that.”
He looked at me for a second; he wasn’t used to somebody actually sitting with the details instead of just saying it sounded cool and moving on.
“That’s the whole thing for me,” he said. “Anybody can put a car back together. I want people to feel something when they see it. I want Zo to walk outside and feel like a new person.” He shrugged. “That’s what I’m chasing every time I start a build.”
I sat there looking at this man talk about wiring and pigment and hydraulics with the same depth and reverence most people reserved for things they considered sacred, and I understood something about him in that moment that I hadn’t fully understood before.
This was his medicine. The same way mine had a stethoscope and a patient chart, his had a wrench and a vision nobody else could see yet.
“Show me more,” I said.
“Maybe later, but let’s get back to this eye cancer. So you can see cancer from someone’s eyes?”
Readjusting my glasses, I nodded. “Yes! It’s kind of wild too. It’s like how dentists can detect oral cancer during a routine exam.”
“Wow.”
That next hour, we kept yapping, bouncing back and forth since we had so much to talk about. I paused to take another sip.
“Hearing you talk,” he said, “is genuinely one of the best things I’ve had in a long time.
” He shook his head slightly. “On some real shit. The way your mind works, the way you put words together — I used to sit across from you at that little table on Old National and just let you go because I could’ve listened to you for hours. ”
“You never told me that,” I said.
“I thought showing up was the same as saying it. I didn’t know yet that a woman like you needs both.”
The warm dark sat around us and the field was quiet except for the distant hum of the next approach.
I looked out the windshield and made a decision before I could overthink it.
I reached under my dress and pulled my thong off in one motion and dropped it in the cupholder between us.
Bane looked at it, then at me.
“Time to go home.”
I pushed myself up and leaned half out the open window into the warm rushing air as he pulled back onto the road. The night wind hit my face as I stretched my arms out and let the speed take everything with it. I took my glasses off before they flew off my face.
He accelerated, matching my vibe
The road opened up and the air got louder and I felt completely, recklessly, irresponsibly alive.
“Lauren.” His voice came up through the window, warm and laughing and a little undone. “Get back in this truck.”
“In a minute,” I yelled into the wind.
“Lauren —”
“In a minute, Bane.”
He laughed and kept driving. I stayed out in the wind with my arms wide and my eyes closed and let the night have all of me for just a little while.
When I finally pulled myself back in, my hair was completely destroyed. I looked over at him and he was shaking his head with the biggest smile on his face.
“You are so —”
“Don’t,” I said, smoothing my shirt down and reaching for my beer.
“I was going to say perfect,” he said.
I looked at him.
He kept his eyes on the road but the smile stayed. He reached over and put his hand on my knee.
There was nowhere in the world I needed to be but here.
“Bane,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad I called you.”
He squeezed my knee.
“I know,” he said. “Me too… Are we getting a late-night snack?”
I nodded. “Yes, please. I’m paying.”
His smile dropped. “You know I don’t even play like that.”
I busted out laughing, trying to keep a straight face.“Why are you frowning?”
“You thought that shit was funny?”
I bit back a response and rested my head on his shoulder.
“My bad.”
“Mhmm.”