Cam
Either way, when this guy paid his bill, they could pay theirs.
He shrugged off his coveralls, remembered he was wearing his ankle-high steel toes when they were halfway down, debated taking them off, ruled it out, tied the arms around his hips.
It wasn’t like he was going to run into someone from school.
Everyone was away for the last few days of break and his social life was as nonexistent as the dodo bird.
Between the shop, training, and finishing the books on his summer reading list, the only other thing he had time for was sleep.
He drained his water bottle, refilled it at the water cooler, then popped it in the fridge alongside the energy drinks he was going to bring to the lake.
If, that is, he got to the lake. He wasn’t allowed to take boats out after eight and if he was going to get a two-hour rowing session in, he needed to get his butt in gear.
“Only if you don’t throw it like you did the last time.”
They shared a laugh. Working with his dad full-time had been great. Not that he’d thought it would be bad or anything. It was more that he’d wanted his dad to know he could handle the responsibility, and over the summer had proved it.
He walked over to the pit, squatted down, and handed the soda to him with a flourish, like he was presenting a fine wine.
“Thank you, son.” Oren took the drink and popped the top, draining most of it in one. “Right,” he said, after finishing the rest. “Better get back to it.”
After squishing the can, he shot it at the recycling can, which had a basketball hoop over it. He missed.
“Should’ve put the pit closer,” they said in tandem.
A running family joke.
The pit, which let the mechanics walk underneath cars safely, was the one upgrade Cam’s mom had made nonnegotiable when she and Oren had started talking about getting married.
“I don’t want to come in one day and find you flat as a pancake.
” She’d even insisted he use the money he’d been saving for her engagement ring.
“The only thing of value to me is you two,” she said whenever Dad tried to put a bit aside to get her one instead of paying a bill. “Besides,” she would say, “do you really think a diamond is going to make our lives better?”
“Not in the slightest,” Oren had said once, giving her an innocent smile. “There’s only one thing that could make my life better.”
“What?” Cam’s mom had demanded.
“We should’ve moved the pit closer to the recycling can. I keep getting rim shots.”
It had taken her a beat to figure out he was kidding, but when she had, it was like always.
They’d laughed themselves silly and he’d pulled her onto his lap, which even young Cam knew was his cue to get the hell out of there.
It was cool his parents were still madly in love, but he had no interest in watching them mash on each other. Gross.
He scooped up his dad’s can and slam-dunked it on his way to the office, where he punched the code into the office phone that forwarded calls to his cell.
The fewer distractions his dad had the better.
“You got Walt’s keys, Dad?” The shop truck was called Walt after the guy who gave it to them ages ago when he’d switched to a mobility scooter.
“On the board.”
The peg board was under the wall-mounted Rube Goldberg clock Cam had made from old car parts in his engineering class last year. His dad had thought it was genius. Cam only saw the things he’d do better if he did it again, but still, it did what it was supposed to. Tell the time.
His dad was always bragging about it to any customer stupid enough to mention it. “Cam’ll be the first Dillinger going to college,” he’d tell them. Mortifying. But also kind of cool. If it happened. “I’ll be back in half an hour, Dad. Okay? Forty minutes, tops.”
Oren looked at the clock and frowned. “It’s four o’clock. I thought you were going down to the lake.”
He started unwrapping the oil-stained blister tape on his right hand. He probably wouldn’t make it. Lying about it wouldn’t work. Especially if there was eye contact. “Lake’ll be there after I get the tires.”
He could feel his dad hard-staring him. He ripped off the rest of the tape and dumped it in the trash. “I’m not going to compromise my scholarship, okay?”
“I’ll fire you on the spot if you do,” Oren threatened. In a loving kind of way, but Cam knew he meant it. There was a real chance Cam could go to college, and he knew his dad would happily sell a kidney to get him there.
“I’ll go when I get back,” he called over his shoulder. If there was time. Once he’d fired up Walt’s engine and put him in gear, he began a slow reverse out of the shop forecourt, making sure to look right, left, then right again—BAM!
What the hell?
He slammed on the brakes, heart thumping like a jackhammer, doubling in pace when he caught a flash of something airborne in the rearview mirror that landed in the truck bed with a thunk. Whatever it was, it could swear.
Shitshitshitshitshitshit.
He tore off his seat belt and flew out of the vintage truck so fast a life behind bars didn’t have time to flash before his eyes.
The UFO was a teenage girl around his age.
Living. Breathing. No fountains of blood.
Phew. He wouldn’t be spending the rest of his life in prison for involuntary manslaughter.
Thank god he’d put a pile of tarps on the toolboxes this morning.
Which made him wonder if future him had known a hot teenage girl was going to endo into the truck.
“Hey!” She scrabbled to her knees without screaming in agony, which boded well.
“You need to watch where you’re going,” she sniped.
He had been.
Her fingers were shaking as she unclipped her helmet. Nerves. Adrenaline. Totally normal. If he’d done an up-and-over into a pickup truck, his would be, too. It wasn’t like he was calm either.
She had pretty brown eyes. Really dark brown. And they were currently trained on him, like she was trying to bore a hole in him.
“You’re not going to ask if I’m okay?”
He took a beat before answering. She was scared. So was he, if fear meant thinking she looked like the kind of girl he’d ask out for tacos if they’d met another way.
Errr… Earth to Cam. Tires? The Lake? “You look okay to me.”
Her eyes widened.
“Uninjured,” he clarified as he crouched down to grab her bike.
“Do people drive with their eyes closed around here?”
Ah. She was a tourist. Which meant she’d be gone soon. No taco dates for him. He stood, leaving his “customer is always right” filter on the ground.
“You hit me,” he began, and definitely would’ve kept on going if he hadn’t been caught short watching her negotiate the uneven terrain in the truck bed.
Even though her cargo pants, T-shirt, and jean jacket were baggy, core strength and strong legs were the only way to explain why it looked like she was walking on water instead of navigating a seabed of mismatched toolboxes.
Surfer, maybe? Something that required balance anyway.
She saw him watching and shot him a look like she was still waiting for him to beg for forgiveness.
No way. He wasn’t going to apologize for something that wasn’t his fault, but as an olive branch, he picked up her bike and slid it lengthways across the truck bed to make sure it was still rideable.
“What are you doing?”
“Stealing it,” he deadpanned.
She snorted.
At least she had a sense of humor.
Though obviously functional, the bike was not from this decade. Maybe even this century. And not in a retro way. Whoever this girl was, she wasn’t a washashore—one of the rich folks who tripled Eagle’s Cove’s population over the summer.
“Tick tock. Still waiting for that apology,” she said.
Talked like one, though.
“You were riding on the sidewalk.” He checked to see if any lightbulbs went on.
In Massachusetts, riding a bike on the sidewalk was illegal in business districts.
Even if it was a stretch to call Eagle’s Cove’s main drag—a mishmash of overpriced boutiques, cafes, and discount stores selling beach supplies—a business district.
No lightbulbs so, to be helpful, and because sparring with this girl was strangely fun, he added, “On a blind turn.”
She looked away, meaning, she got it now. She hit him.
He pulled the bike off the truck and flipped it upside down to rest on its handlebars. “Your chain’s slipped.” He glanced back. “You know how to fix it?”
She gave an exasperated sigh that said, No, idiot, I do not.
The chain and gear-change mechanism were begging for some WD40.
He reached into the truck to grab his toolbox only to nearly crack heads with her.
She fell back on the tarps and gave a frustrated growl.
“You really are trying to kill me, aren’t you,” she grumbled when he held out a hand to pull her back up.
She begrudgingly accepted the offer, but when her hand touched his, her eyes shot to his face. So she’d felt it, too. The energy shift from combat mode to… you’re not as bad as I first thought. Her cheeks turned a cute shade of crimson when he got his hand back.
He stood aside, so she could scooch off the back of the truck. She didn’t move. Like she found it enjoyable being a few feet above him. “I need to get under the tarp.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Is that where you store the bodies of your other hit-and-run victims?”
“Busted,” he said, then, because time really was against him, tipped his head toward her bike.
“I need to get the toolbox you’re standing on so I can fix your bike.
” It was an easy fix, popping a chain back onto a derailleur.
A squirt of oil would have to serve as the apology she wanted to squeeze out of him.
She jumped off the lip of the truck, and though she’d only given him a passing glance as she did it, he saw a chink in her armor.
Something that suggested she knew she was being scratchy but was actually mad about something else.
Maybe somewhere beneath her tough-girl ’tude was someone who needed a friend.
He got it. But she was a tourist, and he had places to go, things to do.
He rummaged around in the toolbox picking out what he needed to check the cable tension and tighten the limit screws if necessary.
“Do you work here?”
He pointed at the logo on the side of the truck. “What gave it away?”
She didn’t rise to the bait. “So, you’re clearly a local.”
He didn’t answer. Yes. Clearly.
“What do people actually do here?”
Work. Enjoy a little free time. Dream about leaving.
“We have clambakes. Tubing. Fudge. If that’s your thing.
” He glanced up at her in time to see her pulling a face.
Not a fudge person. He waved her over. “See the drive train?” He gave it a spray of oil, rubbed it in with a cloth, then did it again, wiping it clean this time.
Cleanish. “You’ve got to clean it or the chain’ll keep slipping. ”
She squatted down beside him to watch while he slipped it back into place.
She smelled good—like honeysuckle and oranges and sunshine.
He was going to plead the Fifth if anyone accused him of checking parts of the bike that were perfectly fine.
When some of her hair slipped over his shoulder and brushed his arm, his body told him all about it.
He tossed the Allen keys and oil into the toolbox, flipped the lid shut, and stood. “That should do it.”
To his surprise, she smiled. “You didn’t have to do that. Thanks.” She gave him one of those waist-height waves people did when they weren’t sure if they should shake hands. “I’m Teagan. I just moved here.”
His heart did this weird lifting thing. Like it was happy or something.
Before he could think of a good response, like his name, he saw his dad climbing out of the pit.
He needed to get out of here. “I gotta go,” he said, lifting the toolbox into the back of the truck.
As he climbed into the driver’s seat, he called over his shoulder, “Learn to fix your bike. Next time you hit someone, you can fix it yourself.”
She snorted, made a point of giving him a wide berth as he reversed the truck out of the lot and onto the street.
Pulling away, he glanced in the rearview mirror. For a safety check. There she was, cupping her hands to her mouth and shouting, “You hit me!”
He laughed. For real this time.
If there was a universe in which he had time to date? He’d find out where she lived and leave a box of fudge on her porch.