7. Salem
SALEM
The shop was supposed to be my refuge.
Loud. Predictable. Engines and impact wrenches, and the kind of controlled chaos I thrived in. In the shop, problems had answers, even if those answers cost time, money, or both.
I was halfway through reorganizing the front counter—receipts, invoices, a stack of parts orders that had been living in the wrong order since before I started working here—when the office door swung open, and Chuck appeared with his reading glasses halfway down his nose and a box of brake pads tucked under his arm.
Same coveralls. Same wire rims. Same expression he’d been wearing every morning for as long as I’d known him.
“Morning, Kiddo,” he said.
“Morning, Chuckles”
He set the box down on the counter and looked out at the shop floor and the counter I’d been reorganizing, then back at the floor.
“You moved the invoices,” he said.
“They were in the wrong order.”
“They’ve been in that order for eleven years.”
“They’ve been wrong for eleven years. Seriously, I am not sure what system of organization you were using. Did you file these by customer shoe size?”
The corner of his mouth moved. “You know, when your dad asked me to take you on, I figured receptionist was probably where you’d stay. Answer phones, keep the schedule, go home.” He glanced at me. “You proved me wrong inside of three months.”
I blinked. Chuck didn’t say things like that often; he wasn’t built for speeches.
“I’ve had guys come through here with formal training, certifications, years of experience—good guys, solid guys—and not one of them picked it up the way you did. Customers trust you. You make this place feel like somewhere people want to come back to. You know that, right?”
I swallowed. “I just like when things run right, but thanks for the compliment, Chuckles.”
“I hate that nickname.”
“I know.”
He turned and looked at me then, the steady way he did sometimes.
“You’ve been looking into the small business loans still?” he asked.
My pulse jumped. “Yes. I have a few more appointments with the bank”
He nodded once. “Let me know how that goes. I’m not making any decisions until I know where you land.”
“I will.”
He squeezed my shoulder —firm, brief, the kind of thing my dad used to do when he meant something he didn’t have words for—and disappeared back into the office.
I stood there for a moment, looking out at the shop. The lifts. The toolboxes. The cars waiting their turn.
Chuck knew. He had probably known before I did.
That was the thing about him. Minded his own business but somehow always knew yours.
The garage door rattled open, and a truck pulled in. A moment later, the bell above the door chimed.
“Hey, Sweet Cheeks,” a man called. “I need to talk to your lead mechanic.”
I didn’t look up right away. I was still wiping my hands on a rag.
The brake dust refused to budge, no matter how hard I worked at it.
I made a habit of shaking everyone’s hand when they came in—customers responded to something tangible, something real—so I stepped around the counter and held mine out.
He didn’t take it.
The man had a good two feet on me, baseball cap turned backward, worn-out sunglasses hooked over the brim, sleeves of his neoprene-like black golf polo pushed up to expose a farmer’s tan that had been earned over many summers and zero sunscreen, I assumed. Mid-thirties, maybe.
To be fair. I was in coveralls with a black lace mock-neck underneath and my combat boots on. Functional didn’t have to mean boring. Apparently, he disagreed.
“No, sweetheart,” he said. “I want a mechanic. Not some little girl.”
I stared at him. Then I glanced at the keys in his hand.
Vintage Ford tag. I looked past him through the door and spotted the ‘86 Bronco. This man needed someone who knew what they were doing, which was going to be a problem for him in about thirty seconds.
“That”—I nodded at his keychain—“belongs to the ‘86 Ford Bronco out front.”
He blinked.
Getting the make and model right usually ended the argument before it started.
It was one of my favorite parts of the job — that specific pause, the brief recalibration happening behind someone’s eyes when reality didn’t match their assumption.
The idea that cars were a male domain was outdated and irritating, and I had approximately zero patience for it.
You didn’t need a particular kind of brain to do this work.
“Now.” I tossed the rag onto the counter.
“I can go grab the next best mechanic if you’re really that committed to this, but let me save you some time.
” I gestured toward the open bay doors and the machinery beyond them.
I sweetened my tone. “The next best guy knows about as much about vintage engines, especially Fords, as you know about finding a date for Saturday night—”
Jordan, who was eavesdropping in the bays, snorted. I didn’t look back. Jordan had an immunity to my antics, built up over years of exposure. I was surprised he responded at all.
“He’s an imports guy,” I continued. “Foreign cars. Very passionate about it. So, you’ve got two options.
” I stepped closer, catching the faint evidence of a lunch beer.
“You either deal with this ‘secretary’ who also happens to be the Lead Mechanic, or you hand your Bronco over to a man who is going to Google your 2.9L valvetrain issues, come to me for help anyway. And if I’m not available, I’ll direct you to the next shop that can handle this, which is approximately forty-two miles from here. ”
The guy grimaced.
“I mean,” I said, already turning toward the bay, “if you want your Bronco in Jordan’s very soft, well-moisturized hands, who am I to argue—Jordan!”
“No, no,” the guy said quickly, stepping forward with the keys. “You. You do it. I want you to do it.”
I didn’t take them right away.
This happened regularly, and I was not one to let a win go uncelebrated.
“Thought so,” I said. “Pull it into bay two.”
I waved without turning around, busying myself with things on the counter. He slipped out the door behind me, a little burned. I wasn’t sorry. Not even slightly.
It was the same thing every time—someone assuming I didn’t know my job.
What they weren’t privy to was that this shop and I had been in a committed relationship for years.
She had my blood, my sweat, my tears, and somewhere in bay three, the left diamond stud earring I’d lost the day after my college graduation.
I had studied, tested, been certified, and shown up every single day, earning my place here from the ground up.
This was not a one-night stand. This job was the love of my life.
The bell chimed again. I didn’t look up. I had already met my quota for difficult first impressions today.
“Okay,” a bright, cheerful voice announced, cutting cleanly through the quiet. “Before you panic, I come in peace and with pastries.”
I looked up, confused.
A woman stood at the counter like she had walked in mid-thought and kept going.
Petite, with a cloud of dark curly hair piled loosely on top of her head—two pencils stuck through it at different angles, neither of them appearing to serve any structural purpose.
She wore a tangerine orange blazer over a floral dress, the kind of combination that should not have worked and absolutely did.
A canvas tote hung from one shoulder with a pink bakery box peeking out the top.
Her eyes found mine immediately—hazel, sharp.
“Hi,” she said, dropping her voice like we were sharing a secret. “You must be Salem.”
Every instinct I had said to deny it.
I had spent the better part of the last twenty-four hours pretending very hard that I was not the person in that video, with diminishing returns.
“…why?” I asked instead, praying silently that she needed a carburetor flushed.
Her expression folded into guilt. “Oh no. Yeah. That’s fair. That’s completely fair. You deserve to ask that before you admit anything to a stranger.” She shifted the tote higher on her shoulder. “Okay. Hi. I’m Alba.”
She waited, like the name might mean something. It didn’t.
She winced. “Right. Of course, you don’t know me. That’s normal. I promise this gets less weird in approximately thirty seconds.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“Totally valid.” She nodded quickly. “Okay—reset. I owe you an apology. A huge one. Possibly several, layered like a cake. Or an emotional burrito. I haven’t decided on the metaphor yet.”
I blinked. “For what?”
She took a breath like someone stepping off a diving board. “I’m the reason your face is on the internet.”
The lobby went quiet in my head. “You—”
“—posted the surveillance video from the Butcher’s Den,” she finished. “Yes. That was me. Guilty. Fully guilty.”
I stared at her.
She kept going. “In my defense—actually, no, there is no defense, that’s the wrong start.
Restarting. again.” She pressed both hands to her cheeks, then leaned forward.
“Hi. I help run the Butcher’s Den. We film for safety, training, and marketing review.
Sometimes we catch fun moments and post them online for content.
Sometimes those fun moments accidentally melt the internet. Yours—well. Yours really did that.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” She nodded emphatically. “‘Oh’ is correct. Also, ‘oh no.’ And occasionally, ‘why is this happening to me specifically?’ which I completely understand.”
I swallowed. “So, you posted a video of a complete stranger. On the internet.”
Her shoulders dropped. “Yes, and I should have reached out first. I should have warned you. I’m genuinely, deeply sorry if it’s caused stress or embarrassment or full-on existential spiraling—”
“It has,” I muttered.
“Yep. Saw that coming. However, you did sign the waiver on entry, which authorizes promotional use. We normally use that responsibly, but this wasn’t just promo. It was — something else.”
She softened, the frantic edge dropping out of her voice all at once. “I still should have handled it better. I’m really sorry.”
The apology sat differently than I expected. It didn’t feel like damage control. It felt like someone who had actually thought about it and felt bad.
She brightened a moment later, snapping back up like a sunflower after rain. “Also, I brought peace offerings.”
She opened the tote and produced a latte, a cinnamon roll in a pink box, and, inexplicably, a small white ghost pumpkin.
I stared at the pumpkin. “You had a whole latte in that bag.”
“Yep!”
“You bring seasonal décor when you wrong people?”
“I panic-bribe with carbs and ambiance,” she said solemnly. “It’s a system.”
I laughed despite myself.
She leaned her elbows on the counter. “It’s been weird, hasn’t it?”
“People are invested,” I said carefully.
“That’s a generous way to put it, I bet.”
“One woman told me our grandchildren would be beautiful.”
Alba nodded as if that were a reasonable thing for a stranger to say on the internet. “Internet people speedrun life stages. It’s a documented phenomenon.”
I huffed out a small laugh.
Her expression shifted into something quieter. “Here’s the upside. Because of that video, every event sold out. Tickets, sponsors, donations. All of it goes to Heroes for Children. Medical bills. Housing. Real help for kids who really need it.”
“That’s great.”
“It is. And it happened because of you.”
I didn’t know what to do with that, so I looked at the counter instead. The edge of the pink box.
Alba set her cup down. “Here’s the catch.
” Her voice sharpened. “That video is Halloween. The fog, the costume, all of it, it lives and dies with the season. We have maybe three weeks or so before people move on to whatever’s next.
The foundation’s been riding this wave for two days, and we either move now or we lose it entirely.
Which is why I showed up at your workplace with a ghost pumpkin instead of sending a professional email. ”
She gave me a small, careful smile. “You can absolutely say no. I’ll leave, I’ll never bring this up again, I’ll respect your boundaries like a well-adjusted adult, which I’m confident I can be.”
“That feels like a setup.”
“It is a little bit of a setup, but a respectful one.”
I crossed my arms. “Okay.”
“The attention isn’t going away immediately. We have a full month of events planned, and we were wondering if you might be willing to—be involved. A little. Appearances, maybe. Helping us keep the momentum going.”
I stared at her. “You want me to… what?”
“Be present, or volunteer, or”—she paused for approximately half a second—“be in a pretend romantic relationship so we can keep filming and give more sick kids more things.” She said it without taking a breath.
“Pretend I’m in a romantic relationship with the shirtless skeleton man from the video.”
“When you say it like that, it sounds slightly unhinged, but also—yes.”
I let out a breath that landed somewhere between a laugh and complete disbelief. “I don’t even know him.”
Her expression shifted into something more knowing. “You know enough for the internet. Also, he’s one of my best friends, so.”
Silence stretched between us. She didn’t fill it. She just waited, which told me more about her than the frantic entrance had.
“If I say no?”
“I respect it. I let you eat your apology cinnamon roll, pumpkin icing, by the way, and I walk away, and we never speak of this again.”
I looked down at the cinnamon roll, then back at her. “This would actually help the charity?”
“Yes. A lot. We can set up a meeting.”
I stood there for another moment, turning it over. “Okay. One meeting. You tell me what’s involved. I’m not promising anything beyond that.”
Her entire face lit up. “That’s all I need.”
“And boundaries. Clear ones. In writing.”
“Absolutely. I love boundaries. Boundaries are the moon and the stars. I will set something up with HR, so it’s official, documented, and laminated.”
I narrowed my eyes. She looked genuine. Alarmingly genuine.
She gathered her bag, looking too pleased with herself. “Low pressure. You can back out at any time.”
“That better be true.”
“It is.” Once at the door, she glanced back. “For what it’s worth, it took me a while to convince Ethan, too.”
My breath caught. Whatever crossed my face in that half second apparently said everything, because Alba smiled before the bell chimed, and she was gone.