Chapter 1 #2
Instead, Jesse said ‘screw college’ and used his intended college funds to open a simple mechanic shop, where he dressed like a homeless person, grew his dark hair into a mullet, swore like a sailor, and pretty much did the opposite of everything they’d hoped for.
Despite their disappointment, Jesse’s parents offered their support as often as they could. They were very loving and generous people and not at all the snobs one would expect them to be with how wealthy they were.
They were like second parents to me when I was a teenager, and they even took me in after my parents died in a car accident when I was fifteen.
They loved me and treated me the same as their own son, even going as far as to offer to send me to college as well, but I just couldn’t bring myself to accept their generous offer.
Instead, I decided to work with Jesse in his shop, and between the two of us, along with a few other stragglers we hired on, we’d made it into quite the success.
I moved around Jesse to set my jacket down on a nearby workbench while he grumbled to himself. He was in a power struggle with this car, and it seemed the car was winning.
I moved closer to the vehicle and studied it.
The car itself could be beautiful, but it had seen better days.
It looked like it had been left out in the weather for years, and there were large patches of rust all over the body, as well as dents everywhere.
I didn’t even want to know what was under the hood.
“Ow!” Jesse suddenly exclaimed as he drew his hand back out to reveal a small stream of blood trickling from a cut on his greasy finger.
He pulled out a cloth from his back pocket and clutched it against the wound in one hand while he used the other hand to smack the top of the uncooperative car. “Goddamn fucker! That hurt!”
I chuckled at his display of anger toward the inanimate object. Every mechanic has been there before, and I knew the exact feeling of fury.
“Who brought in this clunker?” I asked as I watched my friend pull back the cloth to peer at his wound.
It was barely bleeding, yet Jesse acted as though he’d just been stabbed by a gladiator.
“Mr. Pearson,” Jesse grumbled as he moved to the workbench to search for something to bandage his wound. “He brought it in early this morning and requested it be fully restored.”
“That’s an expensive request.” I let out a low whistle.
Mr. Pearson was a wealthy car enthusiast. Every few months or so, he’d bring in an old vehicle he found to be fully restored, but this by far was the most damaged one I’d ever seen.
“Yeah, I know,” Jesse huffed as he held up his still-bleeding finger. “And it’s about to get more expensive because of this.”
I ignored my friend’s complaints as I moved closer to the vehicle. The parts that weren’t rusted through were a beautiful seafoam-blue color, which was probably even more vibrant when it had been fully operational.
“It’s a gorgeous car,” I said. “Original engine… Does it still run?”
“No,” Jesse scoffed. “He had it towed in.”
Jesse opened a drawer and pulled out a roll of duct tape before he began trying to tear a piece off with his teeth.
“Uh, you do know that we have a box of Band-Aids, right?” I asked as I pointed to the clearly labeled box on a shelf above the workbench. “Right there.”
Jesse glanced at the box I pointed to before he turned back to me with a sarcastic grin, and he shook his head at me like a parent would a stupid child.
“I’m not going to use a Band-Aid,” he said, and his dark eyes were lit with amusement. “Everybody knows that Band-Aids are for pussies.”
“Please.” I rolled my eyes. “Nobody’s a bigger pussy than you’re going to be if you get that tiny little cut infected. Quit being difficult and just use the Band-Aid and some ointment.”
Jesse grumbled at my response, but he dropped the tape at least.
“Did you hear anything new about those spacemen?” Jesse asked as he grabbed the first-aid box from off the shelf. “I heard a rumor that the government is considering evacuating the city.”
“I doubt that’s true,” I said with a frown. “Evacuation would imply there’s been a threat, and if there’s actually been a threat, then I doubt they’d still have us all going to work and shit. They haven’t even given us a mandatory curfew.”
“At the bar last night, I heard a guy talking about how he got beamed up and probed shortly after the ships arrived,” Jesse mused.
“Right,” I snorted. “And exactly how many drinks in was this guy when he was talking about it?”
“Oh, he was soused,” Jesse laughed. “But he certainly shared his experience in great detail.”
I bet he did.
That had been a common occurrence when the aliens first showed up. Everyone was spouting all sorts of nonsense. I swear a probing was announced on the news at least four times a day, and yet there was no proof it had actually happened.
One lady even claimed the aliens had carried her up, and now she was pregnant with an alien/human hybrid. But it wasn’t until a man came out and said that he, too, was pregnant with an alien baby that the news finally stopped interviewing every random person they came across.
Now, they just ran constant footage of the spacecraft and aired any announcements made by local, or worldwide, governments.
“Why do you think they’re here?” Jesse asked once he’d finished bandaging his finger, and not very well, I might add.
We’d had this conversation before about a million times, with about a million different people. That seemed to be the question of the year.
Why were the aliens here? What did they want?
As of right now, my best guess was they came here because they wanted to scare the shit out of everyone, because they hadn’t actually done anything since their initial arrival, but I knew deep down that wasn’t actually the case.
“I mean, you’d think if it was to take over our world, they would’ve done it by now, you know?” Jesse continued. “It’s already been proven that our weapons are useless against them… Well, most of our weapons.”
Because we still hadn’t tried nukes. It’d be a death sentence for humanity if we did.
“I don’t know, man,” I said with a shrug. “Maybe they’re taking their time with the takeover, or maybe they’re simply here to observe us.”
“Maybe they’re waiting for reinforcements,” Jesse muttered.
Okay, I definitely didn’t like that particular thought.
“Either way, there isn’t anything we can do about it,” I said. “So, there’s no use worrying about it.”
That had been my motto my entire life.
Can’t change it? Then don’t stress about it.
Sometimes, it was easier said than done, but I felt like I was doing a pretty good job in this case.
“Yeah,” Jesse conceded. “Hey, are you planning to hit the gym after work today? Want to do some sparring?”
That was another thing I’d excelled at in high school: mixed martial arts. I’d always been exceptionally good at fighting, though I’d never been interested in competing at all, much to my coach’s dismay.
And I carried my love of fighting with me into adulthood. I made sure to always schedule some time for training.
Would I ever use my training in the real world?
Probably not.
But was I prepared in case something did happen?
Hell, yeah, I was.
“Works for me,” I agreed.
Who knew, with the way the world was going, maybe I’d need to fistfight an alien.
Our conversation was cut short when a customer pulled up.
Time to get to work.
I moved into the main building so I could greet the customer, who was an elderly-looking woman.
Great.
Not that I had anything against old ladies, or old people in general, but they usually liked to talk a lot, and they had a tendency to ramble, which made it difficult to get to the heart of why they’re here in the first place.
“Good morning,” I greeted her with a warm smile. “What brings you in today?”
I didn’t bother to check if she was already in our system or not. I was here every day, and I remembered all our customers, and I knew for a fact that this customer was new.
The woman had the grayest hair I’d ever seen.
Not a strand of white or silver in sight, which almost led me to believe that the color had been intentional.
Her possibly dyed hair was pulled back into a bun so tight it lifted her eyebrows slightly, and her pale, blue eyes were magnified behind horn-rimmed glasses and yet barely visible beneath her droopy, wrinkled skin.
She also had on nothing but a flowery housedress and a pair of sandals.
“Oh, my god, you look just like my grandson,” she gushed without answering my question. “So tall and handsome.”
And let the rambling begin.
“Thank you,” I replied with a polite smile before I tried to get her back on track. “I’m assuming you’re here about your vehicle. What seems to be the problem?”
“He’s a lawyer in New York, and he does very well for himself,” the old lady continued, presumably talking about her grandson. “But he refuses to settle down or give me any great-grandchildren. I hope you don’t do the same to your own grandmother.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell the old women that my grandparents were dead. Or maybe I should, because then it’d make the conversation awkward, and I could steer it back to why she was here.
“No, ma’am,” I assured her.
“Good.” She beamed at me. “Family is the most important thing. No amount of drive or ambition will replace the love one can get from a family.”
How the fuck did I end up here getting a lecture about family?
“Yep,” I agreed. “So, about your car…”
“Oh, that old thing has been making all sorts of odd sounds for the last few months,” she said as she waved a dismissive hand toward her parked vehicle. “And the other day, smoke started coming out of the front, and my grandson, the lawyer, said I ought to get it checked out.”
She said the words ‘the lawyer’ the way someone would refer to a queen or other royal figure. Like her grandson walked on water.