21. George
George
Five days since the trip to San Francisco, I’m still not entirely where I’m supposed to be.
Carter is less talkative than usual. He’s been that way since I got back, handling his half of the shop with the same competence he always does but without the running commentary he usually keeps up through the day.
When I ask about the Silverado, he gives me a curt reply and goes back to work.
When a customer comes in with a complaint about a repair from two weeks ago, he handles it himself without pulling me in, which he’d normally do just to have a second voice in the room.
It’s possible he’s just focused, or that something’s going on at home that he hasn’t mentioned.
I notice it but I don’t push. Crowding a reserved man has never gotten anyone anywhere.
By seven, the shop is locked and I’m home, still in my work clothes. I smell like oil and that sharp metallic tang that clings to you after hours around engines, even if you never touched a single part.
I don’t go inside right away. I pull the garage door up and stand in the opening for a minute, letting the evening air waft through.
The neighborhood is winding down. The light is flat yellow from a single overhead bulb, and the Gran Torino sits in the corner under the drop cloth exactly where I left it Sunday night.
It’s a 1972 Ford Gran Torino fastback. Original dark green paint under two decades of grime when I bought it two years ago.
Rust in the wheel wells, but good bones.
Nothing structural. My dad had a picture of one on his wall when I was a kid, cut from a car magazine and taped above the workbench in his shop.
He never owned one. He always said he would when the shop was doing well enough.
The shop stopped doing well, he got sick and then the ‘when’ never happened.
This one is going to run right when I’m done with it.
I’ve got the engine pulled and rebuilt, heads cleaned, fresh gaskets throughout. The carb is rebuilt and sitting on the shelf in its box. The body still needs serious work, rust repair, and a proper respray, but the mechanical side is coming together.
I head inside, shower off the day’s grease, and change into black sweats before coming back out.
The shop smell always clings to my work clothes and hair.
Never been able to sit with it like some guys.
My old man was the same way. No matter how long the day ran, he cleaned up before dinner. Old habit.
I pull a stool up to the workbench, open the parts catalog to the brake section, and check the notebook where I left off before we drove up to the city.
New brake lines, master cylinder, wheel cylinders all around.
Suspension needs refreshing too. Those rubber bushings are shot after fifty years.
The whole project is broken down in sections, just like I plan maintenance rotations at the shop.
Every job prioritized, with rough costs next to it.
I stand there staring at the catalog, the notebook, and the car under the drop cloth. But I’m not seeing any of it.
My mind keeps drifting back to Lance’s hand on mine on our trip home, and the goodbye kiss. I shake my head hard, pick up the pencil, and force myself back to reality.
Brake lines, master cylinder. Start there, yes.
An hour into it, I hear a car pull up outside with a familiar rattle on the idle that I’ve been meaning to look at for four days now.
I check my watch. It’s past nine. I set the pencil down and head to the front door.
Lance is standing on my porch with greasy paper bags—tacos from the all-night place and Chinese takeout from the main drag. He must’ve just done a short shift that ended at nine, which means he drove here directly from the hospital instead of going home first.
He lifts the bag. “You eat?”
I let him in.
He drops it on the table and I grab plates.
We sit across from each other like always and the conversation comes easily.
I start noticing things I never paid much attention to before.
How he eats slowly. The small sound he makes when something tastes good.
How he wraps both hands around his cup once it cools down.
After, he wanders into the garage, drawn to whatever I’m working on. He crouches down at the front wheel well, looking at the rust I’ve got masked off and prepped for treatment.
“How long until it runs?” he asks.
“Brakes and suspension are next. Maybe another month before I can take it out, depending on the shop schedule.”
“Nice. Promise me I’ll be your first passenger once done,” he says, moving to the workbench and picking up my notebook. He flips through it slowly, not skimming. He’s actually reading it.
He looks up, waiting for me to respond. I nod, planning on doing that anyway without being told.
“This is systems thinking,” he says. “You’ve got load tolerances and failure points all mapped out. The whole thing reads like a pro job.”
“How’d you even know what any of this means?” I ask.
Lance being smart isn’t exactly news. He calls out answers before the question’s even finished, probably impatient with how slow the rest of us think. Notices what he shouldn’t, connects what he shouldn’t be able to connect. I’ve watched it a hundred times. It still fucking gets me.
He shrugs. “I’ve got eidetic memory, nothing special. I see it once and it tends to stick. I’ve read some engineering books in the library back in high school.”
He sets the notebook down and meets my eyes. “Did you ever think about going that route? Formally, I mean, like mechanical engineering.”
“I thought about studying, yeah. And a lot of other things before the Navy.”
“Like what?”
I lean against the workbench. This isn’t a conversation I have often.
Most people never think to ask. “I wanted to design things. Engines, mostly. I figured if I understood them from the inside, from actually working on them, I would know how to build better ones.” I glance at the Torino.
“The Navy was supposed to be the practical foundation. Get the hands-on hours, save some money, then figure out the rest.”
“You’ve got a real gift for this, G. But your dad got sick.”
“Yes. Shop needed someone.” I shrug. Not because it doesn’t matter, but because it’s settled ground now. “It worked out.”
Lance falls into thought, clearly working it through. “You could still do it, you know.”
“I’m thirty-one with a shop to run.”
“I know a guy who went back to school at forty-four for his nursing degree.” He picks the notebook up again, turns to the suspension page. “I’m just saying the option doesn’t expire.”
I watch him study the page and I think about how he showed up on my porch tonight.
I think about driving him to the hospital in the morning since his shift starts at seven. His car needs the idle checked before I’ll feel good about him taking it on the freeway. I told him that twenty minutes ago, and he didn’t argue. He just said okay and carried on reading the notebook.
“You should sleep here,” I insist. “You’ve got an early start and your car’s not going out tonight.”
He looks up. “I can call a cab in the morning.”
“I’m already up at five-thirty. It’s not a detour.”
We head inside around ten-thirty. Lance drops his jacket and kicks off his shoes. He grabs the blanket from the ottoman and climbs onto the couch.
“Don’t think the couch is comfortable.”
“I’ll sleep here like always,” he replies with a smile, already pulling the blanket over his lap. “Go to bed, G. You’ve got an early morning too.”
I don’t argue. I head to my room, leave the door mostly shut, and sit on the edge of the bed in the dark.
I should sleep. There’s no reason not to.
I lie back in my boxers and stare at the ceiling, listening as the apartment goes still. No TV. No movement. Nothing from the living room.
Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.
I get up.
The hallway stays dark. I don’t turn on a light. When I reach the doorway to the living room, I stop.
Lance is already there.
Standing just on the other side, like he had the same idea.
We don’t say anything. We look at each other in the low spill of streetlight coming through the window. He’s still dressed, arms loose at his sides, expression hard to read.
“Sleep in the bed.” I say softly.
He nods once and follows me back down the hall.
I get in on my side while he silently strips down to his boxer shorts, then climbs in on the other. The bed is big enough to keep space between us, and he takes it. Stays on his side, like he’s making sure not to cross anything.
I move first.
I close the gap, slide my arm over him, pull him back against me. His body goes still for half a second, then melts into mine. I tighten my hold around his waist.
He fits. He must always have.
His hair brushes my chin. Same clean citrus scent he’s used for years. His breathing starts to slow, not asleep yet, but getting there.
“G…are you hard?”
I freeze. Haven’t even noticed it until he called it out. “Sorry,” I mutter. “Just ignore it.”
I start to ease away, but his hand comes back and grips my thigh, firm.
“Don’t move,” he sighs. “I don’t mind.”
I fucking do. I mind the hell out of it. He needs sleep and I’m here wound tight. But, because he says so, I don’t pull away. I hold him closer instead.
What the fuck am I doing? The question hammers through my head, but no answer arrives.
His breathing finally evens out, and he begins to drift away.
“G?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a pause long enough that I think he’s changed his mind. Then, his voice comes lower in the dark.
“That night, before Trevor’s wedding. When we were…both with Adrian and the others.”
I remember it instantly. The moment my hard cock brushed against his ass, the sudden heat of it, the way everything in me locked up because it was goddamn Lance. Because it wasn’t supposed to happen.
He exhales, resets. “When you—” He cuts himself off. Tries again. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since. It’s happening again right now. And I don’t want you to move, not like what you did last time. Not even an inch.”
I draw him in even more without thinking. “Same here.”
The silence feels heavy in the room.
There’s no hiding my erection in this position, spooned tight with my chest to his back and my hips fitted against his ass. But this isn’t about sex.
I press my face into the back of his neck and hold him closer.
“It wasn’t nothing,” I say, the words scraping out of me.
“No,” he whispers. “Guess not.”
He reaches back and wraps my arm tighter around his chest, needy, like he thinks I might still pull away. Neither of us says anything else.
His breathing slowly evens out again. This time he finally falls asleep in my arms.
I run through all the times we’ve shared space like this before.
Trevor’s dorm room years ago when Lance passed out against my shoulder.
The hotel room at my cousin’s wedding in Sacramento four years back, where he somehow ended up wedged between both beds by morning.
Every bar we closed down together. Every long road trip where we split the driving and talked about every fucking thing and nothing at all.
I’ve slept next to this man in one way or another more times than I can count.
We always ended up wherever the hell we ended up.
But tonight feels different. I’m holding him close enough to feel every breath he takes against my chest, and I keep telling myself the difference doesn’t matter yet. Not until he figures out what he’s really looking for and whether any of this means the same thing to both of us.
I close my eyes. I just know I’m not letting him go unless he wants me to.