39. Lance
Lance
George props my hood without asking and shines the work lamp at the engine. The rain is light, barely there, more mist than anything. I stand on the passenger side with my arms crossed and watch him work. We both know what he’ll find.
He takes his time with it, the lamp drifting over the engine. He then straightens up and focuses on me across the open hood.
I know that look. It means I’m about to sit through the “remember when I told you this would happen” sermon, thanks to my own stupidity.
He stays rooted there like he’s replaying the whole thing in his head, figuring out exactly where this started going sideways. In this case, the car isn’t really the problem. It’s me.
George lowers the hood and picks up the lamp, setting it on the roof of the car. The thud of it carries across the ridge. “It’s the alternator. I told you to have the car dropped at the shop.”
There it is. Knew we’d get here inside the first few minutes.
“You mentioned it,” I cut in.
“I didn’t just mention it.” His voice stays level, which somehow makes it worse than if he’d come out of that truck already angry. “Told you to get it looked at. So walk me through how you saw that battery light every day and still thought, ‘yeah, this’ll probably sort itself out.’”
“The light only came on sometimes at first, and it was still starting every time I went, so I kept telling myself I’d get to it.” I scrub a hand over the back of my neck, already knowing how it sounds. “I should’ve just dealt with it. I know that. I just…didn’t.”
“Booking that appointment would’ve taken five minutes,” he says, the calm starting to crack. “Would have taken only one phone call to my shop. You know every guy working there. They would’ve squeezed you in the same day.”
“Figured it was a problem for Future Lance…which, yeah, not exactly my best call.”
Something moves in his jaw. “You just going to make every single thing in your life a joke?”
I push off the car to walk toward him. “What do you want me to say, G? Sorry you drove all this way in the rain just to confirm I’m still useless at taking your advice?
Fine.” I spread my arms wide, the mist now turning into more of a drizzle, dampening my sleeves. “I’m sorry. There. You happy now?”
He steps around the hood, closing half the distance between us.
“This isn’t about me being happy. You always do this shit.
” Rain beads along his jacket as he points toward the car.
“The thing jerks every time you hit the gas, grinds like hell on cold starts, and that battery light’s probably been flashing at you for weeks.
But you keep driving it anyway like the problem’s gonna magically disappear if you ignore it long enough. ”
His jaw tightens. “And then one day the whole damn thing dies and you stand there acting surprised.”
I gesture toward the car between us. “Well, I guess that’s the difference between you and me. You catch things early and handle them before they turn into this. Nothing gets past you.” I shake my head. “Don’t worry. This will be the last time you need to do this kind of thing for me.”
“You know I don’t mind helping you out,” he says, leaning back against the car with his arms crossed, looking at me like he’s been waiting to say this for a long time.
“That’s not the problem. Problem is you don’t listen.
You think you can just keep doing what you want and everything will work out.
Not everyone has a safety net like you, or can coast through life like you.
Some of us can’t afford to let things fall apart bit by bit. We don’t get warning signs.”
His words sink in deep, stripping away the last bit of buffer we had left. After all these years of never really yelling at each other, the thin layer of friendship we’d been holding onto finally shreds apart.
“I’m not like you,” I say, louder now, rain on my face and nowhere left to be guarded. “You walk into everything already expecting the crash. I was no different. You were never really in it because you’d already called the whole thing off in your head.”
George turns slightly, water beading on his jacket now, and meets my eyes across the wet metal. “If that’s true, I wouldn’t have been there for any of it.”
I feel the hurt before I can even make sense of what exactly hurt me. “Is that what it was? You were just there for it, like some kind of a fucking favor? Because I was a confused friend and you figured you’d help me sort myself out?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“But that’s what happened, isn’t it?” I hear my voice starting to unravel and I can’t stop it.
“I was the guy who didn’t know what he wanted, and you were just…
you, the one who always knows what to do.
I’m just another thing you fixed when it needed fixing.
Well, here’s what. I didn’t want to be another thing you fixed, George. I wanted to be the reason you stayed.”
Cold rain starts to come down harder now, thickening into a steady sheet. A shadow crosses his expression, brief and sharp before it’s gone. He turns slightly, his eyes fixed on me, charged with anger.
“You’re smart. Leaving this place is just another thing someone like you would have to do to get to where you’re supposed to be. You’ll go home to Seattle and you’ll fit right back in. You’ll have everything, Lance.”
“Everything.” The word tastes bitter as I spit it out. “Fuck everything. I lose it the moment I leave you here.”
“Fuck. Don’t,” he says, raising a finger and stepping closer, rain running down the side of his face.
“Why?” My voice almost giving way now despite how hard I try to hold it steady.
“It stopped being about me figuring things out a long time ago, or whatever bullshit excuse we both came up with to justify what we want from each other. I’ve got it all worked out.
I would have stayed here, helped you with the buyout troubles, and still had gone to see Mom in Seattle. ”
He drags in a heavy breath, the dark valley stretching wide behind him.
“You could be gone for months, Lance. At first you’d check in.
A text here and there. Maybe a call when you remembered.
” His mouth thins into a hard line. “Then it’d slow down.
That’s how this shit goes. You’ll accept that job at Hearthside.
You’ll meet people, build a life. And eventually I’d just turn into some guy you used to know back here. ”
He shakes his head once, rough and frustrated.
“You think this is about me being noble or pushing you away? It’s not. I know exactly what I am in your life.” His voice drops lower. “I’m the guy who stayed in one place long enough for you to get attached to him. That’s it.”
A hard swallow.
“There’s nothing special about me, Lance. I fix cars. I go home. I do the same damn thing every day. And I especially don’t want to come across as someone who latched on you because you’ve got fucking money.”
“Who the fuck even cares about that?” The words burst out cracked and raw before I can stop them.
“You think I care about any of that shit? I grew up around people who had everything and spent half their lives trying to convince everyone else they deserved it. You’re the only person who’s never tried to be anything other than exactly who you are. ”
“That’s not the same as being enough,” he says, his shoulders dropping slightly.
“What your friend said at that bar? He wasn’t wrong. I’ll walk into your world and I’m already figuring out how long I need to stay before I can leave.”
He swipes rain off his face with the back of his wrist and huffs out a sigh.
“I know what losing a parent does to a person. When my dad died, all I wanted was to be near anything that still felt like him—the shop, his tools. Anything.”
He avoids my eyes.
“Your mom’s sick. You’d want to be near her, near home, everything that’s actually yours. I’m not stupid enough to think that’s here. I can’t get out of this town. Can’t do anything else but that shop. This is everything I’ve got, and it’s the only life I know how to run.”
George looks back at me.
“We’ve never been apart more than a few weeks in ten years. You think a few calls every now and then is going to be enough for either of us? There wouldn’t be an ‘us’ left, Lance—just two people who used to be, hurting slower, growing further apart.”
I stare at him. I can’t breathe.
Somehow, after everything, he still thinks this is about convenience, like he’s interchangeable. As if he’s some placeholder in my life.
The tears spill over before I can stop them.
“Why would you think I’d forget you?” My voice comes out raw, barely holding together. “George, you’ve always been someone I look for first at any place or time.”
His expression looks pained as I shake my head.
“You’re who I call when something good happens, or when everything goes wrong.”
My throat burns.
“You think this is about finding somebody who fits my world?” I laugh once, broken.
“You are my world.”
The rain just fucking fills the silence between us.
“So tell me how the fuck I’m supposed to replace that.”
I don’t know how to want things from a distance, or how to be a man who had it all and tries to live without them.
George doesn’t move. When he finally speaks, it doesn’t sound like an answer. “Don’t tell me what I’m also losing too.”
A breath shakes on the way out.
The rain turns heavy fast, soaking through our clothes in seconds.
George turns away from me, shoulders hunched against the downpour. For a long moment, he just stands there with his back to me, breathing hard.
He spins around and stares at the wet gravel between us, can’t bear to look at me in the eye. “Can’t keep us stuck like this. The shop is falling apart, the bills are piling up, and I don’t have room in my life for anything messy right now, especially not this, or us.”
He finally lifts his head, his face unreadable through the stream. “I don’t get to sit on your couch, eat some takeout, and pretend my whole world isn’t falling apart at the seams. You don’t need to get involved in my mess of a life.”
He drags a hand down his face, rain running off his jaw.
“If I let you decide what happens next, you’ll stay.” His jaw works once. “And I’d watch you do it, every day. Knowing exactly what you gave up to stay for me. I can’t live with that, Lance.”
“More than anything, I just want to be with you. Help you.”
He steps closer, and his voice goes hard in a way that isn’t angry anymore—it’s final. “I don’t need your help. I need you to look at yourself and understand what you’re giving up by staying. You don’t have time. There’s nothing for you here.”
That slams into my chest like a hammer. I don’t miss the meaning of it.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.” George holds my eyes. “You think if we just tried it, gave it some time, it’d sort itself out one way or another.” His voice is rough, sad. “That’s not how I work, Lance. Never has been. I don’t try things and see. I already know how this ends when you go. There’s nothing in between.”
I was expecting to lash out, not laugh at that, bitter and short. I close the last of the distance between us until we’re almost chest to chest, rain hammering down on now.
I can’t believe I let myself care too much.
My voice cuts up over the rain. “You know what fucking sucks?” I swallow hard and it doesn’t help.
“I don’t even know how to say it. It’s not one thing.
It’s just—” I gesture at nothing. “It’s everything.
It’s all of it. And I don’t get a version of my life that doesn’t have you in it like this, and now I’m supposed to just figure out how to be okay with that. ”
My voice cracks hard in the middle and I don’t bother fighting it anymore.
“I’m supposed to go live in Seattle, missing every annoying, amazing fucking thing about you, while you stand there telling me I’ll be fine.”
The words start pouring out faster, messier, dragged up by the rain. The dark and the sheer exhaustion of carrying this shit for so long. I pace back and forth without meaning to, two steps one way and then back again, too wound up to stay still and too fucked up to walk away.
“I would have stayed. We could have figured out how to make the whole damn thing ours—”
For one awful second, the plea “please ask me to stay” almost breaks free. I slam it down hard and shove it back where it belongs so I don’t end up looking like even more of a pathetic fool than I already am.
“But fuck it. I’m done.”
I shove him with everything I have, both hands flat against his chest.
George barely gives ground. In the next instant, his hand catches the front of my jacket and he marches me backward, pinning me against the hood of my car. Metal rattles beneath me. Rain snaps between us in hard sheets.
He’s too close now, close enough that his breath hits my face warm against the cold. His eyes are wide, but it’s not control anymore—it’s gone. All of it.
“You think I wanted this?” His voice breaks through the rain. “You think I planned on watching you walk away because I couldn’t keep you without losing the only thing that’s kept me together?”
His grip tightens like he hates that he can’t let go.
“You’re not some project.” He shakes his head once, like he’s trying to reset and failing. “You matter, Lance. More than I know what to do with. And it doesn’t fucking change anything.”
A breath, rough and uneven. His forehead almost dips toward mine, then stops.
I know this doesn’t help either,” he says, voice rough. “But I can’t—”
His hand comes up to my jaw, and it’s shaking before he even seems to notice it. He doesn’t finish.
He kisses me.
It’s not gentle or careful. His mouth hits mine hard, months of everything we never said smashing into it.
His fist twists in my jacket while his weight pins me to the car, trying to hold the whole goddamn moment in place by force.
I grab his soaked shoulders and drag him closer.
The kiss tastes like the end of something I’m too stubborn to see die and the start of what I’m scared as hell to face alone.
Nothing is fixed. My fucking car is still dead, whatever we are is still in pieces, and the rain doesn’t give a fuck either way.