Beck
I’ve been under a Chevy Silverado for forty minutes when I hear the front door scrape open.
The door sticks. Has for years. I keep meaning to plane it down and never do, because the scrape gives me a two-second warning before anyone walks in. Two seconds is enough to decide whether I want to deal with them.
“Hello?”
My wrench stops moving.
I know that voice. Bright, warm, slightly too cheerful for the situation. The girl from the phone. The one who described a dead e-bike as “the green kind” and then laughed at herself so hard, I had to hold the phone away from my ear.
I’ve thought about that laugh exactly twice since she hung up.
Okay, maybe three times.
“Back here,” I say from under the truck.
Wheels squeak across the concrete. The e-bike. She actually brought it. I wasn’t sure she would. People say they’ll bring things in all the time and then call someone else. Someone closer. Someone who answers the phone with more than one word.
“Beck?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s Callie. From the wrong number.”
“I know.”
I roll out from under the Silverado and sit up on the creeper, wiping my hands on the rag I keep in my back pocket.
I look at the e-bike first. Force of habit.
Mid-range pedal-assist, Shimano motor, probably three years old based on the frame design.
The display unit is dark. Battery casing looks fine from here.
Then I look at her.
She’s wearing a T-shirt with the outfitter logo on it, knotted at the side.
Shorts. Trail runners. Her hair is pulled back but not all the way, like she started a ponytail and got distracted halfway through.
She has a stack of coupons in one hand and the e-bike handlebar in the other, and she’s smiling at me the way people smile at dogs they’re not sure about. Friendly, but cautious.
My pulse does something I don’t authorize it to do.
I stand up. “Let me see it.”
“Good morning to you too.”
I take the bike from her without responding and wheel it toward the bench. I can feel her watching me, which makes my hands less steady than they should be, which pisses me off.
“So this is your shop,” she says behind me. I hear her footsteps, slow, wandering. She’s looking around. “It’s very…mechanical.”
“It’s a mechanic’s shop.”
“I meant it as a compliment. There are a lot of tools. Very organized. I respect a system.”
I flip the bike and rest it on the handlebars and seat so I can get at the motor housing. “You said it died this morning.”
“This morning is when we couldn’t get it to turn on. But a rental customer brought it back yesterday saying it cut out halfway up the pass trail.”
“Halfway up?”
“That’s what they said.”
“Uphill under load is when the controller works hardest.” I unscrew the motor casing and check the wiring. Clean. No obvious shorts. I pull the battery and test the contacts with my multimeter. Full charge, solid connection. “Battery’s fine.”
“I told you I checked it.”
I glance up. She’s leaning against the doorframe of the shop bay, arms crossed, coupons tucked under one elbow. Still smiling, but the smile has shifted. Less cautious now. More like she’s settling in.
I look away and focus on the controller board. There it is. A burnt trace on the PCB, barely visible unless you know where to look. The MOSFET has blown. Probably an overcurrent event on that uphill climb.
“Found it,” I say.
“Already?”
“Controller board is fried. There’s a blown MOSFET on the circuit board. The bike pulled too much current going uphill, and the component failed.”
She pushes off the doorframe and walks over. Closer than I expect. She smells like something tropical. Pineapple, maybe.
“Can you fix it?”
“I need to order the board. It’s a specific unit for this motor. Two, maybe three days.”
“So I have to come back.”
“Unless you want to leave it here, and I’ll call you when it’s done.”
She tilts her head. “And miss all this riveting conversation? No way.”
Something in my jaw tightens. Not irritation. Something worse. Something that feels close to want, which I don’t have time for and haven’t asked for.
“I’ll call you,” I say. “When the part comes in.”
“Or I could just stop by. I’m right at the Trading Post. It’s a two-minute walk.”
“I know where the Trading Post is.”
“I know you know. I’ve seen you.”
That stops me. I look at her.
“At the Trading Post,” she says. “You walk through every morning. Past me, into Lea’s, back out with your coffee. You don’t talk to anyone, and you leave.”
I don’t know what to do with the fact that she’s noticed me. I go to Lea’s every morning because the coffee is good and the walk from the shop clears my head. Lea never makes small talk unless you start it first. I haven’t considered that anyone is watching.
“I wasn’t stalking you,” she adds. “I hand out coupons near the entrance. I see everyone who walks through.”
“Right.”
“You never take a coupon.”
“I don’t need outdoor gear.”
“Everyone needs outdoor gear. You live in the mountains.”
“I live in this shop.”
She laughs. That same laugh from the phone. Open and unguarded and completely out of proportion to what I’ve said, which isn’t funny.
I’m serious. I practically do live in this shop. The fire district calls me when apparatus needs work, half the trucks on Prospect Street end up in my bay at some point, and the ski patrol has me on speed dial for snowmobile repairs from November through April.
But she laughs, and my stupid pulse does the thing again, and I turn back to the e-bike so she won’t see whatever is happening on my face.
“I’ll order the part today,” I say. “Should be here by Thursday. I’ll give you a call when it’s ready.”
“Thursday. I’ll stop by Thursday.”
“I said I’d call.”
“And I said I’d stop by.” She picks up her coupons from my workbench where she set them down. When did she set them down? “Thanks, Beck. For looking at it. I know we’re not technically your customer.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It matters a little. You could’ve told me to call the right number.”
She’s right about that. I could’ve told her on the phone yesterday that she had the wrong shop and hung up and gone back to the Silverado’s oil pan and never thought about her voice again.
I hadn’t done that.
“Thursday,” I say.
She grins at me, wide and easy and completely unfair, and walks out of my shop with her stack of coupons and her half-finished ponytail and the smell of coffee and whatever that tropical thing is that I’m definitely not going to think about.
The door scrapes shut behind her.
I stand there, hands covered in grease, staring at the dead e-bike on my bench, and I know two things with absolute certainty. The first is that the controller board is going to take two days to ship, and they’re going to be the longest two days of my life.
The second is that I’m in trouble.