by Lucy Smoke
"Where are you from?" I ask. She shakes her head and I try a different tactic. "It seems unfair that you know about me and I know nothing about you."
She looks up. "I don't know you."
I set the bolts I’ve removed to the side. "You know I've lived in Charlotte before," I reply. "Are you from here?" She's quiet for a moment and then she shakes her head. "Where are you from then?"
She shrugs. "Nowhere important." Her expression is plain and emotionless. I hate it. The ice there freaks me out and I want to shatter it.
"Come on, Lovely," I say, "give me something to work with here."
Her head snaps up and her eyes narrow. "My name is Love," she says between clenched teeth. "Not Lovely. Since you're so keen on talking, at least get my name right."
"You don't like the nickname?" I ask, laughter in my tone. She sighs hard and looks away. "Okay, why don't you tell me about your name then? Since that's such a hot topic."
"My bio mom was a hippy," she says. "End of story." I know that's not the end of the story because there's a catch in her voice that's deeper. It scrapes the surface of her words, barely there, probably indiscernible for the average person – for someone not listening as closely as I am. There's only so much she's giving me. I'll take it all and examine it with a fine-tooth comb.
I hum as I pop off the tire, grunting as I lay it aside, and reach for the new one I've retrieved from the mechanic shop. "You said 'bio mom’," I comment as I slide the new tire into place and grab my tools to screw the bolts in once more. "Most people who make that differentiation don't have a good relationship with their parents."
"It's really none of your business," she says.
I can tell by her tone that I'm edging into dangerous territory. Something I may not want to do. Not that I should be one to judge. It’s not like I’m on speaking terms with the bitch that gave birth to me or the bastard that fathered me. I sigh and switch topics. "So, Love," I say, "why that name?"
She props her elbows on her knees and leans her chin in her hands, watching me. "Why is that so important to you?" she asks with a frustrated huff. “Was my explanation not enough?"
I shrug. "Just making conversation. It's a unique name."
She mutters something under her breath and turns her gaze away before she glances back at me. Her deep green eyes catch mine. Goddamn, those eyes are like a smoky fog, drawing me in, begging me to get lost in their depths. I almost let myself, but she still hasn't answered my question.
"Most hippies would stick to nature names, right?" I say. "Something like Daisy or Flora or Fauna? Why Love?"
She sighs deeply as if she's tired all of a sudden. "I guess she thought it was pretty. My dad said that she believed the name a person has predicts the kind of life you'll have. I guess she hoped that I would have a lot of love in my life. So, the name Love."
I hum. "Do you?"
“If I did, then you might want to rethink a career in accounting, Tax.”
I laugh as she continues watching me work from her position on the parking block.
“You’ve got me there,” I say. “No fucking way am I gonna put on a suit and tie every day.” Her lips twitch, but she remains quiet. "Who was that girl that showed up at your apartment the other night?" I ask.
There are several moments of quiet between us, and I think she's going to stop talking altogether when she finally speaks. "That was my sister, Trisha."
"Younger?" I grunt, as I put a little more muscle into turning a particularly difficult bolt. She nods. "Guess that's something we have in common then."
She doesn't reply. That’s okay. Let her have her silence – soon, I’ll break her open. My curiosity won’t let me not dive into this mystery girl. I finish attaching the new tire and slowly stand, wiping my hands on the sides of my jeans. She stands and picks up her bag. "Is it finished?" she asks.
I nod. "Yeah." I bend and heft the flat, unusable tire up and start rolling it toward the back of my Jeep.
"You're taking the other one?" She pauses next to the bumper of her car, watching me as I move it.
I shrug and turn with the tire still in my arms. "Unless you want it, yeah, I was gonna take it."
"Oh." When she doesn't say anything more, I take that as her acquiesce and I continue to my car. I settle the tire into the trunk where instruments had been stored until this morning. I'm glad Blake and Cross wanted to practice on their own today, otherwise there wouldn't have been room. I'll drop it off with Keith, the mechanic that had gotten me the new tire on such short notice. He'll likely be able to do something with the rubber.
"When do you want me to tutor Ally?" Love asks, shifting on her feet. She stands in front of her driver's side door, and I smile, feeling real amusement. Her sad – or are they hurt? – green eyes remain trained on mine and I can't help but want to kiss her to see if she’ll keep them open. I wonder what her lips would taste like. Why do I think her lips would be delicious? Like rivers and oceans of tears. Her eyes should be blue, not green. "Tax?" she prompts, and I realize I've been staring at her since she asked her question.
"So, you said you had plans tonight, right?” I clarify, crossing my arms and leaning back against the side of my Jeep.
Her eyes widen. "Is that why you were asking me what I was doing tonight?" she asks. "You wanted to know if I could tutor Ally?"
I shrug again. "Yeah, but it's not a big deal if you can't. She still has some time for the project she just started."
Her gaze turns downward. I have the distinct feeling that she's counting or organizing her thoughts, making her decision. "I can do it," she finally says, looking back up at me. "I can tutor her tonight if she needs help."
I laugh. So that's what the quietness had been. I knew she’d been lying to me. People always look to their left when they lie. It's instinctual – something I knew from a gambling father. A striking blush rises to her pale cheeks, spreading across them and down her neck. I bet it would heat under my skin and spread even further.
"Alright," I say, still chuckling, "she'll be waiting at our place any time you want to come over. I'll be home in another few hours."
She nods and gets into her car. I watch her crank the engine and back up. When she waves to me, it's forced, as if she feels obligated. I smile wider and wave back as she drives off before getting into my Jeep.
I get back on the road and instead of turning towards the first shop I went to, to get Love’s new tire, I turn in the opposite direction. Keith has two shops: one on this side of town – where the shops and department stores are, and one on the side of town that sees more graffiti than boutiques. That one was his first shop, and I know it’s his favorite.
The roads grow more and more bumpy – the springs on my Jeep picking up every imperfection. I bypass nice residential areas and tall apartment buildings into streets filled with dilapidated homes and sagging front porches. It surprises some people how close the seedy side of life is to the nice side, but never me. Part of the reason I never did well in school was because, while I had grown up with fight nights every weekend and fridges that held more booze than food, I had gone to school with kids who drove Jaguars and Porsches. Despite that, my old Jeep with the rusted front end is still one of the nicer cars in Keith's neighborhood.
I pull up to a windowless, concrete building with big, bold letters mounted over the top of the garage doors displaying ‘Keith’s Garage’. The two sliding garage doors to the side are left open as a couple of guys work on a shitty Buick and a red truck with no bed. Keith pops out from under the Buick and spots me as I turn into the parking lot. He ambles out of the garage and over to the entryway of the office, wiping his hands on a rag he pulls from his back pocket. Keith waits for me to get out and unload the tire before greeting me.
"You fuck her yet?" he asks, knowing full well who I had been with. The motherfucker wouldn't give me a deal on the fucking tire until I told him who it was for.
I scowl and drop the flat tire next to the garage's open door. "None o
f your fucking business," I snap.
"Hey, hey, hey!" he says, holding up his hands. They're still dirty despite his attempt to wipe them off. He'll probably have dirt and grease under his nails until the day he dies. "I got you a damn tire, why can't I get any information on this bitch you're sniffing around."
"I paid you for the damn tire, asshole," I say. "And I'd watch your fucking tongue when you talk about women. If I don't fuck you up for that, you know your old lady will."
He scratches his bristled chin. "Yeah, you may be right about that. Abigail don't like me cursing anyways."
"Does she make you hand over your balls when you walk through the door, too?" I snort.
He scowls and slaps me with his dirty rag. "Good thing you didn't wear your pretty boy clothes," he says. "Now it's time for phase two of your payment."
I groan. "It was just a fucking tire."
"And I gave you a damn good deal on it for this reason. I'm shorthanded today and I have a Ford Courier that needs a new set of breaks waiting out back."
"Why don't you just pull some guys from your other shop?" I ask, following him as he turns and heads back into the garage.
"They're shorthanded too. Had a couple of guys get picked up for drug possession. They ain't coming to work for me for a while." He grunts as he bends over and hefts the tire under one arm, carrying it through the garage to the back. He drops it by a pile of other rubber scraps before leading me out back.
"You gonna let 'em come back to work after they get out?" I ask. It wouldn't surprise me if he did. They'll have to eat anyway, and drug dealers and druggies are a dime a dozen on this side of the tracks. It's not like he'll have a line of applicants wanting to work in this shop. The newer shop is much nicer. Settled between a breakfast buffet and grocery store near Tega Kay, it is prime real estate. Safe for customers and staff alike.
This shop is little more than a hovel, but when the opportunity to move everything to the new shop came, Keith hadn't been able to part with this shithole. It might have also had something to do with being a good guy under all the grease; half his staff would have had to find new employment. Many of the guys walked to work, and if Keith had picked up everything and moved to Tega Kay, they wouldn't have been able to get to work on time without waking up before the asscrack of dawn.
I stop outside the garage, staring at the piles of scrap metal behind the building. Keith gestures me toward the Ford he had been talking about. "Goddamn, man," I swear, "that clunker is an antique. Why the fuck are you putting new brakes in that?"
"It used to be Abigail's old man's. She won't drive anything else. I don't want her and her pregnant ass in a wreck if I can help it," Keith admits. "I'm trying to get her to let me buy her a van or something, but she won't fucking hear it."
I swear again, circling the bucket of chipped paint and scratches. "It's gonna take a shit load of work," I say.
"You've worked for me before. I just need the brakes today and I'm swamped over there," he says, motioning back to the garage. "I can get the rest done myself tonight. She's off work tomorrow, but she'll need it this week."
I nod and move around to the front to pop the hood. I scratch my chin and sigh, glancing back at him. "You got an extra creeper around here?"
"Yeah, give me a sec." Keith disappears back into the garage and quickly returns with a padded board on wheels and a toolbox. I take the creeper and lower myself to lay back on it. He puts the toolbox down and slides it under the Ford with the toe of his boot.
"You want the brakes completely replaced?" I ask before I reach for a tool. “Or just checked out?”
"Completely replaced," he says. "I'll be in the garage if you need something."
I nod before I realize he can't see me and grunt an acknowledgement before reaching for the toolbox. "See ya later, asshole," I say. He mumbles a curse toward me in response. Just like old times.
Keith's garage closes at 7pm. I finish what I manage to get done and move back into the garage where Keith waits with two cold beers and a cigarette in his mouth. I take the beer he offers but turn down the pack of cigs he turns my way. I half expect him to comment on that last bit, but he doesn't.
Even at night, the southern air is hot as hell. Bugs swarm the flickering streetlight just outside the garage as Keith and I drag stools from the inside to the gravel parking lot. I sense there's something on his mind and I text Love and Ally, both, to let them know I won't be home for a few more hours. Love never replies, but I can see she's read my message. Ally texts me back a bunch of winky faces and some smiley emojis that I don't really understand, but it lets me know she's fine all the same.
"You gonna spit it out?" I ask, tucking my phone back into my pocket as I angle my beer up to take a sip. Keith nurses his beer quietly, patiently, and I start to get worried. I turn to him. "You’re usually a talkative motherfucker. You okay, man?"
He gives a heavy sigh into the air between us. "No." His voice is shaky, unlike earlier.
I frown, turning his way. "What's up?"
"Abigail," he says. "The fucking boys. The fucking shop. It's all too much." I wait as he takes a moment to snort out a frustrated breath. "I'm fucking drowning under the debt, man," he confesses.
"What about the shop in TK?" I ask.
He shakes his head quickly. "It's not well known enough yet. It's barely chugging along on its own. It's this one that's killing me right now, and it's this one I can't let go," he says. "If I fucking let this one go, half the crew here won't be able to find other fucking jobs. They rely on me. Abigail's about to give birth. I've gotta go on leave for a while. She's going on maternity leave for a while too, obviously. I don't know how we're gonna fucking afford it."
I'm shocked. Keith is not the kind of man to confess his finances to anyone – friend or not – and, yeah, we've known each other longer than most. I still remember him as one of the scrawnier fighters from our cage days. Two boys exhausted and hungry. If I'm honest, though, he was never much good at it like I was. His heart didn’t beat for it. Not like mine did. Those fights fed something inside of me. It let me get my anger out – my anger at my dad, my mom, the goddamn world – and though I knew it was darker than it should have been, I let myself feed on that darkness because it was all I knew for the longest time. I didn't like the kids I fought because they didn't want to be in the cage. Keith certainly hadn’t wanted to be there, but somehow, we had gotten close – I couldn’t even remember how anymore. He was just another staple in my life now, one that reminded me of bad times, but of how we had overcome those times too.
"I'm sorry, man," I find myself saying. "What can I do?"
Keith digs in his pocket and pulls out a slip of paper. It's crumpled and ripped in places, stained by coffee. I can't make out the words from where I’m sitting, and he doesn't hand it over. Instead, he sets his beer to the side, perched precariously in the gravel, and leans his elbows on his knees. He stares down at the slip of paper with haunted eyes and clenches his fists into the wrinkled paper, then shoves it back into his pocket before picking up his beer and downing the rest of it.
"Forget it," he says. "There ain't anything that can be done. I'll just take out another loan or something. Don't worry about it, man."
I watch him regardless of his words. "Give me the paper, man," I say quietly.
He stands up, nervously wiping his mouth. "You want another beer?" he asks. "Actually, it's getting kinda late, ain't it? I better head back to Abigail and you've got a chick of your own to see, I guess." He reaches for my half empty beer bottle. I pull it away and stand. He stumbles a little, and the paper falls out of his pocket. He doesn't realize until I bend down to retrieve it. When he sees it in my hand, he freezes, and his eyes go wide.
I read the scribbles and my blood ices over in my veins as I drag my gaze back up to his. "You are not doing this." The gruffness of my voice belies the amount of animosity I feel. If I was any less in control of myself, I'd be shaking. Rage builds up inside of me and spreads throughout my
limbs.
"It's ten grand." Keith's gaze slips to the ground. “I thought maybe you could just…come to…hell, fuck, I don’t know. Just come?”
I move closer, dropping my beer to the ground, letting it spill around our boots. I grab his grease stained shirt and haul him up to look at me.
"You. Are. Not. Doing. This." I'm barely restraining my boiling anger. I can't picture Keith as he is now, still as scrawny as ever, twig-like neck, balding head, crooked nose, back in the fighting scene. I ball up the flyer in my hand. It's no ordinary flyer. It's one that only passes to certain hands. Hands like his. Hands like mine.
I stare into Keith's desperate face and feel the darkness creeping back in, flooding my veins. The craving is there, begging me to come back. I look down at the paper in my fist, crumpled and torn. I silently tell myself to drop it, to throw it away, incinerate it. Another part of me, though, tells me Keith won't get another loan. Not with the loans he's already taken out for the new shop and the house he bought for Abigail and their unborn son. I close my eyes, wanting to do the right thing. If only I knew what the right thing was.
"It's going to be fine," I hear Keith tell me. "Even if I lose, I'll make a few hundred bucks. Every cent counts right now."
"Does Abigail know?" I watch him, gauging his reaction, and he flinches. That answers that. "You're not doing it," I repeat, and then in a fit of insanity – or perhaps goodwill, whatever the fuck it is, I don't fucking care anymore, because I can't let him do this – I say, "I'll go."
His eyes widen. "It's tonight," he says, shocked.
"So I fucking saw," I snap. "I'll go. I'll win. You'll get the money and you'll never fucking consider this again, do you fucking understand?"
"I can't let you do this for me," he argues.
I don't give a shit about many people. For the most part, it's just Ally and the guys. Love is only a curiosity for now. If Keith hadn't met Abigail, if he hadn't got his shit together before me, he might still be with me. But he did meet her, and he got his feet underneath him. Opened his own fucking garage, and I'll be damned if I see it all wiped away in one night. Because, looking at him, I know it would be worse than a loss and a couple hundred bucks. It'd be a hospital stay. It'd be months out of work. It'd be possible death. Everyone fucking knows that. Abigail and his son would be left alone and in debt. I can't let that happen.