If I Fix You

by Abigail Johnson

  I flipped my hair over the headrest after we found a semishaded spot in the Sonic Drive-In parking lot and ordered two lemonberry slushes.

  So cold. So sweet. I drained half of mine so fast I got a brain freeze. Before I could process anything but the stabbing throb in my head, Daniel reached over and slid his thumbs over my temples, rubbing in tiny circles. I wasn’t expecting him to touch me, so I jumped.

  Daniel drew back. “It helps, promise.”

  He waited half a second before placing his hands back on either side of my face; the gentle pressure of his thumbs forced the ache further and further away and replaced it with a slinking sensation like cool air ghosting over heated skin.

  Only it was brutally hot both outside and inside his Jeep.

  That close, I could track the drop of sweat gliding down Daniel’s neck. He shifted his upper body and I pressed back against my seat, watching the rise of his chest against his T-shirt. I traced the slight curve of his lip with my gaze the way I used to trace Sean’s when he wasn’t looking.

  But Daniel was looking.

  Seconds had passed along with the pain in my head. What was left was the heat from his hands, the tickle of his warm breath mixing with mine, and a sudden awareness of being so close that I felt blood flush my cheeks.

  Daniel’s dark brown eyes directly met mine until they dropped a few inches to flicker over my mouth.

  “This is sort of like your breeze last night, huh?” He pulled his hands away. “I oversold it.”

  It took me a second to realize he was still talking about his brain-freeze remedy. I didn’t think he’d oversold anything. “No, it worked. Thanks.”

  I couldn’t stop stealing glances at him. I sipped my slush more slowly after that, though I did have to check a brief impulse to chug it again. Would he touch me again if I got another brain freeze? Would it feel the same? Would it feel better?

  Was I really thinking about a guy who wasn’t Sean?

  “So what do you do when you’re not fixing cars?”

  Daniel’s totally normal question brought me out of the hormone-driven thoughts I was having. I put my slush in the cup holder.

  “I run every morning.”

  “Yeah? And you like it?”

  He shifted to face me, so I did the same. “Not really.” When Daniel raised an eyebrow, I explained about Claire. “It’s just for the summer, then ideally she’ll have all the other people from the cross-country team to run with.”

  He leaned forward. “And this is ASU?”

  The smile that had been on my face at the thought of not having to run anymore stalled.

  So yeah, I knew Daniel was older than me. Not a lot older; in ten years it wouldn’t be an issue, but while I was sixteen, even a couple years mattered. And I could tell, even if he couldn’t, that it was more than a couple of years.

  “Ah, no. This would be Mountain View.” When that name didn’t register, I added, “High School.” I felt like I was admitting to having leprosy, and based on Daniel’s expression, so did he.

  He pressed back flat against his window and squinted. “Wait a minute. How old are you?”

  I’d ditched my coveralls before we left for Sonic, so I was wearing a pair of denim cutoffs and one of the shop T-shirts. I wasn’t feeling super sophisticated. “Almost seventeen.” My birthday was less than four months away.

  Daniel’s squint turned into a wince.

  “How old are you?”

  I felt every single one of the thirty-six inches separating us when he said, “Not seventeen.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Can you be disappointed by the loss of something that had only begun to flicker with the promise of existence?

  It had been only three days, closer to two since the first night we met barely counted, but already I’d discovered that I liked talking to Daniel. More than that, he was someone—maybe the only someone—that I actually could talk to. If my age meant that he wasn’t interested in being that someone, apart from anything else igniting between us, then, yeah. I could be disappointed.

  Going back to that whole I’ve-only-known-him-a-few-days thing, I was having a hard time figuring out what he was thinking.

  The drive back to the shop was not the most comfortable three minutes of my life. I didn’t say much and Daniel said even less. The only highlight was discovering that my earlier gamble had paid out: Dad wasn’t pacing the garage looking for me. If we’d been even a moment later though, he would have been.

  I’d just gotten out of the Jeep and handed Daniel back his keys when the sound of “You Make My Dreams Come True” buffeted me from behind as Dad popped his head in from the main bay.

  “Have I got a job for you— Oh, I didn’t realize you had a customer.”

  I glanced at Daniel as Dad walked over, saw no obvious answer about where we stood in his expression, and made the easy decision to just go with it. “Dad, meet our new neighbor, Daniel. He and his mom moved into the Cohens’ old house.”

  “Is that right?” Dad extended a hand to Daniel. “I’m Jim Whitaker. Welcome to the neighborhood, Daniel.”

  There was a moment—more than a moment—when I thought Daniel wasn’t going to shake Dad’s hand. He’d gone very still when Dad approached, and seemed to be having a hard time keeping his gaze from darting around the room. It reminded me of the time we found a feral cat cornered in the garage last fall. I still had the threadlike scars on one arm from when I’d tried to catch it.

  Those two little lines between Dad’s eyebrows appeared, the ones that always showed up when a customer would swear they checked their oil regularly and had no idea why their engine blew up. Somebody usually got yelled at when those lines appeared, but Dad just waited, hand outstretched.

  Daniel’s gaze lingered on me—I wasn’t sure why—and then he silently shook Dad’s hand.

  I didn’t know Daniel well enough to guess why he was being borderline rude to my dad, but I thought it was in everyone’s best interest to wrap up the introductions. I drew Dad’s attention to me.

  “I just finished replacing Daniel’s brake pads. What was it you needed?”

  Daniel made it easier for Dad to shift gears by fading back to the other side of his Jeep. The frown didn’t immediately leave Dad’s face, but it softened considerably as he answered.

  “Thought you might want to change a battery for me.”

  My brows rose in response. That seemed like a trivial request, one that hardly warranted a face-to-face conversation. Normally, Dad would just add it to the board.

  My interest sufficiently piqued, I followed Dad to the main bay and forgot everything else the second I saw the Dodge Stratus parked inside.

  I laughed. “You are dreaming, old man.” I practically sprinted back to Daniel’s Jeep.

  Dad was right behind me, Daniel’s presence in the corner equally forgotten by him. “Since when do you run from a simple battery change?”

  “Simple? Really? You actually said that with a straight face.” Dad had sicced a Stratus on me once before and I still had nightmares about it. “Didn’t you tell me that Stephen King wrote Christine after working on a Dodge Stratus?”

  Dad rubbed the back of his neck. “I probably made that up.”

  “Dad. No.” I laughed again. “No. The battery is wedged up under the driver’s side bumper. I’d have to jack it, take off the tire and the inner fender skirt just to reach it.”

  “See? Simple, you already know what to do.”

  “Yeah, leave the evil cars to my infinitely more patient father.”

  More neck rubbing from Dad, and a little smiling. “You’re always telling me you like getting your hands dirty.”

  Yeah, but there was getting my hands dirty and there was ripping my nails off trying to pry a battery from the cold dead hands of a
Dodge Stratus.

  I held my ground. Or more accurately Daniel’s Jeep.

  “I guess if you really don’t want it—”

  “I do not. I super do not.” I was aware of Daniel moving up behind me and brightened. “Plus, I need to finish up here. I’m trying to talk him into retrofitting his Jeep with an AC.”

  Dad’s flat look said he was wise to my scheme, but knew he couldn’t say any more in front of a customer.

  I grinned. “Have fun with the Stratus.”

  Dad scowled toward the vehicle in question. I knew his look was only half for show, so I took pity on him.

  “Fine, I’ll come help when I’m done, but I don’t like you anymore.”

  Dad’s grin put mine to shame. “You don’t like me any less either.”

  My smile ran out of gas when it was just Daniel and me alone again. He had the strangest look on his face, like I was an alien species or something equally foreign. It was more unsettling than the look he’d given me when I told him my age. How could what he witnessed with me and Dad be worse?

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “If you’d ever worked on a Dodge Stratus before, you’d understand.”

  Except the look he gave me said he wouldn’t.

  “So it’s just you and your dad here?”

  “Right now, yeah. There’s another guy who comes in during the cooler months to help when all the tourists are here.” I circled Daniel’s Jeep, squatting ostensibly to check each tire as I passed. “It’s actually more fun when it’s just me and my dad, no offense to Lou, but he doesn’t appreciate the Whitaker humor.” I shrugged and stepped back.

  The brakes had been whisper quiet on the test drive, and even Daniel admitted that the initial smoke had been barely perceptible.

  “Well, you’re welcome,” I said, feeling constrained by the overly polite conversation.

  The noise had picked up out front as lunch-hour traffic filled the streets. I listened to it while Daniel ran his uninjured hand through his hair and then forced both into his pockets. I did not like the smile he gave me after glancing toward the door Dad had disappeared into.

  I wanted to pretend I didn’t know what that smile meant, but I did. I liked that his hair was so inky black that it looked like nothing, like in a picture except the artist forgot to color it in. I liked the way he was still sort of surprised every time he smiled. I really liked that he understood why I’d rather sleep on top of my roof than under it.

  I liked Daniel. Or I was starting to.

  Was it better or worse that he seemed disappointed too?

  He pushed off from the wall and walked toward his Jeep. “I should get going. Thanks for the brake pads.” When he opened his door, he paused and met my eye. “I guess I’ll see you around, Jill.”

  Neither of us believed him.

  Dad was waiting for me right inside the main bay after Daniel left. “All set?”

  “Yep. He, ah, decided to pass on the AC.”

  Dad kept watching the door even after it closed behind me. “Don’t go borrowing sugar from him or anything, okay? Something seems off.”

  “Borrow sugar? Like for all the baking I never do? And he seemed—” I floundered for a word but couldn’t find one that felt right. “Maybe he just doesn’t like Hall & Oates? Nothing off about that.”

  “I’m saying let’s leave that one alone.”

  That was a new one from Dad, but not worth an argument, considering that Daniel appeared to agree with him. “I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem. He seems ready to leave me alone all on his own. The other day he decided to walk home and risk heatstroke rather than accept a ride. Or is that how guys play hard to get?”

  “You think you’re funny, but you’re not.”

  “Lou thinks I’m hilarious,” I said, referring to our very stoic seasonal employee. “Remember that time he almost smiled at my pineapple joke?”

  “That was my pineapple joke.”

  I erased Daniel’s Jeep from the work board. “Yeah, but I told it. I’m gonna see about replacing the ignition coils on the Land Rover before we start on the Stratus, okay?” The next song started, and “Everytime You Go Away” drowned out any response Dad might have made.

  CHAPTER 14

  Attempting to scrub grease out from under my fingernails was one of the more pointless things I did every day. No matter how long I worked, it always looked like I’d traced a pencil underneath. Abandoning the tiny brush, I stepped back from the slop sink and into a warm pair of arms.

  I squeaked when they tightened and swung me around. And laughed when the blind elbow I threw elicited a satisfying grunting noise. I broke free and turned to Sean. “What if I’d been holding a wrench or something? I could have seriously hurt you.”

  “You mean I could have hurt you.” Sean flattened my palm against his quite probably wrench-deflecting abs. When he flexed, I ditched the probably and yanked my hand back.

  “My point is you shouldn’t sneak up and grab me from behind.”

  “So I should just grab you from the—” Sean was already moving to slip his arms around me when Dad came down the hall.

  “You don’t want to finish that sentence, Sean.”

  Sean held up his hands and took an exaggerated step away from me. “Sorry, Mr. Whitaker.”

  Dad didn’t return Sean’s grin as he headed back to the office.

  I twisted away, my face still warm from the moment in Sean’s arms. “What are you even doing here?”

  It wasn’t that Sean didn’t come to the shop; he did. But that was before. I didn’t know how I felt about him being there anymore. I didn’t feel sick though, and that was a start.

  He tossed me a towel to dry my hands. “I thought we could hang out, maybe catch a movie.”

  I let that idea play out in my head. Me and Sean alone in his car—I could do that again. Movie theater full of people, okay. Sharing an armrest in the dark for two hours... “Um.”

  “Come out with me. We haven’t done anything besides run for weeks. Just saying that makes me want to shoot myself. Or Claire.” Sean’s dimple flashed as he slung an arm around my shoulders. “We can get the trash-can-sized popcorn you claim is too small.”

  “It is too small,” I said, trying to decide if I was okay with the weight of his arm and noticing that he smelled way too good. “So you’re bribing me now?”

  “If I have to.”

  Dad’s voice echoed from the office. “Are you touching my daughter, Sean?”

  Sean mouthed at me how does he know? but he dropped his arm. “No, sir.”

  I moved away, choosing the trash can farthest from the sink and Sean to throw my towel away. “Because if there’s a girl anywhere near you, you’re touching them.” Even if he had no business being anywhere near them. Even if he didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

  I jumped when he spoke, not expecting him to be that close behind me.

  “Whitaker. You know I don’t touch every girl who comes near me.”

  Just my mom, then? “I don’t think I’m up for a movie tonight.” I was just beginning to realize how disappointed I was by Daniel’s brush-off earlier. The last thing I wanted was to spend an evening tortured by the past and the person a part of me still blamed for it. “Why don’t you try Claire?”

  “If that’s what you want. But you know if I call Claire, she’ll make you come too.”

  He was right. Claire would make me come. But since the alternative was an empty house or evening spent on my roof with a full view of Daniel’s house, I gave in.

  Sean pulled out his phone. “Anyone else you want me to invite?”

  “Cami,” I said, because I was petty and small. And stupid.

  * * *

  Cami smiled at Sean and hugged Claire and me when we arrived at the theater,
and without a trace of insincerity said, “Thanks so much for letting me tag along. I haven’t been to the movies in forever. I don’t even care what we see.”

  Famous last words.

  Two excruciating hours later—during which time I failed spectacularly in my self-appointed quest to watch the movie and not notice every time Cami grabbed Sean’s arm or tucked her face in his shoulder—not even Cami was smiling.

  “Okay,” she said in response to the shell-shocked expressions Claire and I were wearing as we exited the theater. “That was officially the worst movie I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of bad action movies. Like a lot.”

  “This is why I voted for the animated movie,” Claire told her. “No one would have been decapitated by a shopping cart in that movie.”

  We all looked at Sean.

  “That scene was in the trailer. What’d you expect?”

  “Well, I have to go,” I said. “Thanks for the nightmares I’ll have tonight, Sean.”

  “Happy to serve. But stay—Cami was just saying we can hang out at her house.”

  I shook my head for so many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that my eye kept twitching when I looked at Sean standing next to Cami, but Claire answered before I could speak.

  “We have to run early in the morning, remember?”

  Cami looked like Claire had just stomped on her sand castle, but she recovered pretty quickly. “How about tomorrow if we meet earlier?”

  My mind blanked on an excuse. “Maybe.”

  Claire gave me a look that belonged on a motivational poster along with a slogan like Hang in There, Baby!

  Cami was great. Sean was great. I just didn’t need to see them be great together. There was nothing to feel sorry about.

  I took Claire up on her offer of a ride and followed her to her mom’s minivan.

  “That was...fun.”

  I looked at her.

  “Okay, not the movie.” Claire shook her head violently.

  I kept looking at her.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t think of anything bad to say about Cami. I tried and the best I could come up with is that she hogged the popcorn.”