If I Fix You

by Abigail Johnson

  I felt the blood drain from my face.

  “So there I was,” Sean continued, his eyes narrowed at me in a way I wouldn’t have been able to conceive of a couple weeks ago, “lying to your dad and listening to him thank me—thank me—for always being there for you. Yeah. Can you believe it? He finally likes me.”

  The heat from the asphalt was wafting up and wrapping around my legs, hot and horrible, but it was nothing compared to Sean. Especially when his voice softened.

  “And I couldn’t figure it out. Why would you lie about me taking you? Why would you bother? You wouldn’t if Claire picked you up, or another friend from school or anybody really. And then I thought, maybe it was about your mom. Maybe she showed up and you didn’t want him to know. Okay, that would make sense. But, then—” Sean laughed “—the last time you saw her, you didn’t exactly welcome her with open arms. I doubted she’d risk coming to the shop with your dad there.” Sean affected a confused expression and huffed out a breath. “But maybe there was someone else you wouldn’t want your dad to know about.” He dropped his voice. “Tell me I’m wrong, Jill. Tell me you didn’t lie about me—make me lie to your dad—so you could go off with him.”

  But I couldn’t.

  “Jill...?” Sean’s eyes blurred as they flickered back and forth between mine.

  I took a step toward him, hands rising involuntarily. “I didn’t know my dad would call you. I never meant to put you in that position.”

  Sean was shaking his head. Not wanting to hear me, but I kept going.

  “It’s not like that. We didn’t get to talk after everything and we needed to talk, Sean.”

  But Sean was walking away.

  “I haven’t even seen him since then. Hey. Hey!” I caught Sean by the shirt, damp with sweat under my fingers.

  He rounded on me. “You think I care if you’re with the psycho next door?”

  My face flushed hot at his word choice.

  “I don’t.” He practically spit the words. “I did, and I got a broken nose and a slammed door for my trouble. So now I don’t care. Do what you want, but don’t lie about me to your dad. I won’t cover for you next time.”

  Hot tears scalded my eyes, but I blinked them back. “You’re so self-righteous. You didn’t do anything wrong, huh? It was all me?”

  Sean’s expression didn’t flicker.

  “You hit my—friend.” I barely tripped over the word, but Sean’s hardened look incensed me and I got right in his face. “A friend who helped his mother escape from a sadistic monster who nearly crushed her skull with a baseball bat. You hit him when he was still recovering from the injuries he got protecting her.” That got more than a flicker in response. “He told someone—me—for the first time, about his dad and how he’d been beating them. You have no idea what that was like for him, reliving that nightmare. So he got drunk and he kissed me. He knew he shouldn’t have. He apologized right before you tried to knock his teeth out.” Sean’s hostility had faded with each word I spoke. I should have stopped when he started flinching, but it was too late by then. The words rushed out.

  “That’s who you hit. A guy who was so used to being beaten that he snapped and fought back because he didn’t expect you to stop.” My chin quivered but I refused to cry. “It’s not okay what he did to you. It’s not okay that he kissed me. None of it is okay, but you act like I don’t know that. I do! You never gave me a chance to say I’m sorry, or to explain or anything. You stand there and you lecture me and you go off and say the worst things you can think of, but I keep coming back. I’m here. I was ready to talk to you, to see if we could fix us. To see if you wanted to, but you don’t. You want to pretend you’re perfect. You’re not.”

  And that old hurt, the one I’d tried to ignore for months, the one I couldn’t bear to think about because of what I knew it would cost me, choked out. “You almost kissed my mom, Sean.”

  That one cut as deep as I’d meant it to. I could see it on his face. I clenched my teeth to keep in the sob, letting only rapid breaths pass through. The Sean in front of me was my friend again. The one who maybe loved me, if Claire was right. The one who’d take any pain to protect me. But when he reached for me, I jerked back.

  “No! How could you do that to me?” I didn’t want him to answer. I’d break apart if he tried.

  I looked at his eyes, back and forth, but there were no answers, so I left without even going back for my bike.

  And he didn’t chase me.

  CHAPTER 36

  People were looking at me as I walked home, slowing their vehicles. One lady even lowered her window to ask if I was okay. I waved her off with some excuse and kept walking. It was hot and idiots honked, and I walked. One foot in front of the other, almost as fast as the tears that ran down my cheeks. I couldn’t stop them from spilling over any more than I could shut out the thoughts that made them.

  Sean and Daniel. Sean and my mom. Mom. Dad.

  More and more cars clogged the streets. I started counting them to fill my head. Four white pickup trucks, two red compacts and half a dozen gray minivans. And one green Jetta.

  I could have made a scene when the Jetta pulled up next to me. I’d run out of tears, if nothing else, but it was the sight of my bike in his backseat that made me stop.

  Sean leaned over and pushed open the passenger door.

  And I got in.

  Neither of us spoke as Sean drove me home. We even kept silent as we unloaded my bike.

  The back tire bounced on the driveway when the bike was free, and we both stood up, the Jetta separating us. What little control I’d gained from my walk and subsequent ride home—and it was very little—evaporated when I saw Sean’s hands rest on the roof of his car, all ten fingers splayed out and the knuckles turning white. He wasn’t even blinking.

  “I know you have to go to work, but I’ll come by tonight. We need to talk.” There was no question from Sean, just a simple statement of fact.

  Closing my eyes, I flashed back to Sean’s face that night I’d walked in on him with Mom. The way she was leaning much too close. The way my heart started to splinter before I even understood what I was seeing. The way a million tiny and not so tiny dreams died in the moment that I did.

  Sean was waiting for some kind of acknowledgment, so I nodded once and walked my bike up.

  We were finally going to talk about it. And afterward, maybe we wouldn’t ever talk again.

  * * *

  Dad’s truck was still in the garage when I checked the window, which given how late I was, was alarming enough to push Sean from my mind.

  “Dad?” Once inside, I made a beeline for his room, thinking—hoping—maybe he was just sick. But his room was empty. His bed was even made. I was darting through the kitchen to check the living room when he came walking through the opposite entryway.

  He was holding his phone. “We need to talk.”

  I braced myself against the fridge, almost as out of breath as I’d been after running earlier. Except it wasn’t exhaustion panting through my body. It wasn’t shock, or even fear, so much as dread. Like twisting in a swing, round and round, watching the ropes coil together, tightening, and shortening until there was nothing left to twist together. I’d been watching the swing twist higher and higher all summer, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but always inexorably closer to that point when it would spin free in a rush, trying to hurl me off.

  Except I wasn’t a kid on a playground shouting with my friends. I was a motherless girl, standing in a tiny galley kitchen watching the fluorescent light leach away what little color was left in Dad’s face. He’d been watching the swing twist too, dreading his next words even more than me.

  My hand found the fridge handle and squeezed for no other reason than I wanted something to hang on to.

  “About Mom.”

&
nbsp; Dad looked smaller when he answered. “She left a message. She wants to see you.”

  My response was a confession and an apology all in one. “She already did.” I saw those three little words physically impact him, hurt him. And I had to hurt him more. “When you were at the auction. I know what she wants. And I know why.” I bit the inside of my cheek, but I couldn’t keep my chin from quivering as I looked at him. “Dad... Daddy...it’s not true. Please tell me it’s not.” The idea that I might not be his, that he might not be mine, was unbearable. It was such a vile thing, this poisonous seed that she’d planted, and I’d fed without meaning to. I needed Dad to destroy it. To pull it up so I could salt the earth.

  But he didn’t.

  His face crumbled. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen. The worst. It cauterized my tear ducts in an instant.

  She wasn’t a liar.

  Denials screamed in my head and I was moving, staggering across the kitchen on legs that felt as worthless as Mom’s wedding vows. I wrapped Dad in a bear hug, locked the tips of my fingers behind his broad back and squeezed as tight as possible.

  “I knew when she got pregnant. We hadn’t been able to... I should have told you.”

  “No. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”

  He grabbed my shoulders and held me away from him. He came just short of shaking me. “It does matter.” I felt something rip inside at the words he said next. “She could try and take you away. Do you understand that? Do you want to come visit me on the weekends?”

  “Then we’ll leave. Oregon, remember? People need mechanics everywhere.”

  He let go of my arms.

  “Dad, remember?”

  He turned my palm up and dropped the keys to his truck in them. Dad’s blue eyes were glassy. “Go in without me. Leave the closed sign and work on the Spitfire.”

  I didn’t immediately comprehend what he was saying. It had nothing to do with Mom. Nothing to do with the new reality we suddenly shared. I couldn’t understand why he wanted me to leave when my instinct was the exact opposite. I wanted to physically hold on to him. If there was a chance that she could take me, I’d make her pry me away from Dad if it came to that. I’d make it come to that.

  I’d have sworn Dad felt the same way, except he was stepping back from me. He was sending me away. He was quiet.

  My heart was beating in my throat, so that every word had to fight to push free. “You can come with me. I’m so close to starting it. The timing sprockets came in. Don’t you want to take the first test drive with me?” We’d been talking about it for the past couple days, arguing over the music we’d play.

  Dad shook his head. “Not today. I’ll look her over tomorrow and we’ll see. You go on.” He brushed past me after that, disappearing into his room.

  Leaving me.

  Dad had never left me.

  I was going to choke or hyperventilate or worse—break down in body-racking sobs—if I stayed in that kitchen, so I found myself in the truck speeding toward the shop.

  CHAPTER 37

  When I got to the shop, I flipped on all the lights and stared at the few vehicles in the otherwise empty main garage bay, being assaulted by a potential future where I was taken from all of it. Taken, while Dad did nothing to stop it.

  Sweat pricked my forehead and neck until the heat demanded my attention. The fans whirled to life and the AC kicked on. Moving was good, so I kept at it. I dropped my iPod into the dock and vanished under the hood of my Spitfire.

  I worked straight through dinner, stopping finally to inhale something from the fridge. Shadows crept across the floor as I worked, claiming more and more of the shop until they consumed the last sliver of sunshine.

  Someone tapped my foot and I sat up so suddenly that I nearly knocked myself out. I fought off unconsciousness and rolled out from under the Spitfire, hoping to see Dad.

  But it was Claire.

  “Hey.” I rubbed what was sure to turn into a spectacular goose egg on my forehead. “Make a noise or something next time.”

  “Sorry,” Claire said. “It’s kind of loud in here.”

  With the fans and music blaring, I was watching her lips more than actually hearing her. I walked over and turned off my iPod. “Better?”

  “Much. And that explains why you didn’t hear me calling you all day.”

  Claire always looked a little out of place in the garage. Too clean. Too bright. She was searching for somewhere to sit that wouldn’t immediately destroy her white eyelet sundress. There was a wheeled stool in the corner that was half duct tape and half tattered red vinyl that she seemed to be considering before noticing the Spitfire.

  “Oh, hey! It’s got tires.” Claire smiled at me. “It looks like an actual car now.” She circled the vehicle, running her hand along the door. “When do we get to paint it?”

  No part of me felt like laughing, but I did because of course she would ask about paint. “Another week, maybe two.” And then my heart sank again. There was so much that could happen in two weeks.

  Misreading my expression, Claire came over and rubbed a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about Sean. You guys bounce back, you always do. And this...” She gestured to the Spitfire. “It’s going to be amazing when you’re finished with it.”

  I turned away and pretended to study something under the hood until I could slow the panicked rush of my blood. Because that was what it was. I was frightened of the things I knew and terrified by the things I didn’t. And there was too much space and silence in the garage. I started puffing my cheeks out and in with my breathing, but it wasn’t helping. The engine block blurred in my vision and I blinked half a dozen times before it cleared.

  And when it did, I looked again. And again. And I straightened, mentally running through all the progress I’d made that day. I’d been working for eight hours straight, so focused that I hadn’t stopped to consider that I might actually be able to start it.

  Drive it.

  Right that second.

  Before anyone else could stop me.

  The key was already in the ignition when I slipped into the driver’s seat.

  I really didn’t know. I thought, but I didn’t know.

  I closed my eyes as I turned it and let my grin spread when the engine purred to life.

  “You want amazing?” I nodded my head toward the passenger seat. “Get in.”

  The wind blew all of my fear away as Claire and I peeled out of the garage. The Spitfire roared and it was beautiful. The body was still a mishmash of flat gray and the interior was little better, but split leather was nothing as we whooped and I pressed the rebuilt engine to its limit along the empty roads by the citrus groves.

  We hit 60mph in under fifteen seconds. Claire’s grin became a little tense as she watched the speedometer’s needle climb past 80, then 90. I wanted 95 like it was life, but I let up on the accelerator until Claire raised her arms up and laughed.

  Still, the top was down and our hair was whipping and tangling against our faces in the moonlight. Driving that night was like a religious experience. There were almost no cars, no people, no noise. The streetlights made the roads glow and all the traffic lights were green, just for me. I forgot about everything as pavement disappeared under my car. We laughed like idiots for exactly 11.7 miles. The noise my car made after that was less a purr and more a death knell.

  I groaned out loud and the car rolled to a halt alongside a huge stretch of orange trees. Claire gave a halfhearted “Woo” right before I let my head thud against the steering wheel.

  “That sounded bad,” she said.

  Bad nothing. It sounded like the Spitfire’d had the automotive equivalent of a stroke. The smoke billowing from under the hood confirmed it.

  “You can fix it, right?” Claire asked after I got out and popped the ho
od.

  I let the smoke dissipate and got a better look. I answered, talking more to myself than anything. “It might be a corroded radiator sending rust into the cooling system. That would kill the water pump or possibly block the radiator. Neither means we’ll be driving away tonight, but it’s better than the alternative. If it’s a blown head gasket...”

  I checked the spark plugs, and coolant was squirting out. I slammed the hood shut and bit my lip. Hard. “There’s nothing to fix. The engine is toast.”

  There were a million details that Dad would have checked before letting me circle the parking lot. A million things that I lacked the experience and skill to do on my own. Tomorrow, he’d said. He’d check it and we’d see. But a couple weeks ago he’d said we could go to Oregon too. Anywhere I wanted to go. Today he wouldn’t even answer me.

  “I’m so sorry, Jill. I know how much this car means to you.”

  I nodded and reopened the hood to let the lingering smoke escape. It stung my eyes and scratched my throat, making me cough and sit back down in the front seat. I cared about this car only because Dad had built it up for me when I was little, saying that any mechanic worth their socket wrench had a dream car. When I’d told him this was mine, it was better than any straight A report card I could have brought home. We’d studied engine plans, he’d drilled me on specs, and we’d hunted auctions together. He’d told me sixteen was my year. For the Spitfire. For everything.

  Everything.

  And now I had less than nothing.

  “I shouldn’t have been driving this yet.” When Claire tried to console me I shook her off. “I’m serious, Claire. I could have killed us. I didn’t even check the brakes. We could be wrapped around an orange tree right now if the engine hadn’t died.”

  I saw Claire shrink back into her seat as my admission sank home.