An Accidental Gentleman

by M. Q. Barber

  Kit exhaled a bitter laugh. “When every guy comes up short, a girl’s gotta keep looking for one that doesn’t.”

  “You were singing a—”

  “Hey, enough with the short jokes.” Perry slung a beer at the punk. “Take this and schlep your ass back to your own bay. I know you’re here snooping at my exhaust manifold. Carson’s dying to get his hands on my setup.”

  Beer in hand, glancing from Kit to Perry, the fuckwit shrugged. “Nobody’s looking up your tailpipe, little man.” He cracked the can and guzzled.

  Perry studied the two drinks he had left.

  The ginger ale came flying in, and Brian snatched the can before it would’ve smacked him in the chest. Love at first sight walloped harder. How the fuck he’d missed recognizing the feeling—and this damn punk hadn’t even appreciated her when he’d had her.

  Kit grabbed Brian by the forearm. “Great to see you, Perry. Next week, okay?” She stalked down the aisle and crossed into the next.

  Brian wrenched his arm free before they reached the gate. Fuck if he’d be dragged home like a tantrum-throwing child. The fuck had she been thinking, bringing him to her hunting grounds.

  Every smiling face they passed, every gut-busting laugh bellowing from the guys gathered around the racecars—potentially a man who’d fucked her first. Who’d fucked her at all. She’d never ask him for more than a single night. And he’d thought she wanted him to meet her friend, for fuck’s sake, not show him how little he meant to her. More fool he. Dashed hopes stung as sharp as the stench of burnt rubber.

  They crossed the parking lot. A long walk to the back. Empty spaces dotted the rows. A wasteland of spilled soda cups and program books. Nothing left but the trash.

  “Did you bring me here to wave all these dicks in my face?” Fuck. Those words, fuck, they shouldn’t have left his mouth.

  The car keys fell. She chased them to the ground, her head bowed. Scooping them up, she scraped her knuckles across the stones.

  “So what if I did?” Crouched and still, she kept her face hidden and her voice hard. “You want to drop the damn celibacy idea now, Brian?”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. Rein in the boiling anger and the stupid fucking little-boy hurt.

  She shot to her feet and unlocked the car. Yanking open the back door, she waved with auto-show model flair. “You want a go? I’m a backseat girl, doncha know? Quick and dirty, and never the same guy twice.”

  “You—” He snapped his teeth shut on his tongue. Just his luck to fall for the most frustrating woman on the planet. Maybe that’s what love was—frustration and determination. When walking away wouldn’t work and you had to commit your whole heart or forever be a coward and a failure. Except he had to convince her to commit hers, too, or his wouldn’t be worth shit.

  Katherine stood trembling. A pane of glass about to shatter. From her hand on the frame, her overly tight top-grip, an invisible network of cracks spread across a too-brittle surface.

  She’d told him. A hundred times, a hundred ways, she’d told him the fantasy of a relationship he’d pinned to his heart wouldn’t happen.

  And he’d pushed, and he’d pushed, and now he’d broken her. He ached to pull her into his arms, wrap himself around her, and promise her more didn’t have to be scary. He’d be the wax, or the duct tape, or whatever the fuck she needed to smooth the edges and hold her together until the repairs grew permanent.

  He reached for her. To cup her cheek. To soften her wide-eyed stare. “Katherine.”

  Gasping, she flinched away.

  His chest ripped open and stopped his breath. His heart’s fantasy shredded. She didn’t trust him to heal instead of harm.

  As he backed up, she guided the door shut. The latch clicked.

  “Front seats.” She looked everywhere but him. “I’ll take you home.”

  Silence filled the car. Like he’d pulled the cord on an emergency float and the thing kept expanding, stealing the unused space and the air besides. He sat with an unopened can of ginger ale on his knee as she drove and the pavement droned.

  He had ten minutes before she shoved him out the door. Less, the way she tore down the highway toward his place. They’d have lights and sirens after them at this rate.

  She clenched the steering wheel in both hands. They’d lost the easy laughter. The knee brushes. The ear-grazing proto-kisses. She should’ve been enjoying a drink in a camp chair under her buddy’s tent, the three of them kicking back and talking shit. They’d have walked away with smiles. A deeper friendship, a better appreciation of each other—a basis for more.

  Instead, he had fresh images of hell. Katherine shaking and moaning while that smug punk used her without giving a damn about her. Her calling his name when she came.

  Except—she hadn’t. Not once had she said the guy’s name. She might not know his name.

  He ought to adopt Sherwood’s old motto: looking for love in all the wrong places. They’d been drinking to the end of Rob’s relationship with—fuck, who could remember names?—with that woman who’d cheated on him years ago. Rob had sworn to steal his attitude the next time around, and he’d said his was—

  Get in, get off, get out. Never the same girl twice.

  Oh God. Queasy stomach-taste hit the back of his throat. Swallowing hard, he popped the ginger ale open. He nursed the drink with slow sips.

  A hypocritical fuck, that’s what he was. He’d told her he didn’t care about the guys in her past, and the first flipping second one showed up, he’d made a liar of himself. Laid a double standard across her shoulders. She went out and fucked who she wanted when she wanted, and if she’d been one of his bros, he would’ve cheered her.

  She glanced over three times. Little looks as he sipped. “Are you okay?”

  He would have to be. Accept what she felt able to share with him now, if she still wanted to have any contact with him, and stop pressuring her for the commitment and certainty he craved. The down-the-road when he’d wake up beside her every morning for the rest of their lives. When. Not if.

  He raised the pop can. “A toast.”

  Eyebrow flitting skyward, she tipped her head.

  “To a woman who knows what she wants and won’t stop until she finds it.” He watched her over the can as he drank.

  She slowed, taking the turn-off from the highway, and reached for the drink when the road straightened out. Her gentle tilt screamed polite sip. She set the pop in the console cupholder. “You’re a nice guy, Brian.”

  Here it came, the parade of reasons why they’d forever be wrong for each other. He choked on his laugh. “Why do I think every time you say that, you don’t mean it as a compliment?”

  Twisting her mouth, she almost managed a believable smile. “Because you’re too smart by half.” As she lowered her window, cool night air rushed through the stifling atmosphere they’d built between them. “Nice guys are more dangerous than losers. Charm hides a lot.”

  Arguing with her defined a no-win situation. Be a loser, and she might fuck him but discard him. Be a nice guy, and she’d imagine devious calculations going on inside his head. Forget boxing. He should’ve studied for the damn debate team. Reframing the issue would be the prime strategy to get anywhere with her.

  She acted as if she’d never met a truly nice guy. Bullshit.

  “You pigeonhole all guys as deadbeats and losers and say the ‘nice’ ones hide the lies better, but what about your dad?” They ran a business together. She had to have bonded with him over work, at least. “He’s still around, still with your mom, and teaching you after how many years?”

  She started shaking her head long before he’d finished talking. “Different generation. People were different then.”

  “Oh, so not all guys are dicks—just all of them under forty.” Great. In three years, he might qualify for not-a-dick status.

  Speeding up, she cruised beneath a light turning red. “Fifty.”

  Should’ve seen her sm
art-ass retort coming a mile off. He dropped his head to his chest. Busting his knuckles on the glove box wouldn’t solve a damn thing.

  “You are the most combative woman I’ve ever met.” And the first—second—first he’d loved with his eyes open. He sucked in a hard breath. “Your sister got handed a shitty deal, but other options exist. Different outcomes. Better ones.”

  She turned into the driveway leading up to his sprawling apartment complex. Seconds left at best. Another outing, another failure. The definition of insanity, taking the same actions and expecting different results.

  Slamming her hand on the wheel, she jammed on the brakes in front of the walkway to his building. “How can I know the difference? Fall in love, get married, have kids and then, what, if the guy’s hanging around five years later, he’s not an asshole? Lucky me, I picked a good one from a random, blindfolded drawing.”

  Arms outstretched, nearly touching the windshield, she bowed her head.

  “Katherine.” Fuck. He didn’t have a satisfying answer for her. Cracking a joke about her knowing he didn’t want kids would gloss over her pain. The weighty undercurrent of defeat beneath her anger. He’d reached her, rattled her, and he had no goddamn plan in place to steady her world again.

  Unmoving, she sat with the engine running and her eyes closed.

  The seat belt tightened across his chest. Stabbing the damn release, he freed himself and banged his knee on the gearshift trying to get closer. “Talk to me. Please.”

  “I need you to go.” Hollow-voiced, she raised her head and stared out the windshield. “I’m not—this conversation—I need you to go.”

  And he needed her to stay. His throat burned.

  He pulled the door latch twice before the metal and plastic let go. The door creaked out an invitation to end whatever the thing was between them. Killed before they’d been able to name it. He swung his legs out and grabbed the roof handle. His shaky bones demanded the support.

  “Brian?”

  He froze.

  Her breath hitched. “You’re more than a condom wrapper on the floor mats.”

  Her quiet, wobbly words rearranged themselves into I love you in his heart. Big, scary words fixed to drop them into another argument or send her fleeing faster than she already was.

  Staring across the well-kept lawn and the trimmed hedges, he saw nothing but the woman behind him. The one he dared not look at. “You’re not a backseat girl, Katherine.” Fuck, how long since he’d prayed—a true prayer, a plea for God to make her believe in him. “You never were. You’re the driver. You deserve to be the driver.”

  He launched out and closed the door without looking back. A glimpse of her and he’d lose it.

  One foot in front of the other, all the way to the apartment. Keep walking, airman.

  * * * *

  Straight-backed, he disappeared into his building.

  Her legs refused to ditch the car and follow him. Her throat rejected her order to open and call him back. Her fingers insisted they didn’t know how to compose a text.

  Not a backseat girl. His words, his truth, but not hers.

  After ten years of being nothing else, she wore the name with pride. Didn’t she?

  “You let a habit go long enough, and it becomes who you are.” Her voice came out rough and raw, a whisper yearning to become a shout.

  She threw the car in drive and left with less haste than she’d arrived. She’d wanted the passenger seat empty anyway. A fool’s wish. The silence accused as much as Brian’s persistent picking away at her beliefs. At her.

  Even if she wanted to be the woman he imagined her, she wouldn’t know how. Her control systems locked out the capabilities for happiness and trust in a relationship. Accepting he operated the way he claimed to without cracking the case and testing his wires for herself would be impossible. Easier to classify all men under sex-only. Simpler.

  Northbound on a rural route, she escaped the lights and traffic of the populated outskirts where the twenty-four-hour conveniences lived. The darkness, cut by no more than the twin lines of headlights, embraced her.

  Saturday nights belonged to her alone. She didn’t pick up a disposable guy every week. Hell, not most weeks. But some nights, a woman needed to be touched by hands not her own. To be surprised and delighted by unpredictability.

  Brian touched her with that spark. He made her feel desired. Her, not a set of boobs and a hole to fuck. He saw more than a faceless body. Wanted to be more than a pair of strong hands and a filling cock for her aching, thumping need.

  Sex as more than stress relief when the demands of the world got to be too much. With the men she fucked, she took control. Brian brought his own needs and creativity to the table. Sexy and furtive, he turned arousal into a partnership with his capable hands and his hot breath.

  She hit a stop sign, finally. Silly to roam so far, to blow the gas budget on aimless wandering to nurse her Brian hangover.

  He’d left the ginger ale, the open can at her side. Warm now, and going flat, with the rim leaving a hint of metallic aftertaste. Jesus. She sat at the fucking crossroads in the dead of night sampling the memory of his mouth like her nieces giggling over boys on their phones. Middle-school mentality.

  But driving home, she touched her lips again and again. Rubbing with her fingers, she imagined the taste of him.

  She showered away the clinging scents of exhaust and oil without dallying. Muted and melancholy, her faded desire lay like an ache beneath her ribs and flared as she crawled under the covers in sleep shorts and a cozy tank top. Sleep wouldn’t come, and neither could she.

  The room where she’d lived her whole life. Her closet, stuffed with nuts and bolts going back to childhood. A place Brian would never belong. Safe. Comforting. Stifling.

  She retreated to the garage, to projects lying piecemeal in neat rows on bleached rags. But the rhythms of work, too, failed to drive away the emptiness and wondering.

  The living room couch offered safe haven, as soft as the blank TV screen was silent. The cable box kept the time creeping forward in blue-white numbers. The hour crossed past three, past four, into five. Pre-dawn light filtered through the shades.

  As a door closed in the hall, she slouched into the cushions. Since the spots had invaded Mom’s vision, she liked to be the first to rise. She started her mornings with the sun, watching the parade of pastels crest the horizon. Storing them up, just in case, for the eventual day when the blackness consumed her.

  The toilet flushed and the sink whistled. Ought to check the washers again, maybe replace the valve stem this time. Mom walked soft on the carpet, but she trailed her hand along the wall as a hedge against falling, and the skip-rub-rustle led into the kitchen.

  Unseen. Kit hugged a pillow to her chest. Brian would be a spooner, for sure. All cuddly and sincere. He didn’t dwarf her, either. They might share the big-spoon duties. Trade off for fairness.

  As the coffee maker kicked on in the kitchen, she slid sideways and tucked her feet up. Back wriggled into place against the cushions, she evaluated. Brian would be firmer, and not only in his pants. He took care of himself. Boxing might have given him his toned abs and muscular arms. He’d sure seemed surprised when she mentioned learning a few moves. Before the night had slammed into the wall and burst into flames.

  They’d saved themselves at the end, though, hadn’t they? Another chance, if she dared to keep playing with fire.

  The thing he’d said about Dad staying. Mom had made a choice, and she’d chosen right.

  A fresh direction for her restless energy. She rolled off the couch, pitched the pillow into the corner, and went to learn the secret.

  The patio door stood open, the screen pulled shut to keep the bugs out. A second mug waited on the frosted glass tabletop. Cushioned chair angled east, Mom held her coffee below her nose. “I wondered if you were going to admit you were awake. If you stayed up all night, you’ll want the caffeine.”

 
Of course, Mom would’ve noticed. The couch slouch maneuver always failed. Kit dropped into the open seat and cradled the ceramic warmth. They sipped in silence as the clouds turned lavender, then pink, in thick bands racing each other to the edge of the world.

  “How did you know Dad was the right man for you?” The last time she’d started such a stilted, awkward conversation with her mom, she’d been eleven years old, and Erin had her half-convinced she’d bleed to death in seven days if she didn’t learn to flip over and walk on her hands.

  Head tipped back, gaze on the horizon, Mom smiled. “He danced with me at my cousin’s wedding.”

  “Mo-om. I know the story of how you met.” A thousand thousand tellings she’d rolled her eyes and turned up her nose at. Love. How disgusting when parents held the starring roles. “I want to know how you knew.”

  “I’m telling you.” Mom sipped slowly. Settling unevenly, her coffee mug clanked against the table. “We talked to each other. Face to face, not through screens the way they do today. We found common interests and shared values. Long before he worked up the nerve to ask me out, I knew I’d say yes.”

  Dew glittered on the grass between the concrete patio and the dark soil of the garden. Created in the night, the sparkling carpet disappeared in the morning. Fleeting beauty, burning off under the sun.

  “But how did you know he’d stay?” Some sequence of events must have revealed Dad’s worthiness. His honesty, his commitment. If Mom had traced all of the wires back to their sources and found them sound, she could use the same method to search out Brian’s faults. “That he’d keep his promises?”

  Mom twitched. She stared at Kit, not quite straight on, but with the sideways tilt that said she was really studying her. She wore a soft expression, the outer corners of her eyes and mouth sloping down.

  “Oh, honey.” She snaked her hand across the table, found Kit’s fingers, and squeezed. Strength. Mom still had it in spades, though her hands carried lines now, and her knuckles had grown more prominent. “I didn’t.”

  Nobody would take that bet. Her heart pounded. “But—”

  “Love is a risk.” Mom nodded, slow and thoughtful, her gaze distant. “A big, scary risk. If you take it, you might get hurt. But if you don’t, you’ll never grow.” Rocking their clasped hands, she swayed in the warming air. “Do you remember, you were just four—I found the kitchen stepstool dragged to the counter and the toaster missing. The door to the garage stood open, and out on the dirty slab you sat, half your father’s old toolbox scattered next to you, and a pile of plastic and metal in front. Do you remember what you told me?”