Repair Me

by Jennifer Foor

  Repair Me

  Jennifer Foor

  Chapter 1

  Skylar

  “Are you seeing what I’m seeing, Sky? This is the guy that you think you’re going to grow old with? You should be glad people sent these pictures.”

  “I don’t understand why. How could he do this to me? What did I ever do to deserve this?” My eyes were burning from the amount of crying I’d been doing. It was still a blur, seeing the pictures and coming to the realization that everything I’d believed about my happy relationship had been a lie.

  I’d looked at my cell phone at least ten times. Somehow, I wanted to believe that these were fake pictures. If three people hadn’t forwarded them over, I may have been more forgiving with his explanation.

  “He did it because he thinks with his dick. This has nothing to do with something you did. The guy is a prick and you need to get that through your head.”

  I wanted to hate the things she was saying about my boyfriend, but I knew they were true. He’d cheated on me in the worst way possible.

  Right under my nose, for everyone on campus to see.

  I just didn’t understand how he could do it. We were juniors in college. One more year to go and we had our whole future planned out. I thought his years of screwing around were over.

  I guess I was wrong.

  I would have liked to be able to think that there was some way I could forgive him. We spent the last couple years planning a lifetime together. Now it had all turned to shit. It took one keg of beer and a sorority of little sluts to ruin our relationship.

  Since I went to college out of state, the first thing I wanted to do was drive home. I called my best friends from high school and they talked me off the ledge, per se. I mean, I wasn’t going to hang myself or take a bottle of pills. I did, however, consider killing him, by ripping off his dick and hanging it on a flagpole for the whole campus to see.

  Truth be told, we’d done our share of fighting which would always start at parties and become the entertainment everyone talked about the next week. I guess what kept us in the spotlight, was the fact that my boyfriend was the captain of the soccer team. His wavy blonde hair and bright blue eyes, combined with his perfect physique made all the girls chase after him. Apparently, my leash wasn’t as tight as I thought it was. All it took was one night of me having to work late for him to whip out his dick and give it to whoever wanted it.

  I peeked at the pictures one more time then threw my phone down on the bed. I don’t know why I kept looking. The images were seared into my mind, especially the one where there were two skanks with him, on his bed, naked. One of them was blowing him, while the other was feeding him her pussy. I recognized the bedding and the poster of Vegas at night that we’d bought together while vacationing there. On the nightstand was his watch that my parents had given him for Christmas. There was no mistake about it.

  I wanted to gag.

  Who took the pictures wasn’t relevant anymore. Whether they were trying to start problems or genuinely wanted me to know the truth didn’t matter. My heart was crushed, not to mention, I was totally embarrassed. I needed to get as far away from Mack Ritter as possible.

  My roommate did her best to comfort me in such a devastating situation. She convinced me that I needed to get the hell away from this place and from Mack. After much consideration, I decided she was right. Sitting in my room crying wasn’t helping me at all. I needed a diversion, not a reminder.

  While making phone calls and messaging my friends back in my hometown, I learned that they were all getting together for a road trip out of state and heading to the beach. It didn’t take me but a second to decide that it was exactly where I needed to go to get my mind off of my cheating, now ex-boyfriend.

  I needed to get drunk enough to forget what my heart was going through.

  It took me about ten minutes to pack up the little car that my dad had given me the day I got my license. I had to admit, the sixteen year old Honda Accord was on its last leg. The passenger door had no handle and the radio hung out of the dashboard and was missing the volume knob. Every time a good song came on, I had to take a pair of pliers to turn it up.

  My father sent money for me to change the oil, which I only did sometimes. If we were low on beer money, the oil changes had to wait, because paying for the weekend entertainment was always a first priority.

  Still, it was going to make it to the beach. My car had never let me down yet.

  I’d been on the road for about three hours, my windows were down and I had the music blaring. When I say music, I mean one song. There was no way that I could hear all of the songs that played on the regular radio; most were about love and shit. I wanted to listen to songs about hating your ex.

  Goodbye Earl, it was!

  My friends would have told me I was losing my mind. Listening to one song repeatedly was definitely a sign that I was going insane, except I didn’t care what they thought. Obviously, they’d never experienced what it felt like to be cheated on and have wished for someone’s untimely death.

  At any rate, being angry kept me from being an overemotional wreck.

  A road sign whipped passed me. The beach was still a hundred miles away. The sun was beating down on my car as I drove, making it hotter than Hell since I had no AC to fall back on.

  My last bottle of water was down to the final ring and I hadn’t seen any stores on the old empty road for over an hour. I wasn’t worried. A store was bound to pop up soon. I still had a half tank of gas, so I could last until I needed to fill up again.

  Being the person that I was, I had to know what my friends were doing. While I was driving, I called them. Yes, it’s against the law, but to be fair, I hadn’t seen another car in a good half an hour. Driving through, what could have been the inspiration for Children of the Corn, I felt like I was in some horror movie where radioactive chemicals caused humans to turn into cannibals.

  I watch too many movies, apparently. Come on, those deformed people would have been no match for little kids with freaky powers.

  While still dialing, I looked up and spotted a damn fox crossing the road. It shocked me, causing me to swerve and go careening into the dirt shoulder. My car spun around before stopping in the middle of a wheat field.

  I was so shaken up; I had to catch my breath before I could assess the damage. Thinking that the fox must have had rabies to be out in the blazing sun, I was afraid to get out of the car. It took me ten minutes to gather the courage to open the door.

  Aside from my car being covered in wheat, it didn’t have any physical damage. I got back in and attempted to get the car turned around to get back on the road. Except, the car wouldn’t start. At all!

  I kept turning the key, with no result.

  After slamming my hands against the steering wheel until I was in physical pain, I searched for my phone. It had been flung around somewhere inside my car. Once I found it, I realized that I had no signal.

  “Fuck my life!”

  Once I’d considered that the fox wasn’t out there somewhere waiting to give me rabies, I grabbed my purse, phone and my keys and started to walk out to the road to try and find enough of a signal to make a call.

  I thought it would be easy. About a half mile later, while soaked in my own funky sweat, and seriously thinking about stripping down to my bra, I finally got one bar. Unfortunately, my phone still wouldn’t connect. “Shit! How the hell do rednecks communicate?” I was so frustrated!

  I didn’t know what to do. Not a single car had passed by me and I was losing hope of getting to the beach. I’d made it halfway back to the car, when a pickup truck came into view. Without regard for my safety, I ran out into the road and started swinging my arms around.

  The old, beat up red truck pulled over as
I ran up to it.

  A wrinkly elderly man, who looked like he hadn’t seen a bath in months, rolled down his window. “You lost?”

  “Hello, sir. My car broke down a little ways down the road. Do you think you could call a tow truck for me? I can’t get service out here.”

  He lit up a cigarette and blew smoke out of the window in my direction, while he looked down at my tits. I immediately felt uncomfortable and crossed my arms over my chest. I was so glad that I hadn’t taken off my tank top.

  “Why don’t you get in and I’ll take you to the shop. We can come get your car later.”

  I backed away from the truck. “No offense, but I don’t know you.”

  He rolled his eyes and started to laugh. “Have it your way!” The engine revved and he pulled away from me, leaving me standing there in the hot sun.

  What was I supposed to do? I wasn’t about to climb into some stranger’s vehicle!

  A little while later, after I cried for more reasons than just my car, I heard the sound of an engine. Shockingly, I noticed the same pickup truck pulling over to the side of the road. I jumped into my hot car and locked the doors, feeling like he was there to rape and kill me.

  It could happen!

  By this time, I’d already sweated through my white tank top, revealing my pink polka-dotted bra. I rummaged through the clothes in the back seat, but came up with only two pair of shorts. After throwing them back behind me, I wiped off the increasing sweat from my chest and prayed that I wasn’t about to die.

  As the guy approached, I finally willed myself to look up, and I realized it wasn’t the old man. This guy was built and he was hot.

  “Do you want help, or not?” His voice was raspy and I noticed his perfect teeth hidden beneath his greasy, stubbly face.

  I rolled down my window halfway. “My car won’t start!”

  He scratched his head and looked around. “Maybe it’s because you drove it into a field.”

  Was he getting flip with me? “I was trying to avoid a fox that was in the road. Sue me for being a nice person.”

  He laughed and put his hands across his chest. “Yeah, we tend to carry old ladies groceries around here. If an animal’s in the road it’s called dinner.”

  I scrunched up my face. “Eww!”

  He looked back at his truck.

  “I ain’t got all day. If you want help, I’m afraid this is all you’re goin’ to get.”

  His southern drawl was sexy as hell. If this was my last moment on earth, at least a good looker was going to end it for me. “What about a tow truck?”

  “Look, the tow truck is gettin’ new tires. I can take you back to the shop and come and get your car once the tires are on it.”

  I was still reluctant to trust someone that I didn’t know. “Can’t you just call someone else?”

  He scratched his head and took the bottom of his t-shirt, pulling it up to wipe the sweat off of his face. While he was doing it, I stared at his rock hard abs that were about as perfect as abs could get. When his shirt dropped, so did my jaw, because he’d caught me looking. “See somethin’ you like?”

  “What?” I played dumb. “Gross! No! So, how about that call?”

  He leaned on my car and got close to the half-opened window. “There’s no other company to call. The next closest place is about seventy miles from here. If you start walkin’ now, you could probably get to a payphone by tomorrow mornin’. If someone like you could survive a night alone out here, that is.”

  I put my finger on the electric window button. “I think I’ll take my chances.”

  He started walking away, saying something under his breath as the window slowly closed. I was scared, but desperate. I wondered if I could get to town and jump out of the truck without being injured.

  I figured he was just playing when he started walking away, but when I heard that old truck coming back to life, I began to panic. He was really going to leave me there, stranded.

  I grabbed my things and went running toward the road. “Wait! Please!”

  He leaned out of the truck to peer at me. The slightest smile formed in the corner of his lip. “Change your mind?”

  I hated this guy.

  I really hated him.

  Ford

  It was a hot summer and working with my alcoholic father made it unbearable at times. My good-old dad had managed to chase away my mother and drink himself into a stupor every night since. I can’t remember one single day since I was a little kid, that my dad didn’t have a can of beer in his hand. He’d even shown up at my graduation half -lit.

  I couldn’t blame him for giving up after what our family had gone through in the past year. Losing someone else ripped him to shreds. It was the reason that I had to come home. He couldn’t handle things and the bank was threatening to take everything we owned, our business and our home, away from us.

  Since I’d been back, every day had been the same. I did my job and crashed at night, thinking about my broken heart and the piece of it that was never going to be fixed. Losing a family member before they even had a chance at a life is a terrible thing. One day they were there and the next they were being put into the ground.

  I half expected my father to give up on everything. For the first couple of weeks, while I moved my things back into the apartment, he was a mess. My aunt was the reason the man had food on the table to eat. She brought him something every day before going in to work at her restaurant. Being my father’s only close sibling, I think she felt it was necessary to care for him, even when he refused to care for himself.

  For me, it meant I was a constant babysitter. Hell, I’d given up my whole future to work at a rundown auto repair shop, all because I didn’t want to lose another member of my family. College was something that I’d never finish. As the days passed, so did all of my hopes and dreams of getting out of this dead end town. No, I was going to be stuck here, every single day for the rest of my life. There was no way around it. As long as my father was alive, I had to do this for him. He may have been a loser, but he was all I had left. We hadn’t heard from my mom in years and when we did, she had the nerve to ask us for money. My sister and I were just teenagers and she had the audacity to ask us for money so that she could satisfy her need. It started with opiates, but after time, it turned to heavier street drugs. The last I heard, she was staying at some crack house with a group of people just like her. It made me sick.

  I don’t even think she knew that she’d lost a child. It wasn’t like any of us bothered to find her. Bringing her back into our lives wasn’t an option. She was dead to me and my sister.

  The emotional toll on my father knowing my mother left us to live that type of life was hard to watch. He drank to forget, or ease the pain of knowing, at least. Each day was the same. We’d head out to the shop when we felt like it and work on whatever was waiting for us in there. For the most part, we were repairing beat-up clunkers, because nobody in our little town could afford anything better.

  Even working with my father didn’t change the fact that we had nothing in common and even less to talk about. By noon he was already sucking down his beers while I continued working so I could get the hell away from him.

  When he left to pick up payment from a local farmer and came back talking about some hot piece of ass on the side of the road, I immediately became interested. It wasn’t like I wanted to be involved with anyone. Since I’d come home, I’d pushed my ex to the side, telling her that I needed time to get over my loss. She fought with me about coming home and killing my future of becoming something more than an auto mechanic. She didn’t get it. Her family was still perfect and she had enough money to never worry about losing everything, like we did.

  My dad tossed me the keys. “I got a job for you.”

  “Did Wilber refuse to pay again?” We’d been chasing him around for weeks.

  “Nah. There’s this pretty little thing stranded on the side of the road. She ain’t from around here, that’s for sure. Anyhow,
I’m thinkin’ that if you got laid, you’d stop bein’ such a dick.”

  “How I act is none of your business, old man. How would you know if I’ve had a piece of ass lately? If you saw her, why didn’t you just help her yourself?”

  He took a sip of a fresh beer that he’d just cracked open. “She refused my help and a father knows when his son is deprived.”

  “That’s her damn fault. I’m not about to waste my time, and I ain’t gettin’ into this with you. Who I screw is none of your damn business. Just be glad I’m here, helpin’ you keep this hell-hole goin’.”

  He chuckled and started walking away. “Twenty bucks says she’ll get right in the truck with you.” Obviously everything I said meant nothing to him.

  I laughed and shook my head. “Seriously? You’re bettin’ me money to help someone that doesn’t want to be helped?”

  He pointed to the truck. “Boy, when I was your age, I could hit anything I wanted. Don’t act like you aren’t the same way. You and I both know that there ain’t one person that’s goin’ to be able to help her but us. Go pick up the hard head and I’ll tow her car once I get these tires on. In the meantime, maybe you can get that head of yours right. You mopin’ around is gettin’ old. Go get some pussy.”

  I threw my hands in the air. I wasn’t interested in fucking around with some strange chick. For all I knew she was married with children and he was just being lazy like usual. “Fine! Maybe you should stop worryin’ about me and get your own shit together. You ain’t got room to talk.”

  The twenty bucks wasn’t a big deal, nor was helping some snotty little bitch. I’d dealt with enough of them while I was away. If I had to find one good thing about being home, it would have been the fact that I didn’t have to deal with that drama anymore.

  When I got down the road it wasn’t hard to spot the damsel in distress. She’d managed to drive her car into a field. Women drivers kept us in business. I grabbed my pack of smokes, tossing them on the dash and started walking into the field.

  At first, I thought that hooking up with some strange chick that I’d rescued from the side of the road was ludicrous, until I saw her for the first time. Then I began to think that maybe my dad was right. Maybe I did need a break from reality. My dick started making the decisions the moment I approached her car. I knew, if I could pull off something like this, I wouldn’t be thinking about my depressing existence.