I set my fingers in his palm, and my tiny digits are quickly swallowed. Next thing I know, I’m very nearly catapulted into the cab. One minute my feet are on solid ground, the next they aren’t. I have never been so effectively manhandled in my life.
Levi’s shaking out his hand where he stands to the side of the open door, wiping his palm along the leg of his washed-out blue coveralls as if trying to rid himself of my touch.
Rude!
He shuts the door in my face just as I’m sputtering in offended outrage. I watch him march back around the front of the tow truck again, and I clench my jaw. The driver’s door opens, and he slides into the seat, not even having to use the runner to step up on. That loud, rumbly diesel engine is brought back to life, then he turns the truck around so Sir Galahad’s back faces Cletus’s front. He exits again without a word, then there’s banging and movement coming from behind me as he hooks up one vehicle to the other.
I look down at my hands to see if maybe I have something on my fingers and that’s the reason he’d wiped his hands after touching me. A little peanut butter left over from my sandwich at lunch, perhaps.
Nope. They’re clean as a whistle.
My lips turn down as I glance at the side mirror and watch as he hefts a hook the size of my head—it probably weighs just as much as I do—as if it’s nothing at all. I wait to see if he wipes his fingers after handling the greasy hook.
He does not.
Guess it’s just my touch he finds repulsive.
That should relieve me, right? The fact that I repel this man instead of attract him? I’m solidified in the safe zone when just a handful of minutes before I was worried about the threat of assault. That is the normal reaction. Relief. But I must have more female pride than good sense because against all logic there’s a feeling of hurt caught right behind my breastbone.
Okay, whoa. I am making way too much out of this. What does it even matter? He’s just the mechanic. The tow truck guy. The only interactions I have to have with him are right now when I need a ride into town and one other time after Cletus is fixed. That’s it. I don’t, for any reason, need him to like me.
Even if I’ve doneabsolutely nothing for himnotto like me, a small voice in my head whispers petulantly.
To keep any other arguing thoughts from being able to express themselves, I reach forward and turn on the radio, flicking through the channels until the chorus to “Good Morning Baltimore” streams through the speakers.
Two songs later, the driver’s door opens and Levi plants himself behind the wheel.
“All set?” I ask, giving him my sweetest smile.
Okay, so I may have a problem with wanting people to like me. As far as fatal flaws go, it could be worse.
He merely grunts in response and puts the truck into gear, pulling forward.
Alright, then. I may not be a curmudgeon, but I’m beginning to suspect Levi Redding is.
I half expect him to either turn the radio off or change the channel. I can’t really picture the giant burly man to be a big showtunes fan. But he doesn’t make any move toward the radio knob and doesn’t voice a single objection.
I study the man beside me out of the corner of my eye, trying not to be too obvious that I’m attempting to figure him out. I never want to jump to conclusions with people I meet. One never knows the backstory of another, what has happened in their life to shape them into the person they are or the circumstances that have led to their current behaviors. Fictional characters sometimes get a better deal than people in real life because readers are allowed to see the conflicts and motivations on the page, understand the reasons they are the way they are. Real people are too rarely afforded thesame consideration, even though we all have backstories of our own.
Jennifer Hudson is belting out a high note when I turn to the taciturn mechanic who hasn’t spared me a single glance, much less a word. “Is there another road out of Turkey Grove, by chance?”
A muscle in his jaw ticks, and he does what I thought he’d have done already. He turns off the radio, then flicks me a quick look in the ensuing silence. “No.” He turns the music back on.
“Really? Not even one that would be a super long detour but would allow someone to come and get me?”
His hand reaches out and clicks the knob to kill the music again. “There’s a Forest Service road, but it’s impassable right now.”
The lyrics to “Defying Gravity” fill the cab when he clicks the radio on.
I have so many questions. Why is it impassable? Even to a vehicle with four-wheel drive? How are the residents in Turkey Grove going to survive if everyone is trapped without the means of getting to any type of service? What amIgoing to do? If there’s no way to have anyone come pick me up, then I’m stuck in Turkey Grove for the foreseeable future.
“Okay, what about a hotel I can stay at? An Airbnb or Vrbo?”
He clicks the music off again. “No.”
I eye him and then the radio, my brows pulling down in confusion. A theory is developing but not fully formed.
He turns the radio back on. An instrumental interlude bangs out in the space between us.
