For one suspended second, I’m not a twenty-five-year-old man with prison stamped into his bones and nothing waiting for him on the other side of it.
I’m eighteen. Elbows braced against the engine bay of that beat-up Dodge, hands black to the wrists, head down, focused, pretending I don’t notice Skylar walking through the workshop until the sound of her steps on the concrete makes it impossible.
I remember showing her how to find the bolt near the coolant line. Covering her hand with mine, guiding it, telling her not to force it, to listen for the catch. She leaned in closer than she needed to. Her arm against mine. Bare skin and heat and that vanilla scent she always carried. I remember the smear of grease on her cheek. She never noticed it. And I stood there, wanting nothing more than to reach out and wipe it away. Press my mouth to that exact spot. Feel her smart mouth go soft under mine, just once.
I blink hard, forcing the flood of memories back.
I clear my throat. “Smells the same.”
“Cleaned it yesterday,” Rainer says.
I drag in another breath, slower this time, letting the smell settle deep into my lungs and find all the old places it used to live. Finding versions of me I am certain have been buried for good. The boy with a burning need to prove he could build something from scratch. The boy who worked until his hands bled because the work was the only thing that made sense. The boy who saved every cent, who believed love could survive anything if you just held on hard enough.
He was so wrong about that last one.
Love is not for people like me, because you only hurt the ones you love.
Rainer nods toward the open roller door. “Come on.”
I follow him inside.
Light slants through the high windows, catching the dust in the air and turning it gold. The radio’s on low somewhere, and a calendar on the wall is newer than the one I remember, a different year, a different girl, the same parts supplier who’s apparently been convinced for decades that a woman in tiny shorts is what makes a man choose brake pads.
Rainer stops and looks back at me. His eyes flick across my face once before he points toward the far bay.
“Your car is still there.”
I glance toward the far bay where he is pointing. A shape under a gray tarp.
I walk toward it. I reach the car and stop. The tarp is covered in dust. My fingers hover over the edge. Then I pull it back.
The dust rises in a cloud, catching the light, and I stare at the car beneath.
Rainer appears beside me.
“I did what needed to be done with the parts I had,” he says. “But I left most of it for you to finish. Figured you’d need something to work on when you got out.”
I look at him then.
This man had no reason to give a shit. Not one. He found me picking through his trash, and he knew what I was, and still he gave a shit anyway.
“Why?” I ask.
Rainer’s eyes narrow. “Why what?”
“All of it.”
I gesture around the garage because I don’t have the words for what I’m trying to say. There’s no clean way to point to seven years of quiet loyalty, to a car kept under a tarp, to a man whokept showing up to the visitation room until I finally said enough ugly things to make him stop.
“The visits,” I say. “The car. The room upstairs. All this. Me.”
Rainer looks at the car for a moment, then at the floor. His jaw shifts the way it always does when he’s figuring out how to say something he’s already decided on.
He nods toward the stairs at the back of the workshop. “Your old room is still upstairs.”
I go still.
“My old room,” I repeat, the words coming out flat. It’s not a question, but more like something I needed to hear again to believe.
