I am not thinking about engines.
My mind keeps drifting back to Skylar in my bed. My shirt on her body. Her face soft in the morning light. The way she looked at me when she left, that particular expression as she told me she understood why I thought I had to do it, that she was still mad and needed to protect herself.
The wrench slips and my knuckles hit the metal hard.
“Fuck.”
The pain is sharp through my hand. Pain is useful that way. It shows up, does its job, leaves proof of its existence, and moves on. Women who still own your heart after all these years are considerably less efficient.
“Are you going to fix that car or keep fighting it?”
Rainer’s voice sounds from behind me, coffee in hand, expression settled in that permanent state of mild disappointment he wears when I am doing something wrong. Which, by his standards, covers a broad range of human behavior, including, but not limited to, breathing incorrectly.
He comes to stand beside the bay and looks at me. “What’s wrong with you today?”
“Nothing.”
“You might want to tell your face that.”
I pick the wrench back up.
He leans forward and examines my hand. A thin red line gapes across my knuckle, bright against the grease.
“Bleeding?”
“No.”
He gives me the flat look. The one that hasn’t changed since I have known him and will probably never change as I continue to know him.
“Clean it,” he says.
“It’s just a scratch.”
“Clean it, Zane.”
I stare at him.
He stares back.
I wipe the blood with the rag hanging from my back pocket.
Rainer’s eyes narrow. “That was not cleaning it.”
He doesn’t move.
Which means he has decided to stand exactly where he is until I crack, a strategy that has worked on me more times than I will ever admit out loud.
It takes twenty-eight seconds.
“You gonna hover all day?” I ask.
He sets his coffee on the bench beside me and crosses his arms.
“I get that you’re pissed, Zane. Sometimes it takes time. But you should know that an apology is not a receipt, kid. You don’t hand it over and get something back.”
“I know that.”
“Then act like it.”
