"Hi."
"I came over to thank you." She got it out in one piece and looked relieved to be rid of it. "For the taillight. And the tire. I should've come yesterday — I don't know what the parts cost, but I want to —"
"Sophia."
Her mouth closed on the rest of the sentence. Color climbed her neck.
I'd been carrying her name in my mouth since the trauma bay. I'd just set it down between us, in my own driveway, with grease on my hands, and the morning hadn't cracked in half. Something in my shoulders eased.
“It was only a taillight and a tire,” I said, gentler than I would be with anyone else.
"I — here." She held the card out across the line she'd drawn. "I brought you this. It's stupid.”
I crossed the foot of asphalt she wouldn't and took it. That put us a foot closer than she'd planned for, but surprisingly, she didn’t step back as I opened the card.
Inside, in careful blue pen, were two words.
Thank you.
That was all.
I looked up and found her watching my face.
I smiled.
Couldn't have stopped it if I'd wanted to.
"You're welcome," I said.
For a second, she just looked at me. Then her chin dropped a fraction and her gaze slid away toward the concrete between us.
While she got herself back, she was looking at my hands — the grease worked into the knuckle creases, the wrench I’d set down — and then she caught herself looking and moved her eyes to the floor of the garage instead, which had nothing on it worth that kind of attention.
“You didn’t have to fix my car,” she said, to the ground.
“No.”
“In the dark.”
“It’s when I had the time.”
“People usually ask. Before they—” She looked up. “You didn’t ask.”
“You’d have said don’t go to any trouble.” One corner of my mouth pulled. “I barely know you, and I already know you'd have said don’t go to any trouble.”
The muscle along her jaw flexed once.
“I would not have said that.”
“Sophia.”
A smile tugged at her mouth. Small. Quick. Like she thought she was getting away with something.
“I would have said it’s really not necessary,” she said. “Which is completely different.”
The smile stayed another second before she got it under control.
I found myself wanting it back.
