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“Cool, thanks.” I go to slide back under the car, but I’m jolted to a stop as he pauses my rolling with his boot.

“When you’re ready to sort your shit out, just let me know.”

“Is there a reason you came in here, or was it just to annoy me?” I yank the roller out from the tread of his boots and roll back under the truck as he laughs. “I can handle girls just fine, definitely don’t need you to ‘sort my shit out,’ thanks.”

“That’s not what I was thinking needs to be sorted, but good to know you can handle that on your own. Come find me when you figure the rest out.”

“Figure the rest—” My legs stretch out and I tug myself out from under the ranch truck, but Miller’s already walking away, waving me off.

“I’ll be at the main house if you need me.”

Okay…

***

Cryptic uncle messages and Felicity stress aside, once I get to the right spot, with the right attachment, the work of turning wrenches starts to take over the worry behind my eyes. The stress and tension in my shoulders slip away as I fall into the rhythm of focusing solely on the engine.

My hands move and roll on their own with each part, everything else around me blurring. It’s a tad annoying to most of the guys here—working on the engines. Having to go under the truck to find one problem, fixing it, and then eventually having to get up and check it from the top only to find out no, no…you were right the first time. I guess if you’re old and your knees have gone to crap, like most of the guys that work in the shop, it would be annoying, yeah. But there’s something so satisfying to me about the whole process.

Running into an issue, finding the problem, fixing the problem. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s tiresome, sure, and there’s times where you can’t possibly figure out why this piece won’t fit with that piece or when you drop the tiniest bolt known to man in an engine bay and have to dig a magnet around just to find the stupid thing. It’s not exactly easy, but it is satisfying.

Minutes melt to hours which melt to a whole day of solving and testing and moving and, yes, sometimes cursing and saying you’re never going to work on a Ford again only to do it anyway thirty minutes later. But at the end of the day, when you look back at your work and see what you’ve done, the things you’ve accomplished that no one else could…it feels really nice.

It’s nice, finding a need and being the thing that fills it.

The afternoon sun eventually dips outside the shop, a ray of light now so low that the golden glow is hitting me straight in the eye as I’m back under the second company vehicle—a brand-new Traverse that is less of a company car and more of a tax write-off for my mom.

I’m in the middle of detecting an exhaust leak when I hear the familiar scatter of tiny nails against tools and roll out to find the same groundhog from a few days ago looking at me curiously. And it’s not like this is a onetime thing, this is the fourth time I’ve seen the guy wandering the place, and yet no one else is ever here when he comes around.

“Seriously?” I look around the shop to find it empty. Miller hasn’t come by since he left me with the “figure it out” message a few hours ago, and Jack stopped by once around four o’clock to grab a Red Bull out of the fridge and walked right back out again. Other than that, it’s just me here. “Why do you only sneak in when I’m the only one here?”

The groundhog doesn’t answer, unfortunately. But he does scoot a little closer, only inches from my Leatherman. I pull the knife back in case his tiny talons manage to pop it open. After all the other things I’ve witnessed the town groundhogs commence, a knife-wielding one isn’t that far off.

I tuck the knife into my pocket, and with an almost meerkat level of excitement, he swings his head back and forth to the fridge.

“I told you I don’t have any good food. You’d be a whole lot more lucky if Felicity were here.”

She keeps homemade organic animal treats in a Ziploc bag in her purse at all times.

The little guy quirks his head to the side, and I squint.

“Felicity? Flick? The girl that always comes around with me.” He stares at me blankly; clearly he hasn’t met her. “Curly hair. Voice of an angel. Skin that’s been kissed by the sun and brown eyes that make your knees go weak? Trust me, you’d know her if you saw her.”

The groundhog doesn’t react much, just plops down on his fluffy butt like he wants to hear more. Nosy thing.

“You’re just like Miller, you know. Did he send you in here?”

His nose twitches.

“Listen here, I’m not going to talk about her with you of all people. And you’re not even a person. You’re a potato with legs.”

He blinks and I wave a hand toward him.

“Seriously, stop staring at me. Go…dig a hole or something. Go tear up someone’s Christmas lights again. I know that was one of you, and everyone blamed it on my friends.”

Miss Haythorne threatened to hit Ledger with a newspaper if he did it again. Lawson found it very funny.

The groundhog, who is starting to look less like a groundhog and more like a fat prairie dog, blinks. He gives another nose twitch. And another blink.