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“Do you know a way we could reach out to her?” Beside me, Knox shifts closer, just enough that the side of his arm brushes mine, like he’s trying to tell me something but doesn’t want to push the subject. “Uh, for the shelter,” I tack on since I’m apparently just a big liar even more now.
“I don’t.” The previous relief falls from my chest. “But, I know some ladies in my mah-jongg group that can get it for you and I’ll bring it by the shelter sometime. How’s that?”
I nod. “That would be great, thank you so much.”
After a quick look around the store—of course we stayed longer than just to ask the question, we aren’t heathens—we slip back outside with a new historical romance for me and a book on groundhogs for Knox. If he has questions about the mention of my mom, he doesn’t ask them, but I know by the lingering tug in my gut that I’ll need to tell him about it eventually.
Just not yet.
Chapter Sixteen Knox
Felicity is sitting next to me at her aunt’s tavern, licking a smudge of pumpkin pie filling off her thumb.
It’s late enough that the tavern has emptied out except for us and the regulars nursing coffee at the bar. Riley left us, Lottie, and Walker with the extra pie slices and a can of whipped cream on the table with a warning to “clean up when you’re done, Jude is in the back if you need something.” We all immediately interpreted this as “please make yourselves at home” and gladly did so.
Walker’s half sprawled in the booth like he’s about to fall asleep, Lottie’s stealing whipped cream off all of our plates, minus Felicity’s. And Felicity is telling them how her car broke down again this week.
She bumps her knee into mine under the table, and warm shivers, if that’s a thing, crawl up my legs and settle in my gut.
She sighs and runs her fork along the edge of the plate. “Regardless, I’m going to have to save up for another car eventually.”
“I’ll place a few bets for you, love.” Lottie pats the deck of cards on the table like it’s her security blanket. “Get you that car in no time.”
Walker shakes his head at me and mouths, No, she won’t, Lot has been slowly betting less and less, focusing more on her job of coaching young bull riders and her relationship with Walker. She still always has a deck of cards with her, but she’s not looking to run holes in anyone’s wallet anymore.
“Your car will be just fine,” I reassure Felicity with my knee pressed to hers. “I’ve got her fixed up.”
“It’s just going to break down again,” she mumbles, moving her fork around in circles again.
“And I’m just going to save you and her both again. And again. And again—”
“All right, all right.” She laughs. “Whatever you say.”
She thinks it breaks down all the time because her car is a piece of crap, which it is. But I also think her running the poor thing into the ground doesn’t help either.
Every time I step foot in the driver’s seat, the gas is on E. And I mean E E. Like good luck if you make it two miles down the road E. The first time I changed the oil, I opened up the cap and waited for the flood of dirty oil and was met with nothing but sticky sludge coming out in tiny goops. When I asked her how long it had been since she got it changed, she asked, “Is that something I was supposed to do?”
Even this summer, the check-engine light kept coming on, so she stuck a Willow Creek logo sticker over it because “it felt like it was yelling at me.”
And selfishly, I’m thankful for it. Because as long as that crappy car keeps breaking down, I’m always the first one she calls.
It’s the thing that brought us back together after our weeklong drought of no talking this summer—aka my free seven-day trial of hell. After I almost kissed her, I couldn’t figure out what to say, if I should say anything, and every text I tried to type seemed worse and worse, so I never sent any of them.
But then I was on my way home from Glazed and Confused and saw a familiar curly head of hair propped outside a blue sedan on the side of a curvy backroad. I pulled up next to her and there was a list of things in my head to shout out—pickup lines, apologies, hellos. None of it really felt right.
So I did what I’ve always done with Felicity: I was just there. When no one else was, I would be.
“Come on.” I jerked my head to my truck and she nodded with a sniffle, following me the whole way.
By the time we got to Riley’s house, with my promise of towing her car and fixing it that afternoon, everything worked itself out. Maybe it was us humming along to Spice Girls from the old mix she gave me, or maybe it was just breathing the same air as each other again. Regardless, the tension between us that was as tight as a ball of tangled wires loosened on its own. And in the span of that ten-minute ride, we were us again.
I love that shitty car; it always brings us back together. And I really hope it keeps breaking down. You know, in a safe way that wouldn’t leave her stranded, but yeah.
“Knox.”
“Hm?” I turn my head from watching Felicity asking Jude if the pumpkin pie we’re meant to be sharing is vegan like Riley said or if there are indeed eggs in the filling to see Lottie is staring at me across the table.
“Did you hear anything I said?”
