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“Oh, yeah, I’ll be fine.” Ryan walked backwards down the stairs to prove the point. “Think about what I said. You don’t have to act on it, but you should at least be able to admit it to yourself.”

The screen door whacked shut between us, and I watched until Ryan was out of sight and out of mind.

Yeah, right.

Think about it.

All fucking night I thought about it.

I tossed and turned until I damn near lost my mind. I wanted to sleep, but the more those words played over in my head, the longer I laid there wide awake, watching the minutes turn over on my alarm clock. I was still lying there when the thing went off for my work day. Again, a smart person would have stayed home, but according to that logic, I may have been the most foolish person on the planet. I justified it by thinking that the distraction would be good for me, but I regretted it the moment I stepped into the shop. “You look like death warmed over.”

Christ. I hated that this girl knew me so well.

Ignoring her, I continued past the office and to the garage. I didn’t hear the door click shut which meant she was right behind me.

“Genie—”

“Just leave it!” I whirled on the spot to face her. “Grace broke up with me two days ago. I can’t sleep because I don’t know what it’s like to sleep alone anymore. I’ve never done anything on my own, so excuse me for not knowing how to handle it. But what I do know is that I don’t need to talk about it.”

Grace wasn’t the only thing keeping me up at night, but I didn’t need to admit that out loud.

Not yet.

I’d made a move to walk away when I heard, “I’m worried about you Jason.”

Damn it. I only got full-named by Charlie when it was serious. With a deep breath, I spun to face her again. “Charlie, you’ve known me for a long time. I need you to trust me when I say I’ll come to you if I need help.”

Finally, her face softened and she stepped away from the door. “Okay,” she whispered, gesturing behind me. “You mind taking that Civic around the block? They said it was overheating.”

“Sure.”

Charlie tossed me the keys and I opened up the garage door to back the little black car out of the garage. By the end of the block, the temperature gauge had crept too high for my liking, so I returned to the shop. I’d just parked and lifted the hood when my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was an unsaved number, but there was only one person with a strange area code who would be texting me.

I hadn’t been able to get him out of my head. In my hours of tossing and turning, his face was the only picture that formed in my mind. I tried to remember the last time someone had me so twisted up.

It was Grace. I remembered it like it was yesterday. She’d flipped those long, blonde curls over her shoulder, batted those thick eyelashes at me and asked to borrow a pencil.

I was hooked, walking around every day since with my head in the clouds.

Until now. Well, I still hadn’t come back down to earth, but it was for a whole other reason. The way my heart raced waiting on Ryan to answer that phone call last night was eerily similar to sixteen-year-old Jason getting his first girlfriend.

Standing there in the garage, I closed my eyes and welcomed the image that formed. His eyes were the first thing that materialized. Up until then, I’d never thought much of the color brown. But Ryan’s eyes weren’t just brown. They were like… swirling melted pools of chocolate drizzled with honey. The flecks of gold shone through when the sun hit them—that was something I’d noticed as we stood toe-to-toe outside the shop.

More of his face came into view, and my heart battered my ribcage. That cocky little grin he wore kicked up butterflies in my stomach. When my fantasy zeroed in on his mouth and the way he rolled his bottom lip between those teeth, I grew dizzy. My stomach dropped and my knees buckled.

I fumbled for something to break my fall. Unfortunately for me, that was the scorching-hot engine.

Cursing, I yanked my hand away. Still lightheaded, I swayed and toppled to the concrete. Charlie appeared in front of me as the overhead light flicked on. “What the hell happened?”

I searched for my phone, which had scattered across the floor when I fell. “I got dizzy.”

“Let me see.”

Too tired to argue, I let Charlie inspect the tender, red skin on my palm that accentuated the cuts from the mirror.

“I’m fine.” Flexing my hand hurt, but I’d survive.

Charlie knelt in front of me. “You’re not fine. Why’d you get dizzy?”