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“Me too,” I agreed, starting the car and pulling away.
We still had a few hours before it would be dark, so we opted to start the nine-hour drive to Malibu.
Willow propped her feet on the dashboard and fiddled with the radio station. She found one she liked and began singing along to the song.
I smiled at the sound of her sweet, softly hesitant, voice. For someone that approached life with reckless abandon, she sang with a quiet rasp like she was afraid of being overheard. I loved the sound of her voice though and how at odds it was with her personality.
She tapped her hands against her legs in time with the beat, and I had to chuckle to myself. If you hung around her dad long enough you found that he drummed his hands, or whatever he was holding, against everything. I remembered one of the many New Year’s Eve parties my parent’s had when I was about ten years old. Maddox had been sitting at a nearby table, drumming his utensils against his plate. Some of the older, stuffier, people watched him with disgust. My parent’s had found it endlessly amusing.
The car made a sudden noise and Willow ceased singing. “What was that?” Her feet landed flat on the floor of the car and she looked around like the explanation was floating in the air waiting for her to grab it.
“I’m not sure,” I mumbled to myself.
Smoke began to rise out of the hood and Willow cursed.
“We’re so fucking screwed,” she muttered.
I pulled off the road and into a bend between a cropping of trees.
“No, we’re not,” I assured her as I undid my belt. “I’m a mechanic, remember?”
“I seem to have forgotten that tidbit of information.” She laughed to herself and followed me out of the car.
The sun was beginning to set, making now one of the worst times possible to break down.
I lifted the hood of the car and peered under it.
Willow rounded the front of the car and rested her butt on the end.
“Find anything?”
I twisted to look at her, smiling ruefully. “In the point two seconds since I’ve looked? That would be a no.” I went back to studying the smoking engine. It was hard to see, so I pulled my phone from my pocket and flipped on the flashlight.
About that time Willow’s phone began buzzing in her pocket. She looked at the screen. “It’s my dad,” she groaned, “he has the worst timing ever.”
He certainly did. It was quite a talent. “Don’t tell him we broke down,” I warned her, “or he’ll be on the next plane out here before you can blink.”
She laughed and nodded her head in agreement before walking a few feet away and standing under the shaded cover of a tree to answer the phone.
The smoke coming out from the car told me it was likely something wrong with the radiator.
Poking around a bit more it didn’t take me long to deduce that the coolant was leaking. It would be a quick fix, but I didn’t have the time tonight considering it was getting dark and we needed to find a place to stay.
Willow ended her call and I slammed the hood closed.
“So?” She asked.
“Coolant leak.” I crossed my arms over my chest and sighed heavily.
“Is that a big deal?”
“No,” I shook my head, “but I can’t fix it now. We need to find a place to stay.”
She blew a big bubblegum bubble and looked at me blandly. “We can sleep in the car.”
I shook my head adamantly. “I’m not doing that again.”
She cracked a grin. “You don’t want to be my snuggle bunny again?”
