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“Yep. Which is why you are driving.”
“You’re going to let me drive your car?” It blurted out of me before I could really give it any thought.
“No, Gem, honey. First, no one drives my cars but me. Second, we need for your car not to be around here in the morning when everyone shows up for work if we don’t want everyone asking questions.”
“Oh, right.”
“So, let’s clean up a bit, then we can get going.”
With that, we both hopped up. He grabbed the mugs to clean. I went back to the room I was crashing in to make sure everything looked how it did when I came in, grabbed my bags, then followed Lincoln out the door, waiting for him to engage the locks, then led him toward my car.
“Holy shit, babe,” he hissed when I unlocked the door. From inside. The lock was busted for the past year. I pretty much never had anyone in my car, so it never occurred to me to get it fixed.
“What?” I asked, swiping the contents of the passenger seat–reusable water bottles, receipts I hadn’t gathered up yet, some food wrappers, a small stack of my reusable produce bags–onto the floor. “What?” I asked again when he slid in, gaze on me, smile something I couldn’t quite place. A mix of amused and almost… confused? Maybe even a tad superior.
“You’re a fucking slob, huh?” he asked, making my gaze move around my car.
As I said, no one really ever got in my car with me. As such, the passenger areas were, admittedly, a little cluttered. Alright. Maybe more than a little. My entire backseat was loaded down with discarded sweaters, a blanket, some slip-on shoes, and a box full of various things that might be needed in a pinch–a medical kit, some water, granola bars, a leash, a dog bowl. I didn’t have a dog–yet– but I had come across a stray or two in my day and didn’t have the leash or bowl to get him to my car or give him a good drink.
Maybe there was even more than clutter too. Food crumbs from eating on my way to and from work, a bit of stickiness on the center console from tea surging out of its cup.
“It’s a little messy,” I admitted, shrugging.
“I’m surprised you don’t have rats,” he grumbled, toeing a bit of garbage out of the way so he could grab the bar to scoot the seat back to accommodate his legs.
“It might not be like your factory-new cars, but if I ever found myself stranded in my car, I could survive for a week until help came,” I informed him, throwing the car into reverse, only wincing slightly at the metal-on-metal noise I had been pretending not to hear for the past two weeks, simply not able to find any more hours in my day to get the car into the shop.”
“You might need a series of shots afterward,” he added, grimacing at the center console as his forearm met the sticky surface.
“Take a breath. You only have to tolerate it for a few minutes,” I informed him as I pulled off onto the main drag. “Do you still live over on Cypress?” I asked, having known the addresses of all the team members on the common occurrence that they needed Jules or me to order something and have it sent there.
“I do,” he told me, using his fingernail to scrub at some stain on the dashboard.
I didn’t know Lincoln to be a neat-freak. Not like Finn. But I did know he was anal about his cars, something Miller especially always teased him about. So I figured the state of mine was bothering that side of him. Even though my sixteen-year-old sedan that was hardly worth more than the metal scraps it could be sold for was nothing like his insane sports cars.
It was a ten-minute drive from the main area of Navesink Bank to the quiet cul-de-sac he called home.
While I knew the address, I had never seen the place myself.
I don’t know what I had been expecting, but I somehow never imagined him living in the suburbs. Despite it being the only option outside of the center of Navesink Bank.
It somehow felt strange, though, to know that Lincoln lived there in a house on a dead-end where kids rode their bikes and neighbors compared their lawns to the one next door.
“The one straight ahead,” Lincoln told me waving his hand toward the house in question.
I don’t know why, but I pictured all of the guys at the office living in places that were maybe a little cold or sterile. Stucco outsides with lots of glass and modern furniture inside.
Everything about Lincoln’s sweet Cape Cod style home, though, was warm. Inviting. Completely unexpected.
The white wooden shakes and black shutters around the large windows, the dormer with windows on either side of the chimney, the walkway and front porch made out of uneven cobblestones, the mums in bright yellows and mauves burst into life, happy for the chill in the air, finally, it was all homey, the kind of place you could see yourself raising a family.
