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Come on, baby. Give me the win and make him feel important.When Evan turned the key, she fired right the fuck up like the faithful old biddy she was, and for the first time, I saw Evan smile for real. I peeked at him from under the hood, noticing that he had some nice teeth and was actually pretty cute when he smiled.
By the time I slammed the hood, the smile was gone and his split lip had cracked from the effort. I threw a paper towel at him, the same one I’d used to wrap my PB&J in the other day, and made him scoot over.
“Can I drive?” he had the balls to ask.
“You know how to drive a stick? We aren’t rich enough to afford an automatic.” I slammed my door.
“No, but I can learn.”
She was the only truck I had, and half the time, I barely knew how to drive her. “You can steer.”
I worked the clutch and the shifter while he steered us out of the lot terribly. He reached over me, on the edge of the seat, damn near standing to see out the windshield. We backed into a light pole, then a recycling bin, but when we hit the sign that said LOT 62, Evan clammed up and went over to his own side.
I laughed. “That shit’ll buff out.”
“You aren’t mad?” he asked, looking at his lap and his dirty nails.
“Ha!” I barked again. “When I stole my dad’s truck for the first time, I hit the park manager’s brand-new car and got my ass whooped for it for a month. You barely hit a sign, so you’re good.” I motioned to the wheel to ask if he wanted another go, but he shook his head.
“Your dad hit you?” he asked when we were halfway to the Kane trailer.
“Hell yeah. All the time. My brother, too. Till we got old enough to defend ourselves.” I didn’t look at him. “Yours?”
“Yeah.” He snugged up his hood, and I realized it was his version of my sunglasses. “But says crying is for girls, so I’m not allowed to.”
What a douche. “You ever met Andrea?”
I knew he had. “Yeah.”
“She’s the toughest chick I know. Tell her only girls can cry, and she’ll prove you wrong. She’s made many men sob. Plus, we all cry. Who the fuck cares, right? If he smacks ya around for it, just hide it from him.” Terrible advice, but it wasn’t worth telling him to fight his dad on it because he’d lose. He was eight.
“You cry?”
“Shit yeah. For all sorts of reasons. Happy ones. Sad ones. Painful ones.” I pulled out front at the Kanes’ and honked the horn.
“I cry,” he whispered. “Mostly because I’m scared.”
Oh, holy heartbeat. I swallowed the surge of pride in him for admitting that. “We all get scared. Means you give a duck.”
“Duck?”
“Fuck. But can I swear around you?”Bit late to be asking.At least I remembered eventually.
“I swear around you.”
“Touché. Being scared of something means you have something to give a shit about, you know? Like, if you did everything without fear, it’d mean you didn’t have anything to lose. Shows you value yourself.”
His black eye squinted at me, but he no longer tried to hide it. “You’re weird.”
I’d take it.
Xavi tried to execute a hood slide, fell off the front, jumped up to stick the landing like a gymnast, and barely even balked at Evan being in the truck. He climbed in, made Evan slide to the middle, and started rambling.
“Did you ducking see that landing?”
“You can swear around him.”
“Did you fucking see that landing?”
