Hendrix (Caldwell Brothers)

The look on her face is fucking priceless. Her jaw drops when she realizes I’m not talking about getting inked. She stammers as her face turns red, and I am loving it, but I let her off the hook with an easy laugh.

“You don’t have to answer. But, you did ask.” I stand up and grab the cash drawer out of the register.

“I meant the first time you got a tattoo,” her voice squeaks.

“Oh, shit, my bad, Olivia.” I turn around and wink at her. “I’m gonna go lock this up. You wanna drain the sinks?”

She is quiet on the way to her place. Not one word is said. The few times I allow myself to look over, she is yawning. When I pull up front and throw it in park, I glance over to see she is sound asleep

Shit.

“Olivia?” She doesn’t budge, so I repeat myself. “Olivia.”

She doesn’t even stir.

I sit back in the seat and decide to give her a few minutes. Power naps are beautiful things.

With nothing else to do, I look across the street and see a pile of snow on a car. It obviously hasn’t been cleaned off in a while. People don’t do that shit around here. They don’t let snow pile up on their cars unless they aren’t running. Livi’s car isn’t running.

I begin to piece it together in my mind. I rub my eyes and look closer. It’s a Chevy Camaro Iroc Z, I would dare guess. It’s a 1982, beautiful fucking car. I nearly get as hard looking at it as I do when I think about Olivia.

I sit back and watch the snow begin to fall harder, covering up even more of that beautiful car. Sometime later, I wake up to her poking me.

I slowly open one eye at a time then look at my watch. “Shit.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You fell asleep. Then apparently I did, too.” I sit forward and rub my hands through my hair a few times. “If I knew what number you were, I would have carried your ass in.”

“You would have?” Her voice is a whisper, making me immediately regret saying it.

“Hell yes, this car isn’t all that comfortable.” I look out the window at that beautiful car. “That yours?”

She nods. “Yeah.”

“Sweet fucking ride.”

“Well, it was in its day, I’m sure,” she says with a laugh as she opens the door. “Sorry I kept you from your girlfriend…”

I shake my head, and she smiles. Looking down as her smile grows, her hair falls over her face to hide it.

“I’ll see you later tonight, then?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

I drive home quickly. That wasn’t fucking cool at all. I should have woken her up. I should definitely not have told her I had considered carrying her inside. She is like fucking beer goggles clouding my mind when I am sober. There is just something about her. I can’t fucking shake it, but I have to.

Saturday night, I have Jagger fill in for me. I couldn’t spend three nights back to back around the college girl who is now in my head all the damn time.

I decide I should take a look at her car, you know, so I don’t have to take her home again. I am a strong man, but not fucking invincible. To make matters worse, she is constantly checking me out. I could fuck her just as easily as I did that chick at the fundraiser, but she seems so innocent, too damn innocent for the likes of me.

I push the snow off the car, and I shit you not, she is beautiful.

Hoping I’m not gonna have to use the slim Jim to break in the car and hot wire it, I feel along the underside of the fender and laugh. She has a hide-a-key. Of course she does, she’s a chick. She needs one. She’s lost her keys and spent more than twenty minutes looking for them more than once at the bar and they were in her jacket pocket the whole damn time.

Fuck.

I pop the hood and grab my portable jump box, hooking it up. When it has been long enough to give the battery a charge, I sit in the seat then turn the key and nothing, not one noise. No attempt at a turn over, no clicks for the starter to show it is catching. Nope, she is dead, and the cause is most likely the alternator.

I run down to the parts place where, thankfully, Roy, the owner, finds the right one. He has to blow three inches of dust off it and doesn’t promise it will work, but I take it anyway. After freezing my balls off while changing it in the dark, I get in again and turn the key.

Click, click, click, and catch.

She comes to life, sputtering a few times at the same time as the belts start squealing in the cold, letting me know there is a lot more this beauty needs. I sit back and rev the engine a few more times.