“Depends,” I say. “Are you murdering a bunch of children? Because I’m not super into that.”
“Oh, no, I do my children murdering on Mondays. Tomorrow I’m checking out this car wash my dad just put me in charge of.”
“Really?” I ask,
“Yeah, I mean, we’re building it. And when it’s done, I’ll be part owner, I guess, and I’ll run it.”
“Wow, that’s actually kind of cool, isn’t it?”
He shrugs. “It’s a car wash.”
“But it’s a start.”
He laughs and leans toward me. He reaches out and takes me by the hair, pulling me toward him. It surprises me but I lean into it. “That’s right,” he says. “Building my empire one car wash at a time.”
He kisses me again, gentle and sweet. We linger there for a moment before he pulls away. I turn and slip out of the truck. “See you tomorrow,” I say.
He nods and drives off. I watch him go before turning to the manor.
The speaker crackles to life. “Where were you?”
I flinch. It’s Archie’s voice.
“None of your business, Arch,” I say. “Now open the gate so I don’t have to squeeze through.”
“Yes, Miss Lora,” he says, his tone pompous.
“Don’t be a jerk,” I grumble.
The gate jerks open and I head back toward home with a smile on my face.4DeanThe next day, I pick her up in my normal truck. She smiles as she climbs in wearing these tight jeans and this little gray t-shirt that clings to her breasts so fucking perfectly. “This better?” I ask her.
“I miss the mud,” she says.
I laugh and pull out. We chat about her family a little bit before we pull up in front of the car wash. It’s really a half-built building, but it’s bigger than I thought it’d be. “Not much yet,” I admit.
“But it’ll be yours.”
“That’s true.” We sit there idling for a long moment and I steal at glance at her body. God, she’s gorgeous. I’ve been thinking about her for years, wondering why she suddenly stopped calling, wondering why I never kissed her when I had the chance before she left for California.
I had my reasons. I thought it would be stupid to get involved when she was leaving across the country for another life. I thought we’d never work. She was rich and I was poor, and that’s just the way things were.
Except now, looking back on it, I was a fucking idiot.
That kiss yesterday woke me up. It was like coming up for air after staying under water for years.
I’ve been existing for a while now. Just existing, just breathing, just going through the motions. I’ve had girls, sure, one-night stands mostly. But after a while, even that got tiresome. My days have been the same thing over and over again. Work, home, sleep, repeat.
Now though, I feel alive for the first time in so long. Lora’s doing that to me, and I don’t know how.
“Come on,” I say, hopping out. She climbs down and follows me. We cross the street and linger behind the chain-link fence before I find an opening we can squeeze through.
“Are we trespassing?” she asks.
“Sort of. I mean, not really, but sort of.”
She laughs. “I like it. You’re so dangerous.”
I grin and nod. “Damn right. I’m always breaking into half-built car washes to steal… I don’t know. What do you steal from a car wash?”
“Suds,” she says.
“How do you steal suds?”
“Who knows. But you’ll manage to do it.”
I laugh as we walk around the building. It’s really not much, and it almost makes me more anxious to see it like this, half-built and in disrepair.
“When will it be open?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “There’s an issue with the permit I need to get straightened out. After that, I think it’ll be another few weeks.”
“When it’s done, I’ll have all our cars cleaned here every day.”
“You do that and this’ll be the most successful car wash ever.”
“Then consider it done.”
I walk a little closer, ducking through a door. We step into the building and it’s really not much more than a wooden frame.
“Okay, picture this,” she says. “Right over here, you’ll have a desk. You’ll sit behind that desk and watch your workers. You can say things like, Use some elbow grease! Scrub a little harder!”
“Why am I an asshole boss in your imagination? Can’t I just be chill and cool?”
“You’re an asshole with a heart of gold,” she says, nodding.
“Okay, I mean, that sounds decent then.”
“Right. And maybe I can work here too. I’ll be the scrubber girl.”
“I don’t think that’s a real position.”
“Sure it is. I wear a white t-shirt with a bikini underneath and all I do is towel dry the cars for tips.”
I frown and stroke my chin. “That’s a great idea actually,” he says.
“I’m not really doing that, you know.”
“No, I know, but maybe I can hire some bored girls to do it.”