Work Me Up

He eyes me with one eyebrow lifted, confusion all over his features. “I could,” he says. “But don’t you want to see all of your hard work so far in action?” He turns away again before I respond. “Besides, it’s standard procedure whenever I’m fixing a car up in the garage. You get to see my full process this way, start to finish.” He flashes me a grin over his shoulder, his expression so easygoing and open, like he’s actually looking forward to this, that I can’t bring myself to pop the bubble of hope he seems to be floating in. “And anyway, it’s a lot easier to do these tests with two people. Normally it’s just me in here, so it takes me ages longer than it should.”

A weight settles in my gut. I can’t exactly leave him hanging now, can I? If it’s easier to do this with two people, and if I’ve already made him late on all his other work that he needs to be doing for clients this week, just so he could coach me on fixing his car, which I broke in the first place, I owe him this.

“Sure,” I hear myself saying, even though I want to chase that word down and swallow it back whole. “I can help.”

What are you doing, Selena?

But I tell myself it will be fine. Besides, I can ride passenger in cars. I do it all the time. Ubers, I take those a lot. In the back seat with my eyes shut tightly, but still.

“Great.” Antonio has finished lowering Betty to the floor. She was on the blocks nearest one of the big main garage doors, which he pushes a button to open now. She’s facing the right way already, and the driver’s side door luckily wasn’t damaged. Antonio circles around to it and pops it open, and I feel a little ping of relief in my gut.

But then he waves to me.

“Come on over,” he says. “I’ll need to push her out, so why don’t you steer for me?”

A ball forms in my throat. Expands. It takes me a second to swallow it back far enough to speak. “Um… don’t you want to just start it where it is? And see how she runs first?”

“I like to start them for the first time outside. Just in case.” He winks at me, then. “Standard safety procedure. Come on, it’s fun.” He pats the top of the car again, and my traitor legs start walking toward him, like my body can’t stand to disobey him for even a second, even when I know exactly how this will end, and it’s not going to be pretty.

Still, after a brief hesitation and another deep gulp of fresh air, I climb into the driver’s seat.

Antonio bustles around me, pulling the seat forward so my feet can reach the pedals. Then he tugs on the seatbelt and leans over me to buckle it. “You’ve driven before, right?” he asks me.

“Y-yes,” I answer, truthfully. I have. Just… not in a long time. But he doesn’t need to know that second part.

“Great. So, like I said, all you need to do right now is steer for me. I’ll push, and you aim for the parking lot.” He points out the large garage door, through which I can see a mostly full lot of parked cars. Probably all waiting for Antonio to get around to fixing them, too.

What is he doing spending all his time on me? I can’t help asking, not for the first or even the dozenth time since we started doing this together. But I’m too distracted by the panic firing through all cylinders of my body right now to focus much attention on that question.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Antonio calls, as he slams the driver’s side door shut. My heart kicks into high gear in response. “If anything goes wrong, just tap on the breaks,” he adds in a shout through the glass.

I can barely hear him over the sound of blood rushing in my eardrums. But I dutifully place my hands at two and ten on the steering wheel. It’ll be all right. You’re just freaking out, there’s nothing actually dangerous here. It will be fine.

Yet every time I blink, I can’t help seeing crime scene photos. Every time I inhale, I keep imagining I smell the wreckage all over again, burnt plastic and spilled gasoline, and oh, god, I can’t do this, I can’t be in this car anymore, I need to get out of here.

But Antonio has already started to push. I can feel the car rocking around me, and I startle, tighten my grip on the wheel. It’s in neutral, I realize, which lets him shove his weight into it and make the tires begin to rotate beneath me.