Work Me Up

I can feel his eyes boring into me, as I climb into the passenger seat. Once there, I belt myself in quickly, then clench my hands tight between my knees, my nails digging into my palms because the faint pain of that helps to keep my grounded in the present, to reassure me that I’m all right, it’s going to be okay. I’ve driven in a million cars before, and Antonio knows what he’s doing, he’s a good driver.

So was he, I can’t help thinking. He was a good driver too, and it didn’t matter, none of it mattered. My heart begins to race, and I suck in a deep breath, then another.

Antonio climbs into the driver’s seat next to me, and his gaze jumps from my face to my hands and back again. “You all right?”

“Uh huh. Totally. How were the eggs?” I blurt, trying to think of something, anything, to talk about besides me. Because otherwise he’ll ask me why I’m breathing so fast, why my body looks tense as hell, and I’ll have to come up with some kind of lie to cover my tracks.

“Um…” Antonio frowns, confused. “The eggs were fine. I mean, great. Why?”

“No reason.” I clear my throat. “Just, sometimes they can get a little dry if I fry them for too long. Just wanted to make sure they were good. Um… Radio?” I reach over to click it on before he even responds. I need some other kind of noise in the car, so that I can’t hear my own heartbeat clamoring in my ears.

Antonio finally tears his gaze from me as the music floods the car. He pulls out of the space, and I dig my nails into my palms harder, deeper. Fix my eyes on the road straight ahead of us and try to drown out anything in my peripheral vision. It’s almost meditative, in a way, like I’m drowning out the whole world.

I lose count of how many songs pass before we pull up to the garage. But suddenly, we’re there, and I survived, and the drive wasn’t all that bad after all. I still practically fling myself out of the passenger’s seat the instant we’re parked, but other than that, I’m pretty sure I got through the ordeal without giving too much away.

“Betty’s back on the front blocks,” Antonio tells me, pointing toward the garage. “Her test drive went fine. So now we just need to put on the finishing touches, and she’ll be good as new.”

“Great.” I flash him a bigger smile than I actually feel. “Then let’s get to it.”

He’s right. She really is almost completely finished. It turns out all we need to do today is add a finishing layer of paint and run through some tests of the engine. Antonio shows me how to do that with the hood popped, me observing while he sits in the driver’s seat and runs through stepping on the gas in neutral, then walks me through checking her oil and the gas tank, the coolant fluid levels, all of that.

Some of it’s actually useful stuff. The kind of stuff that I should remember from back when I got my first car, a million years ago, and my dad tried to show me all this. But at the time, I remember ignoring him. I figured I could always call roadside assistance if anything happened to the car, and besides, I had my family members to help me with any issues that might crop up.

Then, by the time I realized how important it might be to know more than that about your own vehicle… well. By then I didn’t ever want to see another car, let alone drive or own or take care of one.

My stomach tightens.

That knot only gets worse when Antonio shuts off the car again, slams the driver’s side door, and crosses around to close Betty’s hood, before he pats it once, twice, like a dad patting his kid on the head. “You did a good job with her,” he says, his gaze fixed on me, searing. Studying. “Thank you.”

My cheeks flush. “Don’t thank me,” I protest. “I’m the one who busted her up in the first place.”

He smirks. “True. But still.” He steps closer to me, until I can feel the heat from his body radiating just a few inches away. His breath tickles my cheekbones. “There aren’t many people in the world who I’d trust with my baby. You’re one of them now.”

I swallow, hard, because my throat suddenly feels tight.

And then there it comes. A question I’ve been dreading. “You want to give her a spin?” he asks. He tosses me the keys.

I reach up and catch them, but it’s just a reflex. Just as quickly, I part my fingers, let them fall to the floor in a subconscious denial. “Oh, no, I couldn’t.”