Look but Don't Choke

Chapter 13

            

            Through the long glass window I watched as the mechanic tinkered under the hood of my car. I’d been lucky, he’d said. The damage was mostly superficial a couple flat tires, a broken window, and some bullet holes in the paint, no biggie! It was the bullet hole in the alternatorthat called for the mechanic—and the tow truck.

            What’s funny is that the police had used that same line. You got lucky, the police man had said. My precious yellow car had taken most of the damage. If it hadn’t of been parked there…

            But my mind rejected such thoughts. Instead I could only watch the mechanic, his head hidden somewhere under the hood, try to put one part of my life back in order. It was calming to watch something so wonderfully mundane.

            “Evie, are you okay?” Harley was sitting next to me in the hard plastic chairs sipping on a cup of awful smelling coffee that Ben’s Auto Shop had left cooling on a concession counter. “You’ve been pretty quiet.”

            “Just thinking,” I said with an air of affected carelessness. “How are you doing?”

            “Fine, thanks to you.” He leaned his head back against the wall.

            And if I’d only been fast enough to reach Sarah…

            She wasn’t even hurt that bad, but somehow, I still felt bad. I mean, it was my fault she got shoot, right? Let’s be real here, Sarah wouldn’t have gotten hurt if I hadn’t been taking my nosy ass around asking questions.

            “Evie, it’s okay.”

            “What?”

            “It’s not your fault. You didn’t pull the trigger.” He reached over and put his hand on top of mine. “And if it means anything, you saved me.”

            “Thanks.” I sighed. “…How’d you know what I was thinking?”

            “You have an easily read face. You always have.”

            “I forget sometimes that we grew up together.”

            “It’s easy to forget. You…look so different than how you did as a child.” There was an air of longing in his voice that I willfully ignored. “You remember that first summer I came home after I moved to New York?”

            How could I forget my first timid steps into womanhood?...Okay, timid is a falsehood. I was being fast as hell. “Vaguely.”

            “You remember when we had plans to have dinner that night…just the two of us?”

            It was the first time he’d ever mentioned that summer in ten years. It had always been some unspoken rule between us. That summer never happened. He never kissed me on the porch of my mother’s house. There was never any attraction. Whatever lies utilized to overlook things we—no, he didn’t want to talk about. And I’d respected that, but now…

             “Boy, what is taking so long on that car?”

            He ignored my diversions much the way the other members of his family were prone to doing. “I always wanted to apologize for that. I’d had a fight with my parents…just walked out. I’d meant to say goodbye to you, to Han and Henry, to everyone but I was such self-centered kid, you know?”