“I don’t know anymore. It’s just that one minute I’m prepared to go to prison, and the next, I’m here in your apartment with you telling me I can stay with you.” I just shook my head. “It’s a little overwhelming.”
“Prison?” Jake asked. “I thought they wanted to take you to foster care?”
“And I told you I wasn’t going to go, no matter what.”
Jake looked at me with an understanding I’d never seen in anyone before.
“You sure you want me to stay?” I asked. “Knowing that I’m the type of person who was about to hurt someone else just to save herself?”
Jake took a deep breath. “Now more than ever.” He smiled. “And I just…” He hesitated. “I like the way you make the silence bearable.”
I knew instantly what he was talking about. I felt the same way.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll stay. But I’m going to sleep on the couch. I can’t let you give up your room for me.”
“No, you’re sleeping in my room.” He pointed to the door off the kitchen. He leaned in toward me, and my heart sped up. I braced myself for his touch. Instead, he leaned past me and flipped the switch behind my head, turning on the lamp next to the couch. “I’m sleeping there.”
“You can’t sleep on the couch while I take your bed. It’s not fair.” And it wasn’t. He was already doing too much for a girl he didn’t know.
“The couch pulls out, Abby, and it’s actually where I spend most nights anyway. I’ll be gone on a few trips over the next few months, so you’ll have the place to yourself for some of the time. Might as well get used to it being your room, anyway. Besides, I’m not giving you a choice in the matter.”
“What about rent?” I asked, “I can pay you—not much, but something, as soon as I can find a job.
“Rent is payable in ass and grass only, baby,” Jake answered. His eyes shone as he looked me up and down, biting his bottom lip between his teeth.
My mind told me to run, but my body wouldn’t budge.
After what seemed like forever, he laughed. “I’m fucking with you, Bee. The look on your face is fucking priceless, though.”
Was I so far gone that I didn’t know a joke when I heard one? I really needed to get out more. Or maybe not. “Come on. Let’s go get your shit off the driveway, and we can do details later.” Jake walked past me and through the front door.
I stood in the middle of the living room, too embarrassed to move. Jake had been teasing me, and I was just a huge moron who just kept embarrassing herself over and over again. It made me question even more why he’d take me in. For the first time in a long time a bit of something I was unfamiliar with crept up inside me.
If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought it was hope.
I wanted this arrangement to work out. I really did. What I didn’t want was to start acknowledging the very small voice in the back of my mind telling me that I wanted to get to know Jake better. I didn’t think it could possibly be worth the risk. I already knew I would have to work extra hard constructing my barriers around him.
What would I do if, for some reason, living there ended up not working out?
Well, I told myself. There’s always prison.
CHAPTER NINE
WE DIDN’T GET BACK ON JAKE’S BIKE. Instead, he drove us back to Nan’s in an old orange pickup truck. It took just under an hour to sort through and load up everything in the yard. That’s how little I had.
Jake and I worked in the comfortable silence I was starting to get used to when he was around. I didn’t even ask him where he expected to take everything. I wouldn’t have been surprised if we’d pulled up to a dumpster to unload.
Jake surprised me once we were back at the shop, by unloading my things into a white shed behind the mechanic bays. When we’d finished, he locked the shed and handed me a key. “All yours,” he said. I shaded my eyes with my hands from the brutal sun overhead.
“Now what?” I asked him, tucking the key into my pocket.
“Now, you make me dinner, massage my feet, become my sex slave, and clean the gutters.” He winked at me.
“Oh really?” I liked joking around with him.
“Nah. But the receptionist here just quit, so if you want a job, you can help by answering the phones for Reggie. He doesn’t exactly have people skills.”
“I don’t know if my people skills would be much better.” I wasn’t sure I even had people skills.
“Yesterday, Reggie told a woman that if she didn’t know how to care for her car then she had no right owning it.”
“Ok, I think I can do better than that,” I said. “But only because he’s set the bar so low.”
“Unless you would rather try to find work somewhere else. That’s cool, too. There’s a Hooters a few miles away. You’d look great in the uniform.” He laughed. He knew exactly what he was doing. He seemed to know the one detail that would get under my skin the most.
“Won’t your dad mind that I work here?” I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes.
“Nope. He’s locked himself in his house, doesn’t come out much. No one’s seen him in a while, and I’m not about to pay him a friendly house call.”
“That sucks.”
“It’s better if we don’t see each other, anyway. Things didn’t end well when I first left town. Shouldn’t take me long to sort out the mess of a business he’s been ignoring. Then, I’m gone again.” He stared off into the sky, his mind obviously on things that places like Coral Pines could not provide.
Back in the apartment, Jake made us both sandwiches while I sat at the counter. I didn’t realize how long it had been since I’d last eaten. I could hear my stomach growl when he set my turkey and cheese in front of me on a paper plate. He politely ignored it, although it was loud enough for the neighbors to hear.
“What do you do?” I asked. “Are you a mechanic when you aren’t here?”
“Not exactly.”
“How can you not exactly be a mechanic?”
“I have mechanic skills, but I only work as a mechanic when I am here.” Then, he asked, “Where are you from?” He took a big bite of his sandwich so his mouth was full. Both the question and the face stuffing were avoidance tactics I’d used myself. Maybe, he was embarrassed about his regular job. I didn’t push.
“Atlanta area, I think,” I answered. I was pretty sure that was almost correct, because my parents had been in and out of the Georgia State Prison system. When anyone asked, I usually said Atlanta because it’s the only city I remember in Georgia off the top of my head.
“You think?”
“I was young when we left, and we moved around a lot.”
“And why did you come to Coral Pines?” This was a slippery slope he was heading down.
“To live with my Nan.” My ability to give only vague answers impressed me.
“And why was that?”
“Pass.”
“Pass?” Jake asked.
“Yes. Whenever you don’t want to answer a question, you get to pass. I’m choosing to pass on that one.”
“Who came up with these rules?”
“My Nan.”
“So you’re just gonna take a pass because your Nan invented a game to let you slide on having to tell anyone anything?” He was a perceptive one.
“Pretty much.” I took a big bite of my sandwich. The recognition of what I was doing danced in Jake’s eyes. He flashed me a smirk.
Once I’d choked my way through more turkey than I should have shoved down my throat in the first place, I laid out a few questions of my own. “So you’re from here?”
“Yes.”
“But you left?”
“Yes.” That single-word motherfucker.
“Why did you leave?”
“My mother and brother died.” I thought I had heard that Frank’s wife and son had died, but I didn’t put two and two together that it would have been Jake’s mother and brother. I avoided apologizing for it. I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t do anything. I never understood that practice anyway.
“How?” I asked, curious.
My brother drowned in a boating accident, and shortly after my mom couldn’t process his death, so she opted out.”
“Opted out?” I asked.
“Took matters into her own hands,” he said.
“No—I know what it means. I actually use that phrase myself. I’ve just never heard someone else say it before, is all.” I sipped my Coke. “I can see why you left, then.”
“Yeah, well... that’s not the whole reason.”
“Then, what is?” I’ve never felt the desire to know anything more about anyone before, but Jake intrigued me on a level I was very unfamiliar with. If he had a diary, I would have unapologetically stolen it and read it.
“Pass,” he said smiling, using my own game against me.
“You can’t pass,” I scolded. “It’s not your game!”
“It is now.” He came around the counter to sit on the barstool next to me. He lifted his sandwich and in one bite had finished off half, laughing with his mouth full.
“You’re going to choke,” I said. Jake laughed harder and tried to swallow the food in his mouth. His eyes were watering by the time he got it all down. When he pushed away his empty plate, his forearm brushed mine. I jumped. It wasn’t just a flinch, either. I jumped high enough to knock over the stool I was sitting on and fall against the computer desk.
“Whoa, there. Are you okay?”
It took me a second to do an inventory. I was okay. It was just a brush of the arm. Nothing inappropriate. No harm done. It didn’t even burn all that much. I nodded at him and tried to catch my breath. Jake reached down and righted my stool. He patted the cushion, inviting me to take my seat again. Reluctantly, I did. I naively hoped that he would overlook what had just happened. Of course he didn’t.
“What was that about?”
“It’s nothing,” I answered.
“That didn’t seem like nothing. Was it because I touched you?”
“Pass.” I didn’t want to spend any more time on this subject, and making an excuse for my behavior meant lingering. The pass seemed like my best option.
“This little get-to-know-you lunch is really working out well.” Jake laughed. I actually laughed too. “How about this instead: since we’re going to be living together for a bit, and we are just so damned forthcoming about our personal lives, what if every day we answer one question and reveal one significant thing about ourselves? We can pass on as many questions as we would like, but at some point we have to answer. And no question can be asked twice in one day.” Jake seemed proud of these rules. I was terrified. “Any follow-up questions are allowed.”
“Like, I can ask you what is your favorite color?” I asked.
“We can ask those types of little things too, but by the end of the day you have to answer something significant.”
“Like, what you do for a living?” I offered. I raised my eyebrow at him.
“Now, you’re getting it, Bee,” Jake said. “And I’m gonna pass on that one. How did your Nan die?”
“Meth lab explosion.” It sounded downright silly saying it aloud, like it was a TV crime show instead of my life. I didn’t like talking about it, but it was public record, and in the vault of my secrets it was a relatively minor one.
“Bullshit! You’re making that up.”
“Look it up,” I told him. “Made the news and everything. Nan didn’t do drugs... well, not after the sixties, anyway. And yet somehow she wound up in a meth lab trailer in the middle of the Preserve during the bright light of day when she should have been on her way to my graduation.”
Jake threw away our plates and moved to sit on the couch. Instead of taking the seat next to him, I just swiveled to face him from my place at the counter. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Okay, let’s get one thing out of the way: let’s not say I’m sorry to one another. I hate that expression. What are you sorry for? You didn’t do anything. I’m not sorry because you lost your mother and brother. I didn’t do it.” The words came out a little rougher than I intended.
“Okay,” Jake agreed. “No more I’m sorrys. How about we just tell it like it is?”
“Now we’re talking.”
“Bee, I am not sorry your Nan died because I didn’t do anything to contribute to her untimely demise, but it still sucks.”
“Better.” I laughed.
“What’s your mom like?” Jake asked.
I stopped laughing immediately. “Definite pass on that one.” I pointed to his arm. “The tattoo on your forearm: whose initials?” He glanced down at the intricate gray and black design on his left forearm that started somewhere inside his short sleeved shirt and ran down to the top of his hand, creating an interlocking SL.
“Pass,” he answered. “How long did you live with your grand-mother?”
“A little under four years. How old are you?”
“Twenty-two,” he replied.
Jake may have had the hard look of someone who had been through a lot, and people who couldn’t recognize what that looks like might have guessed he was a few years older than twenty-two. I knew what that life experience looked like. Twenty-two would have been my guess.
Jake leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He looked like he was deep in thought until he shook his head and smiled up at me. “Who is your…best friend?” I could tell he was trying to come up with a simple question to lighten some of the heaviness of our previous questions.
“Right now?”
“Yes, who is your best friend right now?” He probably thought that this question would be one I could answer easily and possibly even rant a bit about. Most girls my age had tons of friends. He probably expected an answer about my friend, and her car, and her boyfriend, and the movies we’d seen, and all that shit.
“Pass.” I didn’t want to have to tell him that right at that very moment, my very best friend, my only friend in the entire world was him.
***
Jake took me next door to the attached garage area and introduced me to Reggie, the head mechanic. Reggie was tall and skeleton-thin, with huge ears and a crooked front tooth. He happily showed me around the building. There were two offices in the front. Jake was using his dad’s office since he wasn’t around much, and the other was the main office, which is where I was going to be working. It was small—just enough room for two filing cabinets and a little wooden desk with a yellow phone. It had a big window with plastic horizontal blinds that looked over into the three big garage bays that made up Dunns’ Auto Repair.
Cars and motorcycles were in all sorts of stages of repair within the bays. Some were in parts on the garage floor with screws, bolts, tires and rims lined up next to them, while other vehicles were on lifts with men in coveralls under them, reaching up into their mechanical guts.
Reggie showed me how to answer the phone and schedule appointments. It seemed easy enough. I thought I was going to work there in exchange for Jake letting me stay with him, but he insisted on paying me exactly what the last receptionist was making before she’d up and quit on them.
After the tour, Jake and I went back to the apartment. He made some room in his closet for my few articles of clothing. It was pretty easy, since neither of us had much. Basically, he just slid some of his stuff down the clothing rod and I hung up my few things on red plastic hangers. He told me I could use any of the drawers in the dresser, since they were all empty anyway.
“Why are you doing all this for me?” I asked. “You don’t even know me.” Jake stood in the doorway of his room and watched me fold a few t-shirts into one of the drawers.
“I don’t know,” he answered. I was surprised he didn’t take a