Mechanic Next Door Page 4

  Nothing’s funny about this, though. I put the paper back into the bag covertly and return to the house, my feet feeling heavier than they did before.

  “Here’s your bag,” I say, dropping it on the coffee table, deciding not to say anything right now. She isn’t hanging off a pole at an actual strip club. If she were, I’d know. Someone would have brought it to my attention. I know she’d never do that. I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with it.

  It just isn’t her.

  I’ve told her enough times before that she can’t be wearing her cut-off shorts. I’ve told her that she needs to keep herself covered up. But it’s not right for me to be so controlling, and there’s going to come a point when she starts dating men who are going to ask certain things of her. There’s also going to come a point when she’s going to find a nice man to settle down, and whether he asks things of her or not, she’s going to settle down with someone some time. Get her life started. Start a family.

  I push it away. This is all a discussion for some other time. I don’t want to focus on anything other than getting her well as soon as I can.

  And that means not prying into her business. As much as I want to. As much as her business really is my business, too, because that’s how it works when you care about someone. When that someone comes into your life by luck or by happenstance and changes everything about you.

  When she moved in with her grandfather three years ago, she was just a rising senior in high school. She’d had the tragedy of losing both parents, and she needed a place to live. I think back on how her grandfather was so thankful to have her come live with him.

  Imagine that - an old man, who hadn’t had a good relationship with his own daughter, got a second chance to be a parental figure. It makes my heart break and smile at the same damn time.

  “Hey,” I say as I take a seat next to Peach. “What do you say we go down to the lake again as soon as your ankle is all heeled up?”

  “I’d love that,” she says before taking a long pull of her beer.

  She didn’t just give her grandfather a renewed sense of purpose, though. She also gave me a renewed sense of purpose.

  There was something so sweet about her. She made me change my behaviors in little ways, ways that I barely even noticed, ways that were so imperceptible and subtle that I didn’t realize they were happened as they happened. I only realized how much she’d made me change when Ray brought it to my attention one night in the shop over a few cold beers.

  He told me I wasn’t going out with as many women as I used to. He said he hadn’t heard from any more of his sister’s girlfriends that I went out with them and didn’t call.

  Okay, that one wasn’t my fault. We were only together one time, and I was clear with her that I didn’t want anything more. She seemed to agree with my approach at the time, but apparently she thought she’d be able to break me down if she kept showing up at the garage. I let her down as easily as I could. I don’t like to see a woman upset, and of course I don’t like it when I know it’s my fault, and despite all my best intentions, she was upset whether I liked it or not.

  And Ray’s observation did get me to thinking. And when I thought about it, I realized that I wanted to be better because Peach was watching me. She looked up to me. Then I stumbled upon a different realization, one that made me a little nervous: what if I was cleaning up my act not to be a good example for Peach, but because I wanted Peach for myself?

  I dismissed the thought then, but now, as I watch her take a sip of her beer from across the little living room with the white curtains and the old flooring and the picture frames filled with memories, I wonder if she’s really been the woman for me all along.

  I don’t know if it matters, though. She’s too damn good for me. Too young. Too pure. Too young, too good and too pure for the things I’d do if I got my hands on her.

  7

  Peach

  I’m packing up a cooler with a few bees and some cobbler when Thomas starts to stir behind me.

  “Good evening,” I say over my shoulder, shutting the refrigerator door. A tug pulls at my heart as he ruffles his hands through his thick, dark hair and pulls his phone out of his pocket to check the time.

  “Evening?” he asks, scrubbing the side of his face. I think if I look at him for too long he might take away my ability to speak and my ability to even move, except to throw myself down at his feet.

  The stubble on his cheeks is thicker than normal, and his hair is tousled in this dangerously sexy way that sends a shockwave through my system when I imagine my fingers playing around in it. He gives me a smile and stretches his arms over his head.

  “Yes, good evening,” I reply. “My ankle feels fine and I wanted to know if you’d like to go down to the lake.”

  “The lake…now?” he says, his lips pulling into a smile.

  “Well, yeah, if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t want to. I need to.” He pushes himself to his feet and crosses the room to grab the cooler from me. “I don’t think I’ve ever needed to put my feet in some cool water than I do right now. I think this is the best idea you’ve had in…” he checks the invisible watch on his wrist, “well, all day. As long as your ankle is okay.”

  “Come on,” I say, bringing up the lead to the back door. I lock up behind us and we start across the lawn, the dewey blades of grass peeking up around the soles of my sandals and tickling my feet. My ankle doesn’t feel a hundred percent, but I can’t sit around waiting for it to feel perfect.

  Especially if Thomas is going to be around. I think if I stayed in that room with him any longer I might just spontaneously combust.

  It’s an odd, intimate thing to sleep in a room with someone. As soon as he fell asleep, I started throwing glances over at him, unable to keep my eyes to myself. The way his hips jutted out slightly, the way his butt was scooched down on the couch a little, the way his knees were spread and the way his thick, tattooed, muscular arms were draped across his chest.

  He was in a vulnerable position. He trusts me. And when I realized that I trusted him just as much back, I let myself scoot over closer to him and put my hands under my head, put my head on the armrest, and fall asleep with my knees near my chest and my feet near his lap.

  And I woke up soaking wet between my legs. I don’t know if I had an orgasm-inducing dream or had my body taken over by aliens in the short time between the evening news and the late-night talk shows, but something happened to me, something that caused me to wake up feeling like I was being kissed by a million little lightning bugs.

  And he was still sleeping soundly next to me. In my post-sleep blissful haze, I considered getting down on my knees between his parted feet, slowly undoing his buckle, and when he woke up, putting my finger over his lip and telling him that I just wanted to do something for him.

  Not as a thank-you. Not as a token of my gratitude. The idea of sex having a transactional nature makes a little bit of nausea swing at my belly. But yes, I did want to do it for him. Just for the pleasure itself. Just to make him feel good.

  To make him feel close to me? I don’t know.

  And even though it would have been for him, it would have been for me, too.

  God, if he knew I was thinking of him in this way? He’d probably lock me up in my house and only feed me those little packets of fruit snacks by sliding them under the door of my bedroom. In fact, I think if he knew I thought of any man in a sexual way he’d lock me up until I was thirty.

  We make the little hike in silence, careful to take the same path we’ve always taken, through the acre of backyard, an uninterrupted plane of moonlight-soaked fresh grass, though the thick woods at the edge of the property, over some slippery rocks and the little brook beyond it as he takes my hand and guides me through, and then, finally, to the sloping ground leading down to the dock at the edge of the lake.

  I get goosebumps when I see it, and my heart flips over when he smiles over at me.

  “Come on,” he say
s, waving me forward. I strip my top over my head and toss it at him, breaking into a run down the dock and toward the water, ignoring the lingering, dull pain in my ankle. When I get to the edge of the dock I strip off my shorts and as my feet are about to catapult me off the edge and through the lake’s calm surface, I check behind me to see Thomas stripping his dark blue henley over his shoulders, past the tattooed skin of his neck, and taking chase after me as he yanks his jeans off.

  I suck in a big breath before taking the leap. Thomas crashes into the water as I do. I feel him swimming toward me beneath the surface of the lake, and I pop over the surface, pushing my hair away from my forehead as I do.

  Thomas breaks through the surface looking like a god on the cover of a magazine. His chest ripples and flexes under the sheen of water flowing over his body, and he drives his hands through his hair in slow motion.

  “You make that look so damn good,” I complain, kicking my feet in front of me to back away from him. Okay Peach, calm down. The man knows how good he looks. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have emerged from the water like that: in torturously slow motion, acutely aware of very flexing muscle and withering flash of his emerald eyes, every tick of his lips as a sexy smile plays against them.

  “Have a good idea you could make some shit look good too, Peach,” he says. I’m partially shocked at his observation, but also partly turned on. He doesn’t know exactly which class I had my ankle-roll in. He’s just being nice, joking around like we always do.

  “Oh yeah?” I ask, swimming parallel to the shore. “Like what?”

  “You know what,” he says, keeping his distance and tipping his chin up. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “You have something specific on your mind you want to share with me?”

  “Peach, don’t make me say it. I don’t want to embarrass you, but I’ll say it if I have to.”

  I feel my blood go cold, and even in the warm spring water my veins chill and send goosebumps plumping over my arms and shoulders.

  “Who told you?” I ask in a small, quiet voice. I know he’s talking about the pole-dancing class. What else could he be referring to? He isn’t talking about the old jazzercise videos I like to pop into the old VHS player in my grandparent’s old room.

  Different people have different ways of keeping their loved-ones’ memories alive. I have my jazzercise. Other people have recipes. I have recipes too, but I can’t resist those hip-thrusts and booty wiggles that come along with exercises trends of the past.

  “I saw the paper in your bag, Peach,” he says. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant as an invasion of your privacy.”

  “It’s okay,” I manage to squeak out. I know he’d never snoop on purpose. Maybe - just maybe - I wanted him to see that paper announcing the exact location of today’s follies. Maybe - just maybe - I left my bag in his truck on purpose.

  “I get it, you’re a sexy young woman, you want to feel empowered, you want to explore yourself. Nothing wrong with that.”

  I bite my lower lip. He isn’t flirting. He’s teasing me. He’s giving me bait. And I bite for it each and every time.

  “Oh, you thought that was for myself?” I say, swimming toward him. “That was paid training for my new job.”

  “You on the pole,” he says. “That’s something I’d have to see to believe.”

  His words hit me in the gut. He doesn’t understand how big of an impact he has on me. He couldn’t. Indicating that the idea of me being sexual in front of a room full of men is both unlikely and something that he himself could be witness to? No, he just can’t understand how much these comments he makes have on me.

  He couldn’t know. Because if he knew, he wouldn’t be so playful. He wouldn’t play around with my emotions like this. He just wouldn’t.

  I give him a little smile and swim over to the dock and he does the same. We both pull up on the edge of the dock and he pushes up first, easily, then helps me up next to him.

  “Want a beer?” I ask a little more cooly than I’d intended. He nods his answer and I go into the cooler to grab two of the cold bottles.

  When I hand one to him, he gives me a small, sincere smile. But there’s something else in his eyes. Something that tells me something’s changed in him.

  Maybe he’s met a woman. The idea makes my heart deflate like a sad balloon animal after the party’s over.

  Maybe he’s considering plans that extend beyond him just living next door forever.

  Whatever it is, I resolve to let this night last as long as it can.

  Because all I want is for him to live next door forever.

  8

  Thomas

  “You’re right, Peach. We don’t come out here enough anymore.”

  I knock my shoulder into hers as I take a sip of my beer and roll a small, flat rock between my fingers. We’re standing at the edge of the water, next to the dock, where the small waves lap against the stones and dirt.

  “We used to come out here all the time.” She looks over and gives me a small smile. “I think that was the best summer of my life, Thomas. Remember when…”

  She pauses and shakes her head. She knows I don’t like this game. The game of “remember when.”

  When she first came to live with her grandfather, she was understandably a goddamn mess. Her parents skidded on some black ice in upstate New York when they were at an off-off (way off) Broadway show being staged at a performing arts center in White Plains. Her life changed overnight. She’s told me before that she is thankful for what I did for her.

  I say it really wasn’t anything, but the more time that’s passed, the more I understand how much it really was something. And I didn’t just help her. She helped me, too. She helped me become the man I am today.

  When we started spending time together, I noticed that every time she talked about her life before she came here, she would get upset. It made sense, of course. She’d say “I remember when…” and then end up crying. So I banned all utterances of the words “remember when.” I don’t know if it helped. I don’t know if it did more harm than good. But what it did do was made her talk about her past life, the life before she came here, with more enthusiasm and more colorful, vivid details. It felt as though she was no longer mourning the life she’d lost. She was celebrating the life she’d had. She seemed more excited for the life she would get to lead.

  Or hell, maybe she was just humoring me. Hell if I know. All I know is that I tried.

  “Remember when we would sit on the edge of the dock all night with our toes in the water?” I ask her. I go against my own policy. I open up the door for her.

  “I remember,” she whispers. She makes her way over to the dock and I follow her. When I see her falter on her bad ankle I grab her under the arm and help her to the edge. We sit down and I pull her feet into my lap, slide her flip-flops off and take her left foot into my hands.

  What the fuck am I doing? The idea came to me like a flash of lightning. I didn’t think anything of it. A friendly gesture, a little present to her to make her feel a little better, some contact to make her feel cared for, a gift to make her feel good, if only for a little while. Just a small thing I can do for her. I resolve to make this shit platonic. And quick. Platonic and quick.

  “If one foot hurts, I’m going to have to make the other one feel twice as good,” I say.

  “Ohhh, yeah,” she says, biting her lip with a mischievous little twinkle in her eye. “That feels so good.”

  I run my thumbs around her heel, pushing the pads of my fingers into her skin as they glide along the arch. When I get to her toes, I take the big one and squeeze it between my thumbs, rubbing the underside and then going back up to her arch. She lets out a little squeak of appreciation and approval and I slide my hands up to her ankle.

  “Is that good, honey?” I ask, staying focused on her. I bring my hands to her long, smooth calf, pressing into the muscle with my thumb and gliding my other hand behind it. I go higher, to
her knee, and feel myself begin to stiffen when I look at her face. Her mouth is open slightly and her little pink tongue is tickling the corner of her lips. Her brows are knitted together a little in the center and a little moan spills from her parted mouth.

  “That’s so good, Thomas,” she moans, putting her hands behind her to leverage herself. The look on her face says she likes it. That she loves it.

  Shit. Maybe I shouldn’t have started this, because I don’t know how the hell it’s going to finish. I take her lower thigh in both of my hands and squeeze the soft muscle, grazing my thumbs around the front, digging in with more pressure now.

  “Next time we have to use some lotion or baby oil,” she says, giving me a smile that’s slightly out of breath.

  Goddamnit. There it is. She makes my cock stiffen like a rock.

  With her heel inches away from my choked cock I move higher up her thigh, to the center, where the muscle is tense. With each stroke of my thumbs, my palms, my fingers, she starts to relax.

  “Baby oil,” I repeat to her, going a little higher. Can’t fucking help myself. Got god’s greatest gift to humanity halfway in my lap and I’m going to slide my hands up her luscious thigh as far as I can before she stops me. And if she doesn’t stop me, well, I think I might be putting my fingers into her panties before I can force myself to stop. “I told you not to be wearing these shorts.”

  These little shorts she has on are so short, they barely cover the swell of her ass, they barely cover up her little panties. I venture higher, my hands gliding to the soft, sensitive underside of her thigh and she moans, her eyelids fluttering closed and her head falling back.

  “You’re the only one going to see them.”

  She shifts her weight, making her shorts move along with her. The frayed end of the denim is now sliding up and over, making the edge of her white bikini visible at the juncture of her thigh.