If I Fix You

“I don’t mind dropping you off at the shop,” Sean added.

“You’re forgetting I just saw up close how exhausted you are.” I tried for a smile. “Really, it’s fine. I need to take a shower and everything. Go home. Get some sleep.”

Staring straight ahead, Sean said, “You hate that bike.”

So I did, vehemently. And he knew I was choosing it over him.

He shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Claire makes it better, doesn’t she?”

My smile came easier that time. It wasn’t wide, but it was honest. “Yeah.”

“So we have to be sweating at the butt crack of dawn, just to be around each other? Awesome.”

“We’re around each other now.” And it was only half as hard as I’d feared.

He glanced at the still-lightening sky and fingered the edge of my damp T-shirt. “Kinda my point.”

He meant it to be a joke, based on the way he cocked his head at me, but laughing was the furthest thing from my mind. I didn’t want that. I wanted to be able to hang out with him sans buffer. Claire did make things easier, but she also kept things stagnant, and we wouldn’t fix anything if we stayed like that.

I looked through his window and saw my bike crowded into the Jetta’s backseat. I did hate it. “Help me with it?” I meant the bike, but more than that too. I envied him and his godlike power of pretending things were okay. He made it look so easy. Smile, tease, flirt, repeat. I was still struggling.

My head was always clearer when my hands were busy, and I needed clearer. Things with Sean could get murky if I let them. I moved to the back door to pull my bike out. Without comment, Sean stepped around me, and between the two of us, we got it out without undue bloodshed. A triumph on any other day, but that day it wasn’t enough.

I entered the code to open the garage and rolled my bike in, pausing with my back to him. “Maybe I will take that ride.”

“You sure?”

I was. I hoped I was. “Yes.”

In the blink of an eye, Sean changed. The stiffness in his posture relaxed, the shape of his mouth lifted, even his eyes seemed to change. It wasn’t until that change washed over him that I realized how much he’d been holding back, how I’d been missing him even when I saw him almost every day. He flashed a dimple and held his arms open.

If I still loved him, in that moment, I’d have known exactly why.

“Sweaty hug on it?”

My eyes darted from his arms to his eyes and back again. He was asking me to accept more than a ride. A lot more. It was starting to feel like too much, but I wouldn’t know if I didn’t try.

I stepped into him, my cheek pressing against his damp T-shirt.

“Wow, you sweat a lot for a girl.”

My heart was steady as I smiled into Sean’s chest, silently thanking him for saying the exact right thing to keep the moment light and easy. When he seemed reluctant to let go, I stayed in his arms a second longer, relieved that hugging him didn’t hurt. Not much anyway.

CHAPTER 7

After taking the world’s fastest shower, and Sean taking the whole yellow-lights-mean-slow-down law as merely a suggestion, I made it to work on time.

Sean waited until I pulled the door open and waved him on before driving away. I watched him go, lowering my hand slowly. We’d done that a million times, and I remembered the rides that had ended with me dancing through the door when he was out of sight. Today my feet stayed firmly on the ground, but I did watch for longer than I should have. He had to have been nearly home by the time I walked into Jim’s Auto Shop and let a blast of frigid air and the dark, dank scent of motor oil embrace me.

I inhaled deeply and smiled, relieved to leave Sean and the past outside. For some people it was fresh-baked cookies or apple pie hot out of the oven, but for me, the shop smelled like home. Unfortunately it sounded like home too.

Dad had a thing for Hall & Oates, and since I was like two seconds late, he already had the band blaring. Once the music was set, nobody else in the garage could touch it. Shop rules.

When I entered the main garage bay, Dad was in full-on awkward dance mode half-hidden behind the crumpled hood of a Land Cruiser. He spotted me and grinned while lip-synching to the chorus of “Private Eyes” and he pointed to the dry-erase board on the wall.

The work board. I always approached it with an addictive mix of fear and excitement, like Jigsaw or Santa Claus might be waiting for me. Sometimes Dad would banish me to the office for a morning spent chained to the desk, or assign me to endless oil changes. My favorite jobs were the unknowns; the vehicles that came in with serious emotional problems that hid behind odd growls or unexplained shakes.

And of course the shinies, the head turners that we humble mechanics never otherwise got to drive.

My feet began to drag the closer I got to the board. “Come on, really?”

Dad shimmied my way and told Hall & Oates to take five by turning down the volume. “You got something against Acuras?”

“I do when they aren’t Mustangs, which we also have in the shop today.” I tapped it on the board. “You haven’t even assigned it to anyone, unless you hired...” I squinted at the tiny figure Dad had drawn. “The devil in a golf cart without telling me?”

Dad straightened. “That’s a speed demon.” He was always drawing little figures, leftovers from when he wanted to be a cartoonist.

I leaned closer. “That’s actually pretty good, but seriously, where are we on the Mustang?”

“The Mustang isn’t a rush, but I tell you what. The toilet is backed up, so if you’d rather I start on bleeding the cooling system on the Acura, we can swap.”

I slumped forward on the counter and rested my chin on my hands. “Do you ever worry about spoiling me with such a glamorous life?”

Dad laughed long and hard and reached out to rub my cheek with his thumb to show me a smear of grease that I’d somehow managed to get on my face already. He had the most contagious laugh.

“You want the Mustang?” he asked.

“Yes, please.”

“And what do I get?”

“I’ll close tonight so you can catch the game.”

“What game?”

“I don’t know. Some team somewhere is playing a game on TV. That one.”

Dad made a big show of caving. “All right. You can drive the new flip home.”

“The truck?” Oh, sweetness. The Mustang and he was going to let me drive the truck! I was doing a decent moonwalk over to grab the keys when Dad nodded his chin toward the back of the garage.

“Try again.”

We always had a car or two in the shop that Dad got cheap at auction or online. The newest flip was an ugly-as-sin Mazda that had decent guts but needed serious cosmetic work. It was the kind of car that turned heads—just not in a good way.

Dad cued up more Hall & Oates, forcing me to yell over the music.

“How about I stay late dutifully clearing out the storage closet, while you take the Mazda and leave me the truck?”

Dad’s answer was to smile and turn up the stereo as “I Can’t Go for That” started playing.

* * *

After Dad left, I reclaimed the stereo and spent way too much time trying to decide if I was cheating on my imaginary Spitfire when I called the Mustang baby. I was fairly certain I was in the clear when I heard something worse than the din of “Rich Girl” blaring through the garage: the unmistakable grinding screech of Neighbor Guy’s Jeep.

I shot out on my creeper so fast I nearly took out a tool chest. I spared a glare at the Mustang for completely eclipsing last night’s nocturnal activities from my mind, then grabbed a rag to clean my hands before hurrying to the front office.

My steps slowed when Claire’s comments from that morning reemerged alongside the knowledge that I was alone in the shop. I hadn’t been scared last night, but Dad had been a shout away and there’d been a wall between us. What if I had glossed over Neighbor Guy’s potential danger because of my messed-up relationship with my mom?

Stupid Claire. Stupid Mustang.

Stupid me?

My sneakers squeaked loudly on the checkered linoleum as I crossed to the counter, but when the door chimed, admitting him, any lingering trepidation flitted away.

My first thought when I saw him was that it was actually possible for some people to look good in fluorescent light. Not Sean I-descended-from-Olympus good, more I’m-definitely-not-going-to-strangle-you-and-look-how-well-I-fill-out-this-T-shirt good.

I smiled; Neighbor Guy did not.

“What are you, like, the only girl in this city?” His dark eyebrows drew together. “Do you actually work here, or is this some kind of stalking game you’re playing?”

Blood rushed to my face and my jaw jutted forward. A litany of profane words in the most offensive combinations my short-circuiting brain could think of slammed into the back of my teeth. It was only respect for Dad and his shop that kept me from freeing them.

“Nice seeing you again too. I’m Jill, and this is my dad’s shop. I’m the one who left the coupon on your Jeep so you wouldn’t end up wrapped around a streetlamp when your brakes went out, but yeah, it was mostly so I could stalk you.” I might have let one totally non-customer-sensitive word slip after that.

He didn’t respond. At. All. I shook my head and leaned over the counter to grab the coupon he was holding, but he jerked it back. I placed both hands on the counter. “Look, I’ve got other people to stalk today.”

He rotated his jaw and looked fractionally less like a condescending jerk when he said, “Can I take back the stalking comment? I didn’t expect to run into you. Again. You’re kind of everywhere.”

“Yeah, my house, my work—that is everywhere.”

His hands mirrored mine on the other side of the counter, flattening the coupon between us. “How was I supposed to know you were the one who left this?”

I unzipped the top of my coveralls. Underneath I was wearing one of the many Jim’s Auto Shop T-shirts that I owned. It was identical, if in slightly better condition, to the one I’d worn on my roof. “I wasn’t trying to hide it from you.” I pulled the coupon from under his hand, brushing his skin in the process, flipped it over and read aloud what I’d written. “‘Free brake pad replacement. Welcome to the neighborhood.’” I looked up in time to see a ghost of a smile on his face.

“Yeah, I, ah, didn’t notice what the shirt said before.”

I could feel myself turning the same shade of red as my T-shirt. I vividly remembered his eyes passing over me last night. Not for reading purposes, apparently. I gave in to the impulse to zip my coveralls back up.

“Look, I’m sorry. You caught me off guard...Jill.” He focused on my name stitched onto my coveralls. “I’m Daniel. Or did you overhear that from your roof?”

I could tell he was trying for a less hostile tone, and I decided I could do the same, since I was more embarrassed than offended at that point. “No.” My eyes dropped to the bandage on his left hand. He’d wrapped his knuckles, but there were still raw-looking abrasions visible below the gauze. I forgot about him checking me out. “Is it broken?”

The smallest shrug. “It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” I stepped out from behind the counter. “Did you get an X-ray? It might be—”

“I know what broken bones feel like. It’s fine.”

I was about a foot away from him, my hand still outstretched toward his injured one. I was totally in his personal space, close enough to see a sliver of a scar in his right eyebrow and catch something lemony/minty coming off him. It made me want to lean in. Instead, I looked away, but not before noticing another scar disappearing under the collar of his T-shirt.

The lemony/minty scent grew stronger when he leaned closer, causing me to step back, but all he did was slide the coupon from my hand and hold it up between two fingers. “Why’d you leave this?”

I blinked and felt stupid for practically leaping away from him. He wasn’t staring at me like I’d done anything wrong though. He seemed genuinely curious. Daniel. I could stop mentally referring to him as Neighbor Guy.

“I meant it when I said you could forget about the window.”

Yeah, he had. But I couldn’t. And it went deeper than just owing him because I broke it.

Dad had tried to explain to Mom once why he was happy “just being a mechanic.” It wasn’t that he lacked ambition or aptitude or anything like that. It certainly wasn’t because he was content with “mediocrity.” He loved to fix things. To take something broken and neglected and make it new again. It wasn’t a glamorous job, and he’d never be rich enough to own half the cars he worked on, but he made things better. He said there was more satisfaction in that than anything else he might do. And whether Mom liked it or not, I was exactly like my dad.

I just liked to extend the practice beyond the garage when I could.

It was why I’d thrown the pop can. And why I’d left the coupon.

But that answer was way more than I was willing to give someone I just met, no matter how nice he smelled.

“It’s the mechanic in me. I might have exaggerated with the streetlight comment, but that grinding noise your Jeep makes when you stop? That’s not a happy sound. You really shouldn’t be driving it. You’ll end up having to get the brake rotors machined or even replaced. That’s a lot more expensive than new pads. And I’d have to break more than your window to give out coupons for that.”

He might have smiled. Maybe. His mouth definitely twitched.

“I don’t have time to replace them before we close today, but unless we’re crazy busy...” I glanced down the street at the three grinning idiots on the Pep Boys sign. “I can get to you tomorrow before lunch.”

“Tomorrow’s fine.” Daniel fished his keys out of his jeans, pulled one off and gave it to me.

“Hey, if you don’t mind hanging out for a bit, I can give you a ride home.”

Daniel turned back to me just as his hand touched the door. “I’m good, but thanks. And for the Jeep.”

With a last nod, he was out the door and gone.

CHAPTER 8

I expected to find Dad scrounging for dinner when I got home, but the kitchen was empty. I was starting to wonder if he was sick and had gone to bed early when I heard his voice.

Dad was a big guy and he had the voice to match. I could hear him clear across the shop even when all the machinery was running. But at home he’d learned to tone it down. Not quiet, exactly—I don’t think he knew how to be quiet—but not his normal thundering volume either.

But this, this went beyond loud, beyond booming. I remembered this voice like it had been carved into my bones. I knew who he was talking to before I heard him say her name.

“What do you want, Katheryn?”

I backed up until I hit a wall, not that Dad could see me through his bedroom door, but it was an instinct I couldn’t control. It was only a small comfort to realize she was on the phone and not actually in the house.

It was like being doused with ice water, knowing she was talking to him. He was so big and strong, whereas Mom was such a small thing, and yet she destroyed him, destroyed us, as if she were a giant.

After months of nothing, what could she possibly want? She was never what I’d consider maternal, so I doubted custody was an issue at this point. I’d be eighteen in just over a year, and it wasn’t like she’d tried to take me with her before.

And yet, what else could it be? What else could she want? The house? The shop? She’d hated both of them. Whatever it was, Dad was more upset than I’d heard him since the day she left.

“You are unbelievable,” Dad said. “No, you don’t. You haven’t been here, watching her walk through the house like a ghost, and that’s when she can stand to be in it!”

I backed down the hall into the kitchen as Dad’s half of the conversation still thundered through the house. The words I couldn’t hear were chipping away at my bones like an ice pick. I lifted the kitchen phone from its base and pressed it to my ear.

Dial tone. He was on his cell phone, then.

Something about this one-sided conversation was so much worse than the months of fighting before she left, and it took me only seconds to figure out why.

They didn’t know I was there.

Dad didn’t know.

As horrible as their fights had been, there must have been some part in each of them, whether by unspoken agreement or not, that they’d held back for my sake.

They weren’t holding back now. Not Dad, and certainly not Mom.

It had always been me and Dad. From the very beginning. But the last few months of fighting would have made me choose Dad even if the lifetime before hadn’t.

Mom was petty. Calculating. Cruel to the point that shredded any love I held for her.

But not Dad. Oh, he got mad. He yelled. But he never sought to inflict the same kind of personal damage that she did. No matter what she said to him, no matter how vile her insults, he never spoke to her the way she deserved, the way I would have. The way I wanted to so badly in that moment that I was striding down the hall before I could stop myself.

“Kate,” Dad said, and I hated his calling her that. She didn’t deserve it anymore. “Don’t do this. Please.” And then I jumped and froze outside his door when I heard him slam something—his hand probably—against the wall. “You selfish— Don’t tell me you’re sorry. You haven’t been sorry for anything your entire life.” More silence followed by a harsh laugh. “Right, except that.”

There was a lot of yelling after that. It was all things I’d heard before, except reenergized somehow. It was as if all the fights they would have had if she’d stayed were all converging and breaking through at once.

“Please, Kate. Just wait a second. Think. You haven’t been here, you haven’t seen her.”

My stomach soured the way it always did when they started talking about me. Dad’s voice lowered after that. He was speaking so softly that I missed most of the next few things he said until:

“Don’t you ever say that to me again.”

I shrank into myself at the unspoken threat in his voice. I wasn’t used to being scared of him. I’d made him mad plenty of times, but even at his angriest, I’d never been afraid of him.

I was afraid now, and I wasn’t even the one he was threatening.

“Kate—Kate—Kate!” He threw the phone so hard, I heard it break.

My hands fisted at my sides. Things had just started to get better. Dad and I were figuring out life again—just the two of us. I was beginning to remember what being happy felt like.

With one phone call, she took it all away.

Dad would come out of his room any second. If I didn’t want to have a conversation, I needed to hurry back outside and pretend that I was only just getting home.

Avoiding had kind of been the default all summer when Dad and I came even remotely close to talking about Mom. And maybe it would have worked. Maybe we could have kept dodging the subject, pretending that we weren’t a family with an amputated member, ignore the phantom pains that we both still felt.

Maybe Dad and I could have.

But Mom wasn’t going to let us.

Instead of backing away, instead of hiding, I stood directly outside his door so there’d be no way for him to wonder if I’d overheard him. I wanted him to know.

I met his eyes dead-on when he opened the door. “What did Mom want?”

CHAPTER 9

Dad’s face was flushed red, the anger his conversation with Mom had stirred up still visible under his skin. But the moment he saw me, the moment I asked that one question, all the blood drained from his face.

I shouldn’t do this to him. I shouldn’t make things harder. Dad looked ill, and he hadn’t even said her name to me yet. I didn’t want him to have to relive the conversation. And yet, I asked him again. “Dad.” I’m sorry. “What did Mom want?”

His eyes were wide as he stared at me—frightened, I would almost say, except nothing frightened Dad. And that seemed to be all he could do. Just stare.

But I couldn’t let it go.

“She wants to know you’re okay—”

I had never in my life sworn in front of Dad, but I did then. He didn’t even look that shocked.

“She doesn’t get to pretend she cares. Not anymore. She left us—”

“No!”

I shrank back at Dad’s sudden outburst.

“Me. Not you.” He rested his hand on my head. “She didn’t leave you.”

The weight of Dad’s hand was familiar and comforting in a way that always made me feel safe and loved. But his words simmered under my skin so I shook him off. “Then where is she? Where has she been all these months? Why isn’t she here yelling at you? Why did she try to—” I bit my tongue.

In a vertigo-inducing rush, I was back in my living room watching silhouettes moving along the wall in patterns that made no sense to me. And hearing her laughter, her murmuring.

The morning after she left, I’d carried my Post-it note into the hallway. My legs had moved without any direction from my brain. I had stopped when I saw Dad hunched over in one of the beautiful but uncomfortable dining room chairs that Mom had picked out.

He’d had his own note, a scrap of paper even smaller than mine. I had watched him stand, crush it into a tiny ball, and hurl it against the wall. It had bounced off and rolled under the china cabinet. Then his bones had seemed to dissolve before he fell to his knees, hung his head in his hands and wept.

I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t done much of anything besides back up and slip quietly into the bathroom. I’d flattened her note on the counter, but the sticky part was covered with lint from my pillow and refused to stick. I’d held it down and stared at her words until they lost all meaning. Then I’d torn it into tinier and tinier pieces, until all I had left was a palm full of yellow confetti fluttering into the toilet and swirling away.

The words themselves had been harder to flush. I could still close my eyes and see even the one she’d misspelled.

I can’t do this anymore and I’m tired of trying. This isn’t the life I was meant to have and it’s suffacating me. I’m sorry if this hurts you, but I can’t stay without hurting myself more. I hope we can find a way to forgive each other.

And she’d signed it Katheryn. Not Mom.

* * *

I wiped tears with my palms, hating that she could make either of us cry after all these months, and felt my voice strengthen. “She left us.” Dad didn’t try to correct me that time. “I don’t understand how you can defend her.”

Dad raised his hand again, but I stepped back, tears pooling in my eyes. He lowered it with a resignation that infuriated me almost as much as what he said next.

“I wasn’t a perfect husband. I know it’s easy to look at what she’s done and think it was all her, but it wasn’t.”

“You,” I said, “didn’t leave. You would never do what she did.” I shook, struggling not to scream. “Never.”

Why did he look as if I was the one making things harder? As if I was the one who didn’t get it?

“It’s not that simple.”

“It’s exactly that simple.” I pointed toward the front door. “She’s the one who quit. She’s the one who didn’t want us.”

“You can’t think that way.” Dad’s eyes were glassy and I knew I would die if he started crying. “I didn’t love her the way I should have. That’s on me. But your mom—”

“She didn’t love you at all! If you only knew—” I clenched my jaw so tight I thought I heard the bone crack. “Stop making excuses for her!”

“I’m not justifying what she did.” And then he gave me a look that would haunt me. It was like he was trying to tell me something and not tell me something at the same time. “Not then and not now.” And just as quickly the moment was gone. He swallowed. “I’m talking about your mom, here, not my wife. I don’t want you to write her off because she doesn’t want to be married to me anymore.”

Love for one parent and hate for the other fought a vicious battle inside me. How could she not love him when even now he was trying to salvage any affection I still had for her? The outcome cloaked my voice in bitterness. “Wife. Mother. It’s the same person. I can’t separate the two. I can’t.”