Forever Innocent (8 page)

I pulled myself together and forced a smile. “Jenny told you my name?”

He nodded. “Did something just happen?”

“No. I’m fine. Really.”

Austin looked at the door. “You’re locked out?”

“Yeah. I accidentally let it shut.”

He leaned against the brick wall. “You have a minute?”

“Not really.”

He ran his hand through his hair, looking anxious. “Okay. Sorry. I just got that e-mail.”

I forced a clipped laugh. “Oh, that was Jason. He meddles.”

“You gave him my e-mail address?”

“He got hold of your note to me.”

Austin fiddled with the strap of his backpack. “He seemed to think you wouldn’t mind me coming by.”

“He shouldn’t have done that.”

He looked down at his shoes, and my sympathy surged, but I didn’t know what else to do. I practically dry-humped my ex in the dish room not five minutes ago.

And he’d called me easy. Right. Four years of abstinence was easy.

Austin held out his hand. “Well, here’s to being friends. I order cheap tea, and you give me warm-ups until the leaves give out.”

I reached for him, noticing right off how gentle his fingers were compared to the frenzied grip of Gavin. “The sugar’s free, you know.” I instantly blushed, realizing the double meaning.

“I’d already have starved half to death if it wasn’t. Student poverty.”

“I know how that is.”

“Can I walk you back around?” His hazel eyes were earnest. Once again I realized that if I could just feel something for someone else, maybe Gavin wouldn’t hurt so much.

“Okay.”

Austin settled his backpack on his shoulder and we wandered out of the shadow of the building and into the sun. If Gavin thought I was easy, maybe I should just be easy. If he hated me, then maybe we could stay apart.

As we turned to the front windows, Jenny looked up from inside, her eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

Probably nobody had ever lost their nickname faster than I had just lost mine.

Chapter 12: Gavin

Bud looked up from the receipt book as I walked into the front office of the garage. “You’re late.”

“Had a school thing,” I said and walked on through to clock in. I spent all morning looking for Corabelle instead of working, just to find out she had some boyfriend.

I punched my card and actually wished for tires to throw and work off some of this tension. I could still feel Corabelle beneath my hands, her skin feverish, her body writhing against me. Was she doing it with that pipsqueak? Just thinking about it made my head want to explode. She was mine. She had to be. I had to get her to see that we belonged together.

But damn it, I upset her. Called her easy. Damn it.

Mario approached and shouted, “Heads up!” as he tossed me a set of keys.

“What’s this?”

“Another Camaro came through. Told the boss you could take one apart in your sleep. He says for you to change out the motor mount.”

That was a decent job, jacking the motor and pulling the mount, then realigning the engine. “He got the parts?”

“Yeah, came in while you were out. You’re moving up. Take Bay 3.”

I jingled the keys as I went out front to find the car. Bud was hard to figure out. First he threatens to fire me if I drop out of school. Then he moves me out of routine and into mechanics.

This Camaro was only a couple years old, and sitting in the driver’s seat didn’t fire up memories the way the other car had. I picked up the work order from the passenger side and saw it had come in for a tune-up when the motor-mount problem was discovered. With the other issues on the sheet, it looked like whoever owned this car rode it hard over rough terrain. The shocks were shot, tires out of alignment, and two of the axles were cracked. Those had all been fixed while I was scouting coffee shops, but the motor mounts were circled and Bud had scrawled, “Leave for Gavin.”

The motor clunked on starting up, a telltale sign of a misaligned engine. I glanced back at the work order to make sure they’d checked to make sure nothing else had been damaged. Fans could get chipped, hoses torked, a whole host of problems. I’d go over it all again after everything was back in place.

I pulled into the bay, starting to feel grateful for the task, work that would require more concentration than changing a filter, maybe get Corabelle out of my head for a while. Mario came up with the box containing the mount bracket and waited for me to step out. “Lemme know if you need a hand on the realign.”

“Will do.”

The hood popped up smoothly, and I peered into the Camaro’s guts. The inside of the motor mount was cracked clean through, but the bracket was easy to access. I just had to jack the block for support. The job would take less than an hour, if it all went well.

The clang of other mechanics working this end of the garage was a soothing sound. I rolled a jack under the car and steadied the engine. Everyone did their jobs with competence and skill. I could see the appeal of this sort of work. Finite, black and white, cut and dried. Unlike studying in school, where it seemed half the time you were spinning your wheels, memorizing something you’d never need to know again, or writing the same essay on Milton that a million other undergrads had done before.

I should just quit, lie to Bud about it, and pretend to go to class. I could keep up the ruse until December and if Bud kept feeding me real work, I’d be qualified for a better job. Mom might not like it, but hell, I wasn’t around them anymore. And my asshole father never approved of anything I did anyway. Screw that. After that scene with Corabelle, maybe I was turning out to be just like him.

The socket wrench fit neatly on the bolt. I remembered watching other boys with their dads, fixing bikes or playing ball with easy camaraderie. Mine had always been intense, angry, disapproving.

Once when we worked on my mother’s overheating Oldsmobile, I thought I was being so smart by using a towel to open the hot radiator. But when it spewed boiling water and antifreeze, Dad backhanded me so hard that I fell over my sister’s bike, breaking the wheel.

My life seemed like a series of missteps that pissed off my father. Now that I’d been around the block a few times, I knew some kids had it worse. They got in the line of fire just for existing.

When I was little, I felt like I deserved it, punishment for doing something stupid or wrong. Only later did I start to push back. If I went home now, we’d probably kill each other within five minutes.

The bracket came off easily, and I set it aside. Now to remove the long bolt to the mount.

Even when we got old enough to walk around the neighborhood without our parents, I never let Corabelle come over to my house, preferring the quiet simplicity of her family — mother, father, one little girl. But in that middle space when I was small enough to push around, but big enough to take a harder lick, the asshole sometimes really unleashed, like the day I got knocked across the driveway.

Corabelle had seen those bruises and looked up at me with wide sympathetic eyes. She started showing up and hanging out when my dad insisted I help him, reading or poking at the straggly flowers my mother tried to plant by the front steps. Her presence kept my dad in check, just one of the many ways that she saved me.

The mount was out, and I had to do the tricky part, get the new one to align.

Dad caught on pretty quick to when Corabelle and I shifted from little-kid friends to a boy and girl who were messing around. Early on, when I was thirteen, he grabbed me by the collar and flung me into the wall, telling me I better not go around knocking up any girls, or he’d throw my ass out.

By the time I was in high school, and Corabelle and I were crazy tight, I hardly stayed home at all. Her parents saw the handwriting on the wall and got her on that birth-control shot. Once that barrier was crossed we were insane, at each other every minute, and I couldn’t get enough of her. Now, sweating over the engine, I could picture every inch of her body.

Finding out about the baby was a huge blow. Because of the shot, we didn’t know what was going on for several weeks. She thought she had the flu, then that she was tired from staying up too late. I bought the test and stood over her while she peed on the stick. The sight of her astonished face as the two lines appeared is one of those moments seared into my memory.

We never bothered telling my parents about the baby, letting the town gossip handle it. I moved in with her and vowed never to let my father cast an eye on my son.

The new bracket wouldn’t align, so I shifted the jack up a notch, trying to find the sweet spot. I could call Mario over, get him to eyeball it while I worked the lever, but only if it took too long. I’d done it by myself before.

Clearly the work wasn’t occupying my mind well enough. I tried to shake off the past, how I worried about what sort of dad I could possibly be, having the worst possible example. When the baby was sick, and then when they told us he wouldn’t make it, I figured the score. The universe knew I wouldn’t do any better. The bad-father gene would end with me. After the funeral, I went to Mexico to make sure of it, even though I knew it meant I had to give up Corabelle.

Bud came out of the office. “How’s it coming?”

I walked around the side to check the screw mounts. They were aligned. “Just putting the last bolts in.”

“Good, ’cause the owner’s here to pick it up already, and I don’t think I can endure that woman one more minute.”

I chuckled. “Bud menaced by a woman. Never thought I’d see it.”

He looked under the hood as I locked in the bolts. “I don’t see anything damaged. She got lucky.”

The sockets were solid, so I backed away from the engine. “She should be good to go.”

“Start her up. Let’s take a listen.”

I hopped in the seat again and fired up the motor. The clunk was gone. Bud dropped the hood and came around. “She’s good. Pull it around.”

By the time I came back into the office, Bud was leading an old lady to the door. “And here’s the man who got her ready for you, Mrs. Peters.”

I handed her the keys. “Ma’am, you must live near some rough roads.”

“Oh, posh,” she said. “I live in La Jolla. I just hate speed bumps.”

Bud coughed to hide his laugh and I kept a poker face. “Well, I guess we’ll be seeing you again in about twenty thousand miles,” I said.

“Works for me!” She winked, the blue eye shadow over her eyes as bright as a peacock’s feather. “Maybe I’ll mess up something else just to come back and get another gander at you!”

Bud passed her a clipboard. “Sign here, Mrs. Peters.”

I turned to head back to the bays, but the woman grabbed me by the arm. “It wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of you if you didn’t see me to my car and make sure it is in good working order, now would it?”

Bud waved me on. “Start it up for her, Gavin.”

Mrs. Peters continued to hang on my elbow as I opened the door and led her out to the Camaro, all red and sparkling in the late afternoon sun. “What a grand day!” she said. “I don’t guess I can sneak you away for a drive!”

I pictured her wrecked and broken motor mount and imagined jumping creek beds with Mrs. Peters behind the wheel, her white hair flying. “I’m afraid I am much needed here.”

“Well, poo.” She waited by the car as I opened the door, then she slid inside. “Let’s see what she’s got.”

I handed her the keys and winced as she cranked the motor, stomping the gas so the engine revved loud enough to make people across the street turn to look. I leaned in the open door. “You might want to take it easy.”

“This car is going be around longer than I am!” she shouted over the roar. “Life is short. Go after what you love and ride it as hard as you can!”

I barely managed to close the door and jump out of the way before she shot backward across the parking lot, then slammed it into drive and careened past me again, heading for the exit.

That woman was going to kill someone. Still, I had to laugh as I headed back inside. Bud was stuffing her papers in a file folder. “She’ll be back. Drivers like her mean good money for us.” He turned around. “Let me guess, she gave you some sort of advice about life being short, and she was about to die?”

“Yeah.” Of course, that got me thinking about Corabelle. Hell, everything did.

“She’s been saying that for a decade. She’s going to outlive us all.” He glanced at the clock. “You can go ahead and head out. I’m sure whatever kept you all morning is still nagging at you now.”

I suppressed a smart-ass reply. “All right, Bud. See you tomorrow.” I wondered where Corabelle might be, at work still, or on campus. Maybe I could get that pink-haired girl to tell me where she lived.

I should leave her alone. I knew it. But something in me just couldn’t let it go.

Chapter 13: Corabelle

I crossed the quad, anxiety rising as the engineering building grew close. Gavin would be in there, just a few seats down. The two feelings for him warred inside me. Anger that he’d called me easy, when I hadn’t been with anyone but him. And an urgency to get him alone, to feel, if only for a little while, the way we had when we were young and innocent of all the ways life could fail us.

The stairwell echoed with my footsteps, and I couldn’t help but run my hand over the part of the rail where Gavin caught me trying to black out. I had to get control of that now. Gavin showing up again was the sign that my little fits of crazy had to end. I needed some other way to cope.

I thought I’d be able to sneak in close to the start of class and slip into my chair without having to talk to him. But Gavin was waiting outside the door, his lab assignment in his hand. He looked more amazing than ever. Every detail about him was seared into me, the blue T-shirt fitting across his chest and arms, the dark stubble on his jaw, the sideburn near his ear.

He held out the paper. “You turned this in for me?”

I nodded, grasping hard on the strap of my backpack.

“Why?”

“I felt bad that I upset you.” I drew in a deep breath. “By talking about Finn.”

It was so hard to say his name. And not easier on Gavin to hear it. I could see it in how his eyebrows drew together.