He appeared around the corner. “Corabelle, are you all right?”

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. 

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.