“What? I thought you wanted the Firebird finished by midday?” I don’t want to drive this beautiful, frightening creature the whole way across the city. Eye contact would be completely unavoidable. As would small talk, and I’m no fucking good at small talk.
Mac just raises his eyebrows at me. “Faster you get going, faster you get back, right?” He tosses the keys to the shop’s run around at me; Mac bought a very sensible, reliable Volvo for this very purpose. It’s an extra service people travel specifically to the shop for, since they know they can get a ride while their own cars are being worked on. Normally I’d be jumping at the chance to get the hell out of here for an hour, but for some reason my heart feels like a clenched fist rising up in my throat.
“Come on. I’ll let you choose the radio station,” the girl says, heading toward the Volvo.
As soon as she’s out of earshot, Mac thumps me really fucking hard on the arm and grins. “You can thank me later, kid.”
“Fucking thank you with my fist, asshole,” I grumble under my breath. The girl tosses her bag onto the backseat and then gets in the passenger side, and I climb into the driver’s side, dreading the next thirty minutes.
As I pull out of the shop, I see Zeth on the other side of the street, standing outside the gym with that friend of his. They both look seriously pissed, lost in conversation as I pull out and drive by with the midget blonde sitting beside me. If they see me, they don’t acknowledge me. A good thing right now, I think; I wouldn’t want those stern expressions directed toward me. No way, no how.
“So you’re a mechanic, huh?”
I grip the steering wheel with both hands. Millie would be rolling her eyes at me right now. For a five-year-old, the kid sure does have attitude. “Yeah. Apparently.”
The girl beside me nods. “Apparently.” She pulls a face, like she’s pretending to be mulling this over. She turns her head toward me and places her cheek against the headrest, her attention solely fixated on me. “I’m Kaya.” I steal another sideways glance at her, and there it is: eye contact. Damn. She blinks at me in a rather owlish fashion. “Aren’t you going to tell me your name?”
“You already know my name. Mac told you.”
“But it’s nice to have a proper introduction, right?” She’s still looking at me. Still not looking away. Fuck.
“Mason.” My name comes out clipped, like I resent parting with it. I can see the girl—Kaya—nodding her head thoughtfully out of the corner of my eye.
“You’re not very comfortable right now, are you?”
“Not particularly.”
“And why is that?”
I draw in a deep breath through my nose, not sure how to respond. “I don’t know. I’m just not.”
“Just not? Bit of a lame answer, don’t you think?”
“I just—”
“You just think I’m pretty and you don’t know how to talk to me?”
“What?” This girl has absolutely no filter. And apparently no sense of modesty, either.
“You think I’m pretty. It’s okay, I think you’re pretty too.”
“I am not pretty.”
“Yes, you are. In a way.” She laughs, fog still on her breath inside the car. Weird, because I feel like I’m burning up. I lean over and hit the heating anyway.
“Guys aren’t pretty. They’re hot or handsome or whatever,” I say.
“You’d prefer me to tell you that I think you’re hot?”
“I don’t care what you call me.”
“Sure you do.” That laughter again. Kaya pivots in her seat, turning her whole body to face me now. “Aren’t you really tired of these veiled conversations you have with people, day in, day out? Wouldn’t it just be so much more interesting if you said what you were thinking?”
“Is that how you are? All the time?”
“Mmm-hmm.” I hear a snapping sound. She’s produced some red vines from somewhere and is ripping pieces off with her teeth. Grinning, she breaks some off with her fingers this time and offers it out to me. She is perhaps the strangest person I have ever met. I take the red vine and bite down on it, feeling completely out of my depth. This is not something I enjoy doing. Girls are an enigma to me at the best of times. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a virgin by any stretch of the imagination. But interacting with women has always seemed like some complex puzzle I haven’t had time to figure out. Not with Millie to look after.
“Life is just very short, Mason. I don’t like to waste time. By the end, when I die, I want to look back and know that I climbed mountains and jumped out of planes with the time other people wasted talking about the goddamn weather.”
“I suppose that’s something to aspire to.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Kaya leans across the console between us and my head is suddenly full of the sweet scent of flowers and something else, like jasmine. She’s so damn close. Her face is just inches away from mine.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Looking at you,” she whispers. “Looking at your eyes.”
“Why?” She’s so perplexing. I have absolutely no idea why she would need to be looking at my eyes. Especially this frickin’ close.