“You look tired,” Jeff says, firmly grasping our father’s arm. “Why don’t you go back to the house and take a nap?”
He blinks again, confusion eclipsing the anger. For a moment, he looks like a lost little boy, and suddenly I feel like bawling. It’s times like these when I want to grab his shoulders and shake him, beg him to make me understand why he drinks. My mom says it’s genetic, and I know Dad’s side of the family has a history of depression as well as alcoholism. And fuck, maybe that’s it. Maybe those really are the reasons he can’t stop drinking. But a part of me still can’t fully accept that. He had a good childhood, damn it. He had a wife who loved him, two sons who did whatever they could to please him. Why couldn’t that be enough for him?
I know he’s an addict. I know he’s sick. It’s just so hard to put myself in that mind frame, in that place where a bottle of booze is the most important thing in your life, so much so that you’re willing to throw away everything else for it.
“I guess I’m a l’il tired,” Dad mumbles, his blue eyes still cloudy with confusion. “I’ll, ah…go to sleep now.”
My brother and I watch as he hobbles off, and then Jeff turns to me with a sad look. “Don’t listen to him. You are good.”
“Yeah, sure.” I clench my jaw and stalk back to the lift, where the sporty Jetta I’ve been working on awaits me. “I need to finish up.”
“John, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about—”
“Forget it,” I mutter. “I already have.”
I close up later than usual. Much later than usual, because when eight o’clock rolled around, I couldn’t stomach the thought of going to the house for dinner. Jeff popped in around nine to bring me some leftover meatloaf, and quietly informed me that Dad had “sobered up a bit.” Which is laughable, because even if he quit cold turkey this very second, there’s so much alcohol flowing through his veins that it would take days for it to exit his system.
Now it’s ten-fifteen, and I’m hoping Dad will be asleep when I walk through that door. No, I’m praying. I don’t have the energy to deal with him right now.
I leave the shop through the side door, stopping to drop the keys of the Jetta into the little mailbox nailed to the wall. Its owner, a cute brunette who teaches at Munsen Elementary, is supposed to pick up the car tonight, and I already parked it outside for her in the designated area.
I double-check the padlock on the garage door, then turn toward the path to the house just as headlights slice through the trees and a taxi speeds up the driveway. An older man sits behind the wheel, eyeing me warily as the back door of the cab opens and Tori Howard hops out, her high-heeled boots raising a cloud of dust when they meet the dirt.
She waves when she spots me, then gestures to the driver that it’s okay to go. A second later, she sways her curvy hips my way.
Tori is in her mid-twenties and absolutely gorgeous. She moved to Munsen a couple of years ago and brings her car to be serviced a few times a year, and believe me, that car is not the only thing she wants serviced. She hits on me every time I see her, but I haven’t taken her up on her very blatant offers because Jeff is usually around when she shows up and I don’t want him to think I’m sleeping with the customers.
But tonight it’s just the two of us, with no Jeff in sight.
A smile lifts the corners of her mouth as she approaches me. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I nod at the retreating taillights of the cab. “You should’ve told me you didn’t have a ride. Jeff or I could’ve picked you up.”
“Oh, really? I had no idea this was a full service joint,” she teases.
I shrug. “We aim to please.”
Her smile widens, and I realize how sleazy that light-hearted comment had sounded. I hadn’t been trying to flirt, but her eyes are gleaming seductively now.
I suddenly notice they’re almost the same shade of brown as Grace’s eyes. Except Grace never looked at me like she wanted to gobble me up and ask for seconds. There’d been something earnest about her gaze. There was heat, sure, but it wasn’t as calculated and overt as the way Tori is gazing at me right now.
And shit, I really need to quit thinking about Grace. I can’t even count how many times I’ve called her this summer, but her continued silence tells me everything I need to know. She doesn’t want to hear my apologies. She doesn’t want to see me again.
Yet I can’t fight the hope that maybe she’ll change her mind.
“You know, you get better looking every time I see you,” Tori drawls.
I doubt it. If anything, I just get more tired. And I’m pretty sure there’s a streak of oil on my cheek at the moment, but Tori doesn’t seem to mind.
She pouts. “What, you’re not going to return the compliment?”
I can’t help but grin. “Tori, you’re gorgeous and you know it. You don’t need me to tell you that.”
“No, but sometimes it’s nice to hear it.”
I’m not sure how I feel about the direction this conversation is going, so I change the subject. “You got my message, right? I explained everything we did to the car, but I can run through it with you again, if you want.”
“No need. It sounds like you were very thorough.” She slants her head. “So. Do you have big plans tonight?”
“Nope. Gonna take a shower and crash. It’s been a long day, and it’ll be an even longer one tomorrow.”
“A shower, huh? You know,” she says casually, “I just got a second showerhead installed in my shower.”—and there’s nothing casual about the end of that sentence—“I always see it in the movies, these incredible-looking showers with a million showerheads, and I was like, why can’t I have that? And then I realized, I absolutely can.” She grins. “So I called a plumber and he came by last week and installed it. I can’t even describe how amazing it is. Water spraying you front and back? It’s glorious.”
Annnnnd my dick is semi-hard now.
I’m not about to get all self-judgy, though, because one, I haven’t had sex in almost three months, and two, when a beautiful woman is talking about her shower, there’s something wrong with you if your brain doesn’t conjure up the image of her in that shower. Naked. With water spraying her—front and back.
“You should come over and check it out sometime,” she says, and her wink is about as subtle as a slap on the ass.
Hesitation rises in my chest. Any other time, I’d invite myself into her shower in a heartbeat. But I’m still holding on to hope that Grace might…might what? Text me? Accept my apology? Even if she does, that doesn’t mean she’ll want to go out with me. Hell, why would she? She wanted to fuck me and I rejected her.
As my silence drags, Tori lets out a sigh. “I’ve heard the rumors about you, Logan, and I’ve gotta say, I’m disappointed that they’re not true.”