I’m sitting on Route 667 in a torrential downpour, trying to get the engine of my VW bug to turn over and wondering why life has decided to just kick me in the shins yet again.
I didn’t want to even come back here in the first place, and especially not for the reason I’m obligated to return.
It’s just my luck to have my car call it quits not ten miles from home, on the busiest drag around, though that isn’t saying much in a town with two stoplights. Still, the few cars that are behind me swerve around me, some of them laying on their horns, as if it’s my choice to be broken down in the middle of the road.
Friesville people can be real assholes sometimes. I should know, because I’m one of them. Or at least, I used to be.
I take a deep breath and fight hard to keep the tears from rolling down my cheeks. No, professional, mature city women do not cry over things like this. They handle drama with poise and grace.
Drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, I collect my thoughts. Then I reach for my wallet. The Auto Club card my parents gifted me with on the day I left for Boston College is tucked in the back, behind my company ID and driver’s license and Starbucks card, because I’ve never had to use it until now. Dialing the number, I draw in a few deep, cleansing breaths.
“Hi, I need a tow,” I say when the cheerful service agent answers. “My car won’t start.”
I tell her my location (out in the sticks, with pretty much nothing worth seeing or doing for miles and miles).
“Actually, hon, you’re in luck. There’s a garage right down the street.”
I’d hardly call that luck. She’s referring, of course, to Harding’s Garage, which, if there wasn’t a forest between us, I could probably see from this very spot. Yep, I guess if someone really wanted to break down in the middle of nowhere, this is the place to do it.
Except . . .
“Isn’t there another one?” I ask hopefully. I mean, new businesses spring up all the time. Is it really out of the question to hope that a new garage might have opened nearby?
She makes a tut-tut noise. “Oh. No. I’m sorry. Not one for another thirty miles.”
I sigh loudly. Of course, it is really out of the question to think that a new garage might have opened to give the Hardings some competition. This isn’t Boston, it’s Friesville. People here aren’t exactly enterprising. In Friesville, time stands still. Nothing new ever happens.
I gnaw my thumbnail and consider my options. “So, that one that’s thirty miles away . . . could you call them?”
“Well, dear,” she says doubtfully. “I’m sorry, but that will be an additional two-hundred dollar fee, plus mileage, since it’s out of your local area.”
Of course. I do a mental tally of my checking account and remember I’d overdrawn it last week buying Thai food for Fowler’s late-night work meeting, and he still hasn’t paid me back.
My eyes trail out the window, to the thick dark forest lining the narrow road. The rain has slowed slightly, but the sky’s getting darker, and rain has begun pattering the windshield.
“Um. I just had a bad experience with Hardings,” I finally sputter to the agent.
Not them. Him.
Dax Harding.
Even thinking his name hurts my stomach.
And it wasn’t just bad. Sardines are bad. Gum on the bottom of your shoe is bad. What’s the word for bad to the extreme? Bad to the thousandth power?
“Is that so? Hardings has a five star rating here. Well, I can put a note in their file so that—”
“Oh, no, don’t.” The fact is, every one of those five stars was earned. The Hardings live and breathe cars. They’d saved my 18-year old hunk of junk VW from the scrap pile countless times. In fact, people from other towns even ship their fancy sport scars in to Friesville to get the Harding boys to work on them. If the Hardings can’t get a vehicle working again, no one can. And isn’t the definition of maturity putting aside childish fears and dealing with shit when it hits you? I just need to grow up, stop thinking of myself, and get this done.
I let out a deep, deep sigh. “Forget it. Fine. Just call them.”
“Will do, hon. Just sit tight and they’ll be out to get you ASAP.”
That’s what I’m afraid of, I almost say, but restrain myself.
When I get off the phone, a panic attack hits me full force.
Suddenly, my mind whirls. My pulse is thudding in my ears and racing out of control. I throw the phone on the front passenger’s seat and reach for my make-up bag on the center console, half-wondering if it was possible to make myself look human again and half-wondering if I can hide in the trunk. All I manage to do is swipe some lip gloss over my bottom lip before I catch sight of two headlights coming toward me. My entire body’s so wound up like a top that my vocal chords shudder and I let out a mouse like squeak as the truck rumbles toward me, U-turns, and pulls onto the gravel shoulder ahead of me.
I quickly zip up my make-up bag and toss it into my overnight satchel, then pick through the jeans and t-shirts I’d hastily packed when I’d gotten my parents’ call last night.