Probably not, and he wouldn’t do it even if he could.
I smile as he opens the door to his car for me, carefully so as not to make too much noise. It’s a ’67 Mustang he’s nicknamed Arrow, a car so dear to him he might as well have it surgically attached to his body. It feels oddly comfortable, sliding into the seat after all this time, almost as if four years haven’t passed.
In the dim light, his eyes slowly roam the length of my legs, up to my cut-off shorts, and I know I’m so in for it. “That’s the Katydid I know and love,” he says.
“Katherine,” I correct, shivering. Did he just say he loves me? Really? I know, it’s only a saying, but . . .
“Right. Katherine,” he says the name with some trouble.
I laugh. “You can’t take change, can you? I can’t believe you’re still driving this car.”
“Arrow here is a classic,” he explains, patting the dashboard. “She purrs like a kitten.”
“It’s a bucket of rust, though.”
“No, your car’s a bucket of rust. Why don’t you just whip out that fancy checkbook of yours and get a new BMW to match your fancy job?”
I cross my arms. “I don’t want a new car,” I lie. “Plus, I have college loans to pay off and law school to think about. Even with my fancy job, I don’t have the money to sock into a new car yet. I’m working toward it, though, but it won’t be for a little while yet.”
He cocks an eyebrow at me. “That so?”
Not at all. But whatever. I’m sure as hell not telling him the truth; that my apartment is the size of my hand, my boss is a douchebag, I won’t be able to afford a new car ever, and my checking account doesn’t even have two dollar bills inside it to rub together.
Before long, we’re pulling into Harding’s garage. Time stands still in Friesville, so it’s exactly as I remember, a dilapidated white cinderblock building with three bays and a tiny office adjacent to it, with a neon Penzoil sign in the window. A dim light illuminates my VW, up on the jack in one of the ports, but other than that, the place is closed up and dark. “How are your brothers?” I ask him as we get out of the car. “Your dad?”
He tosses his keys into the air and catches them again, his movements athletic and graceful. “They’re around. Doing the same shit. Well, except Cal. Cal’s up at state.”
“Oh,” I ask, surprised. “He’s going to college?”
He lets out a short laugh. “Prison.”
I blush and want to kick myself over the mistake, but it’s not really all that stupid. The Harding boys are smart, every one of them. Even my parents would say that: They’re smart, but they just don’t apply themselves. Still, it’s not a stretch of the imagination that any of them could get into college. “Spar and Turk work here with me,” he continues. “Wob’s a sophomore in high school. My dad’s my dad.”
That means that his dad is still drunk all the time. Dax has always watched over the other boys the best he could. That was the thing that made me fall for him the most, I think.
Everyone thought he was just a stupid, no-good nobody, and yet he had this whole thing going on that only I noticed. He practically ran Harding’s garage, even back in high school. He did his best to keep his crazy younger brothers in line. And he did all this while going to school.
I’d tried to tell my best friends Nevaeh and Juliet that, but they always just rolled their eyes at me and called me “whipped” by the bad boy. They certainly didn’t understand what I saw in Dax, other than his hotness.
“So let’s take a look at her,” he says, snapping me out of my thoughts and memories, dragging me back to the now. Dax reaches into the pocket of those tight-fitting jeans and pulls out a ring of keys, and easily lifts the garage door, letting me walk inside.
“Thanks,” I murmur as I pass by and smell the scent of him. I feel my skin break into gooseflesh, and it’s not because it’s cold, either.
Dax follows me inside and moves alongside me. “I know why you’re so attached to Little Blue,” he says with a grin. “If it weren’t for her, we never would have met.”
I refuse to admit that I’m attached to her for that reason, but he’s right, my VW is how we met.