Jake may have had the hard look of someone who had been through a lot, and people who couldn’t recognize what that looks like might have guessed he was a few years older than twenty-two. I knew what that life experience looked like. Twenty-two would have been my guess.
Jake leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He looked like he was deep in thought until he shook his head and smiled up at me. “Who is your…best friend?” I could tell he was trying to come up with a simple question to lighten some of the heaviness of our previous questions.
“Right now?”
“Yes, who is your best friend right now?” He probably thought that this question would be one I could answer easily and possibly even rant a bit about. Most girls my age had tons of friends. He probably expected an answer about my friend, and her car, and her boyfriend, and the movies we’d seen, and all that shit.
“Pass.” I didn’t want to have to tell him that right at that very moment, my very best friend, my only friend in the entire world was him.
***
Jake took me next door to the attached garage area and introduced me to Reggie, the head mechanic. Reggie was tall and skeleton-thin, with huge ears and a crooked front tooth. He happily showed me around the building. There were two offices in the front. Jake was using his dad’s office since he wasn’t around much, and the other was the main office, which is where I was going to be working. It was small—just enough room for two filing cabinets and a little wooden desk with a yellow phone. It had a big window with plastic horizontal blinds that looked over into the three big garage bays that made up Dunns’ Auto Repair.
Cars and motorcycles were in all sorts of stages of repair within the bays. Some were in parts on the garage floor with screws, bolts, tires and rims lined up next to them, while other vehicles were on lifts with men in coveralls under them, reaching up into their mechanical guts.
Reggie showed me how to answer the phone and schedule appointments. It seemed easy enough. I thought I was going to work there in exchange for Jake letting me stay with him, but he insisted on paying me exactly what the last receptionist was making before she’d up and quit on them.
After the tour, Jake and I went back to the apartment. He made some room in his closet for my few articles of clothing. It was pretty easy, since neither of us had much. Basically, he just slid some of his stuff down the clothing rod and I hung up my few things on red plastic hangers. He told me I could use any of the drawers in the dresser, since they were all empty anyway.
“Why are you doing all this for me?” I asked. “You don’t even know me.” Jake stood in the doorway of his room and watched me fold a few t-shirts into one of the drawers.
“I don’t know,” he answered. I was surprised he didn’t take a pass on that one. I didn’t know whether to appreciate his honesty or be fearful that as soon as he figured out why, he’d just change his mind, and I would be left with nowhere to go. Again.
My plan was now simple. I would save money in the next several months by working at the shop, so by the time I turned eighteen—or by the time Jake skipped town, whichever came first—I would be able to afford my own place.
“I really can sleep on the couch,” I said. “You don’t need to give me your bed. Anything is better than the bench seat of a dusty truck. I’ll be perfectly comfortable on the couch, I swear,”
“No,” he said, without saying anything more. It was one of the things I was beginning to like about him. He didn’t feel the need to explain everything all the time. He didn’t just talk to fill the silence between us with useless words.
Jake made a grocery store run while I finished unpacking. I offered to make dinner for us as a thank you, even though my skills were more of the heating up variety, but he had told me he loved to cook and never really had a chance or a place to do it while he was on the road.
I sat at the counter and watched him slice and chop vegetables. He finally took pity on my uselessness and let me peel potatoes but not without a thorough tutorial first. He had marinated chicken thighs in different spices and set them under the broiler. “You really know what you’re doing, don’t you?” I was amazed by his skills in the kitchen. “Who taught you how to cook?”
“My mom. She went to culinary school, but came back here after she graduated. She wanted to open her own restaurant, but then she married my dad and had Mason and me, so she kept putting it off.” He dropped some chopped onions into a pan. They sizzled and popped when they hit the oil. “Your mom never taught you how to cook?” he asked.
“I’m not a good cook,” I said.
“That didn’t answer the question,” He answered.
“Why do you want to know about my mother?”
“I just want to know you,” he said. I know he was serious about getting to know me, but my frustration was growing like it did every time I allowed that woman into my thoughts for more than a minute without dismissing her.
“What do you want me to tell you? Because I honestly can’t think of a single thing my mother actually taught me. Oh, wait. She did teach me how to tie off those yellow rubber tubes really good and tight around her arm so she could find part of a vein she hadn’t treated like a dart board. That was, of course, until she’d exhausted all those veins and they died in her arms like I wished she would have every time she picked up the goddamned needle or snorted some shit up her fucking nose.”
I got up and walked into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. I was mad, but not at Jake. I was mad I had let myself get that upset. The woman who gave birth to me wasn’t even worth my anger. I’d had a handle on it since the very last day I’d ever seen her, though I don’t know if I could really call avoidance having a handle on it.
After a several minutes, there was a knock at the door. “Bee?”
“Yeah?” I kind of liked his nickname for me. I’d never had one before.
“I’m sorry I pushed. I said I wasn’t going to, but I was curious, and I let it get the better of me. I won’t do it again.” He was apologizing to me when I was the one who acted like a giant ass-hat.
I opened the door. “You shouldn’t apologize. I’m just screwed up and you’re probably thinking that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, and I understand, I’m just gonna go and—”
“We’re all a little damaged, Bee. Some of us more than others.” It was better he knew sooner rather than later how damaged I really was. He smiled and gestured to the counter where there was more food than any two people could consume in one lifetime. “Besides, you can’t go anywhere. Who is going to eat all this? I got a little carried away.”
“No shit,” I agreed. “Are you feeding an army?”
“I do eat a lot,” he said, patting his stomach. I could see the lines of his abs under his shirt.
“Yeah, you should knock off all the eating. It’s really making you gross to look at.”
“I’m vain enough to know that isn’t true, so I’m just gonna let that little insult slide.”
We sat at the bar and ate our food. Jake had made some sort of sliced potatoes he fried in butter with baked chicken thighs. The crispy skin was my favorite part. He also prepared roasted corn and a simple salad with dressing he’d made himself.
I was going to be very spoiled by the time I turned eighteen. And very, very fat.
“What do you like to do?” he asked. “Like, as a hobby?”
I had to think about whether or not smoking weed could be considered a hobby. “Not much. I can take pictures—or, at least, I think I can take pictures. In school they had loaner cameras for the photography class and I took to it pretty well. Even learned how to use the dark room to develop them. I had a knack for it, but at the end of the semester we had to give the cameras back, so I never got to find out if I was any good.”
“My dad might have a camera around you can use,” he offered. “I’ll see if it’s in his office somewhere.” He popped a slice of potato into his mouth with his fingers.
“Really? I mean, I don’t want to take his camera.”
“It’s nothing. I know he’s never even used it. I think I saw it the other day in his office. I’ll grab it for you tomorrow. No big deal.”
No big deal? It was a huge deal. I wasn’t used to people just handing over expensive possessions for me to use.
When we’d finished and I’d consumed more food than anyone my size should ever attempt to eat, I volunteered to clear our plates and do the dishes since I hadn’t contributed anything useful to the delicious meal I’d just devoured.
Jake didn’t argue with me. I had just started loading the dishwasher when a phone rang. He pulled a small black flip phone out of his pocket and when he glanced at the screen, his mood changed and his face went hard. The soft Jake from dinner was gone and in his place was a much more serious-looking version of himself. “I gotta take this. Be right back.” He stepped out of the back door that led to a small covered patio. From where I stood in the kitchen, I could hear him speaking to someone in hushed tones. He wasn’t the only one who was curious. I tiptoed over to the door and pressed my ear against it.