Page 39 of Resilience

Sam swallowed. Shit. Was he in trouble? “Okay. Everything good?”

“Yeah. Just want to talk.”

“Okay, I’ll give you a shout.”

With that, Mav turned and went to the bays. The girls stood where they were and watched him go. When the coast was clear, they ran to the desk.

“Are you in trouble?” Arielle asked. “We don’t need ice cream.”

He laughed. “You try to rob the place blind half the times you come in here, and now you’re guilty about taking something you were offered? Y’all’s ethics are wack.”

“We don’t want you to get in trouble,” Carly said.

“I’m not in trouble. And I’m paying for the ice creams myself, so I won’t get in trouble. Don’t think of this as a regular thing, but go ahead and pick one.”

“You’re a good guy, Sam,” Malika told him.

“So they tell me. Go on. Try the Reese’s one if you want.”

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~oOo~

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“You haven’t spent any time in the bays yet,” Maverick said as he pulled a stool up and sat down behind the counter. “You thinkin’ about that? Your minimum’s about up—I’m not saying anything about a patch yet, but it’s been a year, and you haven’t asked to apprentice.”

Sam chuckled a little, and Maverick frowned. “That’s funny?”

“No, sorry. No. Just ... I was thinking about this today. I guess something’s in the air.”

“Or you’re thinking you’re about eligible for patch consideration.”

“Yeah, I am. But not really. Does anybody get patched at their minimum?”

“It happens. Not that often these days. But Zach didn’t go much longer than a year.”

Now Sam really laughed. “Yeah, but he’s that guy, you know?” Everything Zach Jessup did, he seemed to excel at immediately. It drove his brother nuts. Sam simply found it interesting to watch.

Maverick laughed, too. “Yeah, I hear you. But we’re talking about you. Fitz said he’s offered, and you turned him down.”

Fitz was Sam’s sponsor. Overall, he was pretty hands-off, but Sam knew he’d be there if he needed him. And yeah, he’d offered a few times to let Sam work with him and get some apprentice hours.

“I ... uh ... I don’t think I want to be a mechanic.” Actually, he felt a little intimidated confessing that. “Would that be a problem?”

Mav considered him, letting his gaze hang there until Sam began to feel the need to squirm. “If it is a prob—”

“It’s not. You don’t have to be a mechanic. I want you working here, so we have you when we need you, but ... you want to work the shop? For good?”

“I don’t mind working the shop. I think I’d prefer it to being stuck under a hood all day. I think body work like Dad does would be cool, too, but we don’t get many of those jobs.” They got auto-body work so rarely that his father mainly worked on engines. But the highlight of the work Sam and Dad had done on his pickup had been making that crumpled old rust bucket showroom beautiful again. Working on engines seemed like work to Sam, but rebuilding vehicles was art.

“Tell you what,” Mav said, “work on an I-CAR cert. We get enough work to need a body specialist on the books, and Si’s looking to slow down in the bays.”

“He is?” First Sam had heard of it.

“That’s what he told me. Mentoring you might be a good transition. If you’re interested. You could work here in the shop when there’s no body work scheduled. Regardless, you should be thinking about it—and talking to your old man. More than half our time is spent doing straight work, so you should like what you do.”

Sam wasn’t sure whether the subtext he heard in this conversation was real or merely wishful thinking, but his one-year was coming up in about a week. Then he would be officially eligible for a patch. And here was Maverick, VP of the Brazen Bulls and essentially their head of HR, talking about Sam’s future plans with the club. Plans that were only relevant if he became a patch.

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