Page 8 of The Charm of You

I blow out a breath, mentally tallying up my own list of things to do this afternoon—finish up with one more car, pick up dinner for my mom, then give Keely a lift to my place after her shift at the diner.

Except, as of yesterday, that last item is no longer in the weekly rotation.

Grinding my molars, I relent. “Sure.”

“Perfect!” Addie squeals. “You’ll have just enough time to drop off my stuff, and then you and Keely can go have nasty, meaningless sex in peace.”

I grunt.

“Just shoot me a time, and I’ll be there,” I say.

“You might be a prickly son of a gun, but I can always count on you.”

“I already agreed to your favor. There’s no need for any more flattery.”

Knowing the meticulous woman, I bet she crosses me off her physical to-do list before we end the call.

Addie was clearly too preoccupied with her to-do list to give me a lecture on the emotional dangers of “nasty, meaningless sex,” as she usually does.

Thank fuck.

I haven’t told her what happened with Keely yet, and it’s not something I want to get into anytime soon, either. I’d prefer if I never have to recount the details of my conversation with Keely at all.

I drop a wrench onto the top of a pile of other tools, rattling my messy toolbox. The clap of metal against metal travels across Judd’s auto shop with a vengeance.

Addie’s eyes twitch each time she sees the damn pile. She’s tried to organize my tools multiple times in the past, but I use them so often, her “system” is ruined again within minutes of her hard work.

I respect her need to tidy everything. In fact, I’m similar to her in that way, but there’s a method to the chaos in this auto shop that she doesn’t understand. It’s taken me years to cultivate a system that works for me well enough that even Judd has stopped questioning me.

It’s why Addie has stopped advising me on how to do my job. She stays out of my work, and I avoid telling her how to be a good and efficient English teacher.

School was never my strong suit, anyhow.

Half an hour later, I change the song on my Bluetooth speaker and hoist a tire onto the hub of a sickeningly green Pontiac. The sweat stinging my eyes worsens as I tighten each lug nut, but it’s in part because I can’t stop myself from replaying what happened with Keely.

“You’re emotionally unavailable, Austin.”

“Pfft,” I mutter under my breath as my muscles flex, grease staining my hands and wrists.

“The only woman you have room in your life for is your mother.”

Real fucking rich.

If Keely would’ve seen my mother right after my dad passed, she wouldn’t have thrown my relationship with her in my face last night. She definitely wouldn’t have used it as a reason to break up with me.

Not that there was a real relationship to break to begin with. What Keely and I shared over the last few years was only physical, but rejection still stings.

It’s not one of those things that gets easier the more I experience it, either. I’ve been rejected a lot, and it still fucking burns.

I haven’t been on the receiving end of a rejection in a while, though, not since I grew into my muscles. Many women find my smirk and reluctant humor appealing too, but not enough to accept my emotional unavailability, evidently.

A self-deprecating laugh escapes me as I finish up with the tire, and a figure shuffles in my periphery.

“Hey,” I call out to Judd. “What happened to the air conditioner you were supposed to install?”

The cranky old bastard with a big mouth and an even bigger heart halts by his office door, the usual clipboard tucked under his arm. Rose, our receptionist, and some of our customers believe it’s for working purposes, but I know it’s the keeper of his own personal notes.

Scratching his peppered beard, then the side of his head, Judd says, “Next week.”

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