Page 6 of A Gift for her Festive Firefighter

You have a crush on the firefighter?

You and the captain?

Digging out her keys, she unlocked the door and quickly slid inside as the first tear fell – brushing it away. The scents of brake clean, paper, rubber, and oil welcomed her home… along with the silence and a single flickering nightlight to keep her from tripping on anything.

Holly trudged up the stairs to her small apartment above the garage and plopped down on the well-worn loveseat that was covered with a blanket, tucked carefully to keep it from slipping around. The furniture was just as tired and worn out as she was – or so it felt. She wanted something new, something fun and exciting. Something that welcomed her back.

Right now, life felt like a chore.

She had nothing to look forward to but another oil change, another brake job, another botched blind date, or another series of long days that would drag into weeks or months.

“Or years,” she said sadly to the darkness, with a stark comprehension that was sobering and painful to realize. No one was going to date the ‘Tomboy’ of town or date ‘Good ol’ Beary’ because they didn’t ‘see’ her as a woman. They saw her as Beary’s kid, not Beary’s daughter. The town saw her as the mechanic who worked on everything from lawnmowers to Lincolns.

They didn’t see her as Holly, and that needed to change – somehow.

A few days later, Holly was even more determined to change the way that people saw her in town… and determined not to talk to Krista. She was upset with the other girl because, in Holly’s mind – the woman deemed her ‘compatible’ with the town druggie.

The. Town. Druggie.

Holly Beary was good enough to swap a set of spark plugs or re-ring the pistons on someone’s blown engine, but she wasn’t good enough to ask out or girly enough to be someone’s ‘Booty Call’ (even though she’d say ‘no’ in a heartbeat!) It would be flattering to have someone chasing after her because they were interested and honestly...

It would give her hope and a feeling of validation. Right now, she felt like a waste of female space, and that was hard. Nope – her plan was being put into action immediately.

Run=Holly v2.0.exe

“I think,” she chuckled, realizing she knew cars and zilch about computer programming. “Either way, change is happening, and it starts tonight.”

Grabbing her keys, she locked the doors of the garage and darted out the back door to where her 1967 yellow Mustang Fastback coupe was parked. Yeah, working on cars was a ‘gimmie’ when her father surprised her with the keys when she turned fifteen years old.

“Holly-baby-dolly,” her father had said gruffly, sitting her down at the table with a straight face. “Now, you are growing up and we need to have a talk about the future. You haven’t shown a lot of interest in going to college, cooking, cleaning, or doing other stuff around the house – but every time I’m under the hood, you’re there.”

“Sorry, Daddy,” she had whispered, chagrinned and a little scared he was telling her to get out of the garage while he was working. She was bored, and cars were fun puzzles to figure out.

“Don’t apologize,” he chuckled, relaxing. “Focus and apply that interest – which is why I’m giving you this now. It’s a massive responsibility and just as big of an undertaking. But if you can look past the outside, see the beauty underneath, then I think you’ll realize that it’s worth all the effort.”

“What is it?”

“Here,” her father had smiled, pushing a cupcake toward her with a candle… and a small box. She remembered fondly how her hands trembled because this felt so pivotal, so life-altering. Opening the box, she saw the two worn keys – and her eyes shot to his.

“Now, that yellow jalopy is in rough shape…”

“You got me a… car?”

“I did.”

“But I can’t drive…”

“Yet.”

“Wait,” Holly exclaimed as it dawned on her what her father was doing. “You got me a car, my own car, for me to work on over the next few years… so I can fix it up and drive it?”

“I want you to learn everything, be able to take care of yourself and take over my business someday. I need to know my girl doesn’t need anyone and can be independent, all while maintaining a roof over your head.”

Beary closed her eyes for a moment, jamming the keys into the ignition of the old Mustang, and turned it. The feeling of the engine roaring to life always made her think of her father. Maybe that was why she closed her eyes each time she started it up – not because she was praying that it turned over, but because it gave her a chance to see his proud face. That moment when she first got the engine to work, before he died a few months later of a heart attack, would always stick in her mind.

“C’mon, Butter,” she whispered to her car, smirking at the nickname she’d given it. She was yellow, drove smooth as silk, and when she hit the gas – the car smeared itself all over the road, fishtailing.

Butter’s faded yellow paint job was near glossy from all the love and attention she’d given it over the years during her time off. The headliner was a pale-yellow fabric that she had glued to the old headliner, dotting the ceiling of the car with flowers, lace, and other feminine things. Her seats were recovered white leather because that was her biggest weakness – white leather car seats made her weak at the knees. The floorboards were a pale tan carpet because that was as close as she could get to what fit the car for this model year. She was replacing the dirty seatbelts with yellow ones, complete with a pretensioner kit to fire in the case of an accident.

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