Page 9 of Tuned To Break
JAKE
I drag my arse out of bed on Monday morning, already feeling like crap. Fuck, how I hate Mondays. After having a shower, I get ready for work, pull on my coveralls, and stop off at the servo for a coffee. It tastes like shit, but it’s caffeine. By the time I get into Doc’s at seven AM, Chase, Asher, and José are all already there.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Chase jokes as I walk in.
I level him with a glare. “Don’t. It’s too fucking early for your bullshit.”
He smirks, completely unfazed. “Only because you asked so fucking nicely.” He jerks his chin toward the far side of the workshop. “Come on, it’s toolbox catch-up time. We’ve got to run through the day’s jobs before everyone starts tearing into the wrong shit again.”
It’s essentially just a way for us to be filled in on what projects we have this week and what we need to be doing. Blah, blah, blah.
I’ve worked at Doc’s for over three years, was here before Chase started working here, saw him through his accelerated apprenticeship, and watched him and Arden buy the business. It was the best thing that ever happened to this place because, as much as I love Doc, that old man was running this business intothe ground. We have a reputation to uphold, so it’s been nice to have some fresh faces with new ideas. Honestly, someone who wants to see this shop succeed.
I follow him over and stand around with the boys.
“All right, so first things first on the agenda, Arden’s hired a new admin person.”
The collective groan can’t be missed.
“Really? Another one?” Asher asks.
Chase chuckles. “Yes, another one. We need someone here, and he’s made me promise that we will try not to scare her off.” He throws a glare at José, who’s well-known for scaring our receptionists away, then looks at me. “Keep it in your pants.”
I hold my hands up in mock surrender. “Hey, hey, hey, it wasn’t my fault that you hired that chick who wanted to bang me.”
“Jake, you pursued her.”
“Yes, but she started it,” I cringe at the memory.
He rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. “Just behave yourself, please.”
I think back to the receptionist he’s talking about. This was two years ago, but the woman in question was never going to last. We all knew she wouldn’t. But in my defence, she came on to me, and it was a one-and-done thing, but apparently that was only on my end because she fell in love. She caused a whole bunch of drama and ended up leaving because I “ruined her life.” It was always supposed to just be fun, and if I’m honest, it was a mistake I probably shouldn’t have made. I was drunk, horny, and she was there.
“Fine,” I grunt back to Chase.
“Good. So let’s all agree to be nice to her. There is one other thing Arden mentioned—Stella’s Doc’s niece, and she and Doc are not on speaking terms. So, if you have anything scheduled with Doc that he needs to come in to oversee... Obviously theold geezer’s retired, but we still need him from time to time, especially on projects he used to work on. So, if you need him here, it needs to be on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday morning. We don’t want to cause any extra conflict for her, and it’s part of the conditions of her contract that we don’t have Doc here while she’s working. At the moment, she’s only going to be part-time because she works somewhere on the days I just mentioned, so we’ll have her here in the afternoons those three days, and then all-day Thursday and Friday.”
“Right. We’ll see how long this one lasts,” Asher tosses out before picking up his coffee and shaking his head at the rest of us, who nod in agreement.
“All right, now we have to finish the Chev this week. Asher, you good with finishing up prep for paint?”
“Yep, on it. I should be done by Wednesday and ready to go.”
Chase turns to me. “Jake, the engine rebuild—how’s it going?”
“Almost done. A couple of fine-tuning tweaks, and then it’ll be ready for you to look over and for us to talk with the engineer to make sure everything’s on track.”
“Great. I’ll schedule the engineer for Friday.”
“That works for me.” I pick up my notebook and start jotting down the list of things I need to do to get the car ready.
“José, you know what you need to do?”
“Yes, boss,” he says with an attitude that makes us all laugh.
“What did I tell you about the boss comments?”
“Not to call you boss, boss,” he says, sarcasm dripping from his voice.
