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“Looks like it needs a few stitches. You good with that?”
“Yeah,” I said in an unhappy grumble.
It wasn’t the stitches part that I was grumpy about, it was the fact that it would put me out of commission for a good few days longer than I wanted to be.
He got to work, first cleaning it out and making sure there wasn’t anything stuck in the open gash.
“Is that Chevelle almost done?” he asked, his full attention on tying off the first stitch.
“Yeah. I had hoped to have it done this week. Might not happen now.” I let out a short laugh.
“Bet ya can’t wait to get in it.”
“Nope. Been dying to take it out to the strip since the moment I laid eyes on it. Might be hard to let this one go.” I may have said that about a few of my projects before, but this one I’d spent extra time on for some reason and wasn’t all that ready to let it go so quickly.
“What color are you thinking?” he asked, his fingers working to push the curved needle through the thick, tough skin on the palm of my hand.
“Yellow,” I said. It had been the first color that popped into my mind when I went to pick up the half-abandoned car. “But like a bright yellow. More like lemon.”
I let out a short laugh that jerked my body as I thought about the conversation I’d had with Brand. At Charming’s raised brow and questioning glance, I began to explain.
“So, I convinced Brand that it was a nineteen seventy-nine.”
To this, Charming looked at me blankly. Clearly not a car guy. And Brand wasn’t much for the classics either. He didn’t know them like I did. Yeah, he had grown up working in his dad’s garage, but he’d dealt mostly with cars made within the last twenty years. Honestly, the guy was better with motorcycles. Now, classic bikes, that was something Brand could beat me at in the knowledge department.
“It’s a seventy-three. He tried to argue with me but I somehow convinced him it was a seventy-nine,” I said and I knew Charming wasn’t finding the humor in any of this. “The last year of the Chevelle was seventy-seven.”
“You’re shitting me?”
“Nope,” I said as I laughed. “He was about to look it up and then Cami distracted him. So, he still thinks it’s a seventy-nine.”
It was a bit messed up but we were always doing shit like that to each other. I was sure once he actually figure it out, he would come up with a sly way to get me back.
Not many of the brothers knew the classic lines of cars like I did, the way that bodies adapted over the years. I wasn’t saying that I knew every make, model, and year, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t look at the build and lines of a car and come damn close to its year of production.
“That’s fucking hilarious. He’s going to feel like an idiot when he figures it out.”
I smiled and gave a half shrug. It wouldn’t matter in a couple of weeks anyway, the car would be sold and gone, and sadly, forgotten.
“All set, brother,” he said as he wiped the cut down one last time. “It’s an awkward place, so be extra careful doing shit. Since it isn’t too deep, I should be able to take those out in two days, providing you don’t go fighting with any more engines and bust it open again.”
“I’ll try my best,” I said chuckling. “No guarantees, though. Thanks for this, man.”
I took my ass up to my room. I was on edge and aggravated but it wasn’t like there was anything I could do about it. I flipped on the TV and got lost in some mindless adult cartoons until Lake banged on my door and told me they were heading out for tacos.
The front table in the corner of the restaurant had more or less become ours. Every time we came here that was where they sat us. It might have been that it was the biggest set up they had in the small restaurant, but I liked to think that it was because they considered it our corner. I don’t know why that mattered to me, but it did.
Maybe it was that I found comfort in familiarity. Or it could have been that deep down inside I liked knowing that I had a place. Something so small as a table in my favorite taco joint may have seemed trivial to some, and I supposed it maybe was.
“Heard you messed up your hand,” Mouse said as he clapped me on the back before we took our seats. “Sucks, man. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not all that bad. Few stitches. I should be good to go in a couple of days,” I said showing him the damage.
“Bet you are gonna be a grumpy son of a bitch until you can get back in that garage,” B-ry said with a fucking smirk plastered on his face. “Not that it would be any different from how you’ve been lately.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I barked. “I have not.”
“Yeah, okay,” he replied and I looked around at everyone else to see if they shared his opinion.
