Page 5 of The Way We Are

Chris rubs his hands together before sliding into the passenger seat. He's worse than the middle child of a family when it comes to getting attention. He constantly puts Brax and me on opposing teams, hoping a crack in our friendship will strengthen his importance in our trio. You can’t be the three musketeers without a third man. He doesn’t need to cause trouble to elevate his status.

My jaw works side to side when the first turn of my key fires up my motor.

“What?” Chris stammers, unable to ignore my glare for a second longer. “We were trying to help. How long has it been since you two talked?”

I want to pretend I don’t know who he's referring to, but realizing he knows me as well as I know him, I scrub my hand over the stubble on my chin before answering, “Nearly five years.”

A shit-eating grin stretches across Chris’s face before he holds his hands out in front of his body palm side up as if to say, “You’re welcome.”

If I knew it was going to be another two months before I saw Savannah again, I might have said thank you.

2

Ryan

“Another problem with your battery?”

Stepping back from my engine, I spot Savannah standing at the driver’s side door of my truck. With summer hitting a little earlier than usual, her golden legs are barely covered by a teeny pair of white shorts, and the bright green spaghetti-strapped cami she's wearing enhances both the generous swell of her tits and her green orbs. She’s got the Daisy Duke vibe down pat today.

“Not exactly,” I reply, dropping my eyes from her rack to the rag tucked into the waistband of my shorts. After my less than stellar performance during our last tussle, I don’t think she’d appreciate me ogling her boobs.

While scrubbing engine grease off my hands, I nudge my head to my motor. “It’s a giant fucking jigsaw puzzle. I can’t tell a belt from a bolt. All I know is when I stick my key into the ignition, nothing happens.”

The already scorching day gets a whole lot hotter when Savannah giggles at my comment, thinking I’m trying to be funny. I wish I were joking. Even after putting a hundred hours into my motor with Chris, I’m at a loss on what the hell is wrong with it. It started fine this morning, but the instant I want to go home and shower off the grease, it refuses to start.

Through lowered lashes, I watch Savannah make her way from my driver’s side door to my hood. “Do you mind if I take a look?” she asks, her raspy voice revealing she noticed my sneaky glance at her gorgeous grin.

“What’s Axel gonna think about you getting dirty under my hood?” I nudge my head to Axel and his friends watching our exchange with fire burning in their eyes.

The only time they’ve moved from their window seat at Bob’s Burgers the past hour was to toss pennies at my feet. If my salary wasn’t needed to fix my truck, I would have retaliated to their taunt. Unfortunately, flipping patties is the only job someone with my skillset can do, so I gritted my teeth and ignored them. It was a fucking hard feat.

Savannah sighs softly, drawing my focus back to her. “It won’t be the first time I’ve been accused of servicing your motor behind his back.” She locks her eyes with mine, the determination in them mimicking the girl I used to know. “At least this time I’m doing it in front of him.”

I try to reply to her boyfriend’s insinuation we’ve gotten freaky between the sheets—before our run-in two months ago, we haven’t spoken in years, much less fooled around—but my words trap in my throat when Savannah steps onto the bumper of my truck and leans over the engine.

Savannah isn't very tall, standing a little over five foot five, so the leverage needed to inspect my motor has all type of advantages, the main one being the slightest peek of her glorious backside sneaking out of the bottom of her teeny shorts. If I were a man, I'd tear my eyes away from the image I have no right to observe. Since I'm not, I keep them locked on her ass and take a step to my right, blocking the enticing visual from anyone else hoping for a sneaky peek.

Just like Savannah, I’m not overly tall either, standing just shy of six feet. But years of track and field have kept my build athletic, ensuring even someone a few inches taller than me would think twice before mocking me. If I weren’t parked at the front of my workplace, I guarantee Axel wouldn’t have glanced in my direction, much less ridiculed me. He thinks my desperation to get out of Ravenshoe is his safety net. He is right... for now. All bets are off when we leave this turf.

My mind strays from reckless thoughts when Savannah announces, “I think it’s your spark plugs. Can you hand me the ratchet?” The eagerness in her voice relays her love of mechanics hasn’t dampened in the slightest the past five years.

I drop my eyes to the tools laid out at the side of my truck, acting like I know what I am doing. I don’t. I don’t have the faintest clue what I am looking for.What the fuck is a ratchet?

Wondering what has caused the delay, Savannah cranks her neck back to peer at me. I try to mask my confusion with a cheeky grin but fail miserably.

The smile Savannah was wearing earlier triples in size when she spots the bewilderment on my face. “Ratchet,” she informs me, pointing to a long silver instrument resting on the blanket I draped over the front quarter-panel of my truck to protect its recently restored paint.

“So that’s where it went,” I reply, pretending its glaringly obvious position wasn’t so obvious.

When I hand the ratchet to Savannah, a commotion behind my shoulder gains my attention. Douchebag No. 1 and a handful of his minions have stumbled onto the sidewalk, interrupting the heavy flow of foot traffic that hammer the sidewalks of Ravenshoe every Friday night.

“Come on, Savannah, we’re ready to head out,” Axel sneers like he’s scolding the owner of a dog whose shit he stepped in.

“Just a minute, Axel,” Savannah replies, her voice nowhere near as rude as the man scolding her. “I’ve almost got it.”

Her usually velvety smooth voice comes out with a grunt, enhancing the tightness in my crotch. It reminds me of the throaty moans she released while eating Hershey’s Kisses by the dozen when we were younger.

“Now, Savannah! We stayed at this dump thirty minutes longer than necessary waiting for your ass to arrive. I’m not waiting a minute longer.”

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