Page 18 of Withholding Nothing

“Cool,” I said, standing to my feet. “See later then, roomie.” I grinned when she slightly cringed at her new nickname. This arrangement would be an interesting one.

∞∞∞

Back at the repair shop, I continued working on Ashton’s car. Chris approached me and stood to the side of the car, wiping his hands on a greasy towel.

“Dad always gives you the big jobs,” he complained. I looked up from under the hood.

“Probably because you come in on your own time instead of when he tells you to,” I responded. He thought for a moment before nodding.

“You’re probably right. Plus, that’s too much work anyway. I’ll stick with the oil changes and the other simple stuff.”

“Yeah, you do that,” I answered idly, working on removing the damaged radiator.

“Anyway, I came over here to ask about your meeting. Is your roommate hot at least?” he asked.

“Yeah. It’s this car’s owner,” I mentioned, loosening a screw.

“Holy fuck,” Chris exclaimed. “Ashton’s your roommate? You lucky son of a bitch!”

“I wouldn’t say lucky. She still hates me.”

“Fuck that! You get to see her walking around in cute little nightgowns and panties and all that. You could even ‘accidentally’ walk in on her in the shower,” he said and chuckled. I looked up at him with a raised brow.

“Yeah…you’d be one of those creepers she mentioned in her ad,” I said flatly.

“Hey, I’m just saying. You’d be a fool not to try to get a peek,” he said.

“Chris! God dammit, I told you to rotate the tires on this car and to do the oil change! The owner will be back to pick it up in almost an hour!” Rocky barked from the lobby door.

“I was getting to it!” Chris said in a huff and walked away. I shook my head and focused on my own task. Sometimes I wondered how in the hell they survived before I got here. With Chris’s work ethic, I had no idea how anything managed to get done around here.

As soon as I finally got the radiator out of the car, my phone vibrated in my pocket. Irritation filled me when I fished my phone out of my pocket and saw Kayla’s name on my screen again. I sighed. She’d just keep calling until I eventually answer. May as well get this over with.

“Yeah,” I said upon answering, leaning against the side of the car.

“O’Shea! Hey! I’ve been calling you forever,” she rushed out. “I’ve been worried sick about you—”

“What do you need, Kayla?” I asked.

She released a soft sigh. “Shea…I think we really need to talk about what happened. I thought we would’ve been able to talk about it when I got home, but you were already gone and—”

“What more is there to talk about? You said we were over.”

“I know, but…I’ve had a lot of time to think about things and maybe I was a bit irrational.”

“A bit irrational,” I repeated, letting out an airy chuckle. “You have an answer for everything, huh?”

“Shea, I’m serious,” she said.

“Kayla, it’s one thing to not be ready for marriage. But you claimed that we were just fooling ourselves to think that we could work since we came from two different income classes. That didn’t sound irrational; it sounded like something you’d given a lot of thought to,” I reminded her, suddenly feeling bitter as our last conversation filled my mind.

She was silent for a moment before she sighed again. “Look, maybe we should meet up and talk about this face to face instead of over the phone. Maybe we can do lunch sometime?”

“I’m not in Virginia anymore, Kayla. I haven’t been since that night.”

“Then where are you? I can come to you—”

“That’s not necessary. I have no interest in talking about this anymore. I’ve accepted the fact that we’re not together, so I’d rather keep it that way.”

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