Page 112 of First-Time Caller
“What?”
“The noise,” she says, both eyebrows raised. She drags her clipboard closer to her and starts to make notes. I watch her hand scribble over the page, her handwriting a series of neat looping lines. She writesAiden Valenat the top of the page.Lucie Stoneright next to it under the labelTechnician.
“What did it sound like?” she asks again. “The, uh, the noise?”
She nods.
I make a gurgling clunking sound that’s a poor imitation of whatever the hell my car was doing twenty minutes ago. Lucie tries to tuck her face into her arm, but I can still see the way her shoulders shake. I narrow my eyes.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Absolutely not,” she says, still writing on her clipboard.Overheating, I watch her scribble.Transmission. “What do I have to laugh about? If I were laughing at you, I’d probably ask you to make that sound again.”
“Do you need me to?”
She lifts her face toward mine with a smile. “Not right now, but maybe later.” Another car honks and she rolls her eyes. “I’m going to get you loaded up. Is there anything you need from the car?”
Just the pizza in the front seat I’ve been attempting to keep hot with the seat warmer. I duck into the passenger side to retrieve it while Lucie sets to work getting my car hooked to the tow.
There’s something about her hands and the heavy machinery, I decide as I wait for her on the sidewalk. The confidence with which she maneuvers around my car. She’s quick and efficient, practiced and smooth. She hops back into her tow truck and backs it up to the bumper, one hand braced on the passenger head rest, her neck tilted gracefully toward the back window. I stare at her and remember the way her skin tasted there—the hollow beneath her ear, her fluttering pulse—and I have to shift on my feet and think about Jackson and his pudding disaster to avoid getting overly enthusiastic on a Baltimore side street.
While holding a lukewarm pizza box.
She kneels by the front wheel after securing the towing fork beneath the frame and I tilt my head back to look at the gray sky.
“You worried about your car?” she calls, mistaking my distress for something reasonable.
“Worried about my brain,” I mutter. I can’t believe I’m getting hard watching her load a tow.
“What was that?”
I drop my chin back to my chest. Lucie is squinting at me from the front wheel well of my car. “Nothing,” I call. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
“I’ll be done in just a second.”
“Take your time.”
When she’s finished, she meets me on the sidewalk, pink-cheeked with a spot of grease on her nose. I wipe it away with my thumb and she smiles. I feel like I’ve swallowed an entire swarm of bees. I add it to my list of ridiculous symptoms.
“Come on,” she says. “I’ll give you a lift back to the shop.”
It doesn’t feel safe to be in close quarters with Lucie, but I follow her dutifully to the tow and climb into the passenger seat, my pizza balanced on my knees. I clutch at it like a lifeline, harder when she slides into the bench seat next to me and swings the door shut behind her.
She tries to make conversation on the way to the shop, but I’m busy trying to figure out how to exist in the space next to her. I keep thinking I’ll have a handle on myself the next time I see her and I never do. I’m reading into inconsequential details, trying to make sense of it all. But nothing about the way I’m feeling makes any sort of sense. I’m not sure it’s supposed to.
My brain has been on a loop since I made her come in a supply closet. Her breathing in my ear. Her hips beneath my hands. The smile she gave me when she disappeared into the hallway. The way she laughed in the booth after. I’ve never had that before. The after. Getting to watch the blush slowly fade from her cheeks, her gaze climbing to mine and darting away while we sat side by side in the booth and pretended like we didn’t just deface station property.
I shift in my seat and the leather squeaks beneath me. I’ve been texting her every hour, on the hour, in an attempt to keep her mind on me as much as possible. I’m the toddler on the playground, tugging on her pigtails to get a reaction. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to want more. I don’t know what the rules are. I don’t know the next steps. I’ve never cared enough to figure it out.
Lucie stops trying to make small talk somewhere around the third red light and the silence makes everything worse. I try, several times, to think of something appropriate to say, but my mind is a blank slate. The harder I try to reach for something, the farther everything seems to float away.
By the time she pulls into the service bay of a mechanic shop, I have mangled the pizza box beyond repair and she’s frowning at her hands on the steering wheel.
“Give me a few minutes and I’ll drive you home,” she says, the truck still rumbling beneath us. “Just have to get your car off the lift.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I do, actually.” She laughs, but it’s forced. “If I leave your car on the truck, the door won’t close.”
