Page 77 of It's About Time
She shakes her head before bending down to lift the seat and carry it over to the car. I race over to help her, but she laughs. “What are you doing?”
I attempt to take the seat from her, but she pulls it away from me.
“I was trying to help you.”
Her eyebrow arches. “You think I haven’t done this a thousand times on my own?”
Twisting back to the car, I consider her words before turning back to face her. “Okay, fair point.”
“Besides, no one is touching the Porsche except me.” When I move out of her way, she slides the seat into the body of the car and then stands upright again.
“Why?”
“Why what?” she asks, clearly confused by my question.
“Why aren’t you going to let anyone help you?”
“Because I’ll be damned if anyone else tries to take credit for it.” There’s a bite to her words that makes me want to know exactly what she means.
“Has that happened before?” She darts her eyes from mine and moves over to the other seat, ignoring me. “It has, hasn’t it?”
“Don’t worry about it, Elliot,” she says, moving around me and back to the car, this time placing the seat in the driver’s side.
“Don’t you think this is something that I should know, Dilynne? Especially if you’re my fiancée?”
Sighing, she relents and looks me straight in the eye when she says, “Yes, it’s happened before.”
“When?”
“The last time I was at Motorlux.”
“You’ve entered this show before?”
She shakes her head. “No, but my boyfriend did, and I’m the one who helped him win.”
And everything finally clicks into place. “Vinnie?”
“Yup,” she nods. “So now you understand why this event is so important to me.”
I watch her move around the shop, gathering tools so naturally like she could do it in her sleep. This is her domain, her home away from home.
Andthat’s when it hits me: I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen Dilynne at work.
I scour the garage, feeling like I just entered an alternate universe, and on some level I have. I have no clue what any of this shit is. Dilynne has done all of the maintenance on my truck over the years, and I’ve never thought twice about it. But that’s because I knew she was the expert.
But seeing her in her element now is making me wonder why I never really appreciated her skills before.
Maybe because she’s been too busy hating you and vice versa for you to notice, Elliot.
“Your interview was great, Dilynne. There’s no way anyone is going to doubt that you belong there.”
“Ha. Easy for you to say. The thing is, I did that interviewbeforeI ran into Vinnie, thank God. Because after that conversation, the drive home was…” Her jaw tightens as she looks away from me. “Not fun.”
“He really did a number on you, didn’t he?”
Our gazes lock.
“Tori did a number on you too, huh?” she fires back.
