I watch him fiddle with the engine, touching grease and smelling his fingers. He's a tactile mechanic in a way, using all his senses to feel out the problem. "We're gonna need to order parts," he says eventually.
"How long?"
"Maybe seventy-two hours," he says. "Weekend delays."
"Shit." Sandy's going to be devastated to miss Connie's wedding. Then I have an idea.
"You guys okay if I duck out for the rest of the day?"
Damien and Greg glance at each other, and then Greg nods. He's not in charge here, but as the oldest, he's taken the role of organizer.
The click of heels alerts me to Sandy's presence behind me. "Is it bad?"
Greg and Damien stand straight, and I turn to face the woman who is in my blood so deep I've never managed to bleed her out.
"It's bad," Greg says, shaking his head.
"Can you fix it today?"
"We need to get parts. They won't get here for at least forty-eight hours. Then we need time to fit them."
"Three days." Sandy's face falls, and so does my stomach. Seeing her disappointed is like a kick in the gut. "The wedding…" She shakes her head, blowing out a steadying breath, her eyes focused on a grease stain on the ground.
"Wedding?" a voice pipes up from the other side of the shop. It's Andrew, his bright blue eyes peering at us with interest.
"She has a wedding she's going to miss," I explain.
"Is that why she's dressed up so pretty?" Damien asks innocently, then blushes almost immediately.
"Yes." I shoot him a look, and he has the decency to shrug.
"Why don't you drive her?" Andrew asks, oblivious to all the history bubbling between us but an answer to my prayers. He's suggested it before I could get a word in, and that makes this situation way easier.
All eyes land on me, and I shift on my feet. "I could drive you…if you wanted me to?"
Sandy clutches her purse in front of her body like a shield against me. "It's too far."
"Where?"
"An hour away."
Is that it? "I can do that."
She bites her lip, and I know she's torn. Saying no means that she misses her friend's special day but saying yes will put us in close confines for at least two hours in the car. "You better go home to change first," she says eventually, shocking me so much I take a step back.
"What?"
"Well, you can't go to a party dressed like that."
I gaze down at my stained overalls tied at my waist and the tight gray shirt I pulled on this morning. She's right, but I wasn't thinking I'd be attending with her. I'd imagined driving her and waiting outside.
I should have known she wouldn't have liked that. Sandy never was okay with people putting themselves out for her. She's fair and considerate, from her pretty little toes to the last hair on her head.
"Looks like you just got yourself a free meal," Arden says, grinning next to his brother. He rubs his beard, the only obvious thing that sets him apart from his triplets.
A free meal with an awkwardness chaser.
Shit. I guess I better go scrub up.
3
SANDY
As I sit waiting outside the colossal house where Tyler is currently changing, I pick at the skin around my nail, still reeling at the strange circumstances. In a million years, I never would have predicted something like this, and now I'm here, living in this peculiar reality with the very solid version of my ghost-ex-boyfriend, I don't know how to be.
I'm on a raft, lost at sea, adrift and floundering.
My initial anger has settled into something curious. Something hurt—something worn down and filled with questions.
When the door slams, my eyes are drawn to the shape of the man who wrecked me so badly I've never found the courage to trust again. He's swapped his mechanic’s uniform for navy dress pants and a white button-down shirt that he's left open at the collar. He's rolled up the sleeves, too, probably for the heat but maybe because he always loved to show off his ink. The baseball cap has been ditched and now I see the dark curls that I used to run my fingers through, sometimes when we were relaxing on the couch in front of the TV, and sometimes when Tyler was moving inside me, like he was always going to exist between my thighs.
My cheeks flush, and a feeling stirs between my legs that’s been absent for a long time.
Arousal.
It's not that I haven't wanted sex in the years after Tyler. It's more that I haven't felt this.
What is it? Attraction that's more than the physical? I knew this man and believed he was good in every way.
"Hey." He slides in next to me, smelling like an alpine forest at dawn, taking up way more space in the truck than is decent. When his hand finds the stick, the memory of his palm gripping my ass hits me full force. The whimper that leaves my lips is shameful.
I'm better than this. Stronger than this. He doesn't deserve to know that his presence still affects me in any way other than drawing contempt.
"Do you want to type the zip code in?"
He hands me his phone, and I punch the address into his app. We're on our way in no time, with only the noise of the air-conditioning and engine for company.
The awkwardness feels terrible.
"Thanks for doing this," I say to break the silence. "I'm sure that you have better things to be doing…working…"
"It's okay. The boys have all the jobs at the shop under control."
"Still. This is…it's a lot."
He turns to me, taking his eyes from the road for a few seconds. "It's nothing, Sandy." He nods as though I'm supposed to take more from those three words, and I do. He means it's nothing compared to leaving me without saying goodbye—nothing for going without explanation.
And it is nothing in comparison to all that we've been and all that we lost.
"Connie will be happy," I say.
"Who's the lucky guy? Is it someone I know?"
I pause for a moment, thinking how to answer his question, but there's no softening the answer when we'll be there soon, and he'll see for himself.
"Guys," I say. "She's marrying four men."
"FOUR?" He turns to me again, and I point at the road.
"Four brothers. They're in a polyamorous relationship. A reverse harem."
"Reverse harem?"
"Yeah, you know. Like a king with lots of concubines, except she's a queen with lots of kings."
I grin as he whistles long and low. "Connie?"
The disbelief in his voice is too funny. "I felt the same when I heard about her situation. She was even suggesting I should meet her boyfriends' cousins to see if I wanted the same kind of relationship."
"Oh yeah," Tyler says, all bright and breezy, but I know him well enough to know he's taking my bait.
"Yeah… They're ranchers, five of them."
"Five?"
"Yeah." I leave that hanging for a while, watching Tyler's jaw ticking out of the corner of my eye. When I think he's stewed long enough, I put him out of his misery. "It didn't work out, though."