She gave me a sweet smile, and I tightened my hands on the steering wheel again.
“Are you and your mom close?”
My throat tightened and I nodded. I had this very strong urge to confide in her. “Yeah. I’m all she has and vice versa.” I cleared my throat and shifted on the seat once more, feeling really strange saying this shit to a virtual stranger.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, so softly I almost didn’t hear her.
“For what?” She shrugged, and I focused on the road, telling myself to stop looking at her.
“I’m just sorry you guys are all you have to each other.”
I pulled to a halt at a set of stoplights and didn’t know how to respond. I could hear how much she meant those words. I had the sudden urge to reach out and hold her hand. Of course, I didn’t do it.
“What do you want to do when you get to college?” She changed the subject, and I was thankful.
I thought about her question for a moment, even though I already knew what I wanted to study. “Mechanical engineering,” I finally replied. “Although I don’t know if I’m smart enough for all that. But I like fixing shit, working with my hands.” I gave a sarcastic laugh. “But my future is probably destined in being a grease monkey and working under the hood of cars.”
“It takes talent to be able to figure out what’s wrong and know how to fix it. Not a lot of people, me included, can do that.”
I looked at her for probably the fiftieth time since she’d gotten in my car. God, who was this girl and why was she so incredible?
“Just turn left up here,” she said and pointed in the direction I was to go.
A couple minutes later and she had me stopping in front of a ranch-style home. The yard was landscaped, with these flowering trees lining the entranceway. Shit, if she saw where I lived, she’d probably think twice about getting into my car again.
“Thank you so much.” She was smiling at me again. “Here,” she said and reached into her bag, pulling out a ten-dollar bill. “For gas.”
I knitted my brows and shook my head. “No fucking way.”
Her eyes widened before she started laughing.
“Shit, sorry. I meant no. I’m not taking your money. It was on my way and I offered.”
“You’re sure?”
I nodded. “I’d be a real douche to take your money.”
She tucked the bill back in her bag and gave me a sweet look. “Well, thank you again.”
“It wasn’t any trouble.” She needed to get out of my car, not because I wanted her to—because I sure as fuck didn’t—but because the longer I sat in her presence, the more I felt that unusual, pleasurable sensation move through me, and that meant I’d do something stupid like touch her, hold her... kiss her.
I was shocked at how intense that feeling was, the need to stake my claim, because I didn’t want her sharing any part of herself with another person. It was selfish and unrealistic, but fuck did it feel right.
But she stayed in my car for a long moment, neither one of us saying anything. We just looked at each other, the air thickening between us. I swore she didn’t want to get out, maybe thinking of something to say to me. I could really fucking relate.
“So, do you want to exchange numbers?” she finally asked. “I feel like we really connected the last ten minutes of you driving me to my house, and of course, I let you look under the hood of my car so you could diagnosis the problem.” She was holding in her laugh.
God, she was gorgeous, witty, and had a sense of humor.
“I mean, that would be the logical next step.” I grinned, and it felt good. It was something I hadn’t really been doing a lot of lately, not since my mom got diagnosed, not with all the trouble I got into over the last few years, and especially not with having to start a new school my senior year. But I found that with Harlow, she made it really easy, and I liked being around her.
I liked the way she made me feel.
And the craziest fucking part was I felt all of this in the span of a fucking car ride. That had to mean something, right? Or hell, maybe I was just losing my fucking mind.
She pulled out her cell and I did the same. She took mine out of my hand, her fingers brushing against my skin. That shouldn’t have affected me the way it did, but this electricity slammed into me. I knew if I didn’t start thinking about something else, my cock would start to harden and be clearly visible through my jeans.
Baseball.
Grandmas baking cookies.
Working on a fucking engine.
I watched as she entered her phone number into my phone then handed me back mine and then hers for me to do the same. After I put my phone number into her contacts and gave her back her cell, we just sat there and stared at each other for a second.
She had the prettiest blue eyes I’d ever seen, clear and bright, almost the same color as the denim we both wore. And her hair was this mass of long, thick auburn waves. I’ve never quite seen a shade like it before, and I wondered if it was natural golden highlights I saw in it.
“It was nice finally officially meeting you, Aiden.”
I nodded, wanting to say the same thing, but she was getting out of the car before the words came out. I didn’t move out of the driveway as I watched her walk up to the front door, unlock it, and step inside. She looked back at me and waved, that smile on her face. It was only when she closed the door that I told myself to get the fuck out of there, because Harlow was the last thing I needed to think about.
Chapter Five
Aiden
I found myself heading back home, taking the long way, because the truth was, I liked thinking about Harlow.
I turned the radio on to try to drown out my thoughts. She was the last thing I needed to think about. I had other things to focus on aside from Harlow. But despite telling myself that over and over again, I couldn’t get her out of my mind.
She consumed my thoughts the entire way home, and it wasn’t until I pulled into the gravel driveway of the little two-bedroom, rundown house my mom and I were currently renting that I realized Harlow twisted me all up.
I cut the engine and just sat there, thinking about what this meant, why I felt this way for a girl I didn’t know, that I’d just met. This girl had already gotten under my skin in such a short timeframe.
I climbed out of the car, leaving my books in the backseat. I had to go to work in a couple hours and during my breaks would try to get some assignments done. It was the only time I really had to do homework, that or stay up fucking late to finish them.
I opened the front door, and the smell of disinfectant and artificial lemon slammed into my nose. This was the smell I was always greeted with when I came home.
The house was old, with a retro sixties theme going on. The kitchen flooring was this off-yellow linoleum with little daisies in the center of each faux tile. The counters were Formica, chipped in several places, with gold veining throughout it. The counters might’ve been white at one point, but now they just looked dingy and faded, with a few high traffic areas worn down. Despite the counters being clean, they looked perpetually dirty from age and wear.
The appliances were about twenty-five years outdated, the fridge occasionally making a rattling noise when the compressor kicked on.