“You’re distracting me,” I say cheekily.
“Good to know,” he gifts me a slow wink. “See you in a bit.”
When he’s at a safe distance, Chatty, whose real name is Melinda, gives me the side-eye as she grabs another tub from the stack just dropped off at our station. “How do you know Sean?”
I shrug, stacking up the empty tubs. “We met yesterday at orientation.”
“You be careful with him. And steer clear of his friends, that dark one they call the Frenchman,” she leans in, “I’ve heard…things about him.”
“Really?”
The Frenchman.
It has to be Dominic she’s speaking about. I detected a hint of an accent when he spoke and have little doubt there’s truth to her warning. I’d been introduced to that infuriatingly gorgeous, dark cloud last night. He’s the mirror opposite of the spiked sunray that’s been taking up my thoughts today.
Melinda looks to be in her early forties. Everything about her screams of southern values. From her old school perm to her high-waisted mom jeans to the cross draped around her neck. After just a few short hours of listening to her, my conclusion is that she’s not only the plant gossip but the town gossip as well, and no secret of mine will ever be safe with her. I have no doubt I’ll make it into her future dinner conversations.
“Yeah. They don’t mess around. Fast cars, parties, drugs, and girls.” She leans in close. “I hear they share women.”
This bit of news is far more interesting than her dear friend Patricia’s boating accident last year and the fate of her eleven-year-old cocker spaniel. “Really?”
She leans in even closer. “I hear they smoke the weed.”
I can’t help my giggle. “That wacky tobacky, huh?”
She narrows her eyes at my condescension. “I’m just saying, be careful. One of them got ahold of my cousin’s goddaughter, and let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty.”
I can’t help my bite.
“What happened to her?”
“No one really knows, and no one has heard from her in months. That boy broke her heart so bad she rarely comes home anymore.”
She pulls her cell phone from her pocket, darting her eyes around because phones are forbidden on the plant floor. She scrolls through before she lifts a picture. It’s from a social media profile and the girl displayed on the screen is gorgeous. I tell her as much.
“She was the pride of my cousin, but once he got his hooks into her, she changed. I don’t know.” She glances over her shoulder. “Those boys, pretty as they are, I think might have the devil inside them.”
From my first and second impressions, I find it hard to believe that’s true of Sean, but Dominic might be a different story.
As wrong as it may be, I sidle up to Melinda for the rest of the shift, suddenly in the mood for conversation.
BACK ACHING FROM LONG HOURS on my feet, I unlock my car and practically fall into the seat, turning on the AC to get out some of the humidity in the interior. Tilting the vents my way, I let the warm sticky air dry on my face before I pull my phone from my purse and see I missed a text from Christy. I can’t help my smile when I see I also missed one from Sean.
Sean: Come to the garage. I’ll ping you.
It’s been a long day. I think I’ll just go home.
Sean: Bullshit. You can sleep in tomorrow. Pizza’s on me.
Sean pings me the location and I weigh my fatigue against the rush of seeing him again. Decision made, it takes me ten minutes to get there, and when I pull up, I’m shocked by the size of the garage. Next to a glass-enclosed lobby are six bay doors, the largest at the end, I assume for commercial machine repairs. It’s nothing like I imagined. A few of the cars I saw at the party sit outside in a large lot. Stepping out of my car, I hear music blaring from the other side of the dented bay doors. Clearly, business hours are over, with little sign of life inside aside from a dim light in the lobby. As I approach, an unmistakable smell invades my nose.
These devil boys are smoking ‘the weed.’
I giggle as I take down my hair and run my fingers through it. There’s absolutely nothing to be done about my uniform. I approach the door to knock and see Dominic on the other side of the double-paned window with a King’s Automotive logo in bold, shielding much of the glass. The sight of him stops my curious footing as I drink him in. A lock of dark hair cascades over his forehead as he furiously clicks the side of the mouse on his computer underneath a stuttering yellow light, a lit joint between his perfect lips, and an open beer next to his monitor.