The cost of replacing the two steering column wire harnesses came to just under $500. It was a marvel of twentieth-century American engineering that the Riviera had survived for so long under Dana’s dutiful, though ignorant negligence. I had said that I would get it done by Thursday and I had. She was as good as new—at least as far as her insides went. The outside looked exactly the same. I had wanted to get a fresh coat of paint on there for her—restore that bright sky blue the car probably used to be once upon a time—but I had said Thursday.

I didn’t want to disappoint her. Again.

The night she had come over…

… well, I couldn’t let her in to see Lawson looking like a pile of ground beef on my couch. She would have had questions, and I wouldn’t have been able to lie to her. Yeah, Doll, this is my pal Lawson. He and I are involved in illegal fight clubs. Yeah, I have a criminal record as long as you are tall. Yeah, most of these tats I got in prison.

She didn’t need to see that… hear that… know that about me.

She’d hit the ground running. I wouldn’t even be able to blame her when she did. It was selfish that I wanted to have her, but the alternative was not having her, and that was out of the question. I felt a little bad driving the Riviera to her house because that meant she couldn’t make any more visits to the shop under the pretense of seeing how repairs were going.

It was a little time after I had knocked before the wrong blonde opened the door. The frown on her face told me I wasn’t the person she had wanted to see either. I cleared my throat. I had been taken by surprise by Mimi twice before. Not this time. This time, I was ready.

“Mimi. Hi. I came to drop Dana’s car off. Is she here?” I said in the cordial voice I used to reserve for job interviews.

“Adam. Thanks. I’ll tell her that you brought it back,” she started to close the door.

“Wait, she isn’t here?”

“Nope.”

“Is she not here like the last time I came round wanting to see her?”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Listen, buddy. I understand that you may not like me, and that is fair. I don’t like you either, but we have Dana in common. It can’t be a fight every time we see each other.”

“Alright… okay, just tell me where she is.”

“She went to Los Angeles to visit her family,” she said simply. My stomach felt like a hole had just opened in the bottom of it.

“She’s gone?”

“She’ll be back by the weekend most likely; we have some stuff to do before the shop’s grand opening.”

There was a man’s voice from inside the house. Anthony appeared, kissing her on the lips and wrapping his arm around her before he looked at me. If Lawson cut his hair off the two of them would be nearly indistinguishable. It was a little trippy talking to him sometimes because their voices were the same too, but their personalities were light-years apart.

“Adam,” he said. “I thought that sounded like you.”

I looked between the two of them. No way. No fucking way. Mimi? Mandy? She had no idea. And this fucking guy. He was just looking at me, like a sociopath. Calm. Like I hadn’t heard him on the phone, in bed with a woman who was not called Mimi like his apparent girlfriend standing in front of me.

“You know each other?” she asked.

“We’re just a few degrees separated. He’s friends with Lawson.”

“Ah. Well. Okay. You want me to tell her that you came by?”

“No. Don’t tell her. Just do me a favor and make sure the car gets in the garage. The parts preserve better under shelter,” I said.

I handed her the car key.

“Will do,” she said. I turned and started walking away.

“Hey!”

I turned. She had followed me.

“You don’t have a ride back to the shop?”

“No,” I said, not wanting to elaborate. If Dana had waited for me like I had asked her, I had expected to not be leaving quite as soon as I was.

“I can give you a ride.”

“No need. I can walk.” I made to leave.

“Hey, Adam?”

I turned again. She was standing there playing with her fingers.

“I’m sorry I was so harsh with you. It’s just… Dana’s coming from a really fucked up situation, and this is the first time after that that she is actually interested in someone who seems to like her back.”

All I had heard was that Dana had been in trouble.

“Wha-what kind of situation?” I asked. She visibly clammed up. Oh, so this was a secret.

“It’s not my story to tell you. It’s hers. I just wanted to apologize.”

“Apology accepted. What was the situation?”

“You have to ask her that yourself when she gets back from LA.” She turned and walked back into the house.

I shoved my hands into my pockets. Guess I was walking.

Was it ever supposed to get this deep? The layers peeling off this onion were getting worse and worse. Apparently, Dana had a past in LA, and Anthony was fucking a girl named Mandy while dating her roommate.

Fuck.

Anthony.

Dana was going to end up with a guy like Anthony. That was who she was supposed to end up with anyway. Maybe it was better for her. What the hell was I bringing to the table? Six months in juvie? Multiple jail and prison stays throughout my adulthood? A motorcycle and discount auto repairs?

She was… Natasha was right; she was a princess. Even if she wasn’t a spoiled rich girl, she wasn’t the type that went after guys like me. I wasn’t supposed to be the type of guy that went after girls like her. She still had her innocence and mine had died a long time ago. Not to say that she was virginal or whatever—no, she certainly wasn’t that. She was just so… real. Earnest. It was like there wasn’t a pretentious bone in her body. Besides mine.

She had laughed at that damn Looney Tunes horn in the Superbird like it was the greatest joke she had ever heard. That night in the bathroom she had even cried like she felt the sorrow of everyone who had lived the last hundred years. She let herself just… be. And I loved that about her. I didn’t want to hurt her.

Dana was new in town. I knew that. What I hadn’t anticipated was the fact that that made the number of people I could ask about her very, very few. Literally, the only people who would possibly be able to tell me where she was were her father and her roommate Mimi. Mimi; the roommate who wanted to murder me and probably could murder me with her bare hands. The only other person who she had gotten even sort of close to was me, and I didn’t know where she was.

Not knowing where she was felt… it felt shitty. I didn’t like it. I was worried, but then I was also mad because she seemed to have left without telling me. I felt like she should have told me, or at least wanted to tell me. The fact that she hadn’t; it made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want me to know where she was.

That sucked.

I had pushed her away.

* * *

Reggie’s place was closer than mine, and I didn’t particularly want to go back to the shop, though that is where I really should have gone. I ended up walking there for something to do. I called the guy first, of course. He said it was fine. He wasn’t gonna join me, but I could knock myself out.

Perfect. Just what I wanted. I could lose days working on a car. Hours could tick by, and I wouldn’t feel them when I was under a hood. I wondered whether Reggie would have any fatherly advice for me concerning my current girl trouble. Probably not, considering the girl in question was his daughter. His first seed. His little girl.

I found the garage open and the tools ready when I got to the house. The number of things I would be able to do from here was running out. Soon I’d have to get the car to the shop to do its interior and the paint job. The sun was beginning to set when I retreated into the house to tell Reggie that I was heading home.

Footsteps coming down the stairs caught my attention. I looked up expecting to see him. Doll-face was standing right there, hand on the railing. Her face read surprise, but not like pleasantly surprised.

I looked at her. It was like someone hit the reset button in my brain because all I heard was static. She looked down at me. She had her glasses on.

“Are you leaving?” she asked. Shit. No ‘hello’?

“I was just heading out,” I said. “What about you?”

“Nope. Too bad… I could have used a ride.”

Why did she keep doing this to me? I couldn’t go home after hearing that. She turned and walked up the stairs. I charged after her. The last time I should have followed her up the stairs I hadn’t. I caught her before she walked into her room, pulling her into me and kissing her like my life depended on it. Her arms wrapped around my shoulders and her legs followed, wrapping around my hips when I lifted her up, holding her between the wall and my body. The soft moan she made roused my cock to attention.

“My dad’s still home,” she said breathlessly. I felt like a teenager, trying to have sex in my folks’ home without them suspecting anything. I carried her into her room and dropped her onto the bed. She pulled her glasses off and sat up, running her hands underneath my shirt. I held her wrists and gently moved them away. As much as I appreciated her enthusiasm, I needed to talk to her. Say something. Meet the girl halfway at least. She looked up at me.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. If I rejected her again, she might not let me come back.

“The other night… when you came over—”

“Adam, I know you can’t give me a relationship. I won’t ask that of you.”

“Doll, listen to me. There is nobody else.” I gently pushed her down onto the bed, letting her wrists free.

“I don’t care if there is—”

“You’re not listening, babe. Nobody. There is nobody else.”

I raised the hem of her t-shirt, exposing her smooth, flat stomach. I kissed her there as I hooked my fingers in her waistband to pull her pants off. Her breath became shaky, but she responded, raising her hips and letting me slide them off—her panties too. I pried her thighs apart and just looked at her.

I must have stared too long because she tried to lock her thighs together. Her face was turning pink, embarrassed. She had a masterpiece of a pussy. Gorgeous, just like the rest of her. Pink, wet and all I wanted was to get a taste. I dove in and ravaged her with my tongue like I hadn’t eaten in days.

The sound she emitted was like she was trying to make a sound and muffle it at the same time. Her hips lifted, and I had to use my arms to hold her down. I felt her hands in my hair. I used my fingers to really get on the nose—that sensitive little nubbin that was like an orgasm button—giving it a couple of long licks before I covered it and sucked.

Her hand closed around my arm that was holding her down on the bed; her nails pressed into the skin a little. The little gasps she made were the most adorable and most erotic sounds she could possibly produce. I ran a couple of fingers over her slick lips, teasing her opening before sliding them inside in one smooth motion.

She couldn’t hold that cry.

“A-Adam,” she moaned, in an urgent whisper. If I wasn’t holding her down, she would have writhed all the way off the bed. I applied a little pressure with my fingers, and her quickened breath let me know that she liked it. Usually, an erection as hard and uncomfortable as the one I was sporting would have driven me to distraction, but I was enjoying eating her out as much as she was enjoying being eaten out.

“Adam… I-I’m gonna… I—”

She was coming before she had a chance to get it out. Her legs shook, and more of that sweet honey spilled from between her legs. I kept licking till her limbs fell limp on the bed. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, kneeling between her legs. I looked down at her satisfied expression. I ran a finger across her pink, plump lips.

She held my hand and sucked two of my fingers into her mouth, tasting herself on them, moaning. It was a miracle I didn’t jizz my pants right there. Fuck. I had just eaten her out, and I wanted to do it again. I pulled my shirt off over my head and smiled, seeing her eyes move up and down my body. She was checking me out.

“Are you gonna take care of that yourself or are you going to let me?” she asked, peering down at my very obvious hard-on. She sat up and started on my button and fly. I grimaced and swore.

“Condom,” I said plainly. She looked up at me, not stopping what she was doing.

“You’re the only guy I’ve been with since I moved here,” she said. She had freed my cock, and her smooth, small hand was jerking me off, making it a little bit hard to form full sentences.

“I’ve always used condoms with the others,” I said. Why did I feel guilty saying that? I didn’t like acknowledging Natasha and the other women there had been when I was with her. I leaned down over her. Both of us still had most of our clothes on. “Is that okay?”

Her response had been to lean up and kiss me while her hand fed my cock into her. The inside of her felt velvety and hot. She was tight, but she was wet enough for me to be able to fuck her. I shut my eyes, groaning. Fucking her, I felt like I couldn’t hear anything. All the noise disappeared. Every part of her pressed into my bare cock; nothing at all between us. I quickened my pace, knowing there was no way I would finish anywhere but inside of her.

Every little sound she made, every time she reached for me or bit her lip I just wanted to see her do it again. She was so sensitive to every little movement, every touch. I couldn’t wait till I could have her completely naked, somewhere we didn’t have to try and be quiet. My orgasm crept up on me; I sped up as I came inside Dana’s perfect pussy. I reached down and flicked her clit so she joined me. I could feel her walls squeeze my cock as she had her orgasm and if I wasn’t already deflating, I would have been hardening right back up again.

She looked into my eyes, and I looked back. This was usually the part where I would make up an excuse to leave and hit the door, and I would have if she were any other girl. I put my junk away and did my pants back up. I lay down on my back and held an arm out to her. The way she slid into my embrace with her head on my chest and her body pressed to my side was like sliding a key into a lock.

She fit perfectly.