I wouldn’t want you to stay any longer. That could be dangerous.

I don’t think she’d meant to stay it. But it gave me the little shred of hope I was desperately searching for.

She won’t admit it. And she’s playing like she hates me. But deep down, there’s still a chance. Somewhere, in the back of her head, she thinks that “we” could happen.

I’ve been waiting four years for this. And I can’t leave here until I know.

As promised, Genevieve comes back an hour later, after I’ve managed to clean out the fridge with a paper towel and water from the faucet. I don’t have to watch for her. I can hear her old clunker of a VW from a mile away. As the son of an auto mechanic, I know a thing or two, and it’s definitely the transmission. When she stops the car, I meet her outside.

She’s doing that cute thing where she’s avoiding my chest. “Why the fuck don’t you wear any clothes?” she asks angrily. “It’s like fifty degrees out here.”

“Fifty is hot,” I say. “And I’ve been working up a sweat.”

She rolls her eyes and says, “And yet you can’t seem to take that ring off.”

I spread my fingers and admire the ring again. It looks great in the sunlight.

“You are such a girl,” she mutters.

I know I probably look like a girl who was just proposed to, but she doesn’t get it. This ring signifies the top. The highest point. Once you reach it, there’s nowhere to go, but . . .

She pops open the trunk. I peer inside. She has everything I need to get the place clean—buckets, mops, cleaning solution. I grab two of the bags and say, “Before you head out, let me put it up on a lift and take a look.”

She gives me a doubtful look. “You?”

I’m insulted. “Like I didn’t fix that car of yours a dozen times before. In fact, I’m probably the reason it hasn’t gone to car heaven by now.”

“You changed the oil and spark plugs,” she says. “I could do that.”

“Because that was all it needed. I’ll have you know that when I wasn’t on the field, I was my dad’s right-hand man.” I point a thumb proudly at my chest.

She scoffs. “When were you not on the field?” Then she looks at the closed bays, and I know what she’s thinking: If the shop is in as good a condition as the apartment, her car is probably doomed the second it enters. “Besides, you hated working for your dad. Remember?”

Truth. I never felt half as good working on a car as I did on the football field. Whenever my father would keep me at the garage instead of letting me go to the gym, I felt imprisoned. But fuck it, if working on her car will be the thing that finally helps me worm my way into her pants, I’m all for it.

I tug on her sweatshirt. “Come on.” I fish the keys out of the pocket of my jeans and turn the lock on the garage door. It groans when I pull it open, screaming for oil. I present it to her like a great gift. “See. All good.”

Just then, a raccoon dashes out, zig-zagging to get away from me. It lets out an angry hissing noise, scaring the shit out of me. I let out a wail of surprise.

The raccoon does a mad sprint for the woods. It breaks free of the cement yard, past the piles of tires, and flies between the trees. Genevieve is laughing now. “That was the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen,” she says. “Now you just shrieked like a girl.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “That thing had claws.”

“And it was poised to attack! How did you ever make it out alive?” she quips, stepping into the bay. She looks around, checking out the dusty surroundings, less than impressed, as I think about the last time we’d been here.

“You haven’t fixed it yet?” she’d asked me, as I wheeled out on a crawler. “What do I pay you for?”

“I had to do the breaks, and the transmission on a couple other cars,” I said, wiping my hands with a dirty rag. “Our other customers pay with money, not algebra lessons.”

“You should value those lessons a little more. Maybe you wouldn’t be so bad at math,” she said, looking around the deserted garage.

I threw my wrench down on the counter. “This sucks. Been here all day. Coach isn’t going to be happy. I should be at the gym.”

She said, “Then don’t worry about my car. I can send it to the Pep Boys in East Brady if I have to.”

I scoffed at the suggestion, grabbed the rag and tried to work some grease off my hands, but it was no use. I’d probably have grease under my fingernails until graduation. “Our competition? No way. Besides, your car is the only one I want to take care of. I don’t trust anyone else to make it safe.”

She sidled up next to me, a grateful but coy little smile on her face. It made me wish she was up to no good. But that wasn’t Genevieve. “Where’s your dad?”

“Upstairs. We’re alone. Want to get naked?” I asked hopefully. Yeah, I was kidding, but part of me kept hoping.

She laughed. “You’re all greasy.”

“And?” I dropped the rag and came up close to her, cornering her against the workbench. She dropped her purse and put her arms around me, cautiously. I kissed her, feeling her tits rise against me. My cock was already hard. It seemed to go into a semi-hard state whenever I even looked at her, now. When it did, she squirmed around, moving as far away as she could from it, as if it weren’t the elephant in the room.

She shrugged. The truth was, even if I wasn’t greasy, she’d find some other excuse.

“Do you want to go to prom with me?” I asked her. “June ninth.”

Her eyes lit up at once. “Really?”

I nodded. “Don’t act so surprised. We’ve been going out for months.”

She kissed me then, with as much passion as she could, and I kissed her back, letting my hands roam down to her ass. She let out a soft, shaky breath, took my hands, and lifted them up to her waist.

I find a light, and when I flip it on, I see her doubtful expression. “If you can fix my car in here, I’d call you a master mechanic.”

I cross my arms, my dignity wounded. “Challenge accepted.”

She puts out a hand. “Shake. If you don’t, I get to laugh at your girly ass until you go back to Pittsburgh. Whenever that is.”

If she keeps looking at me like that, never. I’ll never be able to go back. I take her hand. God, I love her skin. Warm and soft, everywhere. “If I do, in addition to calling me master, you—”

“Master mechanic,” she corrects.

“Right. Whatever. In addition, you go out to dinner with me. As payment for my services.”

She wrinkles her nose. She looks like it’s the most terrible deal she’s ever been given, but she shakes, anyway, staring at my ring like it’s a gift from the devil.