Breathless (149 page)

“Hey, Emma.”

“Hey. Did you figure out what’s wrong with your car?” I asked.

“It’s the starter,” the unknown guy said.

“Oh, is that easy to fix?” I asked, sounding like a total girl. I knew nothing about cars, except for how to put gas in one.

“It is if we can get the part. They’re expensive though.”

“I’ll figure something out,” Jesse said as he closed the hood and wiped his hands on a rag.

“What year is it? After school, I’ll check around at a few of the junkyards to see what I can find,” unknown guy said as he took the rag from Jesse and wiped his hands on it.

“It’s a ’98 Jeep Cherokee,” Jesse said as he took the rag back and glanced up at me. “By the way, Emma, this is Andy. Andy, this is Emma.” I held out my hand, and Andy shook it. “Nice to meet you.” “You, too,” he said as he looked me over.

I stared back, taking in his appearance. He had the same surfer guy look as Jesse, except where Jesse’s hair was longer and blond, Andy’s was a dark brown and cut short. His eyes were dark brown, too.

Both guys were both extremely tan and really attractive. Standing next to each other, they made quite the pair. Andy seemed nice enough, but there was just something about the way he looked at me that made me think he was a player.

“Well, I’d better get to class. I’ll see you inside, Jesse. It was nice to meet you, Andy,” I said as I looked away from Andy.

“See you in a few,” Jesse said as he walked to the passenger side of his car and pulled out his bag.

I knew just what to do to help Jesse. I smiled as I pulled out my phone and dialed the number to the repair shop that my mom had me take my car to for services.

Four-Jesse

Frustrated, I slammed my books down on the desk. I had no idea how I was going to come up with the cash to get my Jeep fixed. It pissed me off even more to know that every single one of these kids had enough money in their pocket to pay for the repairs without even thinking about it. I wasn’t usually a whiny asshole, but that really sucked. I hated them all for it right now.

“You okay?” Emma asked as she took the seat beside me.

“I’m fine,” I grumbled. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

“No, you’re not. You’re upset. Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

“Not really.”

She sighed as she set her books on the desk. “Fine, I’ll leave you alone. I was just trying to help.”

I instantly felt bad about being a dick to her. She was only trying to be a friend to me. “I’m sorry. I’m just in a bad mood, and I’m not the best company right now.”

“It’s fine. Seriously, don’t worry about it. We all have those kind of days.” I looked up to see her smiling at me. She really needed to stop doing that. I’d spent half of my night talking myself into ignoring whatever I felt when she was around. When she smiled, she made that really hard to do.

“It seems like I have more of them than most. I can never catch a break,” I replied.

She opened her mouth to speak, but the teacher walked in just then, and we were forced to pay attention to him instead of our conversation. I caught her glancing over at me several times throughout class, and I couldn’t help but grin when she’d look away quickly, pretending that nothing had happened.

Instead of having the end of the period free like last time, we worked right up to the bell, leaving no room for conversation. I was actually kind of glad. I didn’t want to have to explain to the rich girl that I didn’t even have enough money for a fucking car part. It was embarrassing.

I had no idea what I was going to do. I needed to pick up more hours, but I didn’t see how I could with school. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if I were at my old school, but this one was so much farther away, and it took me longer to drive there.

As soon as the bell rang, I grabbed my books and started walking to my next class. I was completely zoned out, and I didn’t even notice when Emma started walking beside me.

“Jesse? Hey, Jesse? Anybody home?” she asked as she poked me in the side.

“What? Oh, sorry. I was in my own head there for second.” “Yeah, I noticed. What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Nothing, just thinking.” There was no way I wanted to tell her that I was broke, not that she didn’t already know that.

She frowned but said nothing as we continued to walk down the hallway. I started walking a little bit faster, hoping to avoid her. She finally took the hint and left me alone as we settled into our seats in our second class. I ignored her as she turned in her seat and started talking to her friends behind her, and she did the same to me. My aggravation increased when I noticed Todd walking in before he sat down beside her.

“Hey, Emma,” he said as he looked over at her.

Her cheeks turned a light shade of red, and I couldn’t help but groan. I had no idea what she saw in the guy. He was nothing more than the shallow, stereotypical jock, and she could do better than that.

“Hey, Todd,” she said.

“Are you doing anything this evening?” he asked her.

I clenched my teeth to keep from saying anything. It wasn’t my place to tell her that he was a douche bag. Not that I was sure he was a douche bag, but he just seemed like he was.

“I have practice after school, but other than that, I’m free,” she said shyly.

“Cool. Do you want to grab something to eat after you’re finished with practice?”

“Sure, that sounds great.”

“Perfect. I’ll meet you by your car in the parking lot then.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Todd turned around to talk to someone on the opposite side of him, and Emma started doing a silent screaming fit with her friends. I just wanted to hit something, but I wasn’t sure why. It shouldn’t matter that she was going on a date. I didn’t even know this girl.

Ms. Mason walked in just then and instructed us to open our history books.
Thank God
. I could focus on school instead of stupid shit, like where Emma was going after school. I ignored everyone around me for the rest of class, and I was the first one out of the room when the bell rang.

I walked to the cafeteria and grabbed my lunch before sitting at the same table as yesterday. Charles and Sean were sitting at the table already. I mumbled hello as I sat down, but other than that, I ignored them both. I wasn’t in the mood to be sociable, and they could just deal with it. I shoveled food in my mouth quickly. I was in a hurry to escape the noise of the people around me. I just wanted to be alone. First, my car, and then Emma and Todd—today was not my day. The sooner I could get out of this place, the better. I finished my food and said good-bye. I stood and dumped my tray.

I spent the rest of the day just like the morning as I ignored everyone.
I just want out of here.
As soon as the final bell rang, I was out the door and walking to the parking lot to look at my Jeep again. Maybe there was something small I could do to keep it going until I could afford a new starter.
Yeah, right.
I knew my luck, and I knew that I would need a new starter regardless. Too bad money didn’t grow on trees for me like it did for the rest of these assholes.

I didn’t even bother to lock up my car this morning. I mean, come on, who would steal my Jeep with all these other fancy cars around? As soon as I reached my car, I opened the glove compartment and pulled out my keys. I stuck them in the ignition and turned, expecting nothing. To my surprise, my car started instantly.

“What the fuck?” I said as I stared at the steering wheel.

I shut my car off and got out. I ignored the strange looks I received as I got down underneath my car. Andy had shown me where the starter was this morning, so I knew where to look. My eyes widened in disbelief as I stared at a brand-new starter.
What the hell is going on?

I knew that there was no way Andy had found one already. He was still in school, so that left only one other culprit since I hadn’t even told my mother about my car breaking down. I knew she would try to help pay for it, and I didn’t want to put any extra financial strain on her. Only Emma and Andy had known what was wrong with my car. She had to have been the one who had it repaired for me.

But the big question was…
why?
Why would she do this for me when she barely knows me?
I wasn’t used to people helping me, and I wasn’t sure what to do. Normally, I would assume that whoever had helped me had done it with ulterior motives, but I doubted that was the case with Emma. There was nothing I could give her that she didn’t already have. I was stumped, but I was determined to figure out why she had helped me.

I had to be at work soon, but I would corner her tomorrow before school and ask her why she’d helped me. I stood back up and grabbed a notebook from my bag. After scribbling a quick note on a piece of paper, I ripped it out and walked to Emma’s car. I stuck it under the windshield wiper and returned to my car, satisfied that she would know she had been busted. I pulled away from the school and floored it to make it to work on time.

I sighed as I stared out the window at the ocean beside me as I drove. It had been too long since I’d been out there on a board. Next to tattooing, surfing was my life. There was nothing like being out there—just you against the ocean. I had crashed and burned a lot when I first decided to try it, but now, I conquered it most of the time. I made a mental note to get Andy after school tomorrow and go surfing since I wasn’t scheduled at the shop.

I pulled into the shop’s parking lot and shut off my car. I’d been wound tight all day, but at the familiar sight of the shop, I felt myself relax. This was where I belonged. This was home. I’d made no attempts to fit in at Hamrick High, and I didn’t plan to. I had nothing in common with those people, and I was okay with that. I didn’t need a bunch of stuck-up snobs to tell me how I wasn’t good enough to be at their school.

The bell above the door dinged as I opened it and slipped inside. As soon as I was walked in, I could hear The Amity Affliction’s “Open Letter” playing. They were one of my favorite bands, and I instantly perked up.

Rick was sitting behind the counter with a pencil in his hand. He glanced up at the sound of the bell. “Afternoon, Jesse.”

“Rick.” I nodded as I walked past him to go into the room we used as our employee room.

It was small to begin with, but with the table, two chairs, and lockers that

Rick had shoved in, there was barely enough room to walk around. I threw

my bag in the locker that I used, and then I slipped off my school shirt to change into one of the shirts with
Rick’s Tattoo
written across the front of it.

I walked back into the shop and stepped behind the counter with Rick to see what he was working on. As usual, his artistic ability blew my mind. The piece he was messing around with now was so real that it practically jumped off the page. It was of a young girl, no older than ten, sitting on a beautiful white horse.

“That’s amazing,” I said as I watched his hand move across the paper, shading around her face.

“Thanks. It’s going to be a back piece. My client’s daughter was big into horse riding competitions, and she was killed while performing. Something spooked the horse, it threw her, and she was trampled while her mother watched,” Rick said as he stared down at his work.

“Shit,” I said. I couldn’t even imagine watching that happen to someone I loved, especially a kid.

“I know. I wasn’t sure I could even do it when she asked me to, but I knew I had to. This piece is too important to pass up,” Rick said.

“Yeah, I can see why you were conflicted,” I said.

This tattoo was a perfect example of why I wanted to go into this business. People looked down on those who were inked, but the truth of it was that for most people, their tattoos represented something major in their lives—a birth, a death, a marriage, or anything that was important to them. Their tattoos were a way of remembering, of dealing with the shit-ass hand they had been dealt in life. They shouldn’t be looked down on. They should be praised for having the balls to put their lives on their skin for the world to see.

Getting tattooed was bliss masked by pain. Sure, it hurt to have a needle go deep into your skin and leave a mark, but the feeling was also about the pleasure and euphoria of it as well. At least, it had been that way for me. The pleasure of feeling the needle go deep into my skin was like nothing I’d ever felt before.

I pulled myself from my thoughts as I looked up at Rick. “What do you want me to do today, boss?”

“We’re kind of slow, so just clean up a bit, and then you can watch the front when my six o’clock appointment comes in.”

“Sounds good to me. I have some homework in my bag. Is it okay to work on it while I watch the front?” I asked.

He smacked me across the back of my head. “You know better than to ask me that. You can always work on your school shit here.”

“Thanks.” I rubbed the back of my head. “And ouch. You don’t have to get physical with me.”

He grinned as he grabbed his sketch and walked to his office, leaving me alone to start cleaning. I hated nights like these. When the shop was slow, time seemed to drag by. He had apparently already sent the other guys home since none of them had come out of the back to talk, so it was just the two of us for the night.

I grabbed a broom and started sweeping the front of the shop. I cleaned everything nightly, so it was always pretty clean. It only took me a few minutes to finish. I started gathering up the garbage bags from the front and then the rooms in the back to take out to the dumpster. I glanced at Rick’s closed door as I walked by to go outside. Surely, we wouldn’t have a customer come in while I was throwing the bag in the dumpster behind the store.

I pushed the back door open and walked over to the dumpster to throw all the bags in. When I started walking back to the shop, my phone dinged, and I pulled it from my pocket, expecting Andy or my mom to be texting me.

Instead, it was an unknown number.

Unknown: Jesse?

Me: Yeah, who’s this?

Unknown: It’s Emma. I got your note about wanting to talk to me about something. What’s up?