The garage was loud with activity, bustling with grizzled men and scrawny apprentices with patchy facial hair. Aaron and I, pristine in our pale school uniforms, stuck out like sore thumbs. We were gawked at as we wandered somewhat aimlessly through the warehouse, eyes peeled for Reece or Caleb. I didn't know who I'd prefer to glimpse first.
It was a stark contrast to the quiet, awkward but not entirely unpleasant, morning Reece and I had shared not long ago working on the car in solitude. I could see it parked in the corner, hidden poorly under a blue tarpaulin. Now, every clang of a tool or purr of an engine made me tense. There was a heavy scent of sweat and oil in the air, making my head spin. I was also, on a more pedantic note, concerned for my pores.
"I don't think he's here," Aaron did a 360 turn on his heel and narrowly avoided a low-hanging bar, ducking under it at the last second.
"Which one?"
"Either of them," he scanned the overall-clad bodies hunched over cars. "Although there is a certain uniformity to mechanics. I might have overlooked Reece. But Caleb isn't here."
He wasn't, yet. I would have spotted him the second I'd walked in if he was. Which either meant we'd beaten him, or we'd guess the wrong destination. Maybe he was currently getting a billboard commissioned with a picture of Sephora next to my school headshot. All bets were off.
"Bloody death trap," Aaron was muttering, picking his way through the layers of cords on the floor.
Before I could suggest we cut our losses and ask Aaron to drive me to the nearest airport, I heard someone called out my name. The booming voice sent my shoulders shooting to my ears and my head bowed self-consciously. It wasn't Reece, who rarely raised his voice and never would have presumed to follow it with, "Son! That you?"
I bristled all the same. I counted down mentally to the hand that clapped my shoulder and squeezed as if to test the give of my collarbone. One of Reece's drinking buddies, Paul or Dave or Kyle I couldn't tell, grinned down at me with a mouthful of off-white teeth. He wore a gold chain and had a thicket of black chest hair emerging from the V of his coveralls. It was so long that it had begun to coil into Shirley Temple ringlets. He was a head taller than me, which was maybe why I first took notice of his chest hair – it was at eye level when I turned.
"Hi," I managed, dragging my eyes up to his sun-blotched face and beady eyes. "... Paul?"
"Dave," he corrected, but he didn't look insulted. "What're you doing here, son? Shouldn't you be in school?"
His tone was teasing, not at all concerned. I extracted myself from his grip on my shoulder and stepped back until my shoulder was flush with Aaron's before I could bring myself smile back. "We got early leave. For study. Exams. You know."
"Ah, and I see you're both putting that time to good use," his smirk belonged to a much younger person. "Looking for your dad?"
I nodded mutely, but before Dave could respond someone yelled out his name, bookended by profanities, and he turned to respond with a string of his own curses and slurs. I felt Aaron cringe beside me and remembered he hadn't had the exposure to the garage environment that I had. If we'd been anywhere else, I would have squeezed his hand to reassure him. Somehow, I suspected doing it in front of Dave would render even more unhelpful than he was already being.
"Oi! No swearing in the shop!" Another voice joined the fray. I glanced up to Aaron, and jerked my head to the door, indicating we'd outstayed our welcome. Caleb wasn't here.
As I turned to leave, the same voice that had reprimanded Dave for swearing held me up with a call of my name. A car bonnet was dropped, and I jerked in surprise. The guy who'd spoken was familiar in the way a cashier at a local supermarket was - only in passing. But he had kind eyes and looked older, wearier, less angry at the world than most of Reece's friends. He had a bushy silver beard and heavy brow, dark hands wringing out a towel before pressing it to his sweaty chest.
He gave Dave a critical look up and down. "Don't you have a windscreen to replace somewhere?"
Dave gave him a smile that oozed contempt and swaggered off from the direction he'd come. I wondered why he'd felt the need to speak to me at all. Maybe Reece had spoken to him about that morning, twisted the incident into something spiteful on my end and Dave had come over to defend his mate's honour.
"G'day Miles," the older man turned to me, giving me a grandfatherly sort of grin. He had a name sewn into the pocket of his shirt, Dev - the name sparked recognition. "Don't mind David. He's procrastinating. Did you come to see the car? Eh? Come on. You too."
He directed this up to Aaron. He had to crane his head; he was only as tall as I was, hunched with age. Before either of us could respond, he was off across the garage, leaving us no option but to trail behind or be considered rude. Aaron bumped my bag with his own.
"We should go to his house next," he told me.
I swallowed and let my eyes flutter closed for a beat longer than was safe in the crowded garage. I hadn't forgotten why we were here, but I'd pushed it to the back of my mind. "He has no reason to go there."
"No, but maybe someone in his family will be home," his jaw was tight. "We could tell them what he's planning. They'd probably have a better chance of getting hold of him, talking sense into him. And even if they didn't... at least they'd know what he'd done."
I furrowed my brow. Aaron stared straight ahead, expression unreadable. "Are you suggesting I get even?"
He flushed, clearly embarrassed by the suggestion but his voice was firm. "I don't see the point in protecting his reputation when he cares so little for yours. That's all."
I pulled at the straps of my backpack, mulling it over. I'd threatened Caleb just the same after our first formal meeting, telling him that if anyone found out about Sephora, I would ruin him right back. I'd invoked his family. Maybe he was doing this all because he knew about my affections now; he believed that my crush would keep me from going nuclear in return.
Well, he's right, isn't he?
"They wouldn't want to believe it." It would be the lowest of blows, the most personal of attacks; destroy Caleb's integrity in the eyes of his family. They were all so faithful, loyal, so supportive... but they weren't blindly so. With a text to Lauren or a letter in their mailbox, I could singlehandedly change the way they looked at him. They might be able to move past this act of malice against me, but it would forever linger in the back of their minds that their golden boy Caleb could be cruel and vindictive. A bully, just like his best friend Aidan.
Aaron just shrugged and left the air open for me to mull over his suggestion. As sour as it tasted, I couldn't quite push the idea out of my head. We'd agreed to mutually assured destruction. My automatic instinct should have been to strike back, trading blows with Caleb until we were left with nothing. This should have been a race to salt the earth.
But the more I thought about Caleb and his family, Lauren's unwavering loyalty, Jake's protectiveness, Seth's wide-eyed admiration of his eldest brother, his parent's pride in him – of family dinners and pancakes at two am and name-calling and love, love that only came about when you happened to really liked the people you shared a house and blood with, love that had ended for me with my mother's death - the more I knew I wouldn't destroy it. Couldn't. Doing so wouldn't bring me a modicum of satisfaction. Nothing that involved hurting Caleb would.
Dev pulled the tarp off the car in one sweep and stood back to admire it as if it was a Ferrari, rather than a battered beige hatchback. I vaguely remembered Reece mentioning him when introducing me to the project. "This was your sons', wasn't it?"
"We're both glad it's getting a second life. It's a sturdy little thing," Dev patted the bonnet. Something clunked ominously inside, and Dev made a face, then covered his surprise easily with a broad smile. "Reece says you're not big into cars."
I bristled at the thought of Reece ranting about me to this virtual stranger. "Yeah, well, Reece isn't big into caring about what I'm into, so what would he know?"
"Woah," Aaron said under his breath. I watched Dev for a reaction, but his smile didn't falter. If anything, his features relaxed into genuine affection.
"You remind me of my daughter," he remarked, and I was slightly amazed at how tightly my shoulders could pull together considering my head should have gotten in the way. "She is outspoken. And funny. And quite short. Very angry at me right now, though she often struggles to pinpoint a reason why."
I screwed up my face and resisted the urge to scoff. Dev had been nothing but kind, so far. It wouldn't have been fair to bite his head off for equating my issues with Reece to his own domestic drama. Instead, I distracted myself by circling the car and running my hand alongside the passenger side door. It had been dented deep last Sunday; now it was repaired, the panel popped back into place.
"Red? That's telling."
I glanced up. Aaron had dug into the canvas bag slung over a nearby pillar and pulled out two can of the red spray paint Reece and I had bought on the weekend. He juggled them in his hands, looking at me with a quirked brow.
"It looks great," I admitted to Dev. It really did. Despite Reece's bargain that we would work on it together, he'd clearly put some hours into it on his own. The knowledge made me feel a little queasy, but strangely enough, it wasn't because I felt he was forcing me into his debt. If Caleb got to him first, how quickly would this new, therapy-attending, open-dialogue, olive-branch-extending father figure he was set on becoming morph into something hideous and hateful?
The notion that he might sell the car was weirdly low on my list of anxieties. The itch in my brain that wouldn't stop scratching was, after all this time, why are you still afraid of how he'll react? Haven't you spent the last two years knowing exactly how this would go down?
I don't know if I did. Not anymore.
"It'll run like it's fresh out of the dealership, just you wait," Dev promised. "Your Da... Reece runs circles around the rest of us in this place. Makes the rest of us look like schmucks."
Aaron had put one of the cans back in the bag; the other he spun in one palm, one corner of his lips pulled into a frown. "Miles says he has a Masters? What is he still doing here?" I shot him a look, and he hurriedly added on, "No offence."
"None taken. He couldn't exactly keep the old job, not with all the flying in and out," Dev shrugged, and that queasy feeling morphed into something that I had a hard time distinguishing. It felt awfully similar to guilt; but that was impossible because the last person in the world I felt sorry for was Reece. "Job market isn't exactly booming for a middle-aged man looking to work in accordance with school schedules. I should know."
"I never asked him to do that," I bit out.
"I know," Dev assured me, all calm and smiling and looking bashful. "Guess he decided it was important regardless."
I pinched my lips to hold back all my refutations to the picture of Reece that Dev was painting; that of a self-sacrificing, working-class widower father, a martyr to his ungrateful son. It was impossible to explain exactly why he was wrong, mostly because my hatred of Reece had always been a deeply personal and abstract thing. The cigarettes, the flippant comments about my masculinity and gay people in general, the laziness, the lecturing, the invasion of my house and space, the constant judgments and scrutiny, and wanting to throw my mum away after only two years as if that was enough time. As if that was any time at all. The fact I didn't know what he'd do when he found out the first thing about me. God forbid he found out the second.
I pushed all that deep down into my chest, biting my tongue and forcing a smile, which probably looked more like rigor mortis. "Where is Reece? I need to talk to him about..." I grasped the empty air for a reasonable excuse, "...something private."
Dev frowned, and my heart dropped. "I thought you would have known. He's not in today."
My blood was hammering in my ears. Everything I said sounded like it was being spoken underwater. "He's not?"
"Called in sick. He could have chosen a quieter day, mind," Dev shook his head. "You'd think he would have used up all his goodwill when he... well. Nevermind."
I swivelled to Aaron, mouth dropping open and eyes widening a fraction in horror. He took two steps forward and caught me by the shoulders. He mouthed, Breath. I obeyed, grateful for the direct instruction. My knees went weak as I gripped his wrists, mind racing at a million kilometres a second.
"Aaron..." I started, cut off when he turned me harshly around and started steering me towards the doors. I might have protested to being frogmarched so forcefully without a say in the matter, but I didn't think I was capable of making a coherent decision.
"Come by any time, boys!" Dev said cheerily behind us, completely oblivious. Aaron took one hand off my shoulder to wave to him before focusing his efforts on getting us out of the garage. It was a good call on his part; the stench of oil and burning sheet metal, the shouting and guffawing and swearing were beginning to overwhelm me. My breathing had just started to become shallow when we spilled out into the carpark.
Reece hadn't come to work.
That didn't necessarily mean he was at home, but the chances of it were terrifyingly high. Here I'd been thinking we were finally ahead, and the sudden realisation that we weren't – far from it – was intense enough to bowl me over.
Thankfully, Aaron still had me by the shoulders. "Hey. Hey, calm down."
"Do NOT..." was all I could get out without my voice breaking. Aaron flinched back and quickly buried his hands in his pockets, and I buried my face in my hands. I didn't cry, thankfully, but my breathing was wet and erratic.
"Where are we going then?" Aaron asked after a minute or so.
"I have to go home," I said faintly.
"You don't have to."
I lifted my head. Aaron's face was hard and determined. I knew from that look that if I asked, Aaron would take me to his place without question. With minimal explaining to Maya, I'd be set with a place to stay for as long as I needed. It wasn't as if Reece would fight to keep me if Caleb told him about me. He'd be glad to finally be rid of me.
Despite every instinct telling me to take up Aaron's offer, I couldn't help but think materialistically. Everything I'd ever collected in Sephora's name was in my closet. My makeup, wigs, outfits, shoes, contact lenses. If I left it all behind, I'd have to build Sephora back from scratch. There would be no performing for me until I could scrounge up enough money to replace my entire second closet; Aaron had been correct on his assumption on Saturday night, lace-front wigs were not cheap. My photos and drawing supplies and show mementos were in my closet. My songwriting book.
Mum was in my closet.
"I have to go home," I repeated helplessly. To pack a bag, at the very least. I could lose almost everything, but I couldn't lose Sephora. She was the thing that would get me through whatever happened next, I was certain.
Aaron looked sceptical. He was putting on a brave face for my sake. Only one of us could be freaking out for this to work. Otherwise, we'd stay in this parking lot forever, trying to find the best course of action, the one that put everything back in its rightful place and balanced out the world. The one that gave me back my right to choose.
I heard the jingle of keys.
"Then let's get you home. I guess." Aaron told me, and we made our way to his car like it was the gallows.
a/n: thank you for your hilarious comments and rightful concerns. they give me life.
see you in the next one, bzz bzz ~