A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston

Author:Ashley Poston [Poston, Ashley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

19

Unrequited Affliction

It only took a glance under the hood for Frank of Frank’s Auto Shop (and the infamous Frank’s Hotties) to know exactly what was wrong with Sweetpea. “How on earth has this thing been running?”

“Duct tape and prayers,” I replied, biting my thumbnail nervously. “So is she fixable?”

He closed the hood and lifted his green FRANK’S HOTTIES baseball hat to scratch at his forehead in thought. He was an older man in a bright Hawaiian shirt with khaki cargo pants, though you couldn’t miss him even without the vacation print. He was a really big dude, with broad shoulders and a two-toned gray beard, the lighter strip running down the middle. In the third book, we find out that he had a stint in the WWE before he slipped a disk in his back. I mean, he didn’t really have a stint in the WWE, but in the fictional world of Quixotic Falls he did, and he had all the charisma of Dave Bautista, and the swagger of Dwayne Johnson, and honestly, I’d buy a thousand hot sauce bottles from him if he asked.

He mopped up the sweat on his forehead and gave a shrug. “I mean, yeah, yeah, she’ll take some finagling, for sure. But I can work with her.”

I let out a relieved breath. “So…I’ll come by later today to pick her up back up?” And leave.

“Sure, you can, but I’ll probably be heading over to Coop’s to try to salvage what I need, so you might wanna get the stuff out of your car that you want.”

I didn’t understand. “Salvage…?”

He waved his hand at the front of my car, and paced back to his work desk at the head of the auto shop, swiping off bits of crumbs from the semi-clean piece of receipt paper underneath. “Your carburetor’s blown,” he said, testing three pens before he found one that worked, “and your girl’s so old I don’t got any spare parts lying around.”

My shoulders sagged. “Wait, I thought you said she was fixable? Is she not?”

“No, no,” he clarified, “she’ll be a quick fix once I get the parts I need to rebuild the carburetor, but the earliest I can promise is…” He scratched something down on his receipt paper, sucking on his teeth. “Wednesday?”

Wednesday?

That was two days from now. Which meant…I was here. For two more days. Two. I chewed on my thumbnail. “And you’re sure you can get it done by then?”

“Probably. In a perfect world,” he replied, a little apologetically. “I’m a one-man band, ma’am, and this is gonna take a bit of time, but I’ll have her fixed up as soon as I can.”

I was being ridiculous, and it wasn’t like anyone was expecting me at the cabin. The only person who knew I had still gone was Pru, and she was off doing Iceland with her boyfriend. Wednesday would be fine. But that meant…a couple more days with Anders, and my stomach twisted at the thought. Last night, I had kissed him knowing I’d be gone today, but now…

I wasn’t sure what I thought.

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