“Thanks.” I turn and walk toward the shop’s entrance, well aware that their eyes are glued to my ass.
The office seems smaller on the inside. It’s clean with two vinyl waiting chairs, a small table with a coffee maker and stacked Styrofoam cups, and various magazines spread across an end table against one wall. It smells fresh, like newly washed laundry, and I spot an automatic air freshener mounted to the wall near the counter. No one’s behind the desk so I wait in one of the chairs and flip through an old People magazine. My God, what’s wrong with these young Hollywood actresses? You make millions of dollars, buy some underwear!
The door behind the counter opens, and what looks like a Yeti enters the room.
“Good mornin’, sweetheart, how I can I help you?”
“Are you Jason?” I ask, getting to my feet.
“Sure am. How can I be of service?”
Jason is huge, well over six-and-a-half feet tall with long frizzy hair, a wild beard, and the girth of an NFL linebacker.
“Oh, um…I’m here to pay for some repairs on Luanne Collette’s truck.”
“Luanne, huh? Woo-wee, that girl’s a firecracker. How’s she doin’?” Jason gives me a big smile and leans over the counter, placing his forearms against the white Formica. It elicits an ominous creak beneath his weight and I take a tentative step backward.
“She’s Luanne, there’s no one else like her,” I say, shaking my head.
“You got that right. Tell her old Jason says hello and that I’ll be stoppin’ by The Cavern real soon for a re-match.”
“A re-match?”
“She’ll know what I mean.”
I don’t like the way his lips have curled over his teeth at the thought of a re-match with Luanne. I’m worried he may be thinking of eating her.
“I’ll let her know. Do you have a bill for the work on her truck?”
Jason pushes himself away from the counter, the action extracting another worrying creak, and rummages through a stack of carbon-paper bills next to a surprisingly new laptop computer.
“It’s gonna be three hundred sixty-seven dollars and twelve cents, after tax.”
I dig into my purse and retrieve my checkbook while Jason clumsily pushes buttons on the computer's keyboard. I hope the computer is made of titanium.
Three-hundred sixty-seven dollars is going to leave me with about twenty-three bucks in my account until payday, three days from now. Looks like I’ll be brown-bagging it at lunch for the rest of the week.
Head buried in my checkbook, I ask, “Who do I make the check out to?”
“SJ Auto Body and Repair,” calls out a deep, somewhat familiar voice. “And make sure to write your phone number on the memo line.”
“My phone number?” Confused, I look up to find Sam, the hottie from the bar last night, standing in the doorway behind the counter. He’s smiling widely at me, perhaps amused by the way my lower jaw refuses to meet with my upper jaw. I hear Mama’s voice saying, “Close your mouth, honey, it makes you look easy.”
“Hi!” I say before clamping my jaws together.
“Ellie, right?” Sam’s deep voice sends vibrations through my chest and compels me forward a step.
“Yes, Ellie. That is my name, and you’re Sam the hot—I mean, Hart’s friend, from the bar.” Smooth.
“Well, friend is a bit of a stretch. He’s my great-uncle, actually.”
“Oh, Luanne didn’t mention that.”
“So you were asking Luanne about me, huh?” Sam takes up Jason’s now vacated spot at the counter and leans forearm down against the Formica; the hard plastic remains creak-free.
An involuntary blush springs to my face and chest as I think of a way to refute his entirely accurate statement. I did, in fact, corner and interrogate Luanne about Sam the minute we walked through her door last night. She scolded me for wanting to know anything about him, given that he checks every box on my list of things to steer clear of. Still, she could’ve told me he worked at the repair shop I’d be headed to this morning, something which I’m sure she’s currently taking great pleasure in.
“What? No, of course I didn’t talk to Luanne about you! No, no, no. Don’t be ridiculous!” Shrill, accusatory and reprimanding. Just the direction I was looking to take the conversation in.
Sam holds both of his hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, so you didn’t ask about me. I must be losing my touch.” He takes a step back from me, a.k.a. the crazy lady, but his smile is genuine, and that dimple…oh, that dimple.