Fractured Things - Samantha Lovelock Page 0,29
Poe on the menu?” My horrified expression makes her laugh even harder, and she has to set her coffee down before she spills it everywhere. “Relax, Stella. I’m not so old that I don’t remember young lust, but I am old enough that I get to tease you about it. Pretty sure it’s written in the aunt/niece contract somewhere.” I toss my wadded up napkin at her with a grin, even though my cheeks are still burning, and she catches it easily.
“Apparently, being a smartass is genetic,” I quip.
“Absolutely! Only I’ve had quite a few more years to practice than you have, so be warned.” She winks playfully. “Since you do have a license, let me refill my coffee, and we can take a quick trip out to the garage before you head off to your lunch thing.” Her snicker makes me groan. “There might be something out there that tickles your inner Andretti.” Cecily may be my aunt, but sometimes she seems more like an older sister. At thirty-four, she’s definitely a responsible adult, but she still remembers what it was like to be a teenager, which was comforting to me somehow.
Following her outside to the large detached building, the delicious scent of her fresh espresso wrapping around us, I’m suddenly hit with the surrealness of the moment. Three months ago, I was a waitress in a diner, bumming rides when I needed to or taking the bus, and now here I am, about to go car shopping in my aunt’s garage.
Rich people are weird. I mean, I’m not complaining, but rich people definitely have a unique perspective on life and their own way of doing things.
Opening the side door of the outbuilding, Cecily flicks a switch on the wall, and banks of recessed lighting in the high ceiling illuminate the vehicles parked inside.
My mouth falls open in awe as I take in the beauty of the gleaming machines in front of me. The late-model, cherry red Corvette Stingray. The snow-white Porsche Cayenne S. The sleek pewter Bentley Continental GT. Once I manage to stop drooling, I notice the last vehicle in the garage is under a beige car cover at the far end, and something about its shape intrigues me.
“What’s under the cover?” I ask curiously.
“That’s the one I thought you might like. One of my more undesirable boyfriends, at least by your grandparents’ lofty standards, was the son of a mechanic from a few towns over. He and his dad used to rebuild cars and race them. Our relationship didn’t last, thanks to my parents, but my love for this car did.” She runs her hand over the front of the cover and pauses, lost in the past for a few seconds. “After your grandparents passed away, I, uh, happened to look him up on the internet after a few too many glasses of chardonnay. Imagine my surprise to find out he’d taken over his dad’s garage and turned it into a pretty major deal.” Brushing off the nostalgia coloring her thoughts, she finishes her story quickly. “Anyway, I had Spry pay him a visit and ask him to find this exact car. It turned out he knew of one for sale that needed a fair amount of work, so I bought it and paid him to restore it to its former glory, and then some. All through Spry, of course, so he could never connect it back to me.”
While it tickles me that my aunt has taken to referring to Spry by the nickname I gave him, the thought of her missing out on something that might have been great because my grandparents disapproved makes me sad. It also makes me wonder what they would have thought of me.
Probably not much if the son of a mechanic wasn’t good enough, even when that mechanic owned his own business. I can’t imagine they would have been impressed by a diner waitress in secondhand clothes.
Shaking off the maudlin train of thought, I feel my fingers tingle in anticipation as I reach out and loosen the toggle on the cover, squatting to grab the bottom edge while Cecily moves to the opposite side and helps me carefully lift and fold the non-descript beige cotton away from the vehicle it’s been protecting.
Holy shit. That is badass.
My aunt stares at me expectantly over the roof, as my eyes devour the beautiful example of American heavy metal, my mouth slightly open and my heart beating noticeably faster than it was a minute