At six-thirty, half an hour after her shift had ended, Jessica was in the parking lot of the pharmacy, sweating through her clothes and staring at the engine of her car. The battery was dead. Her phone was buzzing nonstop in her back pocket. She didn’t even need to look to know it was John. She’d told him earlier she’d swing by his place after work to pick him up, and now she was late.
“Oh, come on!” Jessica yelled.
“Need a jump?”
Jessica spun around, and there was Peter Rojas, backlit by the sun, looking like a saint holding a pair of jumper cables.
“Yes. A jump. Please. Thanks. We have those at the house, but I always forget to get them out of the garage.”
“No problem,” Peter replied.
Peter jogged over to his truck to pull it closer. He kept the engine running as he opened the hood and attached the cables, positive to positive and negative to negative. Jessica noticed a bead of sweat trickling down from Peter’s hairline to the outside edge of his eyebrow, and she had the strange, sudden urge to swipe it off with her finger.
Once he was done, Peter straightened. He was so tall he blocked out the sun, and Jessica had to tilt her chin up to look him in the eye. For a while, Peter said nothing as he peered down at Jessica with that slightly perplexed expression people get when they’re trying to figure out what to say or if they should say anything at all.
Jessica’s phone buzzed again. Sweat was pooling at her lower back. She was ready to get this show on the fucking road.
“What?” she urged.
“Nothing.”
“No, not nothing. What?”
Peter shifted his weight to lean against the front bumper. “Do you still sing?”
Jessica coughed, thrown by the question.
The answer was no, and Peter knew that. Jessica had stopped singing with the school choir the fall after Ana died. Peter had stayed on.
“Why would you ask me that?” she asked.
“It was just a question.” Peter shrugged. “I heard you in the break room the other day singing along to some song. It reminded me of when we were in choir together.”
“So you were spying on me?”
“We work together, Jessica,” Peter replied, deadpan. “I was in the break room. You were in the break room.”
“So, you were spying on me.”
Jessica understood why everyone liked Peter. Really, she did. He was the epitome of a good egg—the kind of person who carried jumper cables in his truck and helped strangers and was patient with old people. Jessica was a terrible, terribly judgmental, rude and selfish person, and, because of that, Peter and Peter’s kindness made her feel even worse about herself than she already did.
“You know what?” Peter said. “Forget it. Forget I said anything.”
Jessica snorted. “Right.”
Peter gestured to the battery. “You want to get in and give it a try?”
Jessica said nothing as she climbed into her car and twisted the key in the ignition. After a series of sputters, the engine finally caught. She sagged with relief as Peter unfastened the cables and slammed down her hood.
“Crisis averted.” He swiped his brow with the back of his hand, leaving behind a smudge of grease. One of the old ladies in the store would spot it later and make a big production of wiping it away.
“Thanks,” Jessica muttered through the window.
“You’re welcome.”
“See you later.”
“Great.”
“Great.”
“Cool.”
They were talking like robots now.
Jessica wished Peter would just walk away, but there he was, still with that slightly perplexed expression on his face. Surely he wasn’t going to ask her more questions about singing. It was possible he was going to try again to ask some version of the very worst question of all—How are you doing?—and Jessica wasn’t sure she’d be able to handle it.