Tension eked out of my shoulders, and I told myself that I needed to get a grip.
“Yo.” Hector nodded at him as he passed his desk.
Rider murmured a response and then took his seat. He leaned over toward Paige, speaking too low for me to hear. I saw her shake her head. He put his hand on her arm. Surprise flickered through me when she jerked away. She slammed her textbook down on the desk, and I thought I heard him sigh.
He glanced over at me. “Hey, Mouse.”
“Hey,” I replied softly.
And that was the extent of what I said to him the entire class, which probably didn’t bode well. I was suddenly so incredibly nervous as we packed up our stuff at the end of the class and Rider waited for me.
“We heading straight over?” he asked.
I nodded, noticing that Paige had already exited the classroom. He arched a brow and said nothing as we filed out of the room, waving goodbye to Hector and Keira. It was a good thing that I was driving, because I could focus on that instead of the internal freak-out that was occurring.
We were heading to the library that was about a twenty-minute drive from the school, and I was white-knuckling it the moment we pulled out of the parking lot.
Rider noticed. Of course. “You doing okay over there?” he asked.
I nodded and then cleared my throat. I wanted to ask him about Paige, but the plug was filling up my throat. So stupid. I never had that problem with him, but I was just too stuck in my head. I needed to get my mouth to work.
“Is...is everything okay with...you and Paige?” It was painful but I managed to get the words out.
A moment passed. “Not really.”
“Do...you want to talk about it?” I asked.
“No.”
“Okay,” I breathed.
“I want to talk about anything other than that right now,” he added. “Okay?”
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel as I glanced up at the red stoplight. I could do that even though I was more than curious about the whole Paige situation now. But there was so much I wanted to know about him.
“How...did you...?” I glanced up at the red stoplight, mentally stringing together a litany of curse words until my tongue untied. I was so nervous it was like it was two years ago. “How did you start working at...the garage?”
He didn’t answer immediately, because I probably caught him off guard with the pure randomness of my question.
I flushed and squeezed down on the steering wheel. “I... I was just wondering about it. So I thought I’d ask. Sorry.”
“No. No, it’s cool.” When I peeked at him, he was staring out the windshield. “Razorback Garage is about a block or so from where I live. So I saw the owner—Drew—often. We talked whenever we crossed paths, you know? Sometimes I would hang out at the garage, because they had this detailer who did amazing work. Anyway, about a year ago or so, I got busted for tagging—unrelated to the school thing.”
“You get...caught a lot,” I said, turning right.
“Ha. Yeah. Apparently. Anyway. Drew ended up hearing about it. So when I saw him again, he asked me to show him some of my stuff. And I did. He liked it. Thought it was pretty cool. The rest is history.”
I slowed for another stoplight. “That’s really...amazing.”
“I’m lucky,” he replied, grinning then. “Drew pays me pretty good.”
“Because you’re really good at what you do,” I told him.
The dimple appeared. “I could, um, show you some of my work at the garage if you want? I mean, it’s not that exciting and you’d probably like to do something else, but—”
“I’d love to.” My heart was tripping over itself.
His dimple hung around for that.