“My gas tank is in the front of my car,” I say. “You’re lucky you weren’t going any faster than you were.”
Dragging my palm along my jaw, I watch as the Mercedes asshat approaches a squad car pulling up to the scene. Cars that pass us honk, drivers rolling down their windows and shouting profanities at us for holding up traffic. I don’t blame them. It’s five o’clock and people are trying to get home. It’s already bad enough without some stupid collision blocking the flow.
The officer talks to the disgruntled guy for a second before strutting our way, and I duck back into my car to grab my registration.
After statements are taken and information is exchanged, the Mercedes guy gets the fuck out of there and the waitress returns to her car and I to mine. Glancing into my rearview, I see she’s texting on her phone again.
Rolling my eyes, I reach toward the ignition and turn the keys.
Nothing.
I try again.
Still nothing.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I press my head against the steering wheel. The second she hit me the first thing I thought about was the fact that my engine is just behind my rear axle, but when I examined the damage, it only appeared to be cosmetic.
The impact must’ve knocked something vital out of place.
Climbing out, I head back to the rear and pop the hood, hunching over the engine to see if anything looks amiss.
“Everything okay?” a female voice steals my attention. When I turn around, I find the waitress again.
“Obviously not.” I turn away. “Won’t start.”
“Oh, jeez. Let me call you a tow.” She grabs her phone and begins typing furiously into a search engine. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. You already said that. Earlier.”
I examine the distributor cap, then the fuel pump relay, which could easily trip on collision. No leaks on the ground yet and the coolant level looks good. I’m probably going to have to tear shit apart just to figure out what’s wrong—which is exactly how I wanted to spend the rest of my pre-deployment week …
“You need a ride home?” she asks.
Glancing at the mountain of grocery sacks taking up my passenger side, I know they’re all non-perishables, but I spent a pretty penny at Whole Foods and I’d like to get them to Mom’s as soon as possible on the off-chance I get hit by a bus … and judging by the way this day’s going, that’s not an unlikely possibility. I could call an Uber but I could be waiting here a while.
“Seriously, I’ll take you home,” she offers. “I feel awful about your car.” She leans closer. “I don’t feel bad about that other guy’s car though, just between us.”
The pretty waitress fights a smirk, but I don’t return one of my own. Nothing about this is funny.
“Okay, I take it back,” she says, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms. “Just trying to lighten the mood. And you have to admit that guy was a piece of work.”
A few minutes later, I close my rear hood and lean against my car. “You call a tow yet?”
She nods.
Forcing a hard breath through my nose, I shove my hands in my jeans pockets and wait. The waitress takes a seat on the hood of her Prius, her Lacoste-sneakered feet resting on the dented bumper while her chin sits in her hands. Her thick, dark hair is pulled back into a ponytail and her round, deep set eyes are an intense and distracting shade of mocha.
Despite the fact that she’s arguably drop dead gorgeous, she’s too perky for my taste, too chatty. Too effervescent.
And I’ve got more important things to worry about right now, like trying to figure out what the hell she did to my car.
“Tow will be here soon,” she calls out over a symphony of motors and horns. The weight of her stare is noticeable, but I couldn’t care less. Turning my attention to my phone, I waste the next twenty minutes on stupid internet sites and email before the tow truck arrives.
“The groceries in my front seat,” I say to her, pointing toward my car. “Grab them and put them in your trunk.”
She hops down, transferring brown paper bags to her Prius one-by-one as I eye the tow truck a few blocks away and hope to God it’s mine.
Five minutes later, I breathe a sigh of relief when he slows down and positions his truck in front of my baby.
By the time my 911T is loaded up and I hand off my key, the tension running through me is getting harder to ignore. It was easy to be cool about this shit an hour ago, when I assumed all I was dealing with were some scratches and paint. But now I’m fucking stranded in a city where everyone needs a car and my pride and joy wheels are going to sit in some oily mechanic’s parking lot overnight.