Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 92069 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92069 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
“There are more important things in life than sex,” I said.
“Like what?” McIntyre sounded genuinely curious.
“Like keeping this business alive despite the fact that we’re bleeding customers and Swifty Auto is soaking them up. Like finding time and money for hands-on training so we can stay up to date with advanced diagnostics. Like getting that small business loan so I can afford advertising, another mechanic, and better tools and software.” I straightened up and grabbed a blue shop towel. “Like winning the league championship.”
He rolled out from under the Mustang and looked at me, his expression somber. “Amen, brother.”
McIntyre and I played for the Bellamy Creek Bulldogs in a league my sister referred to as “old man baseball.” It’s true, we were all over thirty, not as agile or fast as we’d been in high school, and we consumed a lot more beer, but we took it very, very seriously. We lived for those Thursday night games, celebrating every victory—and drowning our sorrows after each defeat—at The Bulldog Pub, the bar that sponsored us. And it looked like this summer’s championship game would be a match-up between us and our most bitter rivals, the Mason City Mavericks. We’d won the title the last two years, and they were anxious to get it back.
“You’re coming to practice tonight, right?” I asked. McIntyre was our center fielder. He wasn’t a big hitter, but he was quick and had a good throwing arm.
“Definitely.” He paused. “If Emily says it’s okay.”
I shook my head—the guy was a hopeless case—and tossed the towel aside.
After closing the shop just after five, I locked the doors and re-entered the building from a door on the far left of the façade, which opened onto the staircase leading up to my apartment.
The garage was actually an old firehouse with two bays. It had been vacant for at least a decade before my grandfather bought it in 1955 and repurposed it into a service station. My father took it over in the early 1970s when my grandpa retired. Back then, they used the second story over the lobby as storage, but after I got out of the Marine Corps four years ago, my father offered to let me convert it into living space.
That hadn’t been the plan, of course, but life as I’d imagined it was no longer an option. So I returned the ring, withdrew my offer on the house, drank myself into oblivion and generally behaved real fucking badly for several months before my dad and my three best friends told me to get my shit together, because life goes on.
Having a project helped, and my buddy Enzo Moretti was a builder, so he’d worked with me on the apartment after hours. There was something cathartic about spending my spare time putting up walls.
It was a cavernous space with high ceilings, exposed brick, and wide-plank wood floors. My bedroom and bathroom were at the back, and the front was basically one big rectangular room, with a kitchen in one corner and a seating area by the three front windows overlooking Main Street.
Thanks to Moretti’s connections, I’d scored nice materials on a limited budget—leftover tile and granite from someone’s new vacation home, reclaimed wood floors from a lumber dealer, doors and fixtures salvaged from old barns and farmhouses, even some of the original details from the firehouse itself. It might have been a little mismatched to an expert decorator’s eye, but it didn’t bother me.
The only thing I wished I had was some land. If I could ever afford it, I wanted a piece to call my own. All his life, my dad had talked about saving up enough to buy some decent acreage when he retired. He’d planned to move out to the country and spend his days tinkering with old cars in a barn, going fishing whenever he felt like it, and teaching his grandchildren how to play pinochle.
Unfortunately, a heart attack had claimed both him and his dreams too soon.
“He worked himself into an early grave,” my mother said the day of his funeral. “Don’t do it, Griff. He wouldn’t want it for you. Find some other way to honor him.”
But my dad had worked his fingers to the bone to keep his father’s business alive, and I’d be damned if it was going to die on my watch. If it meant working longer hours to keep our customers loyal, so be it.
But tonight, there was baseball.
Hungry, I went to the fridge, hoping for a miracle, like maybe I’d forgotten there was a fresh-baked lasagna in there. Or a steak and potatoes. At the very least, a chicken pot pie.
No such luck. Clearly, I’d forgotten to grocery shop again.
But I had some lunch meat and half a loaf of bread, so I slapped a ham sandwich together and scarfed it down while changing out of my work clothes into some sweats.