Mechanic's Married Ass After Hours

I’d been bringing my piece-of-shit Civic to Jake’s garage every three weeks for months. The check engine light was basically a homing beacon, and I’d stopped pretending it was an accident. At twenty-eight I made my living writing filthy stories for a living, yet nothing I typed ever felt as raw as the way Jake looked at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention.

He was forty-two, thick through the chest and arms from years of wrestling engines, with a dark beard shot through with silver and hands so calloused they rasped when he dragged them over his coveralls. The gold wedding band on his left ring finger never came off, not even when he was wrist-deep in my engine bay. That ring should have been a warning. Instead it made my pulse thud low in my gut every single time.

“You again,” he’d say, wiping grease from his forehead with the back of his wrist. His eyes would flick down to the way my jeans hugged my ass when I bent to grab my laptop from the passenger seat. “Tight parts keep needing attention, huh?”

The double entendre was never subtle. He’d smirk, beard twitching, and I’d laugh like it was just shop talk. We both knew it wasn’t.

Last Thursday the Civic died in his lot at 7:15 p.m., well after the bay doors had rolled down and the neon sign flicked off. I was still behind the wheel, cursing, when Jake rapped his knuckles on the roof.

“Won’t start?” His voice was gravel and smoke.

“Dead as disco.”