Breakdown (Crash into Me) Read online

  Before I could even let myself hope, he sent me another message.

  Unknown: No, but I feel like I have a hamster wheel in my head.

  Damn him all to hell, but I laughed again. I added him into my contacts and waited

  Do-gooder: I heard you were at the promenade the other night.

  Me: Yeah.

  Do-gooder: So why didn’t you come over and say hi to me? I was waiting for you all night.

  Me: You were busy.

  I was both hoping and not that it would be the end of the conversation. And when a couple of minutes went by without a response, I was afraid I had gotten my wish. But then the phone lit up in my hand, a reminder that I had set it from vibrate to silent.

  At first I didn’t want to appear as lame as I felt, picking up it up on the first ring and essentially begging him to talk to me. Then, however, I remembered how we met and the messy state he had seen me in afterward. By comparison, picking up the phone right away wasn’t very high on the pathetic scale.

  “I knew I’d regret you having my number.” I sounded more ornery than I felt, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t had an actual conversation on the phone since the summer after high school.

  “Jumper!” His accent sounded even thicker over the phone, his voice still hard sounding but insanely happy. If there was any doubt that I did the right thing by answering the phone it was gone, and I leaned back into the bench, soaking up every syllable he gave me.

  “You had me worried there for a minute, Jumper. I was about to start checking the obituaries.”

  “Yeah, well,” I sighed and tried to sound casual. “You did ruin my plan the other night.”

  His laugh sent my flying. “You say that like it’s a bad thing, Jumper.”

  “Not for you maybe. You got a free cupcake out of the deal.”

  As usual, I had ruined the moment, giving our almost playful conversation a dark undertone that I didn’t know how to take back.

  “You expect me to apologize?”

  I smiled into the phone. “That would be the polite thing to do.”

  I could hear him smiling back. “I’m not good at that.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  “How are you anyway, Jumper? Keeping it together?”

  The switch for smart-ass went on all by itself. “I have another class in five minutes, so no, not really. Whatever you want to bother me about you better make it fast.”

  “Fair enough.” I could practically feel the shrug through the phone. “I just wanted to make sure you were still around. I swung by your house yesterday, but I didn’t know if I should come over or not.”

  My heart caught in my throat, swollen and beating fast, and I thought it might suffocate me completely. How could the words of this person I had just met affect me so much? Was I really so lonely? So starved for attention that I would have accepted anyone in my life?

  “Y-you don’t even know me.”

  “I’m trying to, Jumper.” William laughed. “That’s kinda the point.” Like every second since I had met him, William knew exactly what to say. “Besides, just because you don’t know someone doesn’t mean you can’t care about them. In fact, just so you don’t forget that somebody cares, I’ll do my best to remind you.” William paused as if considering something. “At least once a day until you feel better.”

  “Every day?” I did my best to keep the excitement out of my voice. “You do know stalking is illegal?”

  “Who else is gonna make sure you’re still breathing?”

  He did have a point.

  I sighed and tapped my fingers against the vending machine next to me. “I’ll get a restraining order.”

  “Those things are overrated. They hand them out like candy and nobody takes them seriously.”

  “I’ll change my number.”

  “Then I’ll just come to your house.”

  I swore to myself but failed not to smile. “Damn.”

  Resigning myself to losing, I listened to William laugh for exactly six seconds before he chuckled and sighed. “I’ll let you get to class, Jumper. But remember, I’ll be talking to you soon.”

  “I wonder how much it would cost to change my name…”

  He only laughed harder. “Stay safe, Jumper. I’ll see you later.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled before I could stop myself. “See you.”

  Even over my best attempts to pay attention in organic chemistry, I ended up thinking about racing, cars, and the smell of burning rubber, though less about William than I might have predicted. By the time mid-afternoon rolled around, I gave up on trying to take notes altogether, resigning myself to my new obsession and the growing hope that I might be invited to another race.

  Home by the early evening, I was glad to both see and smell the charcoal grill just outside of the patio—an obvious sign that Dad was home.

  “Hey, Kiddo” Seeing me round the corner, Dad waved at me with the end of the basting brush before pointing to his apron. The apron that said PETA: people eating tasty animals was an old joke between us—his passive aggressive way of making Mom angry, and my way of knowing we were going to have something for dinner that wasn’t organic, vegetarian, and entirely fat free.

  “Hey, Dad” No longer able to ignore how heavy my backpack felt, I plopped it to the ground and watched it shake the potted poinsettias. “What’s for grub?”

  Dad rotated something on the grill and stood back as it sizzled. “I’ve got chicken on now. Maybe when that’s done I’ll throw some of those brats on there.”

  “That sounds good.” I slung myself on the porch swing and sighed.

  Dad laughed like I had said something funny—a salesmen’s trait if there ever was one. “I was thinking we could throw some of that cheddar cheese and leftover bacon on top of them.” He smiled devilishly. “I bought some chips on the way home.”

  “Chips are technically a vegetable,” I joked.

  He looked off as if considering something serious. “Just because they stared out as a potato doesn’t necessary mean they still are one.”

  I nodded seriously. “I remember the epic debate over pizza.”

  “Congress calls it a vegetable!” he said with his hands to the air. “What’s the issue?”

  I humored Dad by smiling, watching while he whistled impatiently over the chicken and waved to passing neighbors and delivery men. Loved, or liked at a minimum, everyone waved back, shouting their greetings and well wishes—yet another salesmen’s trait. For as long as I could remember, socializing had been an easy thing for Dad, or at least he made it look easy. Maybe if I knew how to socialize the way he did, the way Tabby did, then life would be easier for me too.

  “Hey Dad?”

  He looked at me with eyes about as wide as a little kid. “Yeah?”

  “What, ah, what do you know about cars?”

  It turned out Dad knew little more about cars than I did, struggling to explain to me how to change the oil in my Subaru with words like “Thing-a-ma-jigger” and “what-cha-ma-doodle”. Still, I listened while I made us a salad and Dad talked with his hands in a theatrical fashion. Faintly, in the back of my mind, I had a hard time trying not to picture if he would still be okay today if William hadn’t shown up on Friday night.

  It was only when we heard the soft click of Mom’s garage door opener that we each disbanded in our separate ways, Dad and I each exchanging the silent nods like soldiers before the troops dispersed. Knowing him, he would bury himself in the paperwork that I had learned during my summer internship at his office he could have easily done during working hours—either that or online chess or sports center. I, on the other hand, would attempt to do homework while watching any kind of reality show that involved cooking. Occasionally I would substitute this for a science fiction novel, though even those were pretty far and few in-between.

  In my family, our evenings were spent separate and distant from one another. Even when it was just Dad and I, our lack of ability to have more than a two minu
te conversation with each other usually meant awkwardness between us after three minutes, unless Sherlock or something equally awesome was on.

  I spent some time when my depression first found me trying to remember a time when it had been different, when my childhood had been happier, and we had been one big happy family. Yet the truth of it was that it had never been much different from our current situation. I had simply been too young to be aware of how unhappy my parents were.

  Scattering up to my room like I had so many times before, however, I had something to think about other than cooking shows and whether or not my ceiling fan would hold my dead weight. My fingers couldn’t type fast enough as I worked my crummy keyboard, grateful now that alcohol and drugs didn’t do it for me so I could remember nearly everything about Bloody Mary that William told me. I looked up his car, the latest in tricked out engines, and the different street racing laws for each country. Before I downloaded multiple movies featuring racing, I taught myself the difference between drifting and touge racing, made a list of video games to look into, and questions to ask William again if he made his promise about keeping in touch.

  Somehow, I knew he would.

  Sure enough, I heard from him again in the late morning. Though admittedly staying up half the night watching Steve McQueen and the Speed Channel had me so tired I didn’t even feel the phone vibrate the first time, I jolted awake only when the girl next to me nudged me with her elbow to alert me to the sound.

  Do-gooder: Are you still with me, Jumper?

  Me: In class. Go away.

  Do-gooder: Not at work? Damn. I was hoping for something sweet to eat—a food product, that it.

  Do-gooder: Get your mind out of the gutter, Jumper.

  I laughed so loud the girl who had nudged me awake looked up from her notes to give me a dirty look. Luckily, no one else seemed to notice. When did I find dirty jokes so funny? And when did it become socially acceptable to type entire sentences into text messages? I considered both of these points for the remaining painful fifteen minutes of class. Once again I was the first one out the door after I managed to scribble down the assignment from the board.

  Me: I only work in the mornings and afternoons. Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

  Do-gooder: You only work on the weekends while you go to school?

  Do-gooder: Ha. Lazy.

  Me: Now you sound like my mom.

  Do-gooder: If I want to see you and get diabetes I have to wait till tomorrow?

  Okay, so I’ll admit it, my heart fluttered just a little at the idea that he was not only willing to see me, but that he wanted to see me.

  Me: Yep.

  Do-gooder: Way to own it, Jumper. Stay in school. ;)

  With the foolishness of a little girl, I stared at the winking face he sent me all day long, entirely aware of how pathetic I was being, but not caring enough to stop.

  Chapter Seven

  After getting into work the next day, I was only slightly creeped out by the sight of the display cake I had picked out for my wake and not at all by the fact that I had said good-bye to the place a week ago. Plus, with a possible visit from William to look forward to, I focused on everything else I had to do, nodding my hellos to the manager before looking over the list of orders for the day. In my head I had already decided that the faster I worked, the faster the day would go, prompting me to work that much harder.

  The illegals had already been there for a good hour or two, taking care of the food prep and at least one of the delivery trucks before they start up on the dough prep. My lack of upper body strength and knowledge of the machinery had me sticking mostly to fruit and nut chopping, glazes, and pie crusts, which was fine by me. I didn’t need to get yelled at in Spanish to know that I slowed them down.

  Despite William’s compliments, I was far from the world’s greatest baker. Truth be told, I wasn’t even particularly good at baking more obscure things like bread and croissants. My knack for baking was always with the sweeter things. I had an unusual aptitude for decorating wedding cakes and monster cookies, cupcakes and tarts. A talent that even Mom couldn’t deny.

  Like most weekdays, we weren’t that busy, and in those first hours I only sold a few loaves of bread, and a couple dozen danishes and scones to busy businessmen who had obviously pulled the short straw at their office. When they ran out, I refilled the coffee pot, cleaning up the spilled creamers and sugar whenever I got a chance.

  Unlike what I anticipated, I hardly thought of William at all. Alternatively, I smiled at customers as I recommended the raspberry tart over the strawberry, iced almost all the mini cupcakes pink—inspired by Tabby’s hair—and I drank dark roast coffee to fuel my daydreams of squealing tires and revving engines. Maybe, I reasoned, this was just the eye of my madness, or, worse yet, the calm before the storm. Either way, I knew better than to let it go to waste.

  At 11 o’clock, our morning routine came to a head when the other counter girl took over the register and the guys who had been working the kitchen went home for the day. Once they were gone I took their place, and though there were only a couple of specialty orders—and most of them had already been filled—I was still glad to have something to do, anything really to keep myself from thinking about the possibility that William wouldn’t show up at all.

  I started decorating elaborate patterns on the mini cheesecakes, and from there intricately selected the blueberries and where they went into the muffin mix. When I ran out of those, I scrubbed some of pans until the water in sink evolved from hot to lukewarm to downright chilly. I had just started picking out dried icing from bags and their tips with a knife when my fellow counter girl sauntered her way into the kitchen.

  “Hey, Lottie? There’s a guy here to see you.”

  When I dropped the icing bag the water from the sink splashed up onto my shirt, sending suds and a chill all through my torso. I took a quick glance down at myself. As per my usual mid-day work appearance, my arms were battered with flour and squished fruit. The t-shirt and apron I wore with the bakery’s logo were stained with coffee despite multiple washings, and I didn’t need to look in a mirror to know my loose pony-tail was probably greasy from cleaning supplies and sweat.

  Even if I wanted run to my bag and attempt to fix my ponytail, I couldn’t do anything about what I was wearing, not to mention the skunky smell of flour and body odor. I sighed and gritted my teeth. This would have to be the ultimate do-gooder test.

  Though she wasn’t particularly pretty, I wasn’t surprised to see William leaning against one of the display counters and chatting with my female colleague. In fact, I was beginning to think he didn’t know how to be around members of the opposite sex without turning on the charm.

  “Hey you, get out if you’re not buying.” I pretended to brush imaginary dust from a tower of wedding cake toppers instead of noticing the way he grinned when he saw me, how his eyes lit up at the sound of my voice.

  “Jumper! I was beginning to think you had fallen into a mixer or something back there.” Fixing his hands into his pockets, William walked over to me without giving my co-worker another thought. For an instant, I almost felt bad at the way her face fell—almost.

  “I’ll have you know that some of us work for a living.” I cross and uncrossed my arms, trying quickly to think to something clever to say and wanting to kick myself when I couldn’t. “Instead of, you know, just playing around with their cars.”

  I was sure he laughed just to be nice. “I’ll have you know, Jumper, that I work just as hard as I play.”

  I rolled my eyes, “Uh-huh.”

  He waved from his neck to his oil-stained boots. “You think I dress like this because it’s fashionable?”

  The truth was that I had been too busy looking at his face to notice what he was wearing. Now that he mentioned it, the pale blue overalls with stains worse than mine were hard to miss. I stared intensely at the name patch embroidered with “Billy”, wondering if the quotation marks around his nickname were intended
to be sarcastic or not.

  “A mechanic.” I nodded. “Of course.”

  William looked me up and down like he was thinking of something terribly difficult. “And if I didn’t know any better I’d say you were a baker.”

  I rolled my eyes. His stare made me feel defensive again, and I took cover behind the display case and pretended to fiddle with a tray of cookies, picking up red and yellow sprinkles that Elmo and Big Bird had lost.

  “Even your name tag is smart-ass,” I mumbled. “How are you in the service industry?”

  “Meh.” He shrugged. “I’m like you, I work in the back.”

  I shook my head and turned so he wouldn’t see me smile. The simple comparison that William made between the two of us made me ridiculously happy, flattered me in a way I hadn’t been in a long time. It took me a solid minute to realize that it was because, in my mind, I considered the similarity a compliment. And that was because I liked William very much.

  Maybe I could learn to like myself too.

  “Do you get a lunch break, Jumper, or what?”

  I rested my palms against the cool of the counter and sighed. “Or what.”

  “And I’m the smart-ass?” He chuckled.

  He almost had me smiling again before I could stop myself. Frankly, if my fellow counter girl hadn’t been eyeing us so closely, making me feel so self-conscious, I just might have. “What do I need a lunch break for? I have coffee, food—”

  “Can you take a break then?” If possible, he smiled a little wider. “I noticed your Subaru leaks a little oil. I could take a look at it if you want me to.”

  Leaning hard against the counter, I glanced out the storefront window into the early afternoon sunshine. I only had another hour or so before my shift was over, and if I really wanted to, I could easily have given William my keys, permission, and said thank you. After all, it wasn’t as though my car was worth anything, and if I was going to trust him with anything it would have been my car. But more than I was ready to admit out loud, I was eager to spend time with him, even if it was only in the very mediocre acquaintanceship sense.