He nods his head a few times. “I think better when I’m working too. Something about giving my hands something to do seems to free the thoughts that get all tangled up in my head.”
I feel like a shitty boss. Julio has always been kind of on the periphery for us. He’s a valued employee, and I genuinely like the kid, but I’m not as close to him as I am to everyone else who is a part of the garage. Hell, Scott is only the spouse of one of the employees, and we’re closer to him than we are to Julio.
I’m coming to learn that I’m not a very observant man. That’s probably a revelation I should have had the first time I realized my son was an addict, for years, and I had turned a blind eye to it. Or when I learned that he’d been verbally, emotionally, and financially abusing his wife for years.
The thing is, even an old man like me is capable of change. I can’t expect my boy to change something so major and not follow suit. I need to become more self-aware before my obliviousness causes even more harm.
Julio jerks his head toward the garage. “C’mon, I’ve got a truck needing a routine tuneup that I haven’t gotten to because some dumb-ass kid ground the shit out of the gears of his dad’s classic Camaro, thinking he was a bad ass street racer.”
The town might be gentrifying, but it seems there are some things that are still the same. There’s a stretch of country road outside of town that kids hold illegal street races on. Everyone knows about it, but we all pretend that no one knows. Every season, the period of time after the last heavy spring rain, until the weather turns colder at the end of fall, some kid “borrows” their dad’s car and manages to do thousands of dollars of damage.
When I was a kid, I participated in that destruction, and after I grew up, that hedonistic tradition helped pay the bills. I’m happy that he’s the one doing the repairs on the sports car now, though. There’s way too much to mess up in my state of mind, and I’m not really in the mood to focus right now. A tune-up, though, that’s something I could practically do in my sleep.
I take the bay that has always been mine and start setting up the tools I’ll need to change filters, spark plugs, and check the hoses, belts, and battery. Julio turns the stereo back on to a rock station that plays music from the nineties up to today. “Dirty Little Secret,” by All-American Rejects starts playing, and I let my mind free to take me where it’s been pulling me all day.
Griffin - Fourteenyears ago
Stacks of invoices,post-it notes, and scraps of paper with notes scrawled on them litter the top of my desk. I have the unfortunate task of deciphering all of this chicken scratch that Charlie and I have written down over the last month so that I can update the books.
It’s a miracle we’re still in business, to be honest. We give most of our quotes verbally, and then collect cash or a check. I own the building outright, or we’d probably be fucked. The reason that I’m the one in here hunting and pecking on the keyboard rather than someone else is because Liam refuses to learn the accounting system, and Charlie is hopeless when it comes to technology. In general.
I’m not exaggerating. He once spent fifteen minutes trying to rewind a DVD. The extent of his computer skills is turning it on, and that’s about it. I doubt he could even find porn, and Charlie is usually a savant at finding sex in every possible place.
While I'm working to decipher the note on one of the grease-stained scraps of paper, I hear the music get turned down, followed by a woman's voice. Charlie is usually decent with our customers, but by now, he’s screwed just about every woman in town, so I’m always a bit apprehensive when a woman comes into the garage alone. I probably seem like the typical douchebag grease monkey, disrespectful of women when it comes to car maintenance, but there’s been more than one blow-up over his romantic history.
Liam can be extremely charming, but there’s usually an ulterior motive for him when he puts in that kind of effort. Every time thoughts like these come into my mind, I feel guilty. No one wants to have negative thoughts about their child, but despitethe fact that my ex-wife, Melinda wasn’t involved in raising him, I can still see some of her in our son. Mainly in the way he is willing to manipulate people to get his way. I try not to let my feelings about her color my feelings for him, but when I see the way he treats Wren like an accessory more than a spouse, I feel like I’ve failed him somehow, and her by extension. I thought I was doing good by focusing all of my attention on Liam while he was growing up, but one of the unforeseen consequences is that my son has never seen a healthy relationship. Now he’s married and hasn’t the first clue how to be in a healthy relationship.
“What is she doing here?” I growl at Liam and jerk my chin at my daughter-in-law, Wren. “You can play house on your own time, but right now I need you to get Mr. Tucker’s car finished.”
I know I’m being a dick, but the alternative is so, so much worse. I’m sure that she thinks that I’m upset that they’re married, and I am, but that’s not why I treat her like she’s the worst thing to ever happen to my family. No, the reason is that I can’t be in the same room with her for more than a few minutes without feeling like I’m going to hyperventilate.
As for being upset that they got married, well, my son is perfectly content where he’s at. I’m not judging, I love owning my own business and spending my life working on cars. It’s an honest job and provides a much-needed service to my community. I don’t rip anyone off, and I don’t jack up my prices when I see that someone is not very knowledgeable about cars. That has helped me build a loyal customer base that recommends me to others.
I’m not even upset that Liam is content working for me. I assume that someday he’ll get a bit more involved and serious about the business and express some interest in taking over. I won’t be a hypocrite and judge him for doing with his life what I’ve done with mine.
Wren isn’t either of us. Before her parents died, I heard that she was quite the scholar. I’d heard her dad bragging about how she would be the first person in his family to go away to a university. She did a lot of extracurricular activities, kept a high GPA, and was on track to get a full ride to Central Valley University. That might just be a state school, but around here it might as well be Harvard. Very few of the kids around here get out by going to college.
Then she lost her parents, and her life took a detour. I’m sad to say that my son was the major catalyst in making her fall victim to the Harriston curse. They don’t have any kids, but otherwise, she’s stalled out at a dead-end job and married too young.
Granted, according to Liam, she wastes most of their income, to the point he’s had to take over control of their finances, but she is very young. She should be going out with friends, trying to live off ramen in her dorm, and staying up too late studying. What she shouldn’t be doing is trying to learn to cook for my dumbass son, who has two good hands, is working at a failing local insurance company, and waiting around while my son dives headfirst into being twenty-one. To my knowledge, she sits at home most nights while Liam parties since she won’t be twenty-one for another year.
He’s damn lucky she’s not going out on her own without him, like he is her. Anyone can see that she’s stunning. She’s got a sweet demeanor, well, around anyone that isn’t me, at least. I sense a submissiveness to her that makes me hard, and that is the last reaction I should be having to my son’s wife.
It’s not like she’s the first beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I’ve had no problems getting a chick’s attention since I hit puberty. I’m not trying to sound like a cocky asshole, it’s just a fact. The point is that I don’t turn into a drooling Neanderthal the moment a beautiful woman smiles at me.
Not that Wren smiles at me often. The look I get most often from her is a scowl, which unfortunately doesn’t make her less attractive. When she’s pissed at me, I am embarrassed to admit, it’s a turn-on.
At least my surly attitude does the job of keeping her at arm’s length. There are so many reasons why having any kind of interest in her is wrong. The biggest deterrent for me personally is the fact that she’s Liam’s wife. It doesn’t matter that I think they were too young to get married, marriage means something, or at least it should. Enough so that I will do what I can to help them stay married if that’s what they want.
I’m not sure my boy respects his vows, though. Not that I have proof that he doesn’t, possibly just wishful thinking, but even if he did fuck up, I still wouldn’t be free to pursue her. Besides the fact that she’s married, she's twenty years old, and I am thirty-nine. When you add that to the fact that I went to high school with her parents, I’m pretty much the definition of a pervy old man.
I've tried reasoning with myself, avoided her, and when that doesn't work, I'm just a straight-up dick. Part of that is frustration at having to be around her when I can’t have her. The more practical reason is that I’m trying to deter her from wanting to be around me. When they first got married, I could see the hope on her face that she could be part of a family again. The sick fuck that I am, I let myself fantasize about giving her that family, but of course, that can never happen.
My entire life, I’ve had to give up things that I want. I became a father at eighteen years old. Since then, all of my choices have been about Liam. I married Melinda because she is his mother. I started working at the garage because it was what I knew, and the best way for me to make a decent life for my family.
Then Melinda left, and once again, I had to think about what I needed to do to keep Liam’s life stable. I didn’t date anyoneseriously, too afraid to bring another woman into his life that would leave, and I guess mine too. As a result, I’ve become a lonely, almost-old man.
Maybe that is what my fascination with Wren is. She’s young, and the future should be open in front of her. With her intellect, there is nothing she couldn’t do, and yet she chooses a life of hardship. That is also why I hate her. She should have all the chances I didn’t, and she is throwing them away. Here she is, unknowingly teasing me with her sweetness and beauty, and it doesn’t have to be this way.
