“Are you coming?”
He was standing next to the open doors, confusion on his face. “Don’t we need to, like…” I shrugged and waved my camera at him. “You know, film this thing?”
Ethan’s forehead wrinkled, then relaxed as understanding dawned on him. “No, I did that earlier. I mean, we might wantto film it when we get to where we are going, but only if it’d be cool for our video.”
“Oh.” Now it was my turn to be surprised. “You mean, you got this car and planned out the entire shoot for us?”
“Yeah.” Apprehension crept across his face. “Is that okay? If you had somewhere specific you wanted to go, we could go there instead.”
“No. No. This is great.” I rushed, trying to sort through the roughly fifty thousand emotions flooding my senses. He hadn’t wanted my help with the car at all. He wanted as badly as I did for our video to work. Learning that put cracks in the little dam I’d built to hold back all my feelings. Smiling at him, I let the truth slip out before I had the chance to stop it. “In fact, it’s perfect. Thank you.”
The tension in Ethan’s body melted away, and he smiled back at me. This smile felt different, quieter. This was not a smile that was being broadcast for everyone. It was reserved for me. My heart did a backflip as he motioned to the passenger side. “We should get going. I want us to get there on time.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, trying not to sound like I was about to go swimming in the deep end of my emotions.
“If we timed this right, and I think I did, we should get to Red Rock Canyon in time to catch the sunset and see the city at night.” Ethan beamed at me like this was a stroke of genius. “I tried to think of things that people don’t automatically associate with Las Vegas, like nature.”
“Clever.” I nodded at him and started to walk toward the passenger-side door. I was halfway around the car when it hitme that we were going to watch a sunset. Literally one of the most quintessentially romantic things in the history of the world.
I felt like half of the people waiting for the valet to bring their cars could hear my heart pounding. Should I text Gabby to ask for the signs of a sneaky date? Would that be googleable? I could wait until Ethan was distracted and—
“Wait. Don’t get in the car yet,” Ethan said, yanking me out of my thought spiral. “Watch the ground in front of the door when I turn the car on.” With that, he pressed the ignition, and the car roared to life. There, at my feet, projected onto the sidewalk, was an outline of a snake in green. I looked back at Ethan, who was practically vibrating with glee. “Cool, right? It’s a custom door that the rare-car service installed.”
“They had a snake installed?” I asked.
“Yeah, because it is a modified Viper,” Ethan said, as if it were obvious. I nodded like I understood his meaning. Apparently, his bullshit detector was better than mine, because he then said, “Vipers are cars.”
“I knew that.” Ethan arched an eyebrow at me, and I amended my response. “I think I did, anyway.”
He smirked and motioned for me to get into the car. “The company my mentor got it from customizes luxury cars and then rents them to ridiculously rich people who want to flaunt their wealth in Las Vegas.”
“Okay, that I definitely understand. If you are an excessive person, why wouldn’t your rental car be excessive, too?” I sank into the passenger-side seat. “Oh my god. This thing is amazing.”
“I told you.” The volume of Ethan’s voice rose as we waited for the car doors to close on their own. “The first time I sat in the seat, I swear my entire spine realigned.”
“Thisisbetter than a massage.” I shifted around in my chair to put my bag and the sweater behind my seat, then put my seat belt on.
“They don’t even make these anymore. They only ever made around thirty thousand of them,” Ethan said, easing out of the valet area. Talking mostly to himself, he continued. “I still can’t believe they let me take this thing.”
“You really love cars, don’t you?” I asked, angling my knees so I could watch Ethan and keeping my phone out for the right moment. He was so happy; I had to get a video of him actually driving.
“I was basically born in a car. I can’t help myself.”
“Then being a car content creator is a perfect job for you.”
“I mean, I don’t know that it is the perfect job for me. I sort of fell into it.” Ethan frowned a little as we pulled up to the hotel exit light.
“Fell into it like how?”
He fussed with the stereo for a second longer than I suspected it normally took him to connect to Bluetooth, as if buying himself more time to think. “I started making videos to advertise my family’s business. It’s a long story, but after years at one garage my dad decided to start his own. I was twelve, and I didn’t really think much past bringing in customers.” A small smile crossed his lips. Choosing his words carefully, he added, “In fact, I was trying to copy the style of those commercials thatthe Chicago area big-name tire stores have on their websites. I wanted people to see we had a good, reliable garage with knowledgeable mechanics. I think I even said that in my first video, where I explained changing a headlight, which, by the way was about the only thing I knew how to do back then.”
Ethan laughed gently, thinking about his younger, optimistic self. “Turns out that the one thing everyone with a car in Chicago googles is how to change a headlight on a Ford Explorer, so people saw the video and liked it. They thought the idea of a family-run garage was sweet and wholesome, and viewers thought it was cute that my dad and older sisters sort of tolerated me filming them. The more views the video got, and the more people came in and mentioned seeing it, the more it was reinforced that I should keep making them.”
“This all happened because of one Ford?” I asked, incredulity creeping into the edges of my voice.
Ethan laughed again. “Well, no. I started targeting other car types that our garage works on, mostly American-made at first, but now we also work on some European cars. Anyway.” Ethan shook his head to refocus. “I must have changed the headlights of every type of car that came into our garage for six months until I learned how to do other things. The videos did what they were supposed to do for us. People in Chicago learned about our business, and it grew. I started to branch out into other car content because it was helpful and more fun than watching Sophie and Izzie after school. It snowballed, and some of that has been great, but I don’t know if I would do it again knowing what I know now.”
“What do you mean?”
