——Chapter Five: Flirting with Liquid Nitrogen

-Dove-

Alonzo just had to look so smug, didn’t he. I contemplated going through with it and actually climbing over him, smashing my foot into his groin in the process. The thought made me smile, or would have if I was the type of person to smile unnecessarily.

Then I remembered the windows were electric. I turned about and rolled the window down, and tumbled out. Behind me I heard my mortal enemy chuckling.

I dropped down to the pavement, straightened up, brushed the dirt off my outfit, and headed inside General Automotives.

A brown-haired and blue-eyed guy in red coveralls was at the front desk in the main building. He had the suit unzipped and tied around his waist so that his bulky arms poked through the white wife beater he wore underneath. He had a thick neck, a barrel chest, and narrow hips. At first glance I would have thought he was a professional bodybuilder, but I knew better, and this wasn’t our first time meeting.

There was a black streak of oil on his left cheek. He smiled when he saw me and dropped his feet off the desk they had been resting atop.

“Hey, Kyle,” I greeted him.

“You’re kind of early, Dove.” Kyle got up when I passed the desk and followed me into the Employees Only lounge. He talked at my back while I got my own set of red coveralls out of my locker. “Jess is out sick today, so Alheim has me at the desk while he’s at lunch.” Tom Alheim being General Automotives’ main manager. “How was school?”

I undressed without much modesty. It never seemed to make Kyle uncomfortable, so I was never uncomfortable doing it around him. If Tom Alheim was in the room I would have gone to change in the employee’s bathroom. But why waste the energy with Kyle? Wasn’t like I had much to show off anyway. Maia and I might have nearly identical faces, but my elder sister’s body was in far better shape.

I slipped on the coveralls over my plain white underwear and sports bra.

“The usual,” I said. “Except that I got paired up with Montez for a stupid chemistry assignment. He’s being a bigger pain in the ass than usual about it.”

“Montez?”

As I zipped up my suit, I sent a look at Kyle over my shoulder that should have conveyed how little I thought of his intelligence at that moment. “Alonzo Montez,” I reminded him. “The boy who has threatened me since he could talk. The guy who has made my life a living hell for about as long as I can remember.”

Kyle sat on a corner of the small square table employees of General Automotives used to eat on. I scrunched up my nose at him. Had he been raised by animals?

“I thought the guy who’s made your life a living hell would implicate your dad?” Kyle said.

“Before my dad became a psychotic drunk. Meanwhile, Alonzo has been psychotic his entire life.” I decided not to mention that it ran in his family. Kyle would simply point out that I was just as much a victim of my theory as Alonzo was, even if I failed to flash it about so violently. “Are there any cars I can go to work on, or do I get to help you man the front desk until Tom gets back?”

“Wow. Excuse me while I admire your tact. You changed the subject so subtly that I hardly noticed.”

Scowling, I snapped, “Kyle.”

He grinned briefly, and then shrugged those fairly broad shoulders. “Jimmy is working on a Mustang in garage four,” he said. “You can go ask him if he needs help. When Alheim gets back you can come help me figure out what’s wrong with this cute little Chevy that came in yesterday.”

I left Kyle in the employee lounge and went in search of Jimmy.

In the fourth garage, I found the Mustang. Jimmy himself was just outside, busy flirting with whoever was on the other line of his phone. I picked up a bolt and threw it at his head. It bounced off his shoulder.

Jimmy glanced at me, grinned, and brushed off the shoulder the bolt hit as he turned away from me. He continued his conversation with the phone.

I ducked my head under the hood of the Mustang. The belt was loose, I saw instantly.

“Hey.”

He was probably counting on startling me, but I didn’t give Jimmy the satisfaction. I slid my gaze over to the redhead who had popped up beside me. I frowned.

Jimmy could have been a supermodel. He had the body and the face for it, along with the cocky look-at-me-I’m-rich-and-gorgeous attitude. His family even had the connections for every girl’s fantasy to become his reality. But for whatever reason, Jimmy had dropped out of Royce High School a year ago, got his GED, and went on a six month program to a technical college to become a certified mechanic. I never asked why Jimmy didn’t simply live off his looks like any other guy who looked like him would have; and Jimmy never acknowledged that he had done any such thing, though he flaunted the knowledge that he knew he looked good.

“See anything you like?” Jimmy asked me.

See what I mean?

“Mustangs are a piece of shit. They look nice, though.”

I smiled and waited to see if he understood.

The green eyes sharpened when he frowned. Clearly Jimmy understood that he was the Mustang in my metaphor.

“You’re a real ass sometimes, Dove,” he told me coolly. “Kyle is in the office. How come you’re not in there bugging him?” He answered himself before I could, “Because he told you to come buzz around my head, I’ll bet. Fine, then. I’m going to work you to the bone the rest of the evening.”

“On a loose belt?”

Too late did I realize I had set myself for the upcoming sexual innuendo. Jimmy couldn’t go for long without spewing at least one, or he started going through withdrawal.

“It will start with a loose belt. We’ll just have to see where that takes us.” And he winked.

See what I have to deal with, I thought at nobody.

-

Soulbird’s note: Thanks for the feedback, LoveMySoul and VesperK! I really appreciate it ;-) And I HAVE written a new story… Sort of. I posted the first chapter of a new romance story a couple months ago, anyway. And ‘Deep Down Demons’ might be somewhat supernatural, but it is brand new and I’m actually updating it regularly. So there! Anywho, yep. For those who read the first “Age of Ice” and are now prolonging the torture by reading this one, you’ve probably noticed that I totally changed this chapter. WAIT til you see what I’ve done to the next several chapters… You’re going to hate me :-) This version of “Age of Ice” is probably going to be a couple chapters shorter than the original, and with a spanking new epilogue. Well… I hope you enjoy. And I love you!