Pit Stop Surprise

Turning twenty-nine is a weird kind of birthday, because nobody warns you that it feels like running out of road. That's what I kept thinking anyway, standing at the edge of the pit area at the fairground with a coffee I didn't even want, watching Stella's sister Claire back a 1970 Mustang into its display spot like she was parking a battleship. Twenty-nine. One year off the big three-oh, and what did I have to show for it? A decent job doing graphics for a label company, a rental apartment with a radiator that sang at night, and a girlfriend so far out of my league that people at parties sometimes assumed we'd met on a dare.

Stella is twenty-nine too, by the way, same birthday month as me, which she considers hilarious and I consider statistically suspicious. We met two years ago at a bar opening, one of those converted warehouse places where the cocktails cost more than my first car. She'd been arguing with the bartender about the correct way to build a Manhattan, and I'd been eavesdropping shamelessly, and when she caught me listening she just said, "You agree with me, right?" I did not agree with her. I agreed with her anyway. Best mistake of my life, honestly.

Anyway. The car show. Here's the part I have not mentioned yet, the part that has been making my life difficult since roughly seven this morning.

Before we left the apartment, Stella handed me a gift box with a bow on it, birthday present, very thoughtful, and inside was a red lace teddy. Not a modest one either. The kind with the scalloped edges and the little straps that go absolutely nowhere useful. And underneath it in the box, a pair of black heels, my size, because of course she knew my size.

"Put it on," she said, all business, like she was handing me a work order. "And wear it under your coveralls. All day."

I laughed. She didn't. That's how I learned she was serious.

So that's my situation. I'm twenty-nine years old, it's my birthday, and I'm standing in a crowded pit lane at a regional car show wearing a red lace teddy and heels beneath a set of grey mechanic's coveralls that Stella made me zip all the way up, because she is thorough like that. The heels I only had to walk maybe two hundred feet in and my ankles already filed a complaint with management. (Metaphorically. There's no form for that. I checked.)

And the worst part? The part I'd deny in front of a judge? Some traitorous piece of me was thrilled about it. Every time a breeze came through or somebody brushed past me, I felt the lace move against my skin and my brain shorted out for a second. This was going to be a long day.

* * *

"Dom! Over here!" Stella waved me over to the Mustang, which was gleaming under the pit lights like it had been buffed by angels. Next to her stood a woman I recognized but had only met a handful of times, tall, sun-tanned forearms, hair tied back with what looked like a shop rag. Claire, Stella's older sister, thirty-three, professional restorer of cars that cost more than my entire building.

"Happy birthday, Dominic," Claire said, giving me a look I couldn't quite read. "Stella told me you were coming to help in the pit today. Good of you."

"He's very good with his hands," Stella said, and I swear I felt my soul leave my body through my ears.

"Oh, I bet," Claire said. She was already half turned toward the Mustang, which was the only reason I survived that exchange. "Can you give me a hand, though? I need a nine-sixteenth out of the top tray, and my shoulders are done for the day."

"Sure, yeah, absolutely," I said, with the smooth confidence of a man who had no idea where the top tray even was.

She pointed, I found it, and then came the problem. The tray was at the back of the workbench, up high, and the wrench was wedged behind a torque wrench and something that might have been a carburetor. Reaching it meant stretching up on my toes, which meant the coveralls pulled tight, which meant the lace at my hips shifted against skin that had been on red alert all morning. Every strap seemed to find a new place to remind me it existed. I got the wrench out and handed it over like I was passing live ordnance, and Claire took it without a second glance, which somehow made it worse. Did she know? She couldn't know. Could she? Stella wouldn't tell her. Stella absolutely would tell her.

The Mustang's hood was propped open and Claire leaned in, calling out things like "intake manifold" and "previous owner was a war criminal," and I nodded along like I understood, handing her tools at random intervals and praying to every god available that my coveralls stayed zipped and my face stayed a normal human color.

"You look flushed," Claire observed at one point, not even turning around. "Hot out here, huh?"

"So hot," I agreed, with far too much enthusiasm.

Stella made a sound into the engine bay that I chose to interpret as a cough.

* * *

It was maybe forty minutes later that Stella hooked a finger in my coverall sleeve and pulled me aside, past the roped-off pit, around the back of a parked trailer where nobody could see us. The fairground noise went all muffled and distant, just generator hum and tinny announcements about the pie contest.

"Your cheeks are flushed," she whispered, and there was a grin in it, I could hear the grin. "The whole time Claire was talking about gaskets, you were pink from your ears to your collar. It's adorable. I could eat you."

"Stella, oh my god," I hissed. "Someone could walk back here. Claire could walk back here! She's your sister."

"Claire is restoring a carburetor. Claire is not thinking about your underwear." She stepped in closer, and her voice dropped even lower. "Are you okay? Really okay? Because we can absolutely call it, you can go change, no harm done. Say the word."

And this is the thing about Stella that I both love and fear, which is that she always leaves the door open. Every game, every dare, every ridiculous request, there's always a real exit, not a fake one. Which makes it so much harder to take the exit, because it's actually there.

"No," I said, and my voice cracked on it, which was mortifying. "No, I'm... I'm good. I want to stay."

"You sure?" Her hand flattened against my chest, over the coveralls, right where the lace would be underneath, and my knees nearly filed for early retirement. "Because you can say no."

"I'm sure. I'm very sure. Dangerously sure."

She kissed me then, slow, nothing quick about it, one hand curling into the front of my coveralls like she was checking the zipper was still up (it was, barely, thanks for asking) and a sound came out of me into her mouth that I will be taking to my grave. When she finally pulled back I had to lean against the trailer for support like a Victorian woman receiving bad news.

"Happy birthday," she murmured. "Behave yourself out there. Or don't. Actually, don't."

"That's not even a sentence that means anything."

"It means exactly what I want it to mean." She smoothed the front of my coveralls down, brisk and businesslike again in half a second, and sauntered back toward the pit like she had never once destabilized another human being in her life.

I stood behind the trailer for a good thirty seconds, breathing, doing mental math, reciting the names of state capitals. Then I followed her back toward the Mustang, where Claire looked up from the engine with the wrench still in her hand.

"There he is. Feel better?" Claire asked.

"Great. Never better."

"He gets like this in the heat," Stella said, deadpan, and went back to work.

This was going to be the longest birthday of my entire life, and I mean that in the best possible way, which is a sentence I never thought I'd think about a car show.

The afternoon sun kept climbing, and so did my paranoia. Somewhere around the third hour of the show I had developed a system. When nobody was looking, and I mean absolutely nobody, I would reach back and tug the shoulder strap of the teddy back into place, because the thing had apparently been engineered by someone who hated shoulders and wanted them to suffer. It was a two-second operation. Reach, tug, done. Invisible. Safe.

Except the fourth time I did it, I turned my head and Claire was watching me.

She didn't say anything at first. She just raised one eyebrow, the way she does when a customer tells her the weird noise in their engine is "probably nothing," and looked from my hand to my shoulder and back to my hand. Then she went back to the Mustang like she'd seen nothing at all, which was somehow more terrifying than if she'd screamed.

"Everything okay over there, Dominic?" she asked, casual as anything, still elbow-deep in the engine bay.

"Yep. Great. Shoulder thing. Old shoulder injury." I have never in my life had a shoulder injury. My shoulders are the most boring part of my body. Why did I say that?

"Huh," Claire said. "I don't remember you mentioning a shoulder injury."

"It's old. Pre-dating everything. Pre-dating you knowing me. Ancient history."

"Two years isn't that ancient, but sure." She finally straightened up, wiping her hands on a rag, and gave me the once-over. Not a long look, thank god, just a quick professional sweep, the same way she appraises a fender. "You know I restored a car once where the previous owner had hidden an entire second wiring harness under the dash. Nobody knew it was there for a decade. You get a feel for these things. Hidden stuff. Things that don't quite sit right under the surface."

"Are you comparing me to a wiring harness?"

"I'm saying," and she leaned in just slightly, lowering her voice while Stella was occupied with a guy in a flat cap who wanted to talk about paint codes, "that whatever is going on with you today, it's fine by me. You're twitchy, you're pink, and you keep adjusting things like your clothes are trying to eat you. But it's fine. You two have your fun." Then, before I could produce a single word, she patted me on the arm and wandered off toward the tool chest like she hadn't just detonated my entire nervous system.

So she knew. She didn't know know, or maybe she did, but either way she knew