Pitstop Pretty

So here's how my Saturday went sideways, and honestly I'm still processing it a little. I'm Trudy Delaney, I'm twenty-eight, I'm a large animal vet, which means my usual patients weigh half a ton and step on my feet. This story has a cat in it. And a corset. Not on the cat, thank god.

Anyway.

It was a hot Saturday at Riverview Speedway, the kind where the asphalt gets soft and everything smells like race fuel and burnt coffee, and I was wrestling a cat carrier shaped like a small fortress into the backlot shop. The cat, a gray menace I'd been fostering for two weeks, was screaming like I was feeding him into a wood chipper.

Travis Kemp spotted me from across the bay and came jogging over, all twenty-two years of him bouncing as a golden retriever would in a fire suit. He started at the shop last year and he's basically my friend now whether he likes it or not.

"Doc! You bring lunch?"

"I bring you a cat, actually."

"A what?"

"A cat, Travis. I've been fostering this one for two weeks and I cannot keep him, I already have two, and my landlord counts. One of you boys needs a cat. Look at him, he's handsome."

The cat chose that exact moment to throw himself against the carrier door and yowl. Travis took a step back.

"Doc, that thing sounds like a chainsaw with feelings."

"He's dramatic, that's all. He'd be great company in the break room, keep the mice honest. Think about it. Anybody here want a cat?"

A couple guys near the tire rack shook their heads fast. One of them actually said "no offense" to the cat, which I thought was polite. Travis crouched down and peered through the grate, and the cat, the little con artist, immediately went quiet and blinked at him sweetly.

"Oh no," Travis said.

"Oh yes. He likes you!"

"Does he come with, like, instructions?"

"He comes with attitude and a litter box. That's the whole package, buddy."

Travis sighed the sigh of a man who knows he's been outmaneuvered by a twelve-pound animal, and I was already mentally writing the adoption paperwork in my head. That's when the back office door opened.

The guy who came out was tall and broad, maybe thirty-five, with forearms like bridge cables and a buzz cut going gray at the temples. Coveralls, name patch that said D. BAXTER, the whole mechanic thing. I'd seen him around the track over the years, always quiet, always precise, the kind of man who torques bolts like he's diffusing something. He took two steps out, saw me, and stopped dead.

And this is the point. Maybe I wouldn't have noticed anything, except the light hit him just right and there, peeking up over the collar of his coveralls, was a strap. A thin, delicate, lace-edged strap in black. Definitely not standard-issue underarmor.

He saw me see it. His whole face did this fascinating thing, like a dam failing in slow motion. He yanked the zipper of his coveralls up to his chin and said, "Afternoon," in a voice about two octaves lower than necessary, and then walked very quickly toward the tool wall and picked up a wrench he had no use for.

"Hey, Baxter!" Travis called. "Doc's trying to give away a cat."

"Is she," Dirk said, to the wrench.

The cat got settled in the break room on the oil-stained couch within the hour, because Travis is weak and the cat is a professional. I should've left then. I had a hoof abscess waiting at the clinic, a horse, no less, and horses do not care about my social life. But I lingered. I bought a vending machine coffee I didn't even want, and I hung around the bay asking Travis questions about the car while watching the office door out of the corner of my eye like some kind of nosy barn owl.

When Travis got called to the pits for a tire drill, it was just me and Dirk and a lot of very loud silence. He was wiping down a socket set that was already clean. I decided to be kind about it.

"That's pretty," I said, nodding at his collar. "The lace, I mean. I only caught a glimpse."

Dirk set the socket down very carefully. "You caught that, huh."

"I'm a vet. I notice things. Occupational hazard."

He laughed, just a little, and some of the panic drained out of his shoulders. "Most folks wouldn't spot it under the coveralls. You've got a good eye, doc."

"So it's not a fluke. You dress up."

"Sometimes." He said it to the workbench. "Off the clock. Nobody's business but mine."

"Fair enough. It's nobody's business but yours." I took a sip of the terrible coffee. "For what it's worth, the glimpse was nice."

He looked at me then, actually looked, like he was running a diagnostic. "You're not grossed out?"

"Why would I be grossed out? I once had a bull step on my foot and break it. A man in pretty underwear is not on my list of horrors." That got a real laugh out of him, and God, it changed his whole face. "What's your name, by the way? We've circled the same track for years and I only know your last one."

"Dirk. Baxter's my dad, don't ask. And you're Trudy, right? Travis talks about you. The cat doctor."

"The cat doctor. Wonderful. That's going on my headstone."

We stood there a minute, and I could tell he was deciding something, turning it over like a part he couldn't quite identify. Finally he said, "Can I tell you something kind of embarrassing?"

"You're under no obligation, but sure."

"I was actually trying on a new corset back there when you showed up. Had it half laced. When you knocked, I panicked and just threw the coveralls over it, and now I've got a boning wire digging into my ribs and I've been standing here like an idiot for twenty minutes."

I laughed so hard the cat screamed from the break room in solidarity. "That is the most relatable thing anyone has ever said to me."

"Yeah?" He smiled, sheepish.

"Yeah. I once did a pelvic exam on a llama with my phone ringing in my pocket and my pants unzipped from an earlier incident. We all have our moments, Dirk."

He hesitated, then asked, quiet, like it cost him something, "Do you