I cleaned up the apartment a little, took a shower, and braided my long hair, made myself a bowl of cereal for dinner because my stomach was turning up and down, and dug around in my closet for something that was okay to get dirty but didn’t make me look like a bag lady. I settled on a pair of yoga pants and a button-up flannel shirt over a tank top. It wasn’t going to win me any prizes on Project Runway, but I doubted it would send Nash running for the hills. It took me a second to recognize that I wasn’t freaking out at him seeing me like this. Maybe because he had seen me so often in my scrubs at the hospital and sans makeup while I was working. Or maybe it was because there wasn’t a part of me he hadn’t had his hands or his mouth on and he didn’t seem to have any complaints. Had I been anyone else, I think his nonverbal appreciation of my naked form would have been a huge stroke to my ego, but being as I was a weirdo, I was just glad he kept his actual thoughts on the subject—good or bad—to himself.
He showed up a few minutes after ten, gave me a quick once-over, pulled me into a kiss that had me panting and winded, and hauled me outside to the car. He was dressed in what I assumed he wore to work and I could see that he had dark shadows under each eye and a scruff on his normally clean-shaven chin. He looked drawn and worn out. I struggled a little with feeling guilty for asking him to give me some of his time.
I asked him shyly, “Long week?”
He opened the door for me and ushered me into the car. The interior was still warm and he had the Tossers playing on the radio. Every time I was in this monster of a car, Celtic punk rock was coming out of the speakers.
When he got back behind the wheel, he looked over at me and gave me a lopsided grin.
“Well, hearing from you was a highlight of it for sure … and the flowers. You had the shop rolling. I’m never going to hear the end of it. But Phil isn’t doing so great and I keep asking him about how I managed to go my whole life without knowing that he was really my dad and he keeps telling me to talk to my mom. I would rather eat glass. Plus now that Rule is back from his honeymoon, we have to start figuring out what we want to do about the new shop. It’s all just kind of piling up.”
“I’m sorry about Phil and I can totally relate to the mom thing. I had to go get mine out of jail today.”
He barked out a laugh and looked at me. “You’re joking?”
“Nope.” I proceeded to tell him all about it, which meant I was the one carrying on the conversation for a full fifteen minutes as he wound back across the city to the warehouse district out past Coors Field.
He asked questions along the way, but never interrupted, and I couldn’t believe how seamlessly I was engaging with him. That never happened to me. He stopped in front of a huge garage and poked the code in a big metal gate and drove through. I had no idea what we were doing in this part of the city or at this location, so I looked at him questioningly.
“How is car repair fun?”
He tsked at me and pulled the Charger up to one of the closed bay doors.
“I rebuilt this entire beast from the ground up. It was my saving grace back in the day. This car and Phil were pretty much the only things that kept me out of jail. It was how I figured out there were more productive ways to spend my time than getting in trouble and trying to get a reaction out of my mom. Phil told me that I needed a classic, something that would last the test of time. He told me if I took care of it, babied it, loved it, that it would do the same for me. I realize now he was trying to teach me about more than cars. He helped me pull it out of a junkyard and we spent years making it into the beast it is now.”
He got out of the car and punched in another code on another electric keypad, and the big bay door started to roll up. The garage was dark and intimidating at first glance, but as he pulled the car in, the headlights danced across a bunch of old cars in various stages of repair. It clearly wasn’t just a garage but a custom car shop.
“My buddy Wheeler owns this place. He helps me out with the Charger when I need him to and we trade out work. He lets me use the paint shop occasionally.”
I couldn’t help but lift an eyebrow. “A car guy named Wheeler? Really?”
He laughed and got out of the car. He reached behind the seat and pulled out a black bag and a roll of something I hadn’t noticed earlier.
“His first name is Hudsen, and who are you to talk? You’re a nurse named Saint.”
He handed me the rolled-up bundle and I noticed that it was paper. I had no idea what we were doing and told him as much.
He just took my other hand and we navigated the cars and toolboxes to the back of the shop, where there was a sealed-off room. He turned on more lights and smirked at me. His eyes were glittering with violet threads of merriment. I bit back a sigh. Really I could just stare at him all day and be happy.
“Back in the day I used to take a bunch of spray paint out and go tag a bunch of stuff to blow off steam. I thought it was cool to break the law, to leave my mark all over the city, until I got busted and Phil had to pay a huge-ass fine to keep me out of jail. That was how I got into art, into design. Really I think I wanted to get busted doing something illegal so my mom would have to deal with me, but that’s neither here nor there anymore and it’s still fun to paint with cans.”
We went into the room that was all white, had a crazy ventilation system, and had ventilators for breathing hanging on the wall and a bunch of stuff that was obviously used to paint cars in it. Nash tossed the bag on the floor and now I could hear the cans of paint inside it roll around together. He took the paper out of my hands and walked over to one of the walls that had a wire hanging from it and a bunch of metal clips.
“I can’t go out and paint walls, buildings, or trains anymore, at least not unless I’m getting paid to do it, but graffiti is fun. It’s bright and wild, there are no rules, and after tattooing stuff for other people all day, sometimes I need a change of pace. It’s nice just to get out and do my own thing, remember my own style. Wheeler lets me set up in here. No mess, no vandalism charges, and it’s always pretty fun.”
I watched as he hung up two pieces of paper that were almost as tall as me and about as wide as a door. He crouched down to start taking the multitude of paint cans in all the colors in the rainbow out of the bag. I had never had someone let me in on one of their own little rituals before, never was close enough to anyone for that. There was the pull he had on me acting up again.