I didn’t have a comeback for that, so I didn’t try to find one. I just grabbed my bag and let Jackson gloat the whole walk to the parking lot, nodding along at the right places so he’d eventually run out of material.
He didn’t, actually. He kept going until we hit the lot, at which point he had to peel off toward his own car, still talking.
"Just think about it!" he called after me.
"Bye, Jackson."
I got in my car, and for a second, in the quiet, I actually did think about it. Dating my — according to Jackson — ridiculously hot professor.
Then I put the key in the ignition and made myself stop, because thinking about it was exactly the kind of thing that would get me in trouble, and I had somewhere to be.
Tanaka Auto sat on the other side of town, tucked between a laundromat and a place that sold phone cases nobody needed. I’d been working there since sophomore year. A few shifts a week, whenever classes allowed, mostly because Mr. Tanaka had taken one look at my transcript, seen ’Mechanical Engineering,’ and decided that was as good as an application. Turned out he was right. I liked cars before I liked equations. The equations just happened to explain why the cars worked.
I clocked in, grabbed my coveralls from the locker, and had barely gotten my hands dirty before Marcus called over from the next bay.
"Nathan! You’re up. Philip’s back."
I glanced over. Sure enough, there was Mr. Philip’s car. A beat-up sedan that had no business running as well as it usually did.
"What’d he say was wrong this time?"
"Didn’t say. Just said, and I quote, ’get me the good one.’"
I sighed, but I was already grinning.
I popped the hood and got to work.
An hour or so of tightening, testing, and swearing quietly at a stubborn hose clamp later, the engine turned over twice, coughed, and caught, settling into a smooth, even idle that hadn’t existed an hour ago.
I straightened up from under the hood, wiping my hands on the rag hanging from my back pocket.
"That’s it. Fixed."
Mr. Philip leaned in beside me, listening to it with the kind of focus most people reserve for something more important than an engine. "Sounds different."
"It should. Your timing was off by enough that you were basically driving on faith."
"And now?"
"Now it’s driving on actual physics. Start it up."
He climbed in, turned the key, and the engine responded immediately. He sat there a second, listening, then leaned his head out the window with a grin that had clearly been waiting to happen.
"This," he said, "is exactly why you’re the only one I let touch this car."
"Careful. You’re gonna make me blush."
Philip laughed, the kind of easy laugh that meant the car was fine and so was he. From across the bay, Marcus, elbow-deep in someone else’s transmission, didn’t even look up.
"Yo, Nathan. You got a text."
"How do you even know that from over there?"
"Your phone’s been going off on the bench for like a minute. I can hear it over the impact wrench, which should tell you something."
I wiped my hands properly this time, tossed the rag aside, and walked over to the bench.
Nicole.
I stared at the name for a second, then pocketed the phone without opening it. Whatever it was could wait until I wasn’t covered in someone else’s engine.
By the time I got home, it was a little after nine.
I dropped my backpack beside the couch, kicked off my shoes, and fell onto the sofa.
Finally.
I grabbed the remote, turned on the TV, and stared at the screen without absorbing a single frame of whatever was on. Then I remembered the phone in my pocket, and the fact that I’d left a professor on read for the better part of two hours.
I pulled it out.
3 Missed Calls — Nicole
I stared at that for a second longer than the information really required.
Then I opened the messages.
6:31 PM
Nicole: Hi 😊
6:31 PM
Nicole: Did you get home safely?
6:33 PM
Nicole: Have you eaten yet?
7:27 PM
Nicole: You’re quiet 🤔.
8:05 PM
Nicole: Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m checking my phone more than I should.
8:49 PM
Nicole: Is everything okay?
8:54 PM
Nicole: If you fell asleep, that’s a completely acceptable excuse. If you’re ignoring me, I’ll pretend not to be offended.
I read through them one after another. Seven messages, spread across two hours. Somewhere around the fifth one my stomach did something I decided not to examine too closely.
I looked at the call log again, thumb hovering over her name.
I should text her back. That was the normal move. That was the move a reasonable person made.
Instead I found myself thinking about the fact that she was, technically, my professor, and that professors held a certain amount of influence over things like grades and recommendation letters and whether or not a person passed Thermodynamics, and really, when I thought about it that way, calling her back wasn’t forward at all. It was basic academic self-preservation. Prudent, even.
I dialed the number.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Look who’s alive," she said, and I could hear the smile in it before she’d even finished the sentence.
"Sorry. Long day."
"It’s fine." A pause, and then, like she’d decided to let it go entirely: "So what are you having for dinner?"
I glanced toward the kitchen — dark, untouched, nothing in the fridge worth the trip — and did the math on how quickly a lie was going to become load-bearing.
"Already ate something at work, actually."
"You work?"
"Part time."
"What type of work?"
"Auto shop. Fix cars, mostly."
"Interesting." A beat. I could practically hear her deciding on the next question before she asked it. "What kind of cars—"
"Don’t you think you’re being a little too curious for someone who just met me twenty-four hours ago?"
Silence on the other end. Not long. A second, maybe two, but long enough for my stomach to drop, because you didn’t say things like that to a professor. Even if she’d texted you seven times and called three, even if she’d started it. There was a version of this where she took that the wrong way, and that version ended with me failing Thermodynamics out of spite.
"I’ll uhm... leave you to rest," she said, and something about how easily she said it — no edge, no offense taken — made it worse, not better. "Goodnight—"
"Hope you’re not upset or anything," I said, and meant it, because getting on her bad side was the last thing I wanted. Also because there was no doubt, at this point, that she actually liked me.
"If I said I was," she said, "would you keep talking to me?"
I sat there for a second, phone against my ear, saying nothing. That wasn’t a joke. I heard what she didn’t say.
She laughed before I could figure out how to answer it. "I’m not going to fail you for telling me to mind my business, Nathan. Relax."
"I wasn’t thinking that."
"Sure you weren’t."
I didn’t have a response to that.
"Goodnight, Nathan. Sleep tight."
She hung up before I could say it back.
I sat there for a while after, phone still in my hand, staring at nothing in particular, thinking about how a two-minute phone call had somehow left me more exposed than an entire semester’s worth of pop quizzes.