Page 12 of Ignition

“Yeah, aren’t you?” Nick asked as he pulled into the drive-thru.

“Starved,” I said, realizing I’d gone most of the day without a meal since my sandwich had found its way into the trash.

“Great. ‘Cause you’re buying.”

It wasn’t the best food on the planet, but it was cheap and edible. And that’s what mattered. Mostly because I’d spent my last ten bucks filling up a gas can to put some gas in this useless fucking car.

Not so useless now, I thought proudly.

That was the thing about mechanics: they always had a fuck load of projects, but nothing that was ever really fit to drive. But me? I didn’t have the time or space for all that shit.

I needed a car that’d get me from point A to point B, preferably as quickly as possible, so I could actually bring home enough money to afford being alive.

My dad was one of those guys, and our garage was full of evidence to his addiction to projects, along with a couple of cars out back that didn’t run for one reason or another. But that shit all had to go before the house sold. I was just lucky that Frank didn’t mind me keeping this car at the shop while I fixed it up since I had to hawk most of my dad’s tools to stretch out a couple extra mortgage payments.

I’d kept a single rolling tool chest, covered in stickers from my emo teen days, so that I still had most of the essentials. But all of the big machinery was gone now. And what I hadn’t been able to move myself on buy and sell groups was getting picked up by a scrap guy in a few days.

That should give me enough cash to pay mine and Nina’sphone bills for a bit, so at least we wouldn’t have to worry about that.

Drumming my fingers on the wheel as I pulled up to the illuminated menu, reaching to turn off the radio to order our usual—two double cheeseburgers, no onions, extra pickles for Caleb, who would also get mine, extra large fries, and a pair of sodas. Diet for him; he claimed that he liked the aspartamey taste, but I never could get around it.

He handed over his shiny black metal credit card across me and out the window to the cashier in exchange for an overfull bag. She swiped it and handed it back, the window into the restaurant sliding shut between us.

Most people didn’t get why I didn’t hate Caleb. Since he was a fancy cunt who looked exactly like his fuckin’ mother, even if he thought he looked like his dad.Especiallywhen I looked at him sidelong in the passing beams of the street lights.

But Caleb wasn’t his mama, even if he acted more like a prissy omega than an alpha half the time. He was just… Caleb.

Handsome fucker, never said the right thing… And currently obsessing over some girl that wouldn’t be relevant long enough to cause any lasting impact. If he was less self-absorbed, he’d probably have realized that for himself.

Even with all of that, there was still something I found so… endearing about him. It was impossible to stay mad at the guy when you saw him for what he was—a scared kid trapped in the body of an adult man.

“Where are you going?” Caleb asked as I drove us out of the lot and back onto the highway.

“I thought you’d want a view with dinner,” I said with a shrug. “Unless you like sitting in a parking lot looking at rusty pickup trucks?”

“Well, I don’t have anything against it…”

I ignored him, flipping the radio back on to fill the silence while I drove us a couple miles down the road to the beach so we could watch the water while we took turns tossing fries into each other's mouths with limited success.

As much as Caleb was a rich asshole, he was also just a guy. And, now that my dad was gone, probably the most important guy in my life.

Like this, I could almost pretend that things were normal between us. I knew there was some resentment lingering in our laughter—he blamed my dad as much as I blamed his mom—and that it wasn’t something we were going to be able to sweep under the rug forever. But at least for right now, we’d silently agreed to put all that aside.

Caleb took a big bite out of his burger, holding it out for his phone camera with the beach in the background, and I rolled my eyes.

“I thought the camera ate first?”

“It does. This is called visual storytelling, Nick. Or are you too dense to understand art?”

“I’m not sure your half-chewed burger is the next Mona Lisa,” I drawled, unwrapping my own with a crinkle of the foil-treated paper to take a bite.

“Oh, fucking please, what do you know about the Mona Li—ugh, fucking hell.”

“What?”

“My dad just commented on my story, telling me to come home. You know he threatened to cut me off today?Be nice to the girls or else.What a load of fucking bullshit…”

I watched as Caleb opened his father’s profile for the second time since he’d been in the car, his eyes narrowing on the most recently posted image.