Page 70 of Unmanageable

“I started them,” she shouts, pointing proudly at the lug nuts. “But they’re stuck. They’re really stuck, Cash.”

“Move over,” I say, kneeling down next to her on the wet gravel.

The rain is down my collar now, my dark gray t-shirt and jeans soaking wet, but I don’t even care. The smell of the wet earth, the sting of the cold, the absolute ridiculousness of the situation—it feels real.

It feels like the kind of memory that stays with you until you’re old and gray.

I take the wrench from her. I set it on the first nut, brace my foot against the tire, and throw my entire weight down on the iron bar. There’s a loud, screeching crack as the rust gives way, the nut spinning loose.

“Teamwork,” I shout over the wind.

“I softened it up for you,” she yells back.

For the next ten minutes, we work in a weirdly efficient, wordless rhythm. We pull the shredded tire off together, the rim clanging against the gravel, and lift the spare onto the bolts.

My hands are slick with grease and cold rain, my fingers turning numb, but every time I look over at her, she’s right there, holding the bolts, soaking wet, looking more beautiful than she ever does in those sterile Boston boardrooms.

“Last one,” I pant. “We’re good. Lowering her down.”

I reverse the crank on the jack, and the van drops back onto its wheels with a bounce. I throw the shredded tire into the back of the van, slam the hatch shut, and wipe my greasy hands on my jeans.

“Alright!” I shout, the rain coming down even harder now. “Get inside! Before we drown!”

Scottie scrambles up from the cardboard, her hair soaked, her sneakers caked in yellow clay. She runs for the passenger door. She grabs the handle, pulls it—

Nothing happens.

She blinks and pulls the handle again. The metal lever clicks, but the door stays firmly shut.

“Cash?” she calls out. “It’s stuck.”

I walk around to the driver’s side, my sneakers squelching in the mud. I grab my door handle. I pull.

Nothing.

I look through the window. The little chrome lock buttons on both doors are down. The ancient, manual locking mechanism—a system that hasn’t worked reliably since the seventies—has chosen this exact, precise moment to engage its stubborn security.

Scottie stares at me for three long seconds.

Then, her shoulders start to shake.

The guilt hits me immediately—a sharp, heavy lurch in my gut. I’ve ruined her day, locked her out in a storm, and now she’s breaking down on the side of the highway.

“Scottie, I’m so sorry,” I step toward her, my hands out, trying to block the wind. “I’ll find a rock. I’ll break the little vent window on the back door, it’s fine, I can fix it—”

A loud, clear snort breaks through her shoulders. She lifts her head, and she’s not crying. She’s laughing so hard she has to lean against the wet, orange side of the van to keep from falling over.

“We’re locked out,” she gasps, wiping tears and rain from her eyes. “The tire is fixed, the jack worked, and we are… we are standing in a literal swamp, Cash.”

“I have a plan, Scottie,” I say, but a laugh escapes my chest, the sound mixing with the thunder rumbling over the tree line.

“You’re a professional athlete!” she yells, pointing a soaking wet, muddy finger at me, her face bright with joy. “But you can’t keep a piece of metal from locking you out of a vehicle that looks like a giant orange loaf of bread!”

A massive semi-truck blasts past us in the right lane, throwing a towering, ten-foot sheet of gray highway water right over the front of the van. It catches us both square in the chest.

Water streams down my neck, my dark gray t-shirt instantly absorbing the rain, and Scottie’s hoodie is so utterly waterlogged it clings to her frame. We just stand there on the shoulder of the road, completely drenched, wiping the muddy spray out of our eyes, and we laugh like two absolute maniacs.

She loses her footing slightly on the slick grass of the shoulder, giggling as she slips toward the ditch. I move instantly, my hands come up, my palms framing the sides of her face, my fingers wrapping around her jaw and tucking into the heavy, dripping wet mass of her red hair to steady her.