Strawberry Gasoline

Chapter 1: Fleeting Moments

Machines hummed and groaned around the shop. Sunlight poured in from the open garage door, and there were the distant sounds of a train. Walle’s music played loudly in their hearing aids, drowning out the voices of their colleagues and the complaints of unhappy customers. 

Walle sighed as their boss called for him, already pissed and probably drunk. They rolled out from under the car she was working on. They were already at their quota of annoyances of the day despite it only being 10:00 in the morning, she reached up and messed with his hearing aids, pausing the music that had been blasting. 

“-uch a lazy bum. I don’t know why I hired you. You've been ignoring me for ten minutes girl.-” Walle quickly turned off his hearing aids, choosing instead to read their boss’s lips for any important information. They concluded that all they needed to do was check some rich girl's bike.

He nodded and hummed at the right times and tried to look properly cowed instead of the anger that was licking up his sides like flames. She grunted in acknowledgment and headed to the front of the shop. As they passed by they grabbed a clipboard off the wall. He flipped through the pages attached.

“Welcome, what are we doing for you today, ma’am?” Walle asked, finally setting aside the clipboard to look at the woman and read her lips. They were quickly caught off guard by how beautiful the woman was. Her hair was a dark rich black and throughout it were stripes of white. Her eyes were a blue that defeated even the brightest sky in a match of beauty, and her mouth, where Walle’s eyes landed in the end, was covered by a simple blue mask.

“My bike needs a checkup.” She said her voice was void of emotion and silently, Walle wondered what that voice would sound like laughing.

“Uh,” Walle said intelligently, his brain seemed to turn to mush when confronted with such a beautiful person. “Yea, yea, we can do that. Can you fill out this sheet while you wait?” 

He handed over the clipboard and felt a little shock when their fingers touched. She jerked back, taking the clipboard with her. Walle felt a little insulted before he realized how filthy his hands must be from working on cars. The woman tucked her hair behind her ear and walked away. Walle hesitated, then turned and headed back to start checking over the bike. 

The entire checkup took about an hour but nothing was wrong with the bike, he almost wished there was something wrong with it so she would have to come back. Instead, he wiped his hands off on a dirty rag and headed back to the front. Walle wasn’t going to scare off the pretty person once again with her dirty hands. As they walked back to the front, she saw a flicker of fire out of the corner of her eye. When he turned to check the fire was gone. Walle sighed but continued on their way. 

The white haired lady looked up when they entered the room. “All good?” she asked.

Walle nodded his dark hair flying out of their hair tie. He made a quiet annoyed noise and raised her hands to tuck the flyaways back into the tie. Unaware of the heated glances that the others in the seating room were giving her, as his shirt lifted to show the lean muscles hiding behind their baggy clothes. When their hair had been sufficiently tied back she gestured for the other to follow him. 

Eve followed behind the attractive man into the back of the shop to get their bike back. She had already been out of her apartment for long enough to make their skin crawl with the thought of all the bacteria that she had interacted with. Eve’s sensation of crawling skin only got worse as the two of them stepped into the back room and she saw how disgustingly dirty it was. Her bike, luckily, was in the same pristine condition it had been in when it had arrived.

“Here she is.” Walle said gesturing to the bike. “It was in perfect condition, you did a great job looking after her.”

Eve felt her cheeks heat, slightly from the praise. “Thank you. Where do I pay?” 

Walle barely hid his disappointment as she pointed to the desk where their boss sat, obviously annoyed at one thing or another. “It should be about $75.” Eve smiled and nodded heading over to the checkout desk. She paid and debated for a moment whether or not she would regret the decision they were about to make. They thought about it for a moment before coming to a conclusion. She took a spare notecard sitting on the desk and quickly wrote on the back of it. She walked back to the other and gave him the card, before turning and leaving. 

Walle turned the card over and was greeted by two lines of writing. 

Evallyn Winters

(987) 543 - 6425

Hey guys sorry for abandoning this site. I was having a rough time with the pandemic and didn't feel incouraged to write. I'm going to pick up this new story and I'm going to continue working on my other story. Enjoy this dumpster fire of a fic. ~~BDR