Losing His Fix

3

Roland's POV

My fingers felt numb as I turned the alternator around in my hands. I was covered head to toe in oil and grease and the grit from the part was wedged under my nails but I didn't care as I glared at the part in my hands.

The stupid thing was completely shot. The pulley system was broken and there was no way for me to fix it so a new part was in order but I couldn't put it down. Alternators are a common enough problem yet I never spent the time to take one apart and really learn about it.

So here I was, sitting on the floor of my shop, tools and scrap parts littered around me, with Mary sitting behind me on the chair that used to be for Kit. The radio on the table was turned off so nothing filled the awkward silence. She watched me far too closely and I hated every second of it. It only got worse when it was time for breaks.

"Break time," she said in a sing-song voice with a small clap of her hands when an alarm on her phone went off.

I sighed as I put the part down and took my normal seat, feeling like a child.

"Do you need to use the bathroom," she asked as she passed me a water bottle.

"No."

"How about a snack?"

"I don't want a snack."

"But do you need one?"

"No."

"How are you feeling mentally? Stressed? Annoyed? Frustrated?"

"Annoyed."

"At the car?"

"At you," I said with a sigh. "Stop treating me like a child. I know when I need to pee, I know if I'm hungry or not, and I don't need a mental health assessment just because I'm focused and not talking. I'm fine. Stop treating me like a baby you have to watch."

She frowned as she stared at me before nodding.

"I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was upsetting you."

"It's not like it's hard to upset me," I said with a shrug. "Kit used to do the same thing until I screamed at him."

"Well, thank you for not screaming at me. It's very much appreciated but you have to tell me before you get annoyed. The first time I do something that you don't like you need to tell me." I only nodded because I didn't care enough to answer.

The second timer went off and I went right back to the floor without a care in the world.

"Would you like to talk while you work," she asked after only a few more minutes of silence.

"I don't know. Kit never really gave me a choice. He just talked and sometimes I would answer but it really depended on what he was talking about."

"What did you normally talk about?"

"His shitty taste in music mostly." She blanched at the curse but recovered quickly. "His likes and pet peeves, the car I was fixing, his foster situations, sometimes our parents, most of the time it was planning dates or our future."

"I don't suppose you'll want to talk to me about your parents," she asked hopefully, knowing even Andrew didn't know much, but I could hear the doubt in her voice.

"No."

"I understand." She was quiet again for a while after that and I allowed myself to slip back into my dad's workshop.

The smell of the old wood and oil, the feel of the metal, the oil under my nails, the birds chirping out the window. It felt so much like home that I could have sworn I heard my dad moving behind me doing his own work. Time blurred as I committed every bit of the alternator to memory, making blueprints and taking detailed pictures to remember the next time I came across another one.

My eyes stung by the time the timer went off again and my fingers felt like they were about to fall off. I sighed as I pushed myself off the floor and let my eyes adjust to the light bouncing off the room.

The window showed a nice sunset and the birds chirping turned to crickets. My shoulders sagged when I saw Mary reach for the keys sitting on the table. I didn't want this to be over yet. I didn't want to go back to the empty cabin that felt so big without Kit's light; without his voice bouncing off the wall or the way his body would press against me as we fell asleep.

"Ready to go," Mary asked with a tight-lipped smile. I shook my head but followed her out the door anyway.

"I think I'm going to take a walk," I told her when I noticed she was following me to the cabin. "I'm supposed to spend an hour outside now and haven't done it today."