Remember When **Under MAJOR Editing**

Chapter 14

I walked yet another slow circle around the Bug, then another circle around the Miata.  Explaining the diagram of the wreck I'd drawn on the clipboard, I leaned back against the Miata.  I leaped up again when it groaned and shifted under me.  "So, I saw the deer and jerked the wheel to the left."  I held the clipboard in front of me and turned it left like a steering wheel.  Dade shrugged as well as he could while leaning on his crutches in the weedy junkyard.  He slapped at a mosquito.

"Mike, headed the other way, simultaneously visualized said ruminant and relocated the steering device leftward."

"I am listening," Dade insisted.  I put my hand gently on the crushed front panel of the Miata.  "Seems like both of us would have turned right automatically.  As a driver, you'd try to crash on your side rather than the passenger side, since you're the one responsible.

"Let's not go there," Dade said, shaking his head. "It was dark, it was raining, the roads were slick. There was a fucking deer, for God's sake. You don't
remember the wreck, so you have to trust me. I do remember it and I couldn't even tell you who turned the wheel where. It happened so fast. Deer, bam, and it was over."

Deflated, I let the clipboard sag.  And not just because Dade couldn't give me details about the wreck.   I wanted details about him, too, and he thwarted me at every turn.  One of the few things I knew for sure about him was that he and Mike hated each other.  Whenever they found themselves sitting next to each other in the swim team van, they made someone else move so they could get away from each other.  And now it sounded like he was defending Mike.

"What's this?" he asked, hobbling over to the car next to the Bug, this one protected by a canvas.  He peeled back one corner of the cover to reveal the sparkle of red metallic paint.  "Holy fuck, it's a 1987 Porsche 944."

I ventured close.  "I thought you didn't know anything about cars."

"But I am male, and I recognize a 1987 Porsche 944 when I see one."  From the reverence in his voice, I could tell this car was something special.  It didn't look like much though.  "That's some paint job."

"Yeah, that's probably part of the reason a Porsche is sitting in a junkyard.  That color is definitely not found in nature."  Then he grinned at me.  "Wanna go parking?"

"Ha ha ha," I said nervously.

He snapped his fingers. "You told Mike you left your condoms in the Bug.  Did you want those?"

"Ah, right," I said, moving to the front of the Bug (the engine was in the trunk).  I turned my key in the lock, but the hood didn't pop open--not surprising since the front right fender was demolished.  I pushed it, pried it.  "Thanks for remembering my condoms," I said as I struggled.  "Do you have plans?"  In answer, he let his crutches fall, prodded me aside, and threw his whole weight into forcing the hood open.

"Don't hurt it!" I pleaded.  He looked at me.  "Okay, you're right," I admitted.  The Bug was toast.

With a groan from both Dade and the car, the hood popped open.  I blinked back tears at the sight of my pristine trunk, which I'd covered in fresh carpet from the remnant store a few weeks before.  The inside space was concave.  Poor Bug.

The vat of condoms had slid to the back wall.  I reached in for it and half fell into the trunk.  Dade put his hand on my lower back to steady me.  The vat of condoms was suddenly just out of reach and strangely hard to grip.  Dade's warm hand burned through the skin of my lower back.  When I couldn't draw it out any longer without being painfully obvious, I grabbed the big box and backed out the hood.  Very slowly.  Dade's hand smoothed up my back, under my shirt, all the way to my bra.

I turned to him.  He gazed down at me with absolutely no expression on his face while tracing his fingers down my back, out my shirt.  "What?" he asked innocently, daring , to mention Zack again.