The Last Song

7 Will

Will stood in the well beneath the Ford Explorer in his uniform, watching the oil drain while simultaneously doing his best to ignore Scott, something easier said than done. Scott had been haranguing him about the previous evening on and off since they’d arrived at work that morning.

“See, you were thinking about this all wrong,” Scott continued, trying yet another tack. He retrieved three cans of oil and set them on the shelf beside him. “There’s a difference between hooking up and getting back together.”

“Aren’t we done with this yet?”

“We would be if you had any sense. But from where I stand, it’s obvious you were confused. Ashley doesn’t want to get back together with you.”

“I wasn’t confused,” Will said. He wiped his hands on a towel. “That’s exactly what she was asking.”

“That’s not what Cassie told me.”

Will set aside the towel and reached for his water bottle. His dad’s shop specialized in brake repairs, oil changes, tune-ups, and front-end alignments, and his dad always wanted the place to look as though the floor had been waxed and the place just opened for business. Unfortunately, air-conditioning hadn’t been quite as important to him, and in the summer, the temperature was somewhere between the Mojave and the Sahara. He took a long drink, finishing the bottle before trying to get through to Scott again. Scott was far and away the most stubborn person he’d ever known. The guy could seriously drive him nuts.

“You don’t know Ashley the way I do.” He sighed. “And besides, it’s over and done. I don’t know why you keep talking about it.”

“You mean aside from the fact that Harry didn’t meet Sally last night? Because I’m your friend and I care about you. I want you to enjoy this summer. I want to enjoy this summer. I want to enjoy Cassie.”

“So go out with her, then.”

“If only it was that easy. See, last night I suggested the same thing. But Ashley was so upset that Cassie didn’t want to leave her.”

“I’m really sorry it didn’t work out.”

Scott was dubious. “Yeah, I can tell.”

By that point, the oil had drained. Will grabbed the cans and headed up the steps while Scott stayed below to replace the plug and dump the used oil into the recycling barrel. As Will opened the can and set the funnel, he glanced at Scott below.

“Hey, by the way, did you see the girl who stopped the fight?” he asked. “The one who helped the little boy find his mom?”

It took a moment for the words to register. “You mean the vampire chick in the cartoon shirt?”

“She’s not a vampire.”

“Yeah, I saw her. On the short side, ugly purple streak in her hair, black fingernail polish? You poured your soda over her, remember? She thought you smelled.”

“What?”

“I’m just saying,” he said, reaching for the pan. “You didn’t notice her expression after you slammed into her, but I did. She couldn’t get away from you fast enough. Hence, you probably smelled.”

“She had to buy a new shirt.”

“So?”

Will added the second can. “I don’t know. She just surprised me. And I haven’t seen her around here before.”

“I repeat: So?”

The thing was, Will wasn’t exactly sure why he was thinking about the girl. Particularly considering how little he knew about her. Yeah, she was pretty-he’d noticed that right off, despite the purple hair and dark mascara-but the beach was full of pretty girls. Nor was it the way she’d stopped the fight in its tracks. Instead, he kept coming back to the way she’d treated the little boy who’d fallen. He’d glimpsed a surprising tenderness beneath her rebellious exterior, and it had piqued his curiosity.

She wasn’t like Ashley at all. And it wasn’t that Ashley was a bad person, because she wasn’t. But there was something superficial about Ashley, even if Scott didn’t want to believe it. In Ashley’s world, everyone and everything was put into neat little boxes: popular or not, expensive or cheap, rich or poor, beautiful or ugly. And he’d eventually grown tired of her shallow value judgments and her inability to accept or appreciate anything in between.

But the girl with the purple streak in her hair…

He knew instinctively that she wasn’t that way. He couldn’t be absolutely sure, of course, but he’d bet on it. She didn’t put others into neat little boxes because she didn’t put herself in one, and that struck him as refreshing and different, especially when compared with the girls he’d known at Laney. Especially Ashley.

Though things were busy at the garage, his thoughts kept drifting back to her more often than he expected.

Not all the time. But enough to make him realize that for whatever reason, he definitely wanted to get to know her a little better, and he found himself wondering whether he would see her again.