Chapter 8

Gabe tookthe key from her pocket and offered it to Solo.

Solo stuffed her hands in her jeans and shook her head. “This is all you, Jack-in-a-box.”

“Now that we’re out of the Army, maybe you could just call me Gabe?”

Solo laughed. “And then you’ll call me Hannah?”

“And I go back to being Carol,” Woodchuck said and shook her head. “I would’ve preferred that in the service, but I’m sort of married to Woodchuck now.”

“Even though it comes from a place of meanness?” Gabe gestured to Woodchuck’s pronounced overbite.

“Even so.” Woodchuck shrugged. “Our nicknames are a big part of who we are, who we’ve always been.”

RB tapped her ever-present Ray-Bans. “I’ve always preferred it to my real name. I mean, do I look like a Felicity?”

Gabe and the rest of them chuckled. “It does go against your stereotype, I guess, although we could shorten it to Flick.”

RB frowned. “That’d just be another nickname.”

Lightning rubbed her shoulder. “I wasn’t a fan of the way I got mine, but it makes a great story. And it has the added bonus of getting me laid most of the time.”

“Okay, okay. I didn’t mean to start a political debate.” Gabe approached the door beside the shutters and stuck the key in the lock. “Are you ready?”

They responded with jeers of “get on with it” and expletives.

Gabe sighed and shrugged. “I thought it’d be nice to give the whole thing a bit of ceremony, you ungrateful bunch of?—”

“You can have all the ceremony you want on the big opening day, Sergeant,” Lightning said. “But for now, can we please get inside and out of this sun? You know I’m not a fan.”

“Sure. Sorry, Lightning, I forgot.” Gabe unlocked the door and pushed it open. “I’ll get stocked up on SPF50 for you.”

Lightning grumbled. “You better. This city gets a helluva lot more rays than Burlington.”

“Ha. You were there for the ice cream, not the lack of sunshine.”

Lightning rolled her eyes at Woodchuck. “If that were the case, Woody, how have I maintained my Nina Simone look?”

“Yoga?” Woody did a poor impression of a sun salutation.

Gabe grabbed hold of Woody’s shirt and tugged her inside. “Get in and shut up.”

Solo, RB, and Lightning followed. Gabe flicked the main breaker on, and the room was flooded with harsh light.

Solo shielded her eyes and lunged at the wall to flick the light switch off. “We’re going to need some natural lighting bulbs and a dimmer installed.”

“Sure. But this isn’t your area, remember?” Gabe pointed to another door. “That is.”

“I’ve only been here once, and I think I might’ve been a little buzzed from you plying me with alcohol,” Solo said over her shoulder as she jogged toward the door.

“How did you even find this place?” Lightning asked.

“Hours and hours of googling.” Gabe looked around. The place still took her breath away. Her dream—their dream—was finally a reality. It was concrete, and glass, and metal all around them, just waiting for customers to come driving into the main bays.

Gabe watched as the three of them wandered around the main space. RB raised one of the three inspection ramps to its full height and jumped into the pit below it.

Lightning ran her hand over the duck head on the tire machine. “Everything in here still works?”

“Yep. It was a repair shop that went bust during COVID when no one was using their cars or bothering to get them serviced. That’s why I was so eager to get this deal closed and had to rush you all into a decision.”

“I thought it was a good decision just when I was looking at the video walk-through you sent us but being here now…” Lightning smiled widely and shook her head. “Well, it feels like an amazing decision.”

Gabe stood beside Lightning and lightly grasped her shoulder. “And it feels like a dream too, right?”

For a second, Lightning didn’t speak, and Gabe saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. The only traditionally feminine one in their tight-knit little group, Lightning had often held back any visible emotional reactions. Now that they were all out of the Army, maybe she’d decided she could give them free rein occasionally.

Lightning sniffed and looked at her. “Our dream come true,” she said. “I really didn’t think it would ever happen, Gabe. Did you?”

Gabe tilted her head slightly. “We all spent a helluva lot of time talking about it, so it would’ve been a damn shame not to even try.”

Woody walked over. “I reckon we all thought you’d never leave the Army, Jacko. And you were the only one who would ever be able to get us all together again.”

Gabe hung her arm over Woody’s shoulder. She’d missed every single one of her group after they’d left, and she’d had no intention of letting their dream die when she eventually got out. “I say it was fate. This place belonged to a guy in his early sixties. Said he’d wanted to retire for a while, but he didn’t want to sell to anyone who wasn’t going to keep it open for the same purpose.”

“That’s weird,” Woody said.

“Weird got us the bargain of the century.” Gabe moved away from Woody and Lightning to check one of the Snap-on chests. She slid open one of its drawers and caressed the selection of nickel chrome-plated wrenches. “Most everyone else wanted to strip it out, sell the fixtures and fittings, and use it for health supplies or IT manufacture. Once I’d told him about you guys, he only wanted to sell to us.”

RB climbed out of the inspection pit. “Aw, that’s a story to soften even the hardest heart, Jacko. Will you invite him to the grand opening?”

“Definitely,” Gabe said. “And he’ll be getting free oil changes for the rest of his life.”

Solo emerged from the far door with a grin wider than Lake Michigan. “I can’t fucking wait to get to work in this place. Anybody else?”

The shouts and yells in response gave Solo a definitive answer.

Gabe’s phone vibrated in her pocket, and she pulled it out to check it.

Hi, Gabe. I’ve been thinking about your offer, and I’d like to talk to you about it properly. I could come to the city, and we could get dinner. Or lunch. Whichever you’d prefer.

Gabe grinned but didn’t really know what she was happiest about: the opportunity to spend time with Lori away from the Sanctuary or the possible chance to restore a Ford Brewster.

“Message from Lori?” Solo hopped up onto the tire machine.

Gabe glared at her, but it was too late to stop the inevitable interrogation, and she couldn’t actually make out any individual questions from the barrage of them.

“I’ll get the cooler from the truck, and you can tell us all about it,” Solo said.

“You asshole.” They were thousands of miles away from the desert where they’d sat together countless days and nights, talking smack and making crazy plans, but nothing had really changed. Gabe headed to the closest inspection pit and sat on the edge with her feet dangling into it.

By the time everyone had joined her, Solo had returned with the Yeti. She placed it behind Gabe and handed out ice-cold beers. “Spill the deets, Jackpot.”

Gabe twisted the top from her bottle and tossed it back into the cooler. “How about we toast our dream garage first?”

“Later,” RB said. “We want to know about Lori, right?”

Her motley crew clinked their bottles together to choruses of “hell, yeah.”

“You’re going to be disappointed. There’s not much to tell.” Gabe took a long pull on her beer, and they all leaned in like she was about to tell a cool ghost story around a campfire.

“I doubt that,” said Lightning. “I might not have seen you for a couple of years, but I doubt you’ve lost your ability with the ladies.”

“I can’t be that charming; you never fell for it.” Gabe ran her finger over the screen-printed label on her bottle, wishing it had the old-fashioned paper kind so she could peel it off. Someone had once told her that was a sign of sexual frustration, and in this case, they would’ve been one hundred percent right.

Lightning winked. “That’s because you were already my ride or die. Stop stalling and tell us about Lori. We are talking about the same Lori who’s looking after Max, right?”

Gabe nodded. “But there really is nothing to tell in that department.” She opened the gallery on her phone, scrolled to the photo she’d taken on Sunday, and handed it to Lightning. “That’s what she was messaging about. When we were walking Max, I saw that in one of her buildings.”

“Oh. My. God.” Lightning passed the phone to Solo.

“You’re shitting me?” Solo handed the cell to RB, and it made the rounds back to Gabe. “What’s the story, Jackpot? Does she want us to restore it? Man, the paint job I could do on that. The Brewster paint formula was like a state secret, you know? I’d have to do some research to see if we can get it made. It’d have to be black.” Solo caught hold of Gabe’s arm. “She doesn’t want some pimp my ride drag car paint job, does she? I couldn’t do that. Not for any amount of money.”

“Cool your jets, Solo,” Gabe said. “Like I said, that’s what the text was about. She wants to set up a time to talk about it.”

“You mean, like a date?” RB winked.

“No, I definitely don’t mean that.”

RB frowned. “Have you lost your touch? Or is she just straight?”

Gabe tsked. “Wow. Did you seriously just one-eighty the singularly most overused phrase in a deluded hetero guy’s vocab?”

“Think of it as reclaiming language used against us,” RB said. “Get on with your story and answer the question.”

“No, she isn’t straight, but I don’t know any more than that. She’s recently divorced and hasn’t gotten over it yet. So she’s not ready or willing to explore anything with me.”

Solo tsked and clinked her bottle to Gabe’s. “Bad luck, buddy. Good for you to put yourself out there for the rejection though. How’d it feel?”

“You make it sound like I’ve never been reject?—”

“You haven’t, to my knowledge,” Solo said. “When we were on base, you didn’t go home alone any time you needed a little something.”

“Then you’re misremembering.” Gabe drained her beer then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “It sometimes took me two or three ‘no, thank yous’ to get to that.”

“Then we’re all misremembering.” Woody raised her bottle, and everyone did the same. “You were our mentor on more than just the battlefield.”

Gabe shook her head and accepted the adulation. If she had any charm, she hoped it might eventually work on Lori—when Lori was ready.

“Although I don’t think any of us would’ve wanted to follow in your footsteps with the sergeant major’s wife,” Solo said.

“That was a mistake, I can admit that.” One she wasn’t proud of and was in no hurry to repeat or dwell on. “Anyway, I offered to restore the car for her if she could get all the parts so she could auction it and raise funds for the Sanctuary.”

Lightning raised her perfectly trimmed eyebrows. “You did what?”

Gabe frowned. “There’s a problem with that?”

“A restoration on a car like that would take three or four hundred hours.” Lightning gestured around her. “You’ve got a new business to run. Where are you going to find the time to fit it in?”

Gabe tapped Solo’s thigh. “I thought I’d get a little help from my friends.”

Solo nodded. “I’m up for it. That’s the kind of car I live to work on, and it’s for a good cause, Lightning.”

“Plus there’s no hurry. From the looks of the dust on the tarp that covered it, the car hasn’t been touched in a while.” Gabe recalled Lori’s reticence to talk about the vehicle and the story surrounding it, though it clearly had something to do with the ex. “And she wasn’t that enthusiastic about the offer when I made it.”

“She wasn’t?” Solo looked bemused. “Why the hell not?”

Gabe shrugged. “I think it’s complicated, and she wasn’t about to share details about her private life with a relative stranger. But it’s a good sign that she wants to talk about it now.” She glanced at Lightning, who narrowed her eyes.

“She better not be taking advantage of your generosity,” she said.

Gabe chuckled at her friend’s protectiveness. “It’s not like it was her idea, and she’s not exactly pushing my arm up my back.” She put her hand on Lightning’s shoulder. “But thank you for looking out for me.”

Lightning huffed. “Someone has to. Otherwise you’ll be burning daylight working gratis for anyone and everyone.”

Gabe smiled. “Only for the people in need.”

“Look outside, Gabe,” Lightning said. “Most everyone’s in need after COVID.”

Gabe rolled her eyes. “Real need, then. Plus, I feel like I owe her. She saved Max’s life, and she didn’t have to. She did it because that’s the kind of person she is; she likes helping people and animals, and I want to help her.”

Lightning smirked slightly, and Gabe knew she’d revealed more than she’d wanted to.

“You like her, don’t you?” Lightning asked to a chorus of whistles from the rest of the gang.

Gabe emptied her beer and grabbed another from the cooler. “Just for that, you’re driving home.” She shut out the resulting cries and calls from everyone, teasing her that she was in love. They knew it was nonsense as much as she did, but that kind of banter had always been part of their dynamic. She just hadn’t been on the receiving end of it much before. “Have you guys been storing all of this up? Waiting for the day I was no longer your superior officer?”

Solo slapped her hard on the back. “Pretty much.”

“Fine. Anyway, if I end up with the project, I’ll do it after hours.”

“Then so will we,” said Lightning.

If Gabe had been the sentimental type, the solidarity of their friendship might’ve pushed a tear to the surface. But she’d only just come out of the Army and was way behind Lightning in that respect. It’d take a lot longer than a couple of weeks as a civilian to start getting in touch with her emotions, or whatever she was supposed to be able to do now that her life wasn’t at risk every second of the day.

Solo nodded. “We could put it in the smaller workshop in the back, and we’d have her stripped down in a weekend if we all pitched in. That grill and the bumper looked like it was in decent condition though, so if the rest of it is as good, it might take less time to restore than Lightning thinks.”

“I love the ‘skirt in the air’ look on the front fender,” RB said.

Woody shook her head. “I’m not a fan. You shouldn’t be able to see all the front-end linkage. It’s just not very modest.”

“I thought you liked your cars like your women—upfront and open.” RB laughed and gave Woody a shove so hard, she lost balance on the edge and had to jump into the inspection pit.

“Jesus, RB.” Woody grabbed RB’s ankle and tried to tug her in.

RB managed to squirm out of her grip. She shook her beer and sprayed it in Woody’s direction.

“Beer fight,” Solo yelled and sprayed her beer at Woody too, which encouraged them all to join in.

They only stopped when their bottles were empty. A beer-soaked Woody clambered out of the pit and shook like a wet dog all over RB and Solo, but Gabe managed to scramble out of the way.

“I’ve missed you guys,” Gabe said, keeping the softness out of her voice, though the expressions on the rest of the gang’s faces as she looked at them all made it clear they felt the same.

“But now we’re all together, the mayhem can begin again.” Solo handed out fresh beers. “The grill reminds me of a heart,” she said.

“That’s because you’ve turned into a soppy romantic,” Gabe said. “I think it looks like the killer’s mask from the Scream movies.”

“Of course you would,” Lightning said. “Did you know that mask was based on the Edvard Munch painting of the same name?”

Gabe didn’t manage to suppress her laughter. “Trust the Yale graduate to elevate the conversation.”

Lightning gave a bright smile. “The beautiful thing about being among lots of strong and self-assured women is that I don’t have to dumb my intellect down. Correct?”

Gabe pressed her hands together and bowed her head. “One hundred and ten percent correct.”

“So, are you going to text her back and meet her?” Lightning asked. “Just to discuss your very generous offer, of course.”

Gabe didn’t rise to Lightning’s light sarcasm. “If everyone is onboard with it, yeah, I really want to do it. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a project like this.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever had a project like this, have you?” Lightning did that tricky thing with her eyebrow.

“Have I told you lately that you can be like a sledgehammer?” Gabe asked.

“It’s been a while.” Lightning fluttered her eyelashes. “Go on then, text her. You have us all invested. We need to know if we’re giving up our social life for the next six months for your charity woman.”

“It’s for Max too, not just… Never mind.” Gabe pulled out her cell, opened the message, and reread it.

“There’s that grin again,” Solo said. “Buddy, you’ve got it bad.”

“Shut up.” Gabe thumbed a quick message. That would be great. I told my team about it, and they’re happy to help too. Are you free Saturday?

“Wow,” Solo said, hanging over her shoulder, “way to keep it formal, Jacko.”

Gabe hovered her thumb over send. “It is kind of formal, isn’t it?” She looked to Lightning for direction, but she just smiled knowingly. “Forget it. It’ll do just fine.” She sent the message, shoved the phone back in her pocket, and raised her beer bottle again. “A toast. To finally realizing our dream.”

They all did the same and emptied their bottles. Everyone looked to Solo expectantly.

“It’s all good,” she said. “I’ve got more.”

While Solo went back to the cooler and got beer for everyone, Gabe’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She fought the instant desire to see if it was Lori, and she also dismissed the thought that Lori had been waiting for word from her. That kind of Pavlovian chain of thought would be warranted if there was any chance of a relationship between them, but Lori had made it clear that friendship was the only thing she was offering. Which was fine, wasn’t it? Because it had to be. And friendship was better than nothing.

Gabe poured the next beer down her throat, hoping it would drown the flicker of hope for something more.