Golden Autumn - Part Six
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
I hold up a handful of my shirt so I can take a look at it, then grimace deeply. “Wow. We are really gross, right now.”
“It’s gonna be worth it,” Noah insists, earnestly and wholeheartedly. “Every second of work.”
We’re all spread across Raj, Mel, and Noah’s garage, in a shared state of exhaustion. I’m slumped back against Aiden, curled against his chest. He’s on the floor, leaning back against the wall. His snapback is looped over his knee, his arm looped around my waist.
Ralph is still standing, but leaning heavily into his elbows, which are folded on top of a stack of storage boxes. Ripley is perched cross-legged on another stack, and Raj has simply laid down right on the floor beside Noah.
Only Noah is still at work, even though he’s obviously just as tired as we are. He’s covered in grime like the rest of us, and his grey eyes are starting to blink very slowly. His shoulders are drooping, his tattoos splattered with grease, his long hair caught up into a now very messy bun. But he’s still gently, carefully working on cleaning off a headlight. Finishing up what we’ve been working on all night long: getting the exterior of the car clean.
It took all of us, and it took hours. I thought it would be super satisfying to see the results of all that effort. But there’s dirt etched deep into the paint, which is so sunbleached and rusted over that even polished spotless, the car doesn’t show so much as a hint of shine. I still can’t even tell what kind of car it is. Just that it’s built low to the ground, with what I imagine was a sleek body at some point.
We can’t even call it clean, after all that work. The interior is still a wreck. We haven’t even started on that yet, aside from Noah immediately removing all of the seats and tossing them directly in a construction dumpster at the end of the block.
I’m not feeling discouraged, though. I actually feel pretty good. The car still looks awful, yes. But we accomplished something, despite the lack of any immediate results. It was a step, and it still looks way better than it did when we picked it up from Mr. Valencia.
It’s just going to take some patience. After all, I don’t put a seed in the ground and expect a flower by the end of the night.
And… maybe the old car does actually look a bit nicer, now that I’m looking again? The warm light of the garage makes the rusted metal seem less bleak and more vintage. The sight of Noah sitting close to the car, meticulously working away on it, goes a long way to making it look less neglected and abandoned. Not just Noah, actually. All of us spread around the garage, even if we’re just sprawled out in exhaustion, nursing our hard-earned beers (and one iced tea).
Drowsy peacefulness suits this rusty old hunk of a car. Now it looks less like scrap metal and more like a very large, sleeping creature, with many caretakers.
“So we’re all agreed that cleaning the interior can wait, right?” Ralph asks, pushing a tired hand through his grime-spattered blonde hair.
“I hope so.” Aiden throws a troubled look at the car. “I’ve been trying to avoid going in there. Can someone who was already in there warn me how bad it is, so I can prepare myself? Jamie? Ripples?”
“It’s fine in there!” Noah slaps the rag he’s using in Aiden’s direction, then pauses in his work for a moment, reconsidering. “Just don’t - maybe don’t poke your head in there just yet. Or don’t take any deep breaths if you do. Needs a little more airing out.”
“I can still smell it,” Ripley groans, tilting his head back helplessly. “I think it’s become one with me. I am the smell, now. Or are we all the smell, every one of us?”
“Jealousy, jealousy,” Noah sighs, shaking his head like it’s a damn shame, wiping his face off with a handful of his Hot Rodding Championships shirt. “Any of you boys get a brand new car you want to show me? ‘Cause I ain’t seen none.”
Ripley’s eyebrows arch up very high. “Brand new?”
“You know what that smell is, Ripples?”
“No, and don’t anybody tell me.”
“It’s the smell of a quest, of great fucking importance!” Noah emphatically throws his arms out wide, sending Raj scrambling out of the way of the dirty rag in his hand. “And you know what I’m doing here? I’m in - in - in-”
He breaks off and looks questioningly at Ralph, who thinks with his eyebrows furrowed for a moment, then tries - “Endeavoring?”
“Endeavoring to rescue a beauty in distress!” Noah rests his tattooed cheek against the car, hugging it tightly again. “You guys have no idea what kind of brake horsepower we’re looking at right here. She’ll be glorious in no time, you’ll see. Just gotta take things one step at a time. Start with fixing up the engine and the frame. The grenade launcher and flame throwers and all that can come later.”
“Noosh, I’m sorry to tell you, but you will never live in a world where you’ll be allowed to mount a grenade launcher on your car,” Aiden rumbles, as I hide my face against his arm trying not to laugh. “Never ever.”
“Then I don’t want to live in this world!” Noah tosses the rag at the soapy bucket, then flings himself down on his back. “I’ll just fucking die.”
Raj sits up and leans over him, his dark brown eyes as stern as they get. “Noah, you’re the husband of both me and my wife, and the co-father of my child. That means you’re not allowed to just fucking die, first of all, and second of all, if you want a grenade-launching flamethrower car, you’ll have it.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Aiden groans despairingly, as Noah snaps upright to beam at Raj.
“Man, how did my day end up like this?” Ripley laughs, rubbing his eyes with one dirt-encrusted hand. “This morning I was at my workshop with my kitten. Painting, all chill, just doing some studies of Lisetta Carmi’s photography. Now I’m here. Looking like this. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad that Alix can’t hang out tonight.”
“What are you talking about, Ripples?” Noah flashes a grin over his shoulder at Ripley, getting back to work on the headlight. “The grime suits you, dude!”
“Like, surprisingly well,” I add, in all sincerity.
Ripley lets out a disbelieving scoff, pushing his messy green curls out of his eyes. “Oh, yep, I’m sure.”
“I mean it!” Noah insists. “You look good like this, young blood! All tough and shit!”
“He’s right,” Ralph adds, much to Ripley’s obvious surprise. He reaches over to give Ripley’s head a shove. “You should hope Alix sees you this way.”
Aiden lets out a deep huff of laughter. “Man, you know it’s true if even Ralph openly commented on it.”
Ripley absorbs all that with raised eyebrows, then wipes his hand off on his jeans and pulls his phone out of his pocket.
“Should we all take a picture together?” he suggests, all casual. “To, um - commemorate this glorious occasion?”
Noah breaks into a wide grin. “Excellent idea!”
Ralph pushes Ripley’s phone down. “Don’t need that. I’ve got my camera.”
We all drag ourselves to our feet and cluster up in front of the car as Ralph thoroughly cleans off his hands on one of the few clean rags left, then gets his camera from his bag.
“Wait, Ralph - you have to be in it, brother,” Raj calls, as Ralph stops in front of us and lifts the camera to his eye.
“I’m taking it, dude.”
“But you still have to be in it,” Aiden insists firmly.
“It’ll look a lot less good-”
“Who fucking cares?” Noah interrupts, one inky arm outstretched for him. “Get over here.”
Ralph lowers his camera with an exasperated groan, but a flicker of a smile goes over his face as he comes over to join us, shaking his head. “Fucking fine, then everyone come in closer.”
We do, and he turns the camera around to face us.
“Everyone say battle chariot worthy of the gods!” Noah cheers, throwing an arm around Ripley’s shoulders.
Without warning, Aiden gets everyone in the wide wingspan of his arms and squeezes us all in together tightly. A collective startled laugh goes up as we all almost lose our footing and spill our beers. In the midst of it all I hear the click of Ralph’s camera.
“It’s pretty good,” he laughs, looking down at his camera a moment later. “I’ll send it to you guys.”
“Tonight?” Ripley asks hopefully.
“Sure, if I can use Raj’s laptop. Noosh, I assume you still don’t have one?”
“Nah. Don’t really need one, so I don’t want to spend the money on it.” He reaches for his beer, making his tattooed snow leopard silently roar, then knocks his knuckles on the car. “This is where I’m putting the money I got left from working for you, Ralph.”
I lower my beer, glancing hastily, nervously at Ralph.
The money Noah has from working for him might be an awkward topic. Considering that Ralph wouldn’t give it to Noah, so Aiden stole it from Ralph’s safe, then gave Ralph that hard set-down right after.
The memory of that horrible night is less painful to me now, thank god. Before I couldn’t think of it without flinching, but Aiden told me that Ralph knew from the start he didn’t mean anything he said. Ralph just got hit full-force with the Aiden Callahan Scariness, which is admittedly something else. But he knew that wasn’t the real Aiden. He just knows him too well for that.
It’s all behind us, but I’m worried things might turn uncomfortable at the mention of the money. It seems like we’re okay, though. I guess we’re all just past it now, because Aiden and Ralph don’t flinch, and Noah goes on easily -
“If you’ve got a little cash tucked away you got to use it where it counts, right? I’m gonna put it into something useful, instead of a - a - sixty dollar hamburger, or something. I don’t know.” He looks over at Ralph, his eyebrows dropping low in confusion. “What do rich people spend their money on?”
“No, yeah,” Ralph answers, with a shrug of his shoulders. “Sixty-dollar burger is probably right. And drugs, in my experience… I mean, I have no idea, how the hell would I know?”
“Don't you have a lot of money now?” I ask, turning to Ralph. “Being the Warlord, and all?”
“Sure, I’ve got some money, but most of it is tied up in, um - investments. Some of which are pretty long-term, and low-net, at least for now. Even if it wasn’t, though, you’ll see me dead and buried before you ever see me spend sixty fucking dollars on a hamburger.”
“I hate that choice of phrasing,” Aiden murmurs, his deep voice very stressed out. “Can’t you just say ‘fuck a sixty-dollar hamburger?’”
“Fuck a sixty-dollar hamburger.”
“Mmmkay, I exhaustion zoned out for a second,” Raj mumbles, rubbing his eyes. “I zoned back in to hear Ralph say he’d fuck a hamburger for sixty dollars?”
“No, that’s not - I didn’t say-”
“And speaking of things I’m trying to make sense of,” Raj goes on, turning to me, Noah, and Ripley, “Is anyone going to explain to me and Ralph what was going on when we found you guys? What was that guy with a joint doing leaning out of the window of his van?”
“Smoking us up,” I explain brightly.
“I mean, yeah, we already worked that one out. Is there a further explanation?”
“Oh, it’s - he’s a friend, and I had to thank him for something he helped us out with.”
There’s a pause while Raj and Ripley look at me curiously, waiting for an explanation. They seem a little surprised when I don’t offer one, given how happy I normally am to chat at length about anything. But I can’t really get into this without explaining about Nolan, and our camping trip this past weekend.
Behind Raj, Aiden bites his lip, nervously twisting his fingers around his wrist.
I’ve been wondering all night if he’s going to take this opportunity to tell everyone about his magic. We’re all here together, and it was his idea.
But he hasn’t said one word about it. Not even to me. I haven’t pushed him to, so I’m not sure what his plan is, or if there is one at all. The only thing I can tell is that he seems nervous, and he has all night long. He’s good at hiding it, but I’ve definitely noticed.
“Well, that keeps pretty far away from explaining everything,” Raj observes, half-laughing as he shakes his head at me in confusion. “But alright, guess it’s better there’s no explanation. This way if the neighbors ask me what happened I can honestly say I have no idea.”
“What explanation are you gonna give your girls, though?” Ripley jumps in, suppressing a laugh. “When they turn up and see us all like this?”
He gestures down to his dirt and grime covered self, then to all the rest of us, who look much the same way.
“Shit, you’re right!” Noah’s eyes widen in sudden alarm as he whips around to face Raj. “Mel’s gonna show up looking like all a man wants to see after a long day, and we - we look like the last thing a woman wants to see after a long day! We look like we just rolled out of the gutter, man! Quick, we gotta do something before she gets home!”
“Wait a sec, yeah, it’s pretty bad.” Raj wakes up some more, an alarmed expression to match Noah’s coming over his face. “What are we gonna do, though, dude? Cram all six of us into the shower? We can’t go upstairs this dirty - we shouldn’t even go into the house this dirty!”
“Shit, fuck - we need a plan!” Ralph is suddenly busy working his fingers through this hair, trying to remove some mud that got in it when he and Noah wrestled for use of the garden hose during the car cleaning earlier. “When are they supposed to get here? How much time do we have?”
“Like five minutes!” Raj answers desperately, holding back Noah as he tries to dive towards the dirty mop bucket like he’s going to dunk his head in it. “If we’re lucky, maybe a little longer-”
“Hello?” calls a baffled, giggling voice from the open garage door.
We all spin around to face the new arrivals as they step into the garage on a drift of chilly autumn air.
Mel, looking adorable with a white sweater beneath her autumn-red dress, her long hair woven into a silky braid half undone by the breeze, stray strands fluttering softly around her face. One strand blown across her mouth, caught in her lip gloss. She’s pinned a pretty, burnt-orange flower into her braid, done little cat eyes with her eyeliner. She looks like pure warmth, and she has something bundled in her arms.
Calla stands at her shoulder, her arms crossed over her chest. The silvery moonlight illuminates her light gold, buzzed-down hair, shines on her sleek black jeans and combat boots. Her torn, blood-red sweater is threadbare enough to be see-through. Her piercings glitter in the darkness, her lips turned up in a laugh she can barely hold back.
Calla and Mel set each other off strikingly, making a beautiful picture together. Different in every way, but both of them rosy-cheeked and windblown and aglow from the cold night they walked out of, sparkling with laughter from whatever they were talking about before. The giggles make them glow like a handful of glittering dust was tossed over them.
To complete everything, the little bundle in Melanie’s arms shifts, and a drowsy face pokes out of it. Nikita, with her dark hair standing up in a silly little peak. At the same time, Tycho pops up by Calla’s feet, having previously been busy nosing around at the end of her leash.
Without a word, Ralph automatically lifts his camera and snaps a picture of the girls.
“Oh, you two look beautiful!” I blurt out admiringly.
“Wh-? What are you guys doing?” Melanie giggles, gazing around in bewilderment. “What happ-?”
She’s cut off by a burst of movement and noise. At the same time, Tycho scrambles for Ralph, dragging Calla into the garage, and Nikita sits up with a burst of happy babbling, reaching for Raj and Noah.
“Shit, fuck,” Noah murmurs weakly, gripping Raj’s arm. “Look at that, man. And then look at us.”
“Mel!” Raj says desperately. “I don’t normally look like this!”
“Yeah, I know what you look like,” she laughs, coming forward as Nik begins to kick her little legs, arms outstretched for her dads. “We’re married, remember?”
“Where are you going, Ralph?” Calla giggles, trying and failing to pull in Tycho as she lunges against her leash for him.
“Nowhere, just - was gonna quickly see if I could get away and maybe run to the ocean before you looked at me.” He sweeps his hood up over his filthy hair, grimacing deeply. “See now it’s too late for that. You’ve already gotten an eyeful, even though I’d rather be torn up by dogs than have had that happen.”
“Torn up by dogs?” Melanie lets out a bewildered laugh, taken aback. “Jesus! Where’d that come from, Ralph?”
“Nowhere, just-” He backs into the shadows with Noah and Raj, nudging Tycho back with his boot. “How was girl’s night?”
“Well, let’s see.” Melanie catches Nik’s little hand right before she can seize a grimy fistful of Noah’s hair. “Calla went with me to that free lecture at the community college, the one about the background of Europanto. Which was nice of her, considering I’m deep into linguistics in my spare time and she isn’t.”
Calla shrugs her shoulders, smiling brightly. “Hey, I like to learn about anything. Now I know about macaronic languages, that’s pretty cool.”
“Then we went and sat in the park and read our books while Nik crawled around in all the pretty autumn leaves with Tycho. It was very relaxing. Then I got a text from Angie that said-” Mel extracts her phone from the pocket of her dress to read it out loud. “I just drove past your street and I think there’s a car on fire over there and I can’t be sure but I think I saw Jamie, Noah, and Aiden doing something in the smoke, and maybe Ripley falling out of the car window, and Raj and Ralph sprinting right for the car?”
“Shit!” I whisper, as Ripley smothers a startled laugh behind his hands.
“Everything was fine!” Raj hastily assures her. “It was just us getting Noah’s new car home!”
“Yeah, we figured everything was going about as expected over here,” Calla informs him. “We still went out to get dinner before we came back.”
“Takeout bags are in the car,” Mel adds, smiling brightly. “The entire trunk is pretty much full. We raided Big Belly Deli on behalf of the whole group.”
This draws a collective sigh of surprised delight from all of us, but Mel holds up a hand when several of us start forward at once.
“Wait a second! Nobody’s touching my car covered in - sludge? Toxic waste? What is all that?”
“It’s from my car!” Noah eagerly points down at it, beaming at Mel. “Look, angel! Here it is! Isn’t it amazing?”
Melanie drops her gaze to the car, noticing it for the first time. She stares at it for a long moment, blinking slowly. Calla’s eyebrows arch up very high as she notices it, too.
“I’m gonna name her Midnight,” Noah says triumphantly, throwing his arms wide open over the hood. “Minuit.”
This name, announced in such dramatic fashion, in comparison to the wreck of a car before her, clearly makes it very difficult for Melanie not to start laughing.
“I’m - I’m excited for you!” she manages encouragingly, after a severe struggle. “I’m sure it’ll live up to that name once you’re done with it!”
I can tell she completely means it, despite the laughter in her eyes.
“Damn, dude, you came up with that fast,” I tell Noah, impressed. “Me and Aiden are still trying to come up with a good name for our saucepan.”
“What?” Ripley laughs, catching my eye. “Why are you guys naming one of your saucepans?”
The only honest answer I can think of is, unfortunately, what I blurt out. “I - won’t say why.”
Raj spreads his hands at me in confusion, and Ripley lets out a baffled laugh.
“Okay, stop everything before we get wildly off track,” Calla cuts in. “I thought we were all hanging out tonight, but how are we doing that if you guys are - like this?” She gestures to the coating of grime all over us. “I’m guessing Mel doesn’t want you walking into the house like this, right?”
“No, we’ll have to do something,” Mel agrees, pressing a thoughtful fingertip to the corner of her mouth.
A few different suggestions are thrown out at the same time, and the conversation quickly devolves into several arguments happening at once.
I slip around everyone to covertly speak to somebody who’s gone unnoticed by everyone but me.
“Hi, Kase-face,” I whisper, smiling warmly at her. “Went along for girl’s night?”
“I didn’t really mean to,” she answers, hopping up to sit weightlessly on Noah’s car. “But Mel accidentally summoned me. She said - this is totally something Kasey would have been interested in, talking to Noah right before she and Calla left for the lecture. And she was right, I mean, what was I supposed to do, not go to a free lecture on macaronic languages?”
“No, of course,” I agree immediately, biting back a laugh. “You had to go, obviously.”
“Yeah, and as for the park afterwards - well, Nik and Tycho were so cute playing together, so fun to watch. And it turns out that Calla reads at about the same pace I do, and she was reading something called Algorithms of Oppression that was pretty interesting, so I figured I’d hang out and read over her shoulder.” Kasey’s dark eyes sparkle with her devious grin. “Then I came here with them because I was curious to see why you guys set a car on fire.”
“We didn’t!” I protest, blushing deeply. “Oh, god. I hope no one else saw that. One more person in a town this size, and word’s gonna get around to my mom.”
Kasey giggles, then points at the others. “Hey, get back to the group before they notice you talking to thin air.”
I flash her a smile as I turn away, hoping to myself that maybe we won’t have to have these conversations in secret for much longer. Once everyone knows the truth, I can talk to Kasey freely, without worrying what everyone thinks about the state of my sanity.
I steal a hopeful look at Aiden, who still has that subtle nervous tension to his shoulders, the set of his jaw.
“Okay, then it’s settled,” Calla is saying, when I rejoin the conversation.
“What?” Ralph groans, glancing back and forth between her and Mel in disbelief. “Are you two really gonna make us do this?”
“It’s the only solution,” Melanie giggles, then tosses her head at the open garage door. “Go on, out!”
“At least it’ll wake us up,” Noah says cheerfully, pulling off his shirt and kicking off his boots as he goes bounding past me.
I watch him go past with mounting alarm. “Wait, what’s happening?”
Raj is pulling his shirt off, too, but with a groan of reluctance. “Haven’t the neighbors seen enough spectacles for one day?”
“And whose fault is that?” Calla laughs, using the tip of her boot to steer Ralph towards the garage door. “You goons left us no choice.”
“Wait, what?” I try again, as we’re all herded out onto the front lawn by the girls. Aiden just took off his shirt and snapback and tossed them aside onto the grass, briefly distracting me, but my bewilderment is growing with every second. “I’m sorry, I missed the plan completely-”
“Just go with it, dude,” Ripley says briefly, pulling his shirt up over his binder and adding it to the pile with Aiden’s clothes.
“Yeah, no time for questions, this is about to be cold as fuck,” Noah adds, pulling my shirt up over my head for me. “We’re gonna want to move fast.”
“This is how we get to the Big Belly Deli takeout bags, dude,” Raj says urgently.
“Okay, but what the hell are we doing?” I laugh helplessly. “Are we all going down to our boxers in public, right now?”
“We’re on our own lawn!” Raj points out. “So that’s not public, is it? Technically?”
I hope not, because now all of us are in a line on the lawn with way less clothes than normally acceptable in public. Shivering in the cold, clearly visible in the moonlight to the passing cars that once again slow down so their owners can stare at us in blank confusion. My expression probably closely matches theirs, until Calla returns from the garage with the garden hose we were using to wash the car.
“No!” I gasp, realizing all at once. “Seriously?”
“Again, you left us no choice,” Calla laughs, adjusting the nozzle to the highest spray setting as she joins Melanie in front of us, keeping a healthy distance back. “You guys ready?”
“Just do it and get it over with!” Noah shouts, flinging his arms out wide. “This is proof I’d do anything for that car! Don’t have mercy, even if your heart is moved by our pleadin’ cries for-”
He breaks off with a gasp as Calla nails him in the chest with the hose, blasting his long hair up around his face. I only have one second to laugh before she sweeps the water down the line of us, getting everyone drenched immediately. The water hits my chest with frozen force that punches the breath out of my lungs. It shocks me all the way awake, and the first crystal clear thoughts to pour into my head are cold, cold, cold, cold…
We all begin yelling and cursing at once. Melanie and Calla dissolve into laughter, and Nik immediately follows suit, her eyes very wide as she watches us all get battered by the hose.
“Dude!” Ralph gasps, flinging his soaked hair out of his face to glare at Noah. “You can’t tell Calla not to have mercy, dumbass! Dangerous fuckin’ thing to do!”
“I know that now!” Noah wails, as Calla turns the hose back on him. “Just everybody get clean and we can go inside and take a real, hot shower and eat the food!”
The girls start laughing even harder watching us frantically trying to clean ourselves off, making Nik’s laughter swell until it starts to come in deep gasps, and she turns away to bury her face against Melanie’s chest like she can’t take it. Tycho is going wild on her leash, leaping up and down on her hind legs, and Kasey is bent double with her giggles beside Calla.
“Ugh, fuck!” Noah roars, as another car slows down and someone leans out to stare at us. “This is for you, Midnight!”
He takes off sprinting for the house, apparently having decided that he’s clean enough. Ripley is immediately right behind him, and the rest of us are right behind him.
“If we really cram there’ll be room for all of us in the shower, between the two bathrooms!” Raj shouts.
“Squad one is Ripley, Raj, Jamie, squad two is me, Noah, and Aiden!” Ralph shouts back. “Squad one upstairs, squad two downstairs! Move, move!”
The laughter from the girls swells even louder as we neatly split off into two squadrons and make a break for the showers.
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