Page 17 of Diesel

“What’d she say?”

“That I was a tattletale and her blood pressure would be fine if people stopped telling her what she couldn’t do.” I wasn’t trying to be a downer, but I also couldn’t allow someone I cared about to be so reckless with their health. Irene meant the world to me. All five of my seniors did. It would crush me if anything happened to any one of them.

Diesel’s foot tapped against mine under the table. “She’s got a point.”

“She absolutely does not have a point. Her blood pressure medication explicitly says no alcohol. I read the label.” I wasn’t budging on this. Not for Irene or the sexy mountain. “But I agreed with her about the sparkling cider. It was a compromise that didn’t feel like pulling teeth. Or dentures.”

“Diplomatic.” His foot tapped against mine again. Was it some kind of code or was I overthinking the contact? Maybe Diesel thought his foot was hitting the base of the table.

You focus on the weirdest things.

“More like self-preservation. If I let her have the wine and she ends up in the ER, her daughter will have my head.” I leaned back, finding a position that felt less like I was about to hug the menu for emotional support. “What about you? Any interesting customers lately?”

“Define interesting.” Diesel nudged my menu aside with two fingers, as if he’d read my thoughts. God, I hoped he didn’t have that ability. If a gutter mind were illegal, I’d be on death row.

Then I remembered he’d asked a question. “Anyone try to diagnose their own car problems using information they found on the internet?”

Diesel rolled his eyes, though I caught the amusement in them. “Last week. Guy came in convinced his transmission was shot because of some YouTube video he watched. He just needed transmission fluid.”

That made me grin. “Did you charge him for the YouTube degree?”

“Charged him for the fluid and a lesson in humility.” Diesel winked, making my entire body flush with heat. “He called me condescending on Yelp.”

I grinned. “Were you?”

“Little bit.” There wasn’t any shame in his tone, just fact. “But I was also right.”

“Being right doesn’t make you wrong.” I’d learned that lesson the hard way when I was younger. My brother hated when I was right and constantly pulled a guilt trip on me, like I was a bad person for trying to make him see reason when all Brett had seen were bad decisions.

“Philosophy major?”

“High school dropout with years of experience.” The admission just flowed out of me. Diesel didn’t even flinch. He simply nodded like it was no big deal. “But I got my GED later. The traditional education route and I didn’t get along.”

More like I’d gotten fed up with being bullied because I was gay. I’d loved school. It just hadn’t loved me back.

“Nothing wrong with that.” Diesel had said it without a hint of judgment in his voice. When the last guy I’d dated found out, he’d started treating me like I was an idiot. Jesse had escaped my house seconds before the vase I’d thrown could connect with his head.

“Try telling that to my family.” A subject I was never fond of talking about. “They had plenty of loud opinions that were never in my favor.”

Diesel’s eyes hardened, the expression so brief, I thought I’d imagined it. “Family’s good at that.”

“Yours too?”

“Sometimes.” He shifted in his seat, and I saw his jaw tighten just a fraction. “But we’re not talking about them right now. We’re talking about you and your passengers and why you let yourself get talked into things by seventy-year-olds.”

Remembering my seniors made me smile. “Because they’re persuasive and I’m weak,” I said with honesty.

He scoffed. “You’re not weak, Ollie. You’re nice.”

“Nice people get walked over.”

“Nice people with boundaries don’t.” His blue eyes held mine. “You’ve got boundaries. You just choose when to enforce them.”

My throat tightened unexpectedly. Nobody had ever put it that way before. Everyone else had just called me a pushover or too soft or any number of other things that made me feel like being kind was somehow a character flaw.

“Thanks,” I managed.

“For what?”