Page 27 of Sparrow

These days, at least I sometimes get paid for it.

By the time I send little Susie and her first two-wheeler back out onto the street, chain fixed and a new bell on the handlebars, Arden has stopped waiting for me. She’s talking to Penny, she of the bakery, and laughing with a deeper, truer laugh than she used with Rookie. When Penny bends in to ask her something evidently secretive, Arden hits her lightly on the arm and answers in the same tone, and Penny herself tinkles with laughter. Penny is older, in her 60s, and has long passed the phase of giggling at boys in the garage, but for just a moment, I can see what she must have been like as a girl, all twinkling eyes and flushed cheeks, and it makes me pause in my work.

Penny is one of the friendliest people in town, but I’ve never seen her giggle at anyone like that.

Not until Arden started telling her secrets.

My eyes turn to the girl I know only from the city and I take her in, wondering. She doesn’t look much healthier than she did last night. She’s still too thin, still too pale. She moves in a way that reminds me of a bird, like she’s constantly ready to take flight if there’s any danger.

She’s trying to disappear, while somehow making other people feel seen.

And she’s nearly as flushed as Penny.

She looks up and catches me staring, and I jerk and nearly turn away. But then she smiles at me, her eyes full and shining, and despite myself–despite everything I know to be true about her being off limits and me needing to keep my emotions to myself–I catch the smile in the palm of my hand like the treasure it is.

And I give her one of my own in return.

Orion

Istand in the door that leads from the garage to the house watching, my stomach tying itself in knots and my heart sinking down into my shoes.

Mars is smiling at Arden like she’s the moon to his stars, the sun to his daisies, and whatever hope I had of coming out here to tell him again that we need to send her home–that she’ll be safer with her actual parents, who must be searching for her–evaporates into thin air.

I don’t have the whole story yet, of how they know each other or even how much contact they’ve had, but it doesn’t take a fucking idiot to see that he’s decided to make her one of his projects. One of his pets.

And that means it’s going to be impossible for him to let her go. Because once he grabs onto something, he doesn’t give it up. No matter how much it hurts him.

I mean look at this garage. It’s full of mechanics, sure, each of them with a job to do and a vehicle to fix. But it’s also full to bursting of people from the town itself. A little girl who has a problem with her bike. Penny the baker, who’s manufactured a reason to come hang out with the bikers. Wendy, who’s talking at Mars as fast as she can, looking like she’s selling Girl Scout Cookies or something.

I suddenly remember what Mars said about her last night in this very garage and take a careful step back into the shadows. I don’t want her seeing me and getting any ideas.

I’m the last man she needs to try to get her fingers on.

Not that she would. Not that she’d even try it. Because all of these people out here belong to each other. They’ve grown up in the same town, learning each other’s habits and preferences and watching as everyone discovers their roles in the place. Many of these people are lifelong best friends.

Some of them are even related.

But me?

I’m just another one of Mars’ strays, taken under his wing and dragged back to town, then told I can’t leave again because he won’t let me go.

I’m just an outsider shoved into a town that’s too polite to tell me so. Sure, there are days when I feel like I actually belong, but they’re not as common as I’d like. Mostly I feel like I’m here borrowing someone else’s life and pretending to be something I’m not.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve known who I actually am at any point in my life. I didn’t know what to do or who to be when I was trying to make my father happy, and when I got out of his house I was too busy trying to survive to be anything more than a creature of necessity.

This town has helped to fill in the gaps a little bit, but that doesn’t make me a whole person. Not by a long shot. As far as I know, I could disappear entirely and this town would barely blink.

And Wendy will be much better off ending up with someone who actually means to stay here for the long term rather than someone who’s constantly twitching with the need to get on his bike and run far, far away.

Not that I have any interest in her or who she chooses. I’m not looking for someone to tie me down, and I sure as hell don’t think Wendy has what it would take to change my mind.

Before I swing around to leave, though, my eyes land on Arden. She’s bent over next to Penny, giggling, and with that flushed face and wide smile, the fragility has left her for a moment. Her eyes still look too big, her bones too delicate for what she’s been through. But she looks...

Fuck me, she looks beautiful, like a rose that’s just discovered the sun, and it’s such a far cry from the girl we rescued last night that for a moment, just one moment, I wonder if outsiders really can come here and find a home.

Because she’s an outsider, just like me.

And I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone look more at home more quickly than she has.