Page 10 of Fall Over You

I simper and flutter my eyelashes. “You’ll have to educate me, sir. I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. I’m but a simple woman.”

“You can’t have dogs in here,” he adds, flicking his chin toward T-Bone.

“Then what are you doing here?” I ask.

Tyler’s lips quirk up and I can tell he’s cooking up some fresh bit of sass. But he never gets to deliver it, because Ellie comes skipping into the garage from a back room. “Papaw, I want a snack.”

Tyler’s expression changes completely, and Mr. Davis’s face positively lights up. It’s almost like Tyler knows how to be nice when his daughter’s around. “You know where the apple slices are, shug. You can get ‘em for yourself.”

“I want pretzels,” she says. “The long ones with the big salt.”

A dimple on one of his cheeks pops as he looks at his daughter.

Mr. Davis’s laugh, one I’ve heard countless times at the Legion, rings out. “Like the ones on Papaw’s desk?”

“Mm, those are yummy,” I say. “Can I have one?”

Ellie’s eyes light up when she sees me. “Miss Becca!”

She skips my way, stopping to grab the tub of pretzels off her grandpa’s rat’s nest of a desk. Papers, even those old nasty kind with the carbon copy slips. What year is it? The computer at the front counter has that beige graying on all the plastic parts, a likely relic of the twentieth century.

Ellie charges around the counter and gasps when she sees T-Bone. “My doggie!”

Her arms go around T-Bone’s neck, which T-Bone returns with a slurp up her cheek.

“I didn’t know I’d get to see you today, Miss Ellie! You’re my silver lining.”

She wrinkles her nose. “What’s a silver lining?”

I crouch down to her level. “It means you took a bad day and made it a good one.”

She hugs me and I don’t dare let her go. Her warm little body is so comforting in the face of the eye daggers her dad is shooting at me.

“Ellie, we shouldn’t hug strangers.”

“She’s not a stranger, Daddy.” She gestures to me. “It’s Miss Becca! Remember, we talked about how we think she’s a princess.”

I drop my jaw and laugh. “Well, I can’t believe your daddy thinks I’m a princess.”

Mr. Davis cracks up again, and I get that unique high of grinding Tyler’s gears. But I won’t make him wallow in it. I look to Tyler. “What’s Miss Ellie doing out of school?”

“She’s in half-day preschool. But that’s alright. She gets to be with me and her papaw the rest of the day.”

“At the auto shop?” I ask.

He peers around the garage. “Is that where we are?”

I sigh and Ellie plops herself on the floor next to T-Bone and pets her half to death. T-Bone doesn’t mind a bit, soaking up the attention like I’ve never given her any a day in her life.

“Your daddy’s a jokester,” I say to Ellie.

Tyler grabs a blue grease rag and heads our way, wiping his fingers. “What’s going on with your truck?”

“Snapped the timing belt. I’d fix it myself, but I can’t get the part as cheap as you can.”

He whistles. “Gonna be a minute before I can get the part in anyway.”

“Well, I didn’t think it would be overnight.”