Jerk It by Lani Lynn Vale

CHAPTER 3

Things I like to lift:

1. Weights

2. A fork

-Text from Mavis to Murphy

MURPHY

As I rode my motorcycle into the forecourt of the shop, I wondered again, for the thousandth time, why the hell I’d offered Mavis a shower at my shop.

I parked and got off my bike, then headed to the front door without waiting for the woman that’d followed me the entire way to get out of her car.

Once I had the door unlocked, the alarm disarmed, and the lights on, I waited in the doorway, a wash of light spilling out into the slowly brightening morning, for her to arrive.

She did with a flurry of haste.

“How much time do you have?” I asked.

“Two and a half minutes,” she exaggerated.

I snorted and gestured for her to come inside, easily overtaking her and showing her the way to my place upstairs above my office.

I didn’t plan to utilize this space, but I’d found that it was easier to change out of my dirty clothes here, then take a shower, than it was to ride home sometimes.

So everything that was needed to get a body clean was there, which I showed her to the next second.

It wasn’t much. Honestly, I would’ve never thought it’d be good enough for a Pope, but the way Mavis smiled when she saw the shower was enough to make me grin.

It also gave me hope that she wasn’t a stuck-up snob like her grandmother.

Being gone about fifteen years, and not seeing Mavis in all that time, made me a bit wary of what I’d come back to.

Luckily, she was pretty decent.

“Thank you,” she said as she placed her stuff down on the counter in the small bathroom.

I left her at that, going downstairs and getting things turned on. Once my compressor and steamer were ready in the back, I got to work on a transmission from yesterday, only realizing about twenty minutes later that I’d never changed out of my workout clothes.

“Shit,” I said as I looked down at myself.

I was clean.

Luckily.

But I knew I wouldn’t be for long if I didn’t get changed.

Grabbing a rag, I headed to my office, going to the corner of the room and grabbing a pair of pants off a shelf.

After kicking off my shoes and shucking my shorts and t-shirt, I was just stepping into the pants when I heard movement from the stairs.

I didn’t turn around but was delighted when I heard the soft intake of air as Mavis saw me getting dressed in the corner.

I waited until I had the jeans buttoned before turning around and surveying her.

She was in scrubs, and she was staring at me as if she’d never seen me before.

“You done?” I asked gruffly.

Her face was pink from the shower, and though I couldn’t see her baby belly due to the looseness of her scrubs, I could still tell that there was something more there than there’d been the last time she’d been in my shop.

I opened my mouth to say something, probably like ‘you can leave,’ when both of our attention went to the front door.

“Alessio, who is that here so…oh! Mavis! You’re back! I’m so happy to see you!” My mother, the woman that couldn’t help herself from being nice to everyone, no matter what, looked like she was struck with sheer joy upon seeing her. “Would you like a donut?”

Mavis smiled back at my mother, and for one instant in time, I almost wished that that smile was aimed at me.

“Ohh,” Mavis turned to my mother and smiled. “Guilia. You’re so beautiful. And thank you, but no thank you. I’m trying to cut down on all the sugary things because I’ve gained so much weight.”

“You can’t tell that you’ve gained weight,” I muttered underneath my breath.

Mavis’s eyes shot to mine. “What?”

“Aren’t you going to be late?” I asked, not repeating my words.

She looked at her watch and cursed. “I have like six and a half minutes to get there on time. If I run across the parking lot to get into the hospital.”

My mother ushered her out the door, and before I could say another word to her, she was gone, yelling, “Thank you for letting me use your shower,” over her shoulder as she left.

I was sitting down in my office chair, glaring at her stupid foreign-made van backing out of my parking lot, when my mother got back into the office.

“I found a place to work,” she said. “This’ll be my last day bringing you breakfast.”

I groaned and looked at her. “Are you sure you have to work?”

She rolled her eyes. “You know I like to keep busy. And though doing this,” she gestured at my desk that looked almost immaculate in the way she organized it, “keeps me busy, I don’t want to do it every day of the week. I love you, but my brain needs more stretching than what I can get filling out orders, filing paperwork, and making sure you have the correct parts ordered.”

I snorted. “Where did you find something?”

She grinned then. “At the local radio station in town. I am officially on the air at five in the morning until ten thirty when the syndicated show comes on.”

I grinned. “I knew they’d want you.”

My mother, after being fired from Pearl Pope’s place, eventually found a job at a local radio station four towns away. It took her over two years, but eventually she went from a custodian, to working in the sound booth, to being the actual radio personality for over five years.

Everyone loved her so much, especially when she was dubbed ‘The Italian Mama’ by a local celebrity. She became the person that ‘told you like it is’ and ‘never went easy’ on anyone, no matter how hard the subject matter.

It was my mother’s job, and eventually her radio personality self, that helped raise the money to give me lifesaving surgery when I turned eighteen years old.

If she hadn’t had that job, I didn’t think that I would be alive to tell the tale today.

“That’s great, Mom,” I told her. “But why didn’t you just take that syndicated deal that was offered to you?”

I knew why she didn’t.

My mother was a special person.

She was the type of person who would root for the underdog every single time.

“The station spoke to me spiritually,” she told me.

My mother believed in ‘spirits.’ She believed in the way someone’s ‘light’ made them shine…or not shine.

She was seriously one of those ‘woo woo’ people that others looked at and thought they were completely whacko.

And sometimes I thought the same.

But she was the gentlest person you’d ever meet in your life, and never pulled her punches when she thought you were being a dumbass.

She only ever wanted to see people succeed.

“Well, Ma.” I groaned as I leaned back in my chair and eyed the box of donuts she put down on the desk in front of me. “I’m going to miss you.”

“You’re only going to miss me because now you’ll have to answer your own phone,” she countered.

I grinned at her. “Busted.”

“I got your favorite,” she pointed out.

I sighed and reached into the box.

Donuts were why I worked out so hard.

I loved them, and they loved me—especially my love handles.

Not that I had love handles, but if I ate too many, and didn’t work out, I did.

In fact, just five years ago, shortly after my mother and I won the lottery—I say my mother and I because she’d purchased the ticket for me—I’d gotten a little bit…fat.

After realizing the error in my ways a few months into my sloth-like state, I’d changed my way of life and chosen to better myself by going to CrossFit.

Becoming healthy again had saved my life, because a few months ago, my heart started acting up again.

Something that had been a thorn in my side when I had contracted myocarditis from a viral infection around age nine. There were quite a few hospitalizations, procedures and medications until I finally recovered. Then at age seventeen I had a heart attack.

“Make sure you save some of those for me, piggy,” Mom teased as she moved around the desk toward the box I’d commandeered and then managed to eat six donuts out of. “Or I’m going to stop bringing them.”

I snorted and pushed the box toward her, thinking that six donuts was more than enough, and then said, “Why are you so nice to Mavis?”

My mother took the seat next to me and stared at me for so long that I thought she wasn’t going to answer.

Then she rolled her eyes. “Why do you hold grudges for so long?”

“I don’t,” I denied.

She scoffed. “You do. But that’s me coming out in you. Or, more accurately, that’s my mother coming out in you. Man, could she hold a mean grudge!”

I waited for her to continue.

When she did, I wasn’t surprised that she was super sweet about explaining.

My mother really couldn’t be mean, even if she tried.

“I don’t think that you see Mavis clearly,” she admitted. “I know that you said Mavis invited you to ‘y’all’s favorite spot.’ However, you knew better than to traipse around the property, and you know you did. I’d told you more than once not to do it, because you knew how that bitter shrew hated seeing kids—even her own grandchildren—out on her lawn. But you did it anyway. So, I know this is going to really hurt to hear, but if you want to blame anyone, you should blame yourself. You were the older child. You should’ve damn well known better, because I told you to. And you were twelve to her nine. So…”

So she did have a point.

I sighed.

“It was bad,” I told her. “I know that I shouldn’t blame her but…”

“But you had to live in a car for two years, lie to your peers, dig in trash cans for food, and ultimately degrade yourself just so you could survive.” She paused. “I know that you did, baby. And I hate that I couldn’t give you what every kid should have. But we turned out okay, don’t you think?”

“I think that you’re trying to make me forget the awfulness by realizing that we ended up pretty good in the end,” I rolled my eyes and stood up to walk to the vintage Dr. Pepper machine that was in the corner. “Do you think we could get this thing to work again?”

My mother, sensing the need for a change of subject, sighed. “You’re being very weird today. Does that maybe have something to do with the beautiful Mavis being here?”

Instead of answering her, I jogged up the stairs to use the restroom, and found it cleaned.

I wasn’t sure, but I was fairly sure I’d left clothes on the floor.

Now they were in the hamper in the corner of the room and separated at that.

The towels in one hamper and the greasy clothes in another.

There was also a Post-It note on the mirror that had me grinning.

That grin slid off my face when I read what the note said: You’re a damn slob. Thanks for the shower. I still dislike you. M.

M.

Well, M, I still dislike you, too.

Rolling my eyes, I went back to work.

And I tell you what, I didn’t think about her once for the rest of the day.

Also, I was a damn liar.