Goddamn. Who the hell was interviewing who?

“Minimum wage, and we can talk hours if I decide to hire you.”

“If? So what do you have a problem with—my chair or my gender or my sexual orientation?”

Jesus Christ, I was ready to throat-punch Silva. I had a sneaking suspicion he was about to pay me back and then some for every smartass retort I ever made or rule I ever disregarded in his class. “Better flick those chips off your shoulder,” I said. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the first two, and I don’t want to know details of the third.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Meaning you have a problem with it?”

“Meaning the only sex life I have any interest in is my own, which—let’s just throw this out there right now so we’re clear—is none of your damned business. I may be swamped and need help, but not at the expense of pissing off my customers. If you want the job, convince me you won’t be a bitch or a whiny brat and tell me what you can do for me. I run a garage, not a nursery.”

She blinked, silent, which I assumed wasn’t usual for her, and my phone buzzed.

Pearl:  Hey. I know you’re probably busy tonight but I have a problem and I don’t know who else to talk to.

Me:  Never too busy for you. Just tell me where.

Pearl:  Your place? When can I come?

Me:  You tell me, I’ll be there.

Pearl:  Now?

Me:  Come on then, girl. See you in a few.

I glanced down at Sam, who was chewing her lip. “I have to get,” I told her. “Think about the job and come by Monday if you want it. We’ll do a one-week trial.”

She frowned up at me. “One week? Isn’t trial employment usually like a month or ninety days?”

“It’s however long I say it is. Take it or leave it.” I turned to Silva and stretched my hand out over Samantha Adams’s head. “Thanks. I think.”

The bastard had the nerve to laugh.

Pearl

The “highway”—two lanes, one in either direction, with stoplights—was clogged with summer vacationers. Even so, it only took ten minutes to get to Boyce’s place. He was sitting on the top step of his trailer, smoking, one booted foot resting a couple of steps down on the cracked concrete and the other crossed beneath it. The dark plaid shirt—sleeves rolled up, unsnapped with a navy tee underneath—looked good on him. I tried to remember the last time he hadn’t looked good to me and couldn’t.

The doors to the garage’s two bays were both shut, though it wasn’t yet six. I parked in the driveway and got out.

“Close early today?” I walked the worn dirt path from the garage drive to the trailer’s front door. I couldn’t see his eyes; his sunglasses were too dark.

“Yep. Had an errand to run up at the high school.” His forearm flexed under the light brush of copper hair as he turned to stub out the cigarette in a makeshift ashtray—a ceramic pot three-quarters full of sand.

“Really? Doing what?” I ripped my gaze from his arm when he turned back.

“Hiring one of Silva’s students to help me out in the garage, hopefully.” Grimacing, he reached to scratch the back of his neck. “I don’t know though. Might be more trouble than it’s worth.”

“I think it’s a great idea.”

As I reached him, he shrugged and stood. “We’ll see, I guess. You said you had a problem? Come on in and let’s solve it.”

If only it were that simple. I’d never thought of myself as helpless, but Boyce was running a business and his life, and I had no job, no money of my own.

I followed him into the trailer, which seemed darker in broad daylight than it had when I’d come over the other night. We both removed our sunglasses.

As if reading my mind, he said, “Sorry it’s so dark in here—trailers aren’t exactly famous for great lighting design. Your eyes will adjust in a minute, but I can switch on the lamps if you want. I could walk around in here blindfolded, so I don’t really think about it.”

“It’s fine. I didn’t prepare a graphic presentation or anything. I just need to talk this out. You sure you don’t mind?”

“’Course not. You can always come to me—you know that.” He sat on one end of the sofa and I took the other. “So what’s up?”

We leaned into our respective corners, facing each other.

“I just finished my first week of class. It’s an adjustment from work I did for my BS, and even more so from what I ever imagined doing as a postgrad, but I love it. My two classes are small—just a handful of people. I already know everyone. We took a boat out and gathered samples to help one of the professors run lab tests, and it was nothing like being an undergrad at a huge school where you have little to no autonomy. He was like, ‘Go do this,’ with almost no direction, which was like being a peer instead of, you know, a minion. A low-ranking peer, but a peer.”

He smiled. “Sounds great. And I’m not hearing the problem.”

Closing my eyes, I sucked in a deep breath. “The problem is I got accepted to Michigan. Med school.”

“I don’t understand. Thought you said you weren’t going.”

“I applied to several schools, and I was actually accepted to the majority of them. When Mitchell and I chose Vanderbilt, I turned the other acceptances down. But I was waitlisted at two—Harvard and Michigan.”

“At the risk of showing my hick side, what does that mean, exactly—being waitlisted?”

“It means you met the qualifications, but other candidates met them better, so they got the offers to attend. Waitlisted applicants are put in a queue. You only get an actual acceptance if enough of the candidates ahead of you decide to go elsewhere and you’re high enough on the list. I got an acceptance letter today—which Mama opened before I got home.”

“Ah. So she’s all fired up about you changing your mind.”

I chuckled joylessly. “Fired up is a good way to term it. I want to do exactly what I’m doing, but she’s made it really clear that she and Thomas don’t support that decision, which could mean I’m on my own financially. I know this will sound incredibly naïve and immature to you—but I’ve never had to take care of myself in that way. I grew up understanding that there were things I couldn’t have because Mama couldn’t afford them. I never asked for anything I perceived as unreasonable, but I was still a kid. I wasn’t always sure. After they got married, money was no longer an impediment. What I got or didn’t get was based on factors like safety or whether it would distract me from my studies. Things that had little or nothing to do with the expense. As a result, I’m… I’m spoiled.”