It’s been four years but the memory of her was still fresh for me. Hard for it not to be since I was surrounded with familiar places and familiar faces.

She never called.

I hear about her once in a while from Charlie, trivial stuff, ordinary stuff. I can’t believe Charlie—a cop—bought her false assurance and half lies. ‘I’m fine, I’m good, college is great’ was her usual responses, she never went into the personal stuff, never went into details.

I wondered about her change.

The bitterness left me two years back and I was able to function without thinking of her for long periods of time so I don’t know what it was about today that made her scramble across my mind.

I almost muddled an oil change, a task that I could do with one hand tied behind my back and two of my eyes close…when I was eight.

I passed high school—barely—and started a garage with Embry and Quil two years later, it was hard, sure, and we almost didn’t survive the first year but we persevered and fumbled through. It was a good thing that I already had a name for fixing stuff along the rez and those same people said some things to the right people. It helped that there was no decent—reasonably priced—garage around Forks for people to go to.

Besides, it was fun working with my brothers—most of the time.

We have our strengths and weaknesses and our contrast in character blended into our work seamlessly, complementing each other with our different skill sets. Quil was the people person, I was the machine whisperer as they jokingly called me and Embry was the man for the details and paper work whom nagged both of us constantly.

If they needed some extra hands, the pack was always ready to help.

My hands fumbled with the box wrench and I cursed silently. I was never going to finish this in time if I kept going like this. I ducked out of the hood and picked up a bottle of water.

The sky was darkening and from the scent of the air, it looked like rain.

“Jake, man. You’re not done, yet?”