Roland’s POV

My fingers felt numb as I turned the alternator around in my hands. I was covered head to toe in oil and grease and the grit from the part was wedged under my nails but I didn’t care as I glared at the part in my hands.

The stupid thing was completely shot. The pulley system was broken and there was no way for me to fix it so a new part was in order but I couldn’t put it down. Alternators are a common enough problem yet I never spent the time to take one apart and really learn about it.

So here I was, sitting on the floor of my shop, tools and scrap parts littered around me, with Mary sitting behind me on the chair that used to be for Kit. The radio on the table was turned off so nothing filled the awkward silence. She watched me far too closely and I hated every second of it. It only got worse when it was time for breaks.

“Break time,” she said in a sing-song voice with a small clap of her hands when an alarm on her phone went off. 

I sighed as I put the part down and took my normal seat, feeling like a child.

“Do you need to use the bathroom,” she asked as she passed me a water bottle.

“No.”

“How about a snack?”

“I don’t want a snack.”

“But do you need one?”

“No.”

“How are you feeling mentally? Stressed? Annoyed? Frustrated?”

“Annoyed.”

“At the car?”

“At you,” I said with a sigh. “Stop treating me like a child. I know when I need to pee, I know if I’m hungry or not, and I don’t need a mental health assessment just because I’m focused and not talking. I’m fine. Stop treating me like a baby you have to watch.”

She frowned as she stared at me before nodding.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was upsetting you.” 

“It’s not like it’s hard to upset me,” I said with a shrug. “Kit used to do the same thing until I screamed at him.”

“Well, thank you for not screaming at me. It’s very much appreciated but you have to tell me before you get annoyed. The first time I do something that you don’t like you need to tell me.” I only nodded because I didn’t care enough to answer.

The second timer went off and I went right back to the floor without a care in the world.

“Would you like to talk while you work,” she asked after only a few more minutes of silence.

“I don’t know. Kit never really gave me a choice. He just talked and sometimes I would answer but it really depended on what he was talking about.”

“What did you normally talk about?”

“His shitty taste in music mostly.” She blanched at the curse but recovered quickly. “His likes and pet peeves, the car I was fixing, his foster situations, sometimes our parents, most of the time it was planning dates or our future.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll want to talk to me about your parents,” she asked hopefully, knowing even Andrew didn’t know much, but I could hear the doubt in her voice. 

“No.”

“I understand.” She was quiet again for a while after that and I allowed myself to slip back into my dad’s workshop.

The smell of the old wood and oil, the feel of the metal, the oil under my nails, the birds chirping out the window. It felt so much like home that I could have sworn I heard my dad moving behind me doing his own work. Time blurred as I committed every bit of the alternator to memory, making blueprints and taking detailed pictures to remember the next time I came across another one.

My eyes stung by the time the timer went off again and my fingers felt like they were about to fall off. I sighed as I pushed myself off the floor and let my eyes adjust to the light bouncing off the room.

The window showed a nice sunset and the birds chirping turned to crickets. My shoulders sagged when I saw Mary reach for the keys sitting on the table. I didn’t want this to be over yet. I didn’t want to go back to the empty cabin that felt so big without Kit’s light; without his voice bouncing off the wall or the way his body would press against me as we fell asleep.

“Ready to go,” Mary asked with a tight-lipped smile. I shook my head but followed her out the door anyway.

“I think I’m going to take a walk,” I told her when I noticed she was following me to the cabin. “I’m supposed to spend an hour outside now and haven’t done it today.”

“That’s a good idea,” she agreed as she looked at me for a long time. “Just, be back in your cabin before curfew alright? I’d hate for security to scare you on accident just because you lost track of time.”

“I will.” She hummed and broke off from me, heading towards the front office.

My feet led me to the woods.

I took in the fresh, cool air. The leaves rustled in the wind and the smell of pine danced through the air. The sunset was pink and purple and I decided I didn’t hate it and the water lapped the bank in the distance. Most of the kids were already packed up for the night so the only sounds came from the woods around me and it was nice to not have to hear the screams of kids running around. 

I sighed as I sat down on the ground and leaned my head back against the tree. My fingers weaved in the grass as I let myself get lost in the texture that was so different from the hard metal I had been playing with for the past several hours. 

I sighed to myself as I soaked up the feeling of calm.

I stayed there for longer than Mary would have approved. My legs had grown stiff and the moon hung high and the sound of boots crunching in the grass was the only thing that made me get up. 

I could see the faint shadow of the man as I cut through the tree, silent as a mouse.

I knew I should be scared about getting caught but this just felt normal. I had done this enough times; sneaking out of foster homes, trying to evade my mother when she was upset and forbade me from going to the shop, sneaking out of the cabin to try and figure out escape routes, it was all second nature now.

The man didn’t bat an eye as I walked behind him and found my way on the worn-out path back to my cabin.

The cabin was empty, the way that it always was now. I swallowed the lump in my throat as I pulled my disgusting shirt over my head. 

“Well, isn’t that a beautiful sight,” Kit would say as he sat on his bed, still in his dirty clothes. I would shoot him a glare and he would know what I meant without me having to say a word but he wouldn’t care as he leaned farther onto the mattress. “Should I be concerned that you aren’t even a bit nervous about the fact that you just evaded a cop?”

“I didn’t evade a cop,” I would say with an eye roll as I finished changing. “It was a security guard.”

“Who was probably a cop before this and you just walked past them like it was nothing.”

“It was nothing. He didn’t catch us so it was fine.” Kit would hate the way I didn’t care but would give up when he saw it wasn’t going to make a difference.

He would change clothes because he knew it was the only way I could allow him onto my bed. He would pull me into his chest and play with my hair until he fell asleep and I would miss it the second he stopped despite the fact that I hated it when anyone else did it. 

I curled up in bed myself, one arm tucked into my chest while the other reached up to my hair. It wasn’t the same as Kit, but it was enough.

Kit’s POV

I slammed the door the second I got into the apartment and didn’t even care. Cody jumped and placed a hand on his chest while Nathan glared at me, his face grumpy and hair messy from sleeping on the couch.

“Jesus dude,” Cody swore with a sigh as he worked on getting his heart rate back under control. “Give a bitch a heads up before you do that shit. You gave me a fucking heart attack.”

“And woke me up,” Nathan grumbled as he laid his hair back down. “What crawled up your ass on the way over here?”

“Fuckers at work. Who runs up the bill to $200 and then doesn’t tip? Do you have any idea how many times I had to run back to the kitchen for them and they have the audacity to not tip,” I all but screamed as I leaned my board against the wall. “I was there for 7 hours and only made 40 bucks because they camped at my table for three hours! It was bullshit!”

“Just calm down for a second,” Nathan said as he got off the couch and came to stand in front of me. 

“Do not say that shit to me,” I said as I took a step away. “You know I hate it when people say that to me when I’m upset.”

“What do you need right now,” Cody asked, looking up at me from the couch. He still looked scared out of his mind and that was the only reason I forced myself to take a deep breath.

Cody’s parents were pieces of shit. His dad used to hit him and his mom would just watch and yell helpful ideas of torture over Cody’s screams. Loud noises and yelling were no-go’s for him. 

“I need to rant I think,” I said with forced calmness. “And I need to sit down with our budget. Today’s tips were supposed to go towards food this week.”

“We can do that,” Nathan said as he placed a hand on my shoulder. “Go sit down, I’ll grab you some water, tell us all about it and we’ll figure this out. It’s going to be okay. We’ll figure it out.”

I sighed to myself as I sat next to Cody, who shied away from me.

“I didn’t mean to yell,” I said as I stared at the ground. “And I’m sorry for slamming the door. I wasn’t thinking and I’ll try my best to never do it again.”

“I know,” he said, trying to blink away the tears gathered in his eyes discreetly. “It’s okay, just try to do better.”

“I will.”

Nathan came back with a glass of water and sat it in front of me, a small smile on his face.

“So tell us about it.”

I didn’t leave out a single detail. I told them that the people were rude, how they stayed in my section for hours, how loud they were, and the noise complaints we got because of them about the fact that they were so high maintenance and didn’t feel the need to tip. 

“That’s real shitty of them,” Nathan said with a glare of his own.

“Right! Like I get wanting to get the most our of your service so ask for everything you want and more but tips are most of my income. I own the back of the house for an order that I didn’t even make money off of! It’s complete bullshit.”

“You still seem really tense,” Cody said, slowly coming out of his shell again now that I was not yelling. “Do you want to work that off for a bit?”

“What are we supposed to do at 11 at night? Nothing is open.”

“Stake parks are always open,” Nathan said with a smirk.

“I don’t know if I’m up to it tonight,” I said with a sigh, happy to be off my feet.

“I know you,” Nathan said with a sigh. “If you don’t get this anger out somehow you’ll keep getting madder at it until it’s all you can think about and that’s not helpful for anyone so let’s go get the anger out in a productive way.”

I knew he had a point so with a sigh I stood up from the couch and picked up my board. Nathan smirked and followed my lead. I threw a look at Cody who went to shake his head until Nathan threw a helmet into his lap.

“We all know you don’t want to be here alone,” he said as he opened the door. “Get your ass up and let’s go.”