Blood and Engines

Nia People say kids are resilient. That we bounce back, forget things, heal fast. They lie. I was eight the first time I learned that love could rot. It doesn’t scream when it dies. It decays slowly, quietly. The same way our apartment did—peeling paint, a busted heater, and the kind of silence that crept into your bones and made you wish someone would just yell so you’d know you still existed. We lived in a box above a liquor store on the edge of Houston, where the air smelled like oil and sweat and something always burning. One bedroom. One mattress. One Mama who never smiled unless she was holding a cigarette or a bottle. Her name was Carolina Velasquez, and her hands were always rough—like she scrubbed too hard trying to wash life off. She worked two jobs, sometimes three. None of them good. She didn’t hug. She didn’t coddle. But she made sure I ate, even if it meant she didn’t. “Life don’t care if you’re tired, Nia,” she’d say, lighting up with the window open, blowing smoke into the night like she was offering something to the stars. “So you don’t get to be either.” I used to think she was strong. Now I know she was just surviving. My father? I don’t remember the sound of his voice. Just a pair of polished black shoes and the deep brown of his hands when he lifted me once, spun me around, and told me I was “his star.” That star burned out the day he didn’t come home. Mama said he was Nigerian. An engineer. A dreamer. He used to sketch out blueprints on napkins and whisper about building a new life. Then one day, he packed those dreams in a duffel bag and disappeared without saying goodbye. After that, I learned to stop waiting for people to come back. Mama started dating losers. Men with calloused hands and cruel mouths. One worked at a garage and left behind a red toolbox. That was the start of it all. I opened it like it was treasure, even though the tools were rusted and heavy. I didn’t know what half of them were. But I learned. By ten, I could tell the difference between a socket wrench and a torque ratchet. By eleven, I’d fixed the neighbor’s moped just by watching a YouTube video on stolen Wi-Fi. By twelve, I was hanging around any shop that would let me sweep floors in exchange for time with the machines. Engines made sense. They were messy, loud, and complicated—but they followed rules. If something broke, there was a reason. A way to fix it. People weren’t like that. I learned not to trust smiles. Not to cry when Mama didn’t come home. Not to expect anything good to last. Kids at school thought I was weird, too quiet, too angry. Teachers said I had "a bad attitude" and "potential if I applied myself." Whatever the hell that meant. I stopped trying to be liked. Instead, I poured myself into machines. The first time I rebuilt a transmission, I cried—not because it worked, but because I’d done something with my own two hands that nobody could take away. That was the moment I knew I’d never need anyone. Now, I’m twenty-five. I run my own auto shop—barely—but it’s mine. It smells like grease, metal, and sweat. It’s loud and chaotic and rough. Just like me. People don’t expect to see someone like me running a garage. Black. Afro-Latina. Small but sharp-tongued. A woman with oil under her nails and steel in her spine. But I don’t care. I’ve got bills, bruises, and a reputation that keeps the creeps away. My circle’s tighter than a locked valve. I don’t trust easy. I don’t forgive fast. I don’t do second chances. Especially not with men. Love isn’t some fairytale to me. It’s a gamble. A setup. Something that leaves you empty and angry and alone. I’ve seen what it does to women like Mama—how it chews them up and spits them out in pieces. So I built a shell around myself. Thick, hard, unbreakable. And it worked. Until he walked in. Tall, broad, scarred like he wrestled with demons and won. Diego Bishop. That was the name on the fake registration. He had blood on his knuckles and shadows under his eyes. He looked at me like he knew every inch of my armor—and still wanted to peel it back. I should’ve told him to leave. Should’ve ignored the deep rasp of his voice, the way his gaze lingered too long. But I didn’t. Because some part of me—a small, broken, stupid part—was still waiting for something good. Still waiting for someone to st And that’s how it starts. Not with a spark. But with a ruined engine and a man I should’ve known better than