Friction and Fire

Confrontation Brewing Part 1

Alicia's words and Rhonda's own leave her with a sleepless night. By morning, her resolve is forged in steel. The garage is silent. The last rock song is over, and her promise plays on repeat. Wrenches and gears litter the workbenches like notes from an unfinished symphony. Rhonda's phone vibrates, her sister's name flashing bright as welding sparks. She reads the messages with clenched teeth, as if biting down against an old and familiar pain.

The building lightens as dawn creeps in, the windows aglow like glass teeth in an open mouth. They yawn against the muted walls, her tools, the silence. She studies each text, lips tight with a tempered fury. Her hair is unbound, wild with effort and emotion, a mirror of Alicia's untamed curls and unsettled heart. Her auburn waves are barely tamed as she scrapes them back, fastening them with a mechanic's patience and a sister's devotion.

Every moment from the night before courses through her, quicksilver and unrelenting. She'd left Alicia just before sunrise, curled like a child in a sea of pillows and soft lamplight. Alicia's final, weary breath is burned into her memory: "Thank you, Rhonda. For everything."

With no answers, Rhonda left a silent promise. A trace of warmth where she sat beside her sister, and a note beside a box of tissues. "He won't get away with this."

The ink was barely dry. She worked it from her skin, but not from her mind.

A deep resolve winds tighter and tighter in her chest. Her determination crests like a tidal wave, then crashes over the debris of doubt and second guesses. Her heart hammers like pistons driving her forward.

She drops the phone and flings open the windows, chasing out the specter of sleep deprivation. Her shop swallows the morning light, cluttered and shadowy. She breathes deep. Exhales. Tries to clear her head of all but a single thought: She's going to fix this.

Rhonda's workshop clothes have as many wrinkles as the sleepless night has left under her eyes. Her left boot comes untied and she kicks it off, angry and determined. She swaps it for an old sneaker, its pair long gone.

The screen flashes again. Another text. She ignores it, knowing it by heart.

You sure I can't call you?

I'll be okay. Promise.

I know you're worried, but please get some sleep.

Her hair had been tangled in a loose braid when she woke, inextricably Alicia's handiwork. As much love as hairstyle, and Rhonda could hardly bring herself to unravel it. She's the big sister, but last night they leaned on each other like equals.

She works the ache from her arms, both tender and muscular. From her bones. From the night spent crouched by Alicia's side, fierce as iron and just as stubborn.

The shop door jangles with a ghostly, metallic sound. Empty. Sounding of solitude and something almost mournful. Her voice returns to it, the message like the fresh tattoo on her soul: "I'm fixing this, Alicia."

Rhonda's jaw is steel and her resolve is harder. She hurls a rag to the floor, the muscles in her back ached and hard with stress. She talks to herself, words like blows. Her sharp tone ricochets off the walls and sings against the cold, discarded tools.

"That rich bastard thinks he can just decide?" she sneers, venting. Letting off steam. Not yet a true explosion, but enough to bleed some pressure from her heart.

Her bare fingers twist into a length of twine. They work without thinking, knotting it into something complex and utterly focused. The material bites back, rough and fibrous, but her hands have calluses from more punishing things. She bears down.

Her mind races with the anger of a protective sister. A scorned woman. Every second she's not fixing this is a second too long.

Each breath is a blast of the chilled, unused air. Every shift of her muscles is adrenaline made manifest, kinetic and unwilling to rest.

As the sound of the room grows to a climax, so does her resolve.

Her own words haunt her like the last note of a power ballad: "The day I need backup is the day pigs sprout wings." But now, they sound to her ears like a bitter question.

She twists harder, knots tighter, working herself into a tightly coiled fury.

It's either exorcism or luck when the door swings wide, and this time, it stays open.

Jimmy watches her like an eager dog, half-playful and half-afraid. His face falls slightly when he sees her deep-set scowl.