I stared at Renee’s response, rereading it to make sure I wasn’t getting anything confused. I expected her to turn me down, maybe not even respond. But she hadn’t. She was on her way here.
“Shit.” I slipped the phone back into my pocket and looked down at my dirty jeans and grease-smeared hands from working on the engine. I was tempted to run up to my bunk and change, but that would be stupid. I was at work. It was my job to look like this.
“Hey kid, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Paisley, one of my crew, teased, coming up behind me. “Are you talking to your girlfriend?”
I hadn’t told anybody about Renee, let alone any other girl, but Paisley constantly teased me about it.
“Her name is Renee,” I said, neither confirming nor denying that Renee Lyon was my girlfriend. “She’s going t
