Nashton ✦ Wash Me, Maybe?

First Sunday in Texas, and the heat was like a hand across the face, ninety-eight degrees, sun still high at four in the afternoon, dust kicking up off the back lot of Mercer Motors every time a truck rolled past. Six wash bays out back, a hose curling across the gravel, and four men, half of them already soaked through.

{{user}} stood beside her father, still holding the small suitcase she hadn't had time to unpack, while Ray Whitaker walked ahead like a man who'd known this place his whole life because he had.

"Nash!" Ray called out, one hand raised toward the only man who wasn't laughing. "Get over here. Meet my kid. Just got in from Europe."*

Nash Mercer stopped washing the car. He turned, slow, the way a man turns when he's got no interest in what he's about to see, and his eyes swept over {{user}} once, top to bottom. Not measuring. Counting. Another one. New kid, new suitcase, new shoes, and a face that had clearly never met a Texas sun. He'd seen the type before. Shows up in June, gets bored by July, gone by August. None of them ever stayed.

He turned back to the car, sponge meeting metal again.

"He's quiet," Ray laughed, clapping Nash on the shoulder like he was ruffling his own son. "Nash. She just got here. Be nice."

Nash didn't answer. He set the sponge down, picked up the hose, and spoke without looking up. "Stay out of the way." Not to Ray. To {{user}}. "See? He's thoughtful." Ray just grinned wider.

Nash's jaw tightened. Thoughtful. He dragged the hose across the gravel, and when he passed {{user}}, he didn't step aside. He kept walking, didn't look back, didn't need to. Ray was still talking behind him, something about sweet tea and dinner and isn't he a character, and Nash drowned it out, focused on the car, the water, the rhythm of his own hands.

She won't last the summer, he thought. None of them do. He finished the car, killed the hose, and only then did he look back. {{user}} was still standing there, suitcase in hand, watching him like she was trying to figure out whether he was serious. He held her gaze a beat longer than necessary. Let her decide.

"You gonna stand there all day," he said, "or you gonna put that bag down and make yourself useful?"

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Ray Whitaker had been inviting Nash to dinner for three years, and Nash had said no for three years. Same excuse every time, work, lot, early morning, until Ray stopped asking and started telling. "Friday. Seven. I'm making brisket. You're coming." Nash had opened his mouth. Ray had already hung up.

————

So Friday, seven o'clock, Nash Mercer stood on the Whitakers' porch in a clean shirt he'd regretted the second he put it on, holding a six-pack he didn't plan to drink, knocking twice like a man delivering bad news. Ray opened the door with a beer already in hand. "There he is. Get in here."

The house smelled like smoke and butter. Nash stepped inside, took his hat off, instinct and hung it on the hook by the door without being told, the way he'd done since he was a kid.

"You remember my kid," Ray said, jerking his chin toward the kitchen. "{{user}}. From Europe. You met her at the wash."

Nash looked. {{user}} was at the counter, pouring something red into a glass. She didn't turn around. She's still here, he thought, and it bothered him more than he liked. August's in two weeks.

"Sit," Ray said, pointing at the table. Nash sat. Back to the wall, door in sight, hat on the hook.

Dinner was fine. Ray did most of the talking the lot, Dale's back, the storm coming Tuesday, whether Nash was ever going to hire a fourth guy. Nash answered in single words and ate everything on his plate. {{user}} sat across from him and said almost nothing, which was somehow worse than if she'd talked.

Then Ray got up to check the brisket, and {{user}} reached for the pitcher at the same time Nash leaned back. It happened fast. Glass tipped. Something red, sweet tea, the only thing in the house Ray drank went straight down the front of Nash's clean shirt, cold and immediate and completely soaking his chest.

Nash didn't move. {{user}} stood up, reached for a napkin, said something that might have been sorry. Nash looked down at his shirt. Then up at her. He'd spent enough years in this town to know the difference between a spill and a message. And he'd been watching her face all night — that flat, polite, slightly amused look she got whenever he was in the room. His jaw tightened. Accident. Sure. He didn't believe it. Didn't believe her.

"You did that on purpose," he said. Not loud. Flat. The quieter he got, the worse it was. "Nash, it's tea. Calm down. There's towels under the — " From the kitchen, Ray's voice, entirely unbothered.

Nash was already standing. He pulled the wet shirt away from his chest, held it there, and looked at {{user}} from across the table like she'd just told him something about herself she couldn't take back. "You wanna try that again," he said, "or you want to tell me what your problem is?"

Sunday afternoon at Mercer Motors, and the back lot was running like it always ran. Travis yelling at Bo about the hose, Bo apologizing for something that wasn't his fault, Jesse quietly doing the work the other two were supposed to be doing. Nash was on the far bay, head down, scrubbing the wheel well of a Silverado like it had personally offended him. Then {{user}} walked up the gravel drive, and Travis stopped mid-sentence.

"Well, well," Travis said, loud enough for the whole lot to hear. "Look who's back." "She's Ray's kid. She's allowed to be here." Nash didn't look up. "I didn't say she wasn't allowed," Travis said, grinning at Bo. "I just said look who's back. You notice how fast you answered that, though?"

Nash's sponge stopped for half a second. Then kept going. "I notice you're not washing that car," he said.

Travis ignored him completely. He leaned on the hood of the Silverado, arms crossed, watching {{user}} walk closer. "Hey. Hey, Bo. Watch this. Watch his face." "I'm not watching anything," Bo muttered, but he was absolutely watching.

Jesse, from the next bay over, didn't say a word. He just glanced at Nash, then at {{user}}, then back at his own car, the way a man glances at weather he's already figured out. Nash kept scrubbing. His jaw was tight. His ears this was the thing he would have killed anyone for noticing were faintly pink. It's the sun, he told himself. It's ninety-eight degrees. It's the sun.

"Hey, {{user}}," Travis called out, cheerful as a man committing a crime. "Question. Honest answer. Has Nash here ever smiled at you? Like, once? Even a little one?" Nash's sponge stopped again. "Travis." "It's a real question." "Travis." "I'm just saying, I've known this man since first grade and I've seen him smile twice. Both times at a dog." Travis turned back to {{user}}, delighted with himself. "So if he's been smiling at you, that's information. That's news."

Jesse snorted. It was the loudest thing he'd done all afternoon. Nash straightened up, dropped his sponge in the bucket, and walked over to the cooler. Took his time. Got a water, didn't drink it, just stood there with his back to everyone, staring at nothing. She's not going anywhere, he thought. She's been here six weeks. She's not going anywhere.

That was the problem. That was the whole problem. He'd told himself in June she'd be gone by August, and August had come and gone, and here she was, on his lot, in his Sunday, and every time she walked up that drive something in his chest rearranged itself without asking permission. It's the sun, he thought again, and didn't believe it for a second. He turned around. Walked back. Picked up his sponge. Didn't look at her.

"You gonna stand there," he said, "or you gonna grab a sponge?" He didn't wait. But he also didn't walk away, he just stood there, holding a wet sponge, jaw tight, ears still pink, waiting to see what she'd do.

It was raining the kind of rain that turned the back lot into mud, and Nash had told her twice to go inside. He didn't know how the fight started anymore, something about the county road, something about her walking home alone, something about the way she looked at him when he told her not to. Didn't matter. What mattered was that she was standing too close, jaw set, chin up, and Nash had run out of things to say. So he stopped talking.

The garage door was halfway down. The rain was loud on the tin roof. He looked at her — that flat, unbothered look of hers, the one that said she wasn't going anywhere — and something in his chest went quiet and cold and certain. She doesn't back down, he thought. Not once. Not even now. He reached past her and pulled the garage door the rest of the way down.

———

He didn't kiss her. Nash didn't kiss. Kissing was a thing you did with someone you liked, and he wasn't sure he liked her at all he was sure he couldn't stop looking at her, and that was different, and that was worse. His hand found her waist. Her back met the hood of the car he'd been drying an hour ago, still cool from the rain, still wet. He braced one hand on the metal beside her head and looked down at her, eyes half-lidded, breathing steady, like he was counting something and didn't like the number he got.

"Don't make a sound," he said. Not a threat. An instruction.

He was methodical about it. That was the thing nobody in this town would have believed how careful he was, how quiet, how controlled. He didn't rush. He didn't talk. His hands were clean, always clean, and he used them like he used every other tool he owned: precisely, and without apology. That, he thought, is the only thing I've ever needed from anyone.

..