First-line meme by grimm_psyke ...

It's 2 in the morning, I'm supposed to be doing an English paper, and I finally finished this.  ...Don't judge me.  >_>

...Oh hey, 2400 words exact.

I winced at the sound of several, what sounded to be, generously sized rocks hitting the side of my car.  Rubbing my eyes, I slowly sat up, ducking instinctively as a rock half the size of my fist thudded into the clear packing tape covering the hole in the back seat window.  The tape held, and I grinned.  I knew the 2.6-mil tape had been worth the investment.

Yawning, I took a peek out my own window to see who was throwing rocks this morning.  The rusty old green Jetta creaked as I moved in my seat, and I patted the wheel fondly.  It was a sturdy little thing, covered with dents now by many rocks over many months.  Nothing new.

Huh, this was a surprise.  The manager of the fine establishment that sold nasty greasy little burgers (I knew because I’d stepped on one in the parking lot and it oozed oil for me onto the pavement) was the one chucking the rocks this morning.  Usually managers sent out employees to do the chasing away, but I guess this place was so nasty that he couldn’t afford to hire anybody.

Another rock hit my door and I sighed.  Some people were so impatient. “I’m going, I’m going,” I muttered, turning the key in the ignition. “No need to worry that I’ll keep away customers eager for a heart attack.” The engine sputtered to life and I drove out of the parking lot. I hummed as I turned onto the interstate, driving along. I reached absent-mindedly for the dry fruit bars sitting beside me in the front passenger seat, only to find nothing except for fake leather upholstery and two empty wrappers. "Okay," I said, not at all perturbed. "No breakfast yet then. And," I added, glancing at the needle hovering dangerously close to the E, "you need breakfast too. Let's see if I can find some restaurant in need of a dish washer."   

I had done this so many times before I no longer really remembered when I had started. I knew that one day my family had finally kicked me out for being the black sheep. I hadn't minded too much, packed some clothes, a few CDs, and left with my money and my car. With no friends' at which to stay, I drove around town sleeping in my car in random parking lots and on the streets until I was notorious for doing this and was chased out of town as well. Well, the police didn't quite put it that way. They told me if I left they wouldn't bother to come after me for all the parking fines I had racked up. Now who would argue with such a deal?

From there on there's little to tell. I'd drive into a town, find a job, and stay until I was kicked out. Or until I figured my trusty little Jetta was tired of being pelted with rocks, which was happening more and more the farther I traveled. Maybe people were just getting meaner or something.

Taking a random exit, I again turned back into another small town. The radio crackled, and I whacked it, then tried to make up for that by turning the knob for the radio more gently. I looked back up at the street just in time to slam on the brakes as an old man stepped out onto the street without looking. I had just enough time to see the old man sniff at me as he sauntered past the front of my car before my whole body flew forward, held back only by my seatbelt.

Aside from a mild case of whiplash, a helpful passerby told me after I’d been pulled from my car and inspected, l was fine and I’d done everything right and it wasn’t my fault old man Jenkins or whoever had walked out like that and that Ms. Grinthe had rear-ended me. Yeah, I was fine, but my car wasn’t.

Things like police and contact information and tow trucks all passed by in a blur. I sat down at some point, then had to get up again to reclaim my clothes and CDs. The Jetta was hauled away slowly, dribbling something in a mournful little trail. I watched it go numbly. It had been with me for so long; I had patched it up so carefully so many times! And now it was too far gone for anyone to save. My car would end up in a landfill somewhere, waiting to be crushed or torn apart ruthlessly for scrap metal.

Presently I found myself sitting in a little restaurant of some sort, staring blankly at the fake wood grain of the table in front of me. Then a glass of something yellow slammed down in front of me and I jumped a foot in the air before catching at the table, wheezing in fright.

“You know, I ain’t never seen a man so in shock after a little accident like that! Honey, you ain’t got a scratch on yeh, so why’re you looking like someone’s died, here?”

She was tall, and looked younger than she sounded, tall and skinny with straight black hair that fell past her shoulders and grey eyes that slanted oddly.  Standing legs akimbo, she seemed to tower over me for a moment, hands against her apron strings, and I sputtered wordlessly.  She sniffed and pointed a finger at the glass.  “Drink that.”  At my look, she added, “It’s juice and it ain’t gonna kill you.”

I still gave the liquid an experimental sniff before I took a sip, taking time, stalling to study the girl.  She couldn’t have been much older than I was, I thought, and realized I had finished the entire glass in only a few gulps.

“Thirsty, are we?  You sit tight there.”

Since I wasn’t entirely sure where I was to begin with, I had no problems with doing as she said.  I stared at the empty glass in my hand, turning it so the drop in the bottom slid around in a circle.  Then I looked up, around me.  This was a restaurant, all right.  And most likely lunchtime now, judging by the people here though somehow all the tables in my immediate vicinity were quite empty.  I frowned and looked back to the glass, wondering what I was doing.

I smelled the coffee before the girl put down the mugs.  Two, I saw.  And a sandwich on a chipped white plate.  "I'm not hungry," I tried telling the girl as she sat down across from me .

She scoffed immediately.  "Nonsense," she said.  "Never met a man who wasn't hungry, 'less he had his eyes on a girl. And sometimes even then.  Now eat."

"I'm staring at you," I pointed out, grinning.  "Besides, I can't pay for it.  Unless you have dishes for me to wash."  I couldn't quite look away from the sandwich.  I could see meat.

"Oh, there's dishes aplenty, so you hardly need to worry about that," the girl said, eyeing me.  "Now eat.  I didn't bring you that for you to stare at."

I scarcely needed more convincing.  With one last look at her, I picked up the sandwich and took a bite. 

It was pure bliss.  The lettuce was crisp, the tomato juicy - the meat was cold sliced turkey complimented by a sharp cheese and all on a whole wheat bun.  Mustard, spicier than I was used to, oozed out between my fingers.  I had not had anything like this in months.  Bulk fruit bars and granola were cheaper than soups and sandwiches, and not nearly as appetizing.

I was licking my fingers clean when the girl got up and came back a little later with another plate and a coffee pot.  On the plate was a thick slice of fresh blueberry pie.  My fingers twitched for the fork.  “Really, I don’t need…”

A raised eyebrow was all that was needed to tip the already precarious balance.  I sighed, “A lot of plates tonight,” and tucked in.

“So tell me why you show up here with nothing but CDs and a car, and suddenly look like your best friend died when it got totalled.”

The second forkful of blueberries glued itself to the back of my throat.  I choked and coughed it back up.  Impassive, she pushed one of the mugs at me and watched as I took a gulp.  When I was sure I wasn’t going to have blueberry juice going up my nose, I sighed and set into a routine of talking between bites and sips of coffee.  I told her about being kicked out, wandering across the country in my Jetta, how it had brought me so far.  How it was gone now.  How, as long as I’d had a car, I had thought that I would be okay.  By the time I was done, I had drank three cups of coffee and really needed to pee.

“There’s no windows or back doors,” she warned me when I got up.  “So no running out on your dishwashing debt.”

I snorted, offended.  “Where would I go anyways?” I retorted.

When I got back to my table again the girl was gone.  A guy in an apron pointed me to  the front of the restaurant with one of the mugs he held.  "Gwyneth is waiting for you in the kitchen.  Just go through the door marked 'Staff Only'."

I sighed.  The upside to things was that I no longer had to pay for gas now with no car.  It wasn't a very big upside.  I pushed through the door and was assaulted by a pair of gloves.  ''Gwyneth," I called, pulling them on.  "I've never actually met anyone named that."

She appeared from behind a counter with a sniff.  "My mother was somewhat eccentric," she declared almost haughtily.  "If you mean to talk, you can do it while washing."

I was sure she didn't mind my helping her do her job since she stood at my shoulder at the sinks.  I didn't actually mean to talk while I worked, so I didn't and it was quiet except for...well.  Quiet for a busy restaurant kitchen.  Until Gwyneth spoke.  "So now that you have no car, what are you going to do?"

There was a hole in my glove.  My right hand was getting pruny, and I held it up to let the water run out.  "Thank you very much," I said, "I had been trying not to think about that.  But no, no, it's much too late now to not speak of it."

She presented me with a flat stare.  I stared right back.  "A park bench," I said. "You have any of those here?  Or a bus station works too.  And then I'll have to find a job.  Or hitch a ride to someplace where I can."

There was a bit more of that stare and then she looked down with a face that said she was debating something.  Since she wasn't talking, I went back to scrubbing plates.

''I've got a house. I don't use the basement suite.  It's open for rent – "

"If you'll recall, I have no mon–"

" – and my house needs some painting done, I have the paint but not the time – "

"You know how when you're a little girl your mother tells you not to talk to strangers – "

" – and you know, tonight is fine, no charge, because you obviously need a place to stay – "

" – and you're obviously crazy, Gwyneth, I could be a serial killer for all you know – "

" – and do you want someplace to stay or not?!"

Park bench or a couch.  Bed.  At least a roof over my head.  I presented her with my most rakish grin.  “Y’know, that’s not such a bad idea – ”

“Stop being stupid and stop looking at me like that, you look absolutely ridiculous.”

So that was how I spent a night in her house in the bedroom in her basement.  And I don’t believe either of us knew how it turned into a second night, and then a third.  And that turned into one week, and by the end of two it was normal to bump into her as I walked out the front door that we both shared, me carting pails of paint in old clothing, or nails and a hammer, or heading out to the shed to give her lawn mower a few hefty kicks until it started again.

In between playing handyman for Gwyneth, she had somehow persuaded the restaurant to let me work there, and so I did.  I had hardly needed to apply; the owner looked me up and down, squinted at Gwyneth, and grunted something along the lines of, “If he makes a mess you’d better clean it up, girl.”  Or something to that effect.

After that it was all a blur.  Most of it was a pleasant blur – it wasn’t all that way, but somewhere in the months and then years that followed were flowers, and fights, and tears and laughter and broken plates and awkward dates and all manners of things that tend to happen in a growing relationship.

It was on our fifth anniversary while Gwyneth was telling me to wipe blueberry juice off my chin that she handed me a small, oddly-shaped package wrapped with duct tape.  “Here, because I know how you get all weirdly sentimental, whatever you might say,” she said, staring pointedly at the pie on the dinner table, and rescued the remaining half from little Jeremy.

“Hey now, watch those accusations,” I complained, and peeled open the package.  Then I blinked.

A jagged, rusty piece of metal…green paint on one side…  Some things in life are instinctive.  I knew what it was instinctively.

“Now if it wasn’t for that ratty piece of junk who knows where we’d be now?” she inquired, only just mildly disdainful.

“Stuck here,” I said, waving my arm at her, “you, and I would be gone, gone, gone!  Travelling across the countryside – ”

She pulled the remnant of my first car from my hand and straddled my legs.  “I think I’ve done some poor girl in another town a favour,” Gwyneth said drily.  “Now that’s enough sentimentalizing and drama, or I’ll throw it away.”

I laughed.  Who’d have figured? I thought with a grin, and I leaned forward to kiss her.