The Truth About Us

by Megan D. Martin

  “There’s no need to worry about that, son. While I am pleased that you are dating my daughter – and you should make note that I spoke those words out loud, because I have never said them to another soul in my life – I would have picked you for this job regardless of that.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, though what words I was going to say, I didn’t know. Luckily George kept going preventing me from looking stupid.

  “Being a shop foreman is about more than being good at working on cars, kid, at least it does when you work for me.” He folded his hands together on top of a pile of paperwork on his desk. “It’s about integrity. It’s about being a good delegator, an open mind when working with different types of people. It’s about being fair and generous, and understanding that this is a business where we are all only successful if we are able to work together in harmony.” The corners of his lips quirked. “Darren was never meant to be shop foreman. It’s why Red hung on for so long. Didn’t you think it was weird that he was still working here? Dude is like one hundred years old.” George chuckled. “He didn’t leave because he didn’t want to leave me in a position where I had to put someone like Darren in charge. Darren’s good at his job, don’t get me wrong and I’m lucky to have him as an employee, but he’s selfish. He doesn’t carry the traits of a leader.” He paused. “You do, Tyler. Which is why I want you to have this job.”

  Those words had floated around in my head all day, putting me on cloud nine in a way I had never been in my life. How often did your hero pay you the highest compliment you could receive and offer you your dream job all at once? I finally understood why people posted #blessed on their Instagram posts. I’d been feeling that way since the day George hired me and I laid eyes on Rowan. It was fate. And now I was the Steel Mechanics, Inc. shop foreman. Unbelievable.

  “You don’t got anything to say?” Darren moved toward me, bringing me back to the present.

  “Darren, you’re good guy and a good worker. I don’t know why I was offered the job and you weren’t. That’s something you have to talk to George about.” Everyone was looking at us now.

  “Oh, spare me the bullshit. We all know why you got the job.” He stood just a few feet away from me now, glancing around at all of our coworkers. “We all know it’s cause you’re fucking Row, here. Must be nice to get Daddy’s pussy and his money too.”

  It occurred to me in that moment that he had said something similar moments before when he started talking shit, but somehow it hadn’t registered in my head. He gave me a hard time at work a lot, saying things about Rowan that made me livid, that made me want to rip his fucking head off. Of course I never had. I didn’t want to lose my job and chances were, if I punched him in his stupid, meaty face at work, that was exactly what would happen. But this was too far – too much.

  Rowan was the most beautiful person, inside and out, that I had ever met. She was the fucking wind beneath my wings, like that old song went. I was done hearing him talk about her that way. I didn’t even realize I had hit him until the knuckles on my right hand throbbed. I looked down at them, smeared with blood. Darren’s blood. I caught him right in the nose and he stumbled back against the bar, blood gushing down over his mouth. There was a collective gasp around us.

  “Don’t you dare fucking talk about Rowan like that.” I took a step toward him.

  “Tyler, no!” Rowan clung to my arm.

  “Oh, you think you’re a big man because you sucker punched me?” Darren pushed off the bar to lunge at me, but Victor and several other technicians stepped in, grabbing Darren’s arm, effectively stopping him.

  “Let him go,” I ordered, but they didn’t comply.

  “Babe, stop. He’s not worth it. You know that.” Rowan tugged on my arm.

  “Chill out, Darren,” And “Chill the fuck out, dude,” were part of the slew of sentences that came from the guys holding Darren back. Blood dripped down onto his shirt from his nose. “You’re acting like a fucking fool. Do you want to lose your job?” Their words continued as I allowed Rowan to pull me away from Darren and out of the crowd of our coworkers.

  “Come on, you need some fresh air.”

  It was cool outside, although the effects of winter on the verge of disappearing altogether. I leaned back against the side of the bar.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, and I looked at her for the first time since the situation with Darren started inside.

  She was utterly gorgeous. She’d worn her hair loose tonight, not restricted by her long braid like usual. Her hair fell in long beautiful waves I loved, her honeyed eyes wide, and worried.

  “I fucking hate that guy,” I muttered.

  “I know. He’s the worst.”

  I nodded and sighed. Something else was bothering me. Something that had been bothering me for a long time, but I hadn’t had the balls to say anything about it. Too afraid of where it would lead, or how it would end.

  “You know what Darren said?” I asked her. She stood in front of me, just a few feet away, giving me space – but space wasn’t what I wanted.

  She blinked and tilted her head.

  “About only getting the job because I’m fucking you.”

  She looked away from me then, down at her black converse. She knew what I was talking about.

  “But I’m not. Fucking you, that is.”

  We’d been together over five months, Rowan and I. The best five months of my life – for sure, but we still hadn’t had sex. She’d spent the night with me plenty of times and we would mess around when she did, but it never went as far as sex – even though I desperately wanted it to. Part of me felt like an asshole for bringing it up, but we had never talked about it. Even when things were hot and heavy, she’d tell me she’d want me to come in her mouth or slide my cock between her breasts until I came. I loved all of these options. The couple of times I had reached for a condom from my side table, she’d stopped my hand and distracted me with her mouth, which I couldn’t deny. After we were both sated with orgasms, I’d lay in bed with her next to me, wondering what it was – why it was. I loved her. She knew that. She said she loved me too. I wasn’t going anywhere – that was for certain, but I wanted all of her. I needed all of her.

  “Tyler.” She still didn’t look at me, rubbing her shoe against the pavement, like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

  “Why don’t you,” I paused, sucking in a cool breath of air, “want to have sex with me?” I knew what I sounded like – like a pathetic desperate man.

  Her head snapped up, her gaze meeting mine. “Why don’t I want to? Tyler…” she shook her head. “Obviously I want to.”

  I frowned. “But we haven’t.”

  “No, you’re right. We haven’t.” She went back to looking at the ground and messing with her shoe. “It’s just kind of embarrassing, okay?”

  I wracked my mind for all of the embarrassing reasons she could have for not having sex with me even though she actually wanted to. “What is it?”

  “All right.” She sighed. “This is going to sound crazy, okay? I know it will, but well…” her words trailed off while she held me in suspense. Had something bad happened to her? Is that why she didn’t want to do it?

  “It’s okay, Rowan. If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to. I’m not trying to push you.” I ran my hands over my head. “Darren just pisses me off, and I don’t—”

  “No, I want to talk about it.” She cut me off. “I’ve wanted to talk to you about it from the beginning, I was just nervous about what you would think about me.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her that I could never think ill of her – didn’t she know that? She was like my fucking kryptonite, my weakness, but in a good way – but she spoke before I could.

  “This sounds dumb, but I’ve never done it, Tyler.”

  I blinked. “Never done what?” I asked dumbly.

  “Sex,” she muttered. “And I know, it’s weird. I’ve always wanted to do it, but I just never found the ri
ght person, or someone I felt comfortable doing it with, and then time went on and it never happened.” She shrugged. “And now I’m twenty, and I’ve never done it, which sounds freaking ridiculous, I know, but—”

  I cut her off with my kiss, pressing my lips against hers there on the side walk outside the Buzzy Brews. My heart pounded in my chest as our lips pressed together. Of all the things I thought she would say – the fact that she was a virgin had not entered my mind. Most people grew up non-traditionally these days, and having sex with a boyfriend or girlfriend in high school had become the norm. Rowan was so remarkable and beautiful, I had just assumed there was no way she hadn’t had sex with some asshole along the way.

  “I’ll wait for you, Rowan, for as long as you need, until you feel ready,” I said staring down at her, breathless from our kiss.

  “That’s the thing, I don’t want to wait. I just – I was nervous about being bad at it, or you being shocked about me being a virgin while we were doing it, and I-I just couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.” Her cheeks were pink.

  Her words made me hard.

  “I want to do it. Have sex. With you.” She smiled up at me sweetly, and I hoped she couldn’t feel the thickness in my pants, which would make this sweet moment more disingenuous somehow.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. “I love you so much.”

  She bit her lip, further driving me wild. “I love you too, Tyler.”

  I pushed through the swinging door at Steel Mechanics, Inc. It was another early morning for Dad and I, though this time it was to finalize paychecks for the last two weeks for his employees. While I was officially in charge of making sure everyone got paid – a job Dad had released to me sometime ago – he still liked to be involved and double-check the numbers. I didn’t take offense to this. Steel Mechanics, Inc. was his baby. He’d been in charge of every aspect of the business for decades, and I was happy to have a watchful eye over my work, especially when it came to money. I had forever had this fear that I would make a mistake and accidentally pay someone too much, or too little, causing a kink in our system.

  Today I wanted to talk to him about someone I thought was way over paid – Darren. Dad needed to save money for the shop with the way work had declined due to the lack of technicians. Well, Darren, our shop foreman since Tyler left, had somehow managed to get several raises, causing him to be the highest paid foreman we’d ever had – and yet he was simultaneously the absolute worst foreman we’d ever had. I didn’t think he deserved a pay cut because I didn’t like him – no, that didn’t affect my decision in the least (or least I didn’t think it did). There was no reason for us to be overpaying an employee who wasn’t doing his part when the shop was losing money. It just didn’t make sense. After getting the foreman job, Darren had been consistently late, acting like he owned the place. His pay raise had caused him to be lazy, rarely taking on serious work, which was also causing loss of money. I had all the paperwork of proof ready to go to show Dad, otherwise, I feared he wouldn’t believe me.

  He had a new affection for Darren that had started when Tyler left, initiating the beginning of a wide range of tech turnover. Darren had been one of the few who had hung around and practically sworn allegiance to my dad. Not to mention the hand I’d had in helping him be named shop foreman, which at the time had seemed like a small price to pay for what I was gaining in the long run, or rather, what I was gaining for Tyler. Dad had taken Darren’s allegiance very seriously, which led to increased pay he hadn’t deserved. Proof that Darren wasn’t acting as the most ideal employee would be something my dad would instantly want to deny. If he couldn’t trust his foreman, then who could he trust? I hated to put him in this predicament, but it was time for him to face the music, at least when it came to Darren.

  “Dad?” I called out as I stepped inside the shop, surprised to find all the lights off. At six a.m. he didn’t turn on every light, but he usually turned on the small lamp leading back to his office where we met, but all lights were out, including his office light at the other end of the shop. “Dad, are you here?” I moved slowly through the dark space. When Dad had the building constructed thirty years ago, he hadn’t been very good at planning. There should have been an outside door that led directly into his office, that way we could just enter through there instead of having to journey all the way across the shop, but, alas, there wasn’t, and he had always been too cheap to have one installed.

  I had almost reached the lamp when my feet bumped against something on the floor.

  I frowned and called out again. “Dad?” This was unlike him, he was always here and ready to go before me.

  I bent down and felt for the thing I kicked, surprised when my hand met warm skin. “Dad?” Panic bubbled through me, as I crawled over the body on the floor and reached for the lamp. Once the switch clicked on, I whirled around to see my dad sprawled out on the concrete floor, paperwork scattered around him. His eyes were closed and his skin ashy. I reached forward in a haze, feeling for his pulse, but I couldn’t find one. “Shit, Dad? Wake up!” I shook him, but he didn’t respond. “Fuck.”

  I pulled out my phone and dialed 911. I explained the situation to the operator on the phone.

  “Is he bleeding?” she asked.

  But I couldn’t see any blood. He looked unharmed, outside of not breathing.

  “I’ll need you to begin CPR until the ambulance can get there. Can you do that for me? The ambulance is on their way.” I hung up the phone and began CPR. I’d taken a CPR class in high school when I had my own little babysitting business sophomore year. I’d never had to use it before, but the movements came back to me in a rush. I began pumping on his chest.

  “It’s okay, Dad. I’m here. You just need to wake up,” I pleaded with him as I moved my hands on chest. “Just wake up. You’ll be okay. Did you hear the lady on the phone? The ambulance is coming. They’re coming and you’re going to be fine. You’re going to feel fine.” I kept pumping but nothing changed. “Dad?” I tilted his head back and breathed into his mouth twice, but still nothing. I started chest compressions again. “You have to wake up.” I said the words louder. He would be okay. He was my dad, he was George Steel, a self-made immigrant from Italy who started the most successful automotive business in town. He was a one of kind man, and my only family.

  “Dad.” The word came out as a gurgle as I continued to press on his chest. I hated the tears that dripped down my face.

  Keep your shit together, Rowan. He needs you to keep it together right now.

  It seemed like a moment and an eternity all at once before the ambulance arrived and the paramedics rushed into the shop with their medical equipment. With them there to continue CPR, I stopped and was moved to the background while they attempted to save his life. I stood alone, next to an old car up on a lift with my arms wrapped around my shoulders. I watched with hawk eyes as they worked.

  He will be fine.

  But I was wrong.

  He wasn’t fine and eventually they stopped trying. I begged them not to – this was George Steel – he was tough as nails. He couldn’t die. Not so soon, not at the age of fifty-six. He was too young. But those things didn’t seem to matter, because he did die, there on the floor of the shop he’d created with his bare hands and loved so dearly. He died alone on the concrete in the dark.

  He had dedicated his life to saving me, and this one time when he needed me… I couldn’t save him.

  Death was a strange concept for me. Growing up with just my dad had made my life simple, especially when it came to death. I hadn’t ever known my mom or her family, and my dad had left his family decades ago, with little to no contact with them in the mean time. Therefore I had never experienced the death of a family member – Dad was my only family.

  Of course I had known people who died. The first person I could remember dying was Lacey McCallahan when I was twelve-years-old and in seventh grade. She’d been an eighth grader, not really my close friend, but I knew her since we attended a
small local school. She was pretty and nice, on our middle school basketball team. Lacey had lived less than a mile from the school and had been run over by a semi-truck one evening walking home from practice. The trucker hadn’t even known he’d hit her until he stopped at the truck stop outside of town and found blood all over the front of his eighteen-wheeler.

  The whole town had practically collapsed in on itself in grief at Lacey’s death. I had been sad that she died; no one who was so nice deserved such an ending. But I had found myself more disturbed by the fact that everyone in our town acted like Lacey had been some sort celebrity, and that her death destroyed our little community. People went to her funeral and cried tears for a young girl they didn’t know. I hadn’t understood at the time that you didn’t have to know someone personally to be sad about them dying, especially when they were so young. But it hadn’t made sense to me back then, and I’d spent the majority of Lacey’s funeral not thinking about her, but instead, watching all the tears from all the people who had never known her.

  My new reality, where my dad, George Steel had died, was much different than the death of Lacey McCallahan. By later in the evening on the day he died, a Tuesday, everyone at the shop knew, and everyone had come to see me, had stared at me with sad eyes. They were all so sorry, they had all loved my dad, and loved working for him. They all said as much. Old Red had ventured from his farm on the outskirts of town to go with me to make the funeral arrangements the next morning so I wouldn’t be alone. He was my dad’s oldest friend, probably his first friend here in the states after he moved, and he seemed to be equally as shocked as I was. He was probably the only person whose eyes weren’t sad just for me, but for himself as well. There was a comfort in that – a shared sadness I hadn’t seen in anyone else.

  There was a sense of warmth from Red as we picked out the casket – those shiny boxes that cost a fortune.

  “He wouldn’t have wanted all this fancy shit.” Red whispered as we walked through our room of choices. I laughed on the inside, but outside I only nodded. “He would rather be covered in concrete and sunk to the bottom of the lake than have lie in one these overpriced boxes.”