Free How to Save a Life by Amber Nation

and by the sounds of what was currently blasting through the speakers, Ray wasn’t. Foreigner’s “Juke Box Hero" was up almost a few notches too high, but that was how we worked best.
    Walking further into the bay, I immediately felt myself relax as the tension left my body. Just the lingering smell of grease and oil, my bad mood was rapidly dissipating. Now let’s hope that he had some disassembled car that I could tinker with.
    I went to the old Magnavox Shelf Stereo, something that was made probably circa 1990 and turned the volume down by using the control dial. Yeah, no remote for this thing, it even had the Cassette player along with the CD player. But inside a dingy garage, where there was grease literally in every nook and cranny, you didn’t want to have some top of the line iPod docking station only to be ruined by a miscalculated thrown wrench when you were aiming for the toolbox. Not that I was speaking out of experience.
    “Whoever that is better have a damn good reason for turning down my song during the best part," I heard Brock’s muffled words before I saw him as he was laying on a creeper nestled up underneath a newer Ford Fusion. He used his legs to roll himself out from beneath the car and the instant he saw me, the scowl he had on his face disappeared.
    “What if I would’ve been a customer?" I asked. Even though Brock was the manager, Ray still owned the garage and he wouldn’t take that shit from anyone even if Brock was his son.
    “I knew it was you. I don’t know anyone else who has a dopey ass walk. You shuffle your feet or some shit, it can be heard over the stereo, which wasn’t that loud." He slid back under the car on the creeper, “Why don’t you make yourself useful and hand me an Allen wrench."
    I walked over to the Industrial Craftsman tool chest and retrieved the tool requested and ‘shuffled’ my way back, handing him the wrench.
    I decided to lean against Sheriff Mitchell’s ’05 Monte Carlo SS. It wasn’t anywhere close to being new and it had some issues, but I absolutely loved its sleek black features.
    “So what brings you here?" Brock asked.
    “What do you mean? I come here all the time. I was going to see if you needed a hand with anything."
    I heard him say, “Hmm," before he pulled himself back out from underneath the car he was working on and raised up into a seated position, resting his arms on his bent knees, spinning the wrench in his hands.
    “I know you come here to work and that was my first initial thought that crossed my mind until I saw the guilty look on your face. You may not know or admit it, but you need to talk more than you need to work."
    That was just like Brock, he got straight to the point. No beating around the bush.
    I lifted my hat up off of my head and brushed my hand over my hair before barely setting it back on my head, the bill pointing towards the sky.
    “I just got to thinking about my Ma and then that led to thinking about Hannah. Having Sheridan stay with me is just letting all my pent up emotions run wild."
    Brock knew everything there was to know about Erin and Hannah. One night after we had put a restored engine into an old pickup truck, which was a bitch of a task, we cracked open a few beers and then he broke out the tequila. It started being guzzled down freely and the words just started falling out of my mouth. Before I had a chance to reel them back in, the entire story had already been told.
    Would I have told Brock my past without the copious amounts of free flowing alcohol that was coursing through my bloodstream, I couldn’t really say one way or the other.
    “Ok, let me get this straight. You have an attraction to Sheridan, yes?" I hesitated for only a brief moment before I reluctantly nodded my head. He continued on, “So you don’t want to act on that attraction, because…" He shrugged his shoulders, “You feel remorse because of Erin?"
    “Remorse for Erin? Absolutely not… Fuck that." I took a defensive