Complimentary Coffee: A Love Story
Amy Daws collected her laptop and the neighbor’s car. For today’s trip to Tires Tires Tires, she needed a fresh set of wheels. She’d already had the oil changed on her own car, her best friend’s car, and her mom’s car.
Walking into the waiting area was like coming home. The scent of Folger’s mingled with motor oil was sensually masculine. Her phone rang. It was the neighbor.
“Have you seen my car?” he asked.
“You needed an oil change,” Amy said.
“I got an oil change last week, and I need to get to work.”
“So do I,” said Amy, and she hung up on him. Her new book was waiting. It was called Free Cookies and it was about a woman named Jamie Paws who fell for a sexy mechanic while waiting on some spark plugs at Oil Oil Oil.
“Amy Daws? Is that you again?” came a voice from the doorway. It sounded like a rumble strip and she didn’t even need to look up to know who it was. Jack. In his grease-spattered coveralls that didn’t hide his bulging muscles, or the tattoo of a soccer ball on his neck. With a face and body like his, she didn’t even mind that he rooted for the wrong soccer club.
“It’s me, Jack. It’s me.” She waited for him to ravish her, but instead he just said, “How many cars do you actually have?”
“Hundreds.” In fact, just the previous evening she had applied for a part-time job at a car rental company, in the hopes of securing a new fleet to bring to Tires Tires Tires. He smiled and walked away, and she turned back to her work.
Mack ravished Jamie Paws atop the hood of a muscle car, and then in the bed of a pickup, and again on a roll-y wheeled thing he normally used to get under cars. Today, it was only Jamie’s hood he was under. “You really know how to rev my engine,” he panted as he gave her a seventh orgasm. “Be quiet and touch my spark plug again!”
It was a beautiful moment in a book already filled with more beautiful moments than she could count. The words flowed from her fingers like gasoline from a pump. She rewarded herself with a cookie.
“The free cookies at Oil Oil Oil are nothing compared to yours,” Mack told Jamie Paws as they lay side by side in the garage bay, recovering from the day-long ravishing. “I think I love you.”
“I love you too, Mack!” Amy Daws bellowed as she typed the words.
“It’s Jack, actually.” She hadn’t noticed him walk in.
“How long have you been standing there?” She slammed her laptop closed. “I was just… working on something.”
“What were you working on?” He moved closer, and her nipples beamed forth like headlights.
“A tiremance,” she said, noting that her pump was becoming more primed with each step he took. “I mean, a very serious non-fiction essay about science.”
“I’ve always felt you were very serious and science-y, Amy Daws.” Another step. She waited for him to ravish her, but he just handed the neighbor’s keys over. In her haste to get home and drive herself across the finish line, she didn’t even notice she’d left her laptop behind.
An hour later, she returned to pick it up. When she walked into Oil Oil Oil, Jack flipped the sign to Closed. She nervously ate a cookie while he retrieved the laptop from the office. Then she ate another.
“Amy Daws, I have a confession. I read your very serious non-fiction essay about science,” Jack said, placing the laptop gently on a nearby plastic seat.
Amy Daws was humiliated. She needed Tires Tires Tires to finish her book, and also to avoid replenishing her own coffee supply. But how could she return now? It would have to be incognito. She could do it. She could pretend to be a woman named Mamie Claws who also owned hundreds of cars and enjoyed complimentary coffee.
“I’m sor—” she began, preparing to collect her computer and shattered dignity.
“It was filled with more beautiful moments than I could count,” Jack continued. “May I ravish you?”
“You may, Jack. You may.”
Slowly, he unzipped his coveralls to reveal his giant, throbbing gearstick. It was as though someone had attached jumper cables to her lady-battery. She quickly removed her own clothes, so that she could receive her tune-up.
“Your suspension is perfect,” Jack said.
“I like your drive train,” Amy said.
With that, they proceeded to merge their undercarriages. Afterwards, they ate free cookies as Amy Daws finished writing the novel that would go on to earn her NYT bestselling status. Jack printed out an invoice for the copious amounts of coffee and cookies she had consumed, but tore it up.
Tires Tires Tires was not a place for accounting. It was a place for love.
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