PAN
Here’s a sneak peek at this contemporary reimagining of the Peter Pan stories, complete with Wendy, Hook, Tink, and all the Lost Boys as sexy mechanics. There are no fantasy elements in this world, other than the "magic" that happens between the sheets. ;)
Peter
Using the back of my arm to wipe the grease-tinged drops of sweat from my brow, I duck out from under the hood of the Chrysler 300 and turn to grab my— Where the hell is it? Damn it, I hate it when I can’t find my shit. I start pulling open every drawer in my tool bench, one after the other. Knowing that what I’m looking for isn’t in the bottom drawer full of miscellaneous crap I never need, I squat down and open it to rifle through the contents anyway.
I shove aside a roll of paper towels, a mug of pens, a few dirty rags that I should really take home and wash…and then I freeze. There, in the back corner, is a small black box. The kind that a woman in love would freak out over. Except, if a woman opened this particular box, she’d be sorely disappointed. Any woman except for the one I’d intended to give it to, anyway.
The dust covering it is evidence of how long it’s gone untouched—half a dozen years, maybe more—but I know every detail of what’s inside without even having to open it.
I pick up the box and swipe my thumb over the top, displacing the dust as my brain displaces the mental lock on that part of my life. Memories of a distant place and time flood my mind like a dam breaking under the pressure. Cornflower blue eyes, long hair the color of maple syrup, and a musical laugh I’ll never forget as long I live.
When I was a boy, I thought she was my forever adventure. But just as they have a beginning, adventures also have an ending, and she had other things to explore. She wanted me to go with her, but even then, I knew there was nothing for me outside of Neverland. So she left, I stayed behind, and I did my best to bury her memory and avoid the ache I feel in my chest every time I think of her.
Fuck. Without opening it, I toss the box back into the drawer and slam it shut. Growling, I turn my agitation to my original problem and call out through the garage. “Which one of you assholes didn’t put my 7/16ths wrench back?”
A man with black hair, short on the sides and long enough to curl on top, sticks his head out from the customer service area next to my bay. “Sorry, boss.”
I roll my eyes. Even as a grown-ass man, his childhood habit of taking the blame for stuff is ingrained in him as it ever was. “It wasn’t you, Carlos. You’ve been manning the front desk all day.”
A boyish smile breaks across his face, popping the dimples in his cheeks that make every female customer swoon. “Oh right. Never mind.”
The heavy metal being pumped across the four garage bays from the huge speakers makes it hard for any of the others to hear me, so I make my way down the line.
“Nick, you take my wrench?”
The muscles in his arms bunch, and a sheen of sweat covers his dark brown skin as he drags a wheel from the Jeep on his hydraulic lift and drops it to the ground. “Nah, I’ve done nothing but new tires and rotations today. People out here acting like it’s about to snow in the middle of July or something.”
“They can act however they want as long as they’re spending money here and not over at Croc’s place.”
“I hear that,” he says, grabbing the wheel to haul it over to the tire changer. “Good luck finding your wrench, man.”
I know the next two bays will come up short as well. Thomas is our resident technology geek. Anything that has wires, computer chips, and mother boards, he’s our guy. In the shop, that usually means custom sound systems on a fun day or aftermarket alarms or remote starts on a boring one. Either way, I know Thomas won’t have my wrench. He has the strictest moral code of anyone I’ve ever known. He’d never take anything that wasn’t his without asking first.
Then there’s Silas. He’d never take anything that wasn’t his either, but for an entirely different reason. He’s an arrogant jackass—and I say that with nothing but love for the guy—who believes he’s just a hair better at everything than you are and all his things are of slightly better quality. For lack of a better term, Silas is a one-upper. It usually annoys the shit out of other people, but we accept it as one of the many individual idiosyncrasies that make up our group.
Silas and I are two of the three body work specialists in the shop, but it’s rare we get the opportunity to flex our skills. Pulling dents out of doors is child’s play when you can take a rusted POS and turn it into an award-winning, custom beauty. But if we don’t do the mundane crap that pays the bills, we won’t ever have the money to open up the custom rebuild business we’ve been wanting forever. Something we’ll get around to doing someday, but not anytime soon.
“Si,” I say with a nod as I pass.
He gives me a chin lift and his signature smirk before going back to sanding the bondo on a Chevy Malibu’s quarter panel.
I can hear the arguing before I even get to the next bay, which is nothing new when it comes to the twins. I find them standing underneath a lifted Toyota, one working on the exhaust and the other replacing brakes, their blond hair sticking up in different directions from running their hands through it as they do when working.
I stop in front of them and cross my arms
