Chapter Forty-Five

“God, I thought I was gonna die in there,” I groaned as the three of us walked out of class after the bell finally rang.

“You thought you were gonna die?” Jamie laughed. “At least you knew what he was talking about… What the hell is an intercooler, anyways?”

“Well…”

“Never mind,” she interrupted, “I don’t even wanna know.”

Miguel and I just laughed.

“Whose car is that?” Jamie asked as we walked through the parking lot.

“What d’you think of it?” Miguel asked, not answering her question.

“Is it yours?”

“Mine? It’s purple!” he practically shouted.

“Oh, come on, Miguel,” I teased. “You know you’ve always wanted a purple car… He wishes this were his car,” I continued, turning to Jamie.

“Whose is it, then?” she asked again as we walked up alongside the car.

“Mine,” I said, grinning as I unlocked the door.

“Really?” she asked, getting in. “Did you do all the work on it yourself, or did you buy it like this?”

“Buy it like this?” I laughed. “Girl, do you even know how much it would cost to buy a car like this?”

“Uhm…no…” Jamie answered slowly.

“Nah, I didn’t buy it like this. Did all the work myself.”

“All the work yourself…yeah, right,” Miguel added, smirking at me. “I’ll make sure to tell Leon you said that…”

“Okay, okay,” I hurriedly said. “With some help from my cousin and my…my ex.”

“Still, pretty impressive…” Jamie said, looking around.

“Yeah, whatever…” Miguel smirked.

“You need to shut the fuck up, unless you want to walk the rest of the way,” I said, glaring at him.

For once Miguel actually listened to me. He didn’t say another word until we were pulling into the driveway of Hector’s garage.

“Okay…I’ll see you in about an hour or so,” he said as he climbed out of the backseat.

After we dropped Miguel off, the car got pretty quiet. Jamie kept trying to start up conversations, asking how long I’d lived in LA, if I had any brothers or sisters, shit like that, but I only gave her short answers. Just didn’t feel like doing all the small talk bullshit…I never have been all that good at it anyways.

“So uh…here we are,” I finally said as we pulled up to the garage and I parked the car.