"Long time, no see, Ray."
Ray turned around in the chair to see his ex-boyfriend from high-school, Noah.
"Still friends with Lily I see," Noah smirked, even though Ray was sitting down, their eyes met perfectly.
"Uh yeah, me and her are still friends." Ray responded, not knowing what else to say.
"Pity, remember how Lily had a crush on you in middle school?" Noah's tone almost sounded as if he was trying to make their day worse.
"Uh... she did?" Ray glanced over at Lily, trying to get ideas on how to respond. Lily shrugged, she had an awkward expression on her face.
"Yeah she did, she used to draw you in the spare pages of her notebook all the time!" Noah laughed, Lily seemed uncomfortable with these old memories being dug up and shoved in her face as if to remind her of what a fool she was.
"Look, Noah, what did you walk over here for if you're just gonna shove random memories we wish could be forgotten in our faces?" Ray said with a steady tone.
"Oh I just overheard your conversation. Still living at home, eh?" Noah almost seemed like he was bragging that his life is doing better than theirs is.
"Yeah, the rent is free. Besides I also get free food and love." Ray tried making his situation sound less depressing.
Noah stared at Ray in silence before saying,
"You win, cya later tall stuff."
"Sure, nice (not) seeing you again." Ray said.
Lily and Ray had a small eyebrow conversation before the realization had hit him,
"Wait.... did he call me 'Tall stuff'?"
"Uh, yeah I think he did.." Lily looked at him, dumbfounded.
"Is 6'2 really that tall?"
"Uhh, yeh."
The waiter walked up to their table, setting a cold class of lemonade in front of Lily.
"Here's your drink Miss."
Lily nodded to the waiter.
The waiter pulled a notepad out from his apron pocket.
"Anyways what would you like to eat, Miss?"
"I'll have French toast with eggs and bacon."
The waiter quickly wrote that down. He looked at Ray, his face was giving off the thought of "Do I feel like keeping my job, and asking again or deciding to listen to what he already had told me and get in trouble for 'ignoring' a customer and not asking them what they wanted to eat.".
"Still sure you aren't hungry?"
"Uh-huh." Ray twisted a random strand of his hair around his finger, bored.
The waiter walked away, leaving Lily and Ray to sit there silently doing their own thing. Lily pulled the wrapping off one end of the straw and blew the other end in Ray's face. Ray made an over-exaggerated frown and stuck his tongue out at her as if he was a little kid. She smiled and laughed, then sipping some of her lemonade. Ray sunk his head and arms in his hoodie, soon realizing he didn't have a shirt on underneath.
"Shit!"
Lily looked up.
"You okay in there?"
"Yeah I just realized a forgot a shirt today."
"So... does that mean you'll be shirtless at work today?"
"Most likely, being that the garage gets super fucking hot."
Lily laughed at his predicament.
"Not funny!"
"You're gonna have girls staring at you all day!"
"Yeah, they do that anyways because I look like Edward!"
"Who's Edward...?"
"You know... Edward from Twilight? Shiny vampire guy? Attractive?"
"Ray you're far from attractive."
"Oh shut up!"
The waiter came back with the food, Ray poked his head out of the dim pink cave that was his hoodie. He looked like dog that had just smelled the smell of heaven.
Lily noticed that he was nearly drooling at the smell, and gave him some bacon.
"Bacooonn."
Ray got enough of his hands out of his hoodie to hold and nibble on the bacon.
...
When they had finished their meal, Ray paid, and him and Lily walked outside. He was looking around the autumn setting to notice a girl pointing at him and her friend getting excited, he didn't have enough reaction time to realize they had started running at him. Lily slowly inched away from the most likely insane girls with the expression of "you're on your own".
The girl that had pointed at him was blonde and taller than the other girl, who had black hair.
"Hi." The blonde said ecstatically.
"Uh... hello."
"We wanted to know if you're in a vampire cosplay group, or something." The blonde said, her friend close behind her clinging to her arm while nodding.
"Umm... I'm not a vampire cosplay, I was born like this. I'm albino."
"Oh." The blonde looked dumbfounded.
"Big let down," The girl with black hair chipped in from behind.
"Let's go Beatrice." The black haired girl pulled her friend away by the sleeve.
"Ok bye..." Ray awkwardly waved.
Lily giggled, she was holding her phone up in his direction.
"I'm definitely posting this."
Ray gapped and tried to grab her phone from her.
"No, I'm not going down in history like this!"
"Too bad! It's already posted!"
...
Ray signed in on the small clipboard at the garage, he focused on the little logo at the top of the paper. It had a cartoony car with a smile driving by the words "Touch-up trailblazer".
"Dawson!"
"Yeah Ray?"
"Got anybody I could get to?"
"Uh, yeah I think there's a person waiting in car slot 23."
"K! Thanks."
Ray walked through the open space of the garage and into car slot 23. A young man, maybe in his teen years, was sitting on a waiting bench.
"Aye, need help?"
The teenager looked up at Ray and blinked.
"Oh uh.. yeah my car for school has been making weird noises recently and I just want to make sure it's not gonna breakdown on me."
Ray looked over at a nice Chevrolet Corvette, it was lime green and roughly 2 years old.
"What kind of noises?" Ray queried as he walked over to the car, running his fingers along the hood.
"Eh, hissing noises and squeaks."
"Ah, ok."
Ray started to sweat so he took his hoodie off and put it on the work table. He slid the car lift out from its corner and got it under the car and turned the hydraulics on so the oil flowed into the cylinder, pushing the piston into the underneath of the car, lifting it into the air.
"You must work out." The teen said from behind him.
Ray turned his head "Eh?"