Coming Home(152)

“Socket wrench,” Tommy said with a salute before handing it off to her, and she lay back on the creeper and used her feet to propel herself underneath the car.

“You got the pan set up where I showed you?” Danny asked, crouching beside the car.

“Yep. So I just remove this plug, right?”

“Right. Once you get it off, it’s gonna come out fast, so move quick or you’ll get it all over you.”

“That’s what she said,” Jake said from the other side of the car, and Danny heard Leah laugh beneath it.

“Come on, Danny, you made that way too easy for him,” she said through a grunt, and he could hear the sounds of her trying to remove the drain plug.

After a minute he heard a muffled shriek, followed by the sound of oil hitting the pan.

“Oh my God, so gross,” she whimpered, and Danny laughed.

“Nice job! You did it.”

Her oil-covered hand came out from underneath the side of the car. “I need the rag to clean the plug.”

Tommy reached down and handed it to her before he lifted his eyes to Danny’s. “With all due respect, man? This is kind of hot.”

“Agreed,” Jake said.

He would have told them both to shut the f*ck up—if he hadn’t been thinking the exact same thing.

Danny stood and leaned back against the car next to the one Leah was working on, watching her legs shift with her movements as Tommy walked her through how to remove the oil filter.

She was the only reason he was okay. The only thing in the past three weeks that could make him smile.

That could make him forget.

The week after Bryan’s death had been unbearable. Danny had promised himself he would spend the last few weeks leading up to his sentencing making the most out of the time he had left, trying to soak up and appreciate every second of his freedom.

But enjoying himself in any capacity right after losing Bryan felt wrong. It felt callous and cold and disrespectful of his memory.

So he spent the week existing in a self-imposed vacuum; he got up, went to work, ate meals, and carried on conversations as if he were programmed to do it.

It was rote, and robotic, and forced, and empty.

The entire time, Leah was there—giving him space when he wanted it and support when he required it. He didn’t even have to vocalize what he wanted; it was like she could read his needs before he could, like she was always two steps ahead of him.

Danny knew she must have been remembering her own suffering, that she was using what she knew of the feeling to make everything easier for him.

He hated that she had to experience everything alongside him, but he didn’t know how to move on. He was stuck in some horrible catch twenty-two, torn between his veneration for his best friend and his promise to the woman he loved.

The weekend after they took Bryan off life support, he and Leah had been lying in bed, and out of nowhere she asked him to tell her something he’d always wanted to do. They spent the next hour talking about it, running through their lists, and at some point Leah had gotten up and grabbed a pen and pad; she divided the paper in half and labeled the left side “One Day”—Leah had always wanted to go to Santorini, and Danny wanted to learn how to fly a plane—and the right side was labeled “Right Now”—Danny wanted to have dinner at Per Se in Manhattan, and Leah wanted to spend an entire day at a spa.

They talked until Leah had filled both columns to the bottom of the page, and after she had placed the pad on the nightstand and lay back down beside him, she told him she wanted to accomplish as many of her “Right Now” items as she could in the next few weeks.