Heating Up

Excerpt:
"Hey, Sully!"

Sully whipped around to see Jay Burgess pulling his car into the garage. A quick glance told him Jay hadn't driven it into the wall again. He raised his eyebrows, waiting to hear what Jay needed.

"Car's too loose." Jay crawled out of the window and dumped his helmet on the counter. "See if you can work a little magic?"

Sully gave him a nod and found him a smile. "Bring her in," he said.

Sully wasn't in the mood to be working any damn magic today, not on cars, anyway. He'd been gonna take the day off, go with Denny to the hospital, but Denny'd put his foot down -- the good one -- and said no.

Goddamn Denny and his goddamn pride.

Denny was at the hospital, talking to the surgeon, a check-up to see how his leg was healing up after the last operation. Sully was at the track, staring at a big damn hunk of metal and grease and wondering what the hell he was doing with himself.

He didn't even have the car all the way up on the lift when he gave up. He turned to Mack and Tucker and waved at the car. "I gotta take off. I ain't feelin' so good. You guys take good care of Jay's car, okay?"

He had sick days, vacation days if the boss called him on it. He hadn't taken a single day off since he'd started this job months ago. He figured he had a damn good reason now.

"You got it," Mack said. "You looked like shit all day, man. You go on home. Take care of yourself. Track'll still be here tomorrow."

Sully drove himself on home to an empty condo. Denny was still up at the hospital. That gave Sully time to do some of the cleaning that they'd been letting slide lately and to get a nice dinner in the oven.

Sully put together a roast, with some carrots and potatoes. They could eat the leftovers for a couple days, he figured, and it would make a nice treat for Denny to have a good dinner all cooked up and ready for him when he got home. No beer or anything like that, not with Denny's pain pills, but Sully found the candles Denny'd bought a while back and set them up at the kitchen table and on up in the bedroom, too.

When everything was ready, Sully settled down on the couch. All he could do was wait. Sully was damn good at fixing things, but he was shit at waiting.