He reached into the car and fiddled around for a bit before coming out with what I recognized as a spark plug. “These look pretty rough,” he said. “You can pick some up from a hardware store pretty cheap and replace them. Might fix the problem. If not, we can look into it later and see what else it could be.”

“Wow,” my dad said. “Thank you.” He shot me an approving look and a double thumbs up.

I smiled back, a little confused. Had Dean been watching car repair videos in his spare time since I’d warned him about this? I supposed it wasn’t the craziest possibility. The man was clearly very smart. Maybe he taught himself just enough from the internet to pull it off.

“Now what about this?” My dad asked. “The front driver side tire has a little wobble to it. I mostly only notice it when I really get going, but it–”

Dean suddenly gave the wheel a hard kick with the heel of his rubber boot. There was a creak of metal and the whole car shook. I frowned, tilting my head and staring. The wheel had looked a little crooked before his kick, but it actually looked normal now.

“Hah! How about that!” My dad clapped with excitement. “The old kick it and fix it technique, huh? I like this guy, Pearl.”

Dean shot me a wink, followed by a bewildered look that said he hadn’t actually expected that to work.

I lingered for the next half hour while my dad walked Dean around the car, asking about so many problems that I wondered why he hadn’t brought the damn thing into a mechanic’s shop by now. Dean managed to look like he knew more than enough to make my story believable. There were a few things he admitted he wasn’t sure about, but he managed to peel off the door panel and fix a wiring issue that was stopping the driver side window from rolling up. He even fixed the seats that wouldn’t adjust.

“Now Pearl’s mom and I were hoping for one of those massages,” my dad said, “but–”

“Actually,” I said. “Dean and I need to get to dinner. If we’re going to make our reservation, I need him to go get cleaned up now.”

“Oh, sure,” Dad said. “Thanks, Son.” He clapped Dean on the shoulder and smiled.

Son? Was it that easy to win my dad over? Or was Dean just that damn likable?

I felt my heart melt a little when I saw how Dean reacted to my dad’s words, though. Dean was smiling, but looking at my dad in a way that made me think his words had meant a great deal. It made me think of what he’d told me about his strained family life and how our first assumptions about people were so often wildly wrong.

I’d first seen Dean at Pollard over six months ago and pegged him as the man who had everything. I thought he was rich, blindingly attractive, charming, and probably never had to slow down for a speed bump in his life. But Dean’s life hadn’t been perfect. I saw that now, and seeing the man he was despite the things he’d been through only made me appreciate him more. It also made me wonder if the women he’d been with had ever stopped to see that in him. Maybe they only used him like a shiny toy they could take for a spin and leave behind when the maintenance got to be too taxing.