[b][center][h2]Joel Nicolosi[/h2][/center][/b]
    

Joel left Sio to her cooking and proceeded to haul in a few bags from the Jeep before strolling across the street to borrow the forklift from his neighbors at the machine shop as he’d done countless times before. They were long gone for the day, but Joel had a key to their small garage. Since he moved in they’d never minded him using it since the first time he asked and likewise whenever anyone that worked for the small business had any automotive troubles, Joel took care of them. It was typical Southside. As he putted back across the street and past the Jeep, raising the forks slightly to clear the curb, he figured he could just buy his own from his race winnings, but with his own lift, he would miss out on his regular excuse for shooting the shit with the employees. 

As he had asked before leaving for Japan, one of the owners of the small shop deposited the various parts and accessories that he ordered for Sio’s car in one of the two old shipping containers behind Apex Designs. Pulling the lock, the big metal door opened with a metallic groan revealing a sizable assortment of crates and cardboard boxes. He loaded the forks with the lighter items first and carried them back to the shop stopping briefly as he placed them in front of her car to smell the food cooking and steal a glance at her busily working the appliances in ways they’d never been used before. Next came a large wooden crate containing the new engine, then another with the transmission and another with the coilovers and new suspension. He was still missing several pieces that had not arrived, but the beauty of working on domestics usually meant the wait could be measured in days. 

He was figuring that he could likely have the whole car stripped down to the body by the end of the week as he walked back across the street glancing up at the red-orange evening sky. The scent of baked salmon floated by his nostrils again and nothing else suddenly mattered other than eating. More than two weeks of Japanese was enough for any red-blooded American. As he strolled into the kitchen, he oddly found the table set and ready, but no sign of Sio. He glanced around at the shop floor where the two cars sat quietly then looked up the stairs. [i]God, she was nosey[/i]. He thought. She couldn’t just sit patiently and wait. Remembering that a certain set of stairs had led to their first encounter back on the roof of City Hall, he crept up the stairs finding her wandering between his living room and bedroom.

The upstairs remodel had left for some storage space between the rooms where the old offices, parts area and conference room had been from the previous welding business. He crept around the outside silently, again channeling his younger days of playing Metal Gear Solid on Playstation and retrieved an old black driving helmet from the storage area. Carefully looking back around a corner he caught her examining one of the [url=https://stuartboothartinmotion.com/index_htm_files/ayrton-senna-mclaren-painting.jpg]oil paintings[/url] that hung on the wall of his “living room” and slowly, deliberately balancing the weight of each step, began silently slinking down the wall towards her. Knowing that if she just happened to turn or get bored, she would catch him and he’d look like a fool, but such rare opportunities required boldness of character and pressed on.

When he was only a few, short steps behind her he quietly flipped down the solid black tinted visor and waited.

[@Almalthia]