Under the Hood: A Mechanic Romance

The engine made a sound like a dying animal and then went silent.

I coasted my 1969 Mustang to the side of the road—or what passed for a road in this part of rural Virginia—and sat there for a long moment, staring at the dashboard like it might offer me an explanation. The temperature gauge was buried in the red. Steam was rising from under the hood. And I was approximately forty miles from the nearest AAA-approved service station.

This was supposed to be a simple weekend trip. Drive out to the cabin my father had left me, assess the property, decide whether to sell it or keep it. Instead, I was stranded on a back road with no cell service, no idea what was wrong with my car, and no plan beyond "wait for someone to drive by."

I'm Ethan Moore. Professor of English literature at Georgetown. Forty-two years old, recently divorced (second time), and apparently incapable of maintaining either relationships or vintage automobiles.

A truck appeared on the horizon after about twenty minutes. Pickup, old but well-maintained, the kind of vehicle that suggested practical rather than flashy. It slowed as it approached, and a man leaned out the window.

"Need a hand?"

He was roughly my age, maybe a few years younger. Dark hair under a worn baseball cap. Face that had seen sun and work and not much pretension. When he climbed out of the truck, I saw he was built solid—broad shoulders, forearms roped with muscle, hands that looked like they knew what they were doing.

"The engine overheated. I don't know what happened."

"Pop the hood. Let me take a look."

I did. He leaned in, examined things I couldn't name, made hmm noises that could have meant anything. After a minute, he straightened up and wiped his hands on his jeans.

"Blown head gasket, probably. Maybe worse. You're not driving this anywhere today."

"There's a service station about forty miles south—"

"I know. That's where you're going. But your car's coming with me." He extended his hand. "Sam Tucker. I run the garage in Millbrook, about five miles back. I can tow you in, take a real look at her."

"Ethan Moore."

His grip was firm, callused. Something flickered in his eyes—curiosity, maybe—but he let go quickly.

"Nice Mustang. My dad had one just like it."

"This was my father's too. Left it to me when he passed."

"Then we'll take good care of her. Hop in the truck. I'll call my guy to come with the flatbed."

Tucker's Garage was a converted barn on the edge of a town so small it barely registered. Two bays, hand-painted sign, a waiting area that consisted of three mismatched chairs and a coffee pot that had probably been there since the Reagan administration.

I settled in for what I assumed would be a few hours of waiting. Instead, I ended up spending three days.

"Worse than I thought," Sam told me that first afternoon, emerging from under my car with grease on his face and bad news in his expression. "Head gasket's gone. Water pump's shot. And honestly, whoever was maintaining this thing before should be ashamed of themselves."

"That would be me."

"No offense."

"None taken. I don't know much about cars."

"You own a '69 Mustang and you don't know about cars?"

"I teach poetry. Different skill set."

He laughed at that—genuine, surprised. "Poetry, huh? What kind?"

"All kinds. Currently teaching a seminar on the Romantics. Keats, Shelley, Byron."

"I know who Byron is."

"Most people don't."

"Most people didn't have a mom who was an English teacher." He wiped his hands on a rag that looked like it had never been clean. "Look, I've got to order parts. They'll be here day after tomorrow at the earliest. There's a motel about a mile down the road, nothing fancy but it's clean. Unless you've got somewhere to be?"

I thought about the cabin, sitting empty like it had for years. About my apartment in DC, equally empty. About how there was literally no one expecting me anywhere.

"Nowhere urgent. I'll take the motel."

Something crossed his face—relief? satisfaction?—but it was gone before I could identify it.

"Good. I'll drive you over when I'm done here."

The motel was exactly as advertised: nothing fancy, reasonably clean. I spent the first night reading and feeling sorry for myself. The second day, I walked back to the garage out of sheer boredom and found Sam under my car again.

"Thought the parts weren't coming until tomorrow."

"They're not. I'm just assessing the damage." He rolled out on his creeper, looked up at me with those steady brown eyes. "Shouldn't you be off doing professor things? Reading books, grading papers?"

"Summer break. And I left my books in the car."

"Trunk's unlocked. Help yourself." He paused. "Or you could hand me that wrench and make yourself useful."

I handed him the wrench. Then another. Then found myself holding a flashlight while he explained what he was doing in a patient, clear way that made me feel slightly less useless.

"You learn fast," he said after an hour of this. "For a poetry professor."

"I learn fast for anyone. It's kind of my job."

"Must be nice. Spending your life learning things, teaching people. Feels more meaningful than oil changes."

"You keep people's cars running. That's meaningful."

"It's not poetry."

"Everything can be poetry if you look at it right."

He snorted, but he was smiling. "That's the most professor thing I've ever heard."

We worked in companionable silence after that. When the sun started to set, he closed up the garage and drove me back to the motel, and I found myself wishing the ride was longer.

"You want to get dinner?" he asked before I could get out. "There's a diner in town. Food's decent. Better than whatever the motel vending machine's got."

"That sounds good. Really good."

His smile did something to my chest.

Dinner turned into beers at the only bar in town. Beers turned into a walk through the quiet streets, streetlights flickering on as we talked about everything and nothing. His life in Millbrook, born here, left for a while, came back to take over the garage when his father got sick. My life in academia, the marriages that hadn't worked, the loneliness that crept in despite being surrounded by colleagues and students.

"You don't seem like the type who'd be lonely," he said as we stopped on a bridge over a small creek. "Big-city professor, fancy degree. I'd have figured you'd have people lining up."

"Credentials don't make you less lonely. They just change what the loneliness looks like."

"Yeah." He was quiet for a moment. "Yeah, I get that."

"What about you? Is there anyone—I mean, in a town this small—"

"You're asking if I'm single?"

I felt heat rise to my face. "I'm asking... I don't know what I'm asking."

"Single. Divorced, actually. Eight years ago. Haven't really dated since." He turned to face me, leaning against the bridge railing. "Not a lot of options in Millbrook. Especially for someone like me."

"Someone like you?"

"Someone who isn't interested in the usual things."

The night was quiet around us. Crickets, water moving beneath the bridge, our own breathing. I could feel my heart pounding.

"What are you interested in?"

He reached out, slow and deliberate, and touched my jaw. His hand was rough against my skin, warm from the summer night.

"Right now? You."

"Sam—"

"If I'm wrong, tell me. Nothing happens. We go back to the motel, I drop you off, we pretend this never happened."

"You're not wrong."

He kissed me on that bridge, gentle at first and then deeper, his hand sliding into my hair while the creek rushed beneath us. I hadn't been kissed like that in years—maybe ever. Like I was something he'd been waiting for.

We went back to his place instead of the motel. A small house behind the garage, neat and sparse in the way of someone who lived alone and didn't see much point in decorating. He had books, I noticed—not just car manuals, but real literature. Poetry even. A worn copy of Byron on the nightstand.

"You weren't kidding about your mom."

"She made me read everything. Said a man who can't appreciate beauty isn't really a man." He sat on the edge of the bed, pulled me toward him. "I never really understood what she meant until just now."

I kissed him again because I didn't have words. Because words were my whole life and suddenly they weren't enough.

We undressed each other slowly, learning by touch what we hadn't learned through conversation. He had scars—one on his shoulder from a car accident, one on his ribs from a fight when he was young. I had my own—less visible, more internal, but he seemed to find those too.

"Tell me what you want," he murmured against my throat.

"This. You. Whatever you're willing to give."

"I'm willing to give a lot."

He showed me. Hours of showing me. Patient and thorough and devastatingly good at it. By the time the sun came up, I was wrecked in the best possible way, curled against his chest while his fingers traced patterns on my back.

"The parts come today."

"I know."

"You'll fix my car."

"That's the plan."

"And then I'll leave."

He was quiet for a long moment. "Is that what you want?"

I thought about my apartment in DC. My office at Georgetown. The life I'd built that felt increasingly hollow.

"No. But it's what makes sense."

"Sense is overrated." He tipped my chin up, made me look at him. "Stay the week. Help me with the car. Let's see what happens."

"And after the week?"

"We figure it out. That's what people do, isn't it? Figure things out as they go?"

I stayed the week. I stayed another week after that. And then another.

📅 Six Months Later

I didn't sell the cabin. I fixed it up instead, with Sam's help—new roof, new plumbing, fresh paint on the walls. It's a weekend place now, a retreat from the city when grading gets overwhelming and I need to remember what fresh air smells like.

We split our time. I teach in DC during the week, drive down on Friday nights. He can't leave the garage for long, doesn't want to really, but he comes up to the city sometimes—museums, restaurants, all the things he never had access to in Millbrook.

"I feel like a tourist in your world," he said the first time I took him to the National Gallery.

"You feel like a tourist in mine too."

"Fair point."

We're both tourists now, in each other's lives. Learning the terrain. Making maps. It's not always easy—the distance, the differences, the looks we get sometimes when people realize we're together. But it's real in a way nothing else has ever been.

The Mustang runs perfectly. Sam rebuilt her engine by hand, replaced half the parts with things he tracked down from specialty suppliers across the country. He says she's got another fifty years in her, easy.

I believe him. I believe everything he tells me now.

⏳ One Year Later

I took a sabbatical. One year to write the book I've been putting off, the one about Byron and masculinity and all the things I've been thinking about since I met Sam. I'm writing it in the cabin, at a desk by the window where I can watch the mountains change with the seasons.

Sam comes over every evening after he closes the garage. We cook dinner together, talk about our days, fall asleep in the same bed. On weekends, I help him at the shop—I've learned to do oil changes, tire rotations, basic maintenance. He's teaching me everything he knows.

"You're getting good at this," he said last weekend, watching me work under a lifted Honda.

"I had a good teacher."

"Damn right you did."

We're talking about making this permanent. Not just the relationship—that's been permanent since the night on the bridge, whether we admitted it or not—but the logistics. Maybe I'll teach part-time. Maybe I'll open a bookshop in Millbrook. Maybe we'll split our time differently, or find some third option we haven't thought of yet.

The important thing is that we're thinking about it together.

My mother asked me once, after my second divorce, what I was looking for. What would make me happy. I didn't have an answer then. I didn't know.

Now I do. It's this. Quiet evenings and honest work and someone who sees me clearly and wants me anyway. It's hands covered in grease and conversations about poetry and falling asleep knowing exactly where I belong.

It's Sam Tucker, standing in his garage, looking at me like I'm worth something.

It took a broken-down car and a wrong turn and three days in a small town I'd never heard of. But I found it.

I found him.