humid tuesday. //open

[cameron sweet]

The heat was practically unbearable on this Tuesday afternoon. The sky was more yellow than blue, and the sun cast a scorching temperature down upon all the citizens of Pittsburgh. The absolute worst place to be at this moment was the auto repair shop, where everything was done in an open garage with no air conditioning. Needless to say, Cameron was in a terrible mood.

"Fuck!" he exclaimed, sliding out from underneath a family van. It was an old model, so fixing it up would take twice the amount of time than it normally would, seeing as they needed to find some parts for it. Cameron sat on the dirty garage floor for a moment or two, and then climbed to his feet to find the family that the van belonged to.

A thin woman with narrow eyes stood by the side of the garage, her hands firmly placed on the shoulders of her young daughter. They looked like they were in a hurry, probably to the girl's ballet practice or something superficial like that. Cameron stopped in front of the two and pushed his sweaty bangs out of his eyes.

"It'll probably take a day or two to fix up your van, ma'am. We can provide you with borrowed transportation, but it'll cost you an additional--"

"That's not possible!" exclaimed the woman. Her shrill voice gave Cameron an instant headache. "We need to get going right now."

"Well, you can just pay for a rental car and we can send you on your way--"

"That's not happening. I came here to get my car fixed, not to be scammed into buying a rental car while you dilly-dally with my van." The woman's grip on her daughter's shoulders became visibly tighter. The little girl looked down at the ground uncomfortably. Cameron stared at the two and then groaned.

"Ma'am, I'm afraid it's just impossible for us to fix your car in such a short amount of time. Again, we can provide you with a rental car service, and the cost is really not that bad--"

"I would like to speak to your manager." The woman began tapping her foot impatiently. Cameron honestly couldn't believe how stupid somebody could be. He just wanted to scream at her, tell her that the damn car couldn't be fixed and she needed to move on with her life. But she was a customer, and therefore, he had to be polite. God damnit. He silently pointed at the manager's office in the side of the garage, and the woman spun on her heel and dragged her daughter along with her so they could go complain.

Cameron waited until they were inside the small office before he grabbed an oily rag off a nearby table and threw it across the garage. "Why is it so damn hot?!" he shouted, gaining a few looks from his co-workers. He stormed across the floor and collapsed on the bench. He needed to take a break.

"Why don't you take that jacket off, Cam?" someone nearby asked him. Everyone else was shirtless and showing off their sweaty bodies. Cameron had no shirt on, but still opted to keep his leather jacket on top. He looked ridiculous wearing a jacket in the heat, but he didn't dare take it off.

He ignored his co-worker's remark and folded his arms across his chest, keeping one eye on the manager's door. On top of the humidity, he now had to worry about keeping his job...

[audrey patton]

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God fucking damn was it hot outside. That was more or less Audrey’s train of thought as she slammed the door of her house behind her and clambered into her black BMW convertible. She was supposed to take her car for its emissions test, but she was seriously considering skipping it. Not having her car for a day? That would not bode well. Then again, it was still early. As Audrey started her car, the digital display told her that it was barely after nine. Maybe if she got to the shop now, they’d be able to hurry it along and get her car back before the day was over.

It was with that in mind that Audrey raced down the roads of Pittsburgh at nearly twice the speed limit. It was minutes later that she skidded to a stop in the lot of that auto repair shop. It looked like the place was busy on one car at the moment, so Audrey sat behind the wheel of her car a moment, radio blasting Boys Like Girls’s “Up Against the Wall.”

She leaned her head back against the seat, pushing her sunglasses from her eyes to rest on top of her head. She unbuttoned another button of her white blouse, sleeves rolled up messily. She pulled down her jean shorts and stretched her legs out in the space in front of her seat. Then she paused a moment to make sure her car was in park – more than once had she gotten comfortable and forgotten to put her car in park. It never ended well.

A few minutes later, Audrey was getting bored. She had never claimed to be a patient person, after all. She left the car running and climbed out, leaving her blue bag on the passenger seat. She wasn’t very careful with her things. She’d only had anything stolen once – she’d been mugged in Johannesburg two summers before. But other than that, she had been given no real reason to take precarious, obsessive caution with her belongings. Besides which, that would take far too much effort. And really, she just didn’t care all that much.

Audrey trudged to the office, her green and white flats padding softly on the pavement. She twisted her stackable rings on her left middle finger as she pushed open the door with her shoulder and walked inside. It was only slightly cooler in here; she had a sneaking suspicion that there either was no air conditioner or that it had broken. Or perhaps she was just spoiled by parents who left their multitude of aid conditioners on almost non-stop. Her house wasn’t exactly “eco-friendly.”

There were a few men hanging around the in the small office, and more in the garage she could see through the window. There were two bare-chested men in the room she was currently in, along with one in a jacket, which she found rather odd. How he could be faring in the heat, she would never understand. Funny, he looked about her age. The other two were noticeably older; one probably in his late twenties and one rapidly approaching middle age.

“Any one here up for a speedy emissions test?”

[/color]she asked, smiling brightly. She never noticed it, but she was told that her accent changed based on her mood. When she was in a bad mood, for one reason or another, she had a stronger Brazilian inflection than ever. When she was being sarcastic, she seemed more British. Cheery, and she was more South African. And for everything in between, though mostly indifference, the New England influences on her inflection were more prominent. So, though she could never tell, people who knew her would pick out the South African predominance.

Boredly, Audrey ran a hand through her long red locks, looking from one man to the next with one brow slightly raised. A good tip was in store for anyone who could get her up and running before she was to meet Chase for lunch in three and a half hours.[/font][/size][/blockquote]

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TAG cameron! (kellyyyy)
LYRICS tangled up in me by skye sweetnam
WORDS six hundred and seventy-five words.
OUTFIT clickie here
CHARACTER audrey jenna louise patton
NOTES =D
CREDIT sophielizabeth of CAUTION 2.0.

[cameron sweet]

Cameron had been watching the girl from the corner of his eye ever since she pulled up blasting that annoying music on her car radio. He chuckled to himself when she stepped out and left her car running. How could people be so careless?

He was entirely content in not answering when she stepped in the garage, asking for a quick emissions check. Bruce, one of the middle-aged workers, gave the girl a creepy smile and opened his mouth to accept the job. Okay, so Cameron didn't really feel like starting work on another car after what had just happened. But he also didn't really want to watch Bruce trying to catch glances down this poor girl's shirt.

With a loud sigh, Cameron got up to his feet and grabbed some tools. "I'll look at it," he mumbled, much to Bruce's dismay. He stepped around the girl and started heading towards the car. Jealousy flared inside of him as he got a better look at the vehicle. Some kids were blessed with everything.

"Can I have your name, ma'am?" he asked, stopping beside the car and staring at it in awe. Then he snapped out of it and looked back at the girl. She was pretty, but Cameron had a hard time looking past the fact that she was so obviously wealthy. She reminded him of most of the student body back at Stewart - child of a rich family, given everything they wanted, etc. It occured to him a moment later that this girl probably did attend Stewart.

Back at the garage, the manager's door opened and out stepped the pissy woman and her daughter. Cameron watched them carefully, trying to figure out whether his job was in jeopardy or not. The two sat down in the waiting room and the woman got on her cell phone. His manager never came out of the office. He wasn't in trouble.

Cameron smiled just a little and then turned to the BMW. That was when he noticed the bag sitting in the driver's seat. He rolled his eyes and opened the car door, snatching the bag and handing it to the girl. "Ma'am, you might want to be more careful with your stuff," he said through his teeth, reaching over and turning off the ignition. "You don't want anything to get stolen, do you?" It was a rhetorical question, but he couldn't help but wonder if she would even notice if a few bucks went missing from her wallet.

He told himself to stop thinking this way. He needed to stop being so judging of the wealthy. Just because a lot of the students at Stewart had been total brats didn't mean this particular girl was just as bad as them.

Cameron slammed the car door shut and then went around to the back of the car to start inspecting the tailpipe. This looked like it would be a speedy test.

[audrey patton]

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Audrey smiled as the youngest of the three agreed and led her out the door. She followed, letting the door of the office fall shut behind her. “Thank you,”

[/color] she answered cheerily as they stopped at her car, which was still running, music still blasting. With a sheepish smile she reached across the driver side door and jabbed the power button of the radio with one manicured finger. In the time it had taken her to walk inside and back out, the music had changed course from Boys Like Girls to Rihanna; it would seem that she had perfect timing in shutting the music off.

“Audrey Patton,”[/color] she answered, leaning against the car and flipping loose hair from her face. “Can I have yours?”[/color] she shot back with a smirk. Hey, he was cute. A little sweaty – he didn’t really smell all that bad, honestly. He wasn’t her type, really – too pretty boy-esque for her to fantasize over. Then again, she didn’t really have a type. Her type was male. And from what she could tell, he fit the bill quite nicely.

Not that she wanted to jump him then and there though, do not get me wrong. An auto repair shop wasn’t her typical location for random hook-ups, though it wouldn’t be the weirdest place she had done it. She was just admiring; she couldn’t help herself. He was cute, what could she say.

She laughed under her breath as he chided her careless behavior and turned off her ignition. She shrugged. “After going six years and three various summer in Johannesburg, Pittsburgh seems rather tame. And I only got mugged there once. I think I’ll be okay,”[/color] she replied rather cockily, smiling at the boy contently. But in all honesty, she failed to see the threat here in Pittsburgh. She rarely saw a homeless person about, though it was a large city. She had never been robbed or mugged. She’d never even seen a gun while in the U.S. – she’d only seen them in South Africa (repeatedly) and a few times in Brazil during the one summer she spent there a few years previous. She felt almost naively safe in Pittsburgh.

But, for the guy’s sake more than her own, Audrey reached into her car and took her blue bag. She slung it over her shoulder and shot him a somewhat sarcastic look. While it was probably with (somewhat) good intent, she didn’t need people looking out for her, and she didn’t appreciate their trying. She had always done perfectly fine on her own, and she would continue to do so.

She pursed her lips to one side, boredly letting out a stream of air from her lips as the guy closed her door and moved on to some other obscure part of her car. She hadn’t the faintest idea of how cars worked. If her car broke down or she got a flat and there was no one around to help her, she would be utterly lost. She was surprised she’d even passed the license test on her first try. She wasn’t a great driver, either.

“Do you spend all of yours Saturdays here, champ?”[/color] she asked conversationally, turning to face him as he poked around the tail end of her car. Instead of leaning her back against the side of her car, she propped her elbow on the side of her car and watched him work, rather intrigued. She would fail at his job rather epically. She didn’t understand how one could figure out a car so completely. She could barely figure out her toaster.
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TAG cameron! (kellyyyy)
LYRICS tangled up in me by skye sweetnam
WORDS five hundred and ninety-nine words.
OUTFIT clickie here
CHARACTER audrey jenna louise patton
NOTES =D
CREDIT sophielizabeth of CAUTION 2.0.

[cameron sweet]

He couldn't help but smile at her replying by asking for his name. It wasn't too often that he got a customer who was willing to have a conversation. Most of the time they just stood around tapping their feet and waiting impatiently for their car to be looked at. But occasionally, there was the person who actually was interested in how cars worked, or someone who would talk about their personal life to anyone, including whomever was fixing up their car. Then there was the flirt, which was the category Audrey seemed to fit in. Someone who was outgoing and perhaps bored, so they decided to make cute comments while they waited for the job to get finished.

"The name's Trevor Sanderson, if you really want to know," replied Cameron, while he squinted and bent over to observe the tailpipe. This was his special (or strange) way of flirting - making the person believe he was someone he wasn't. He didn't know why, but he often got a kick out of giving out false names and personalities. Besides, it was unlikely he'd ever see this girl again, so why not? Trevor Sanderson was really just a boy who had been in his seventh grade class back in Ohio - a random name that popped into his head. Cameron wondered what had ever happened to Trevor...

When she mentioned having lived in Johannesburg, he had to pause and think about this for a moment. Wasn't that in South Africa? He looked at Audrey and raised his eyebrows a bit, suddenly more intrigued. Unless she had just caught onto his lying game, and was now playing along. But he doubted she knew he was fibbing about his name, seeing as there was nothing really unbelievable about it.

He started to stand up, wanting to ask her more about Johannesburg and what it was like there. Then Cameron remembered he was still on the job. Quickly he went back to inspecting and messing around with the car. The sweltering hot sun beat down on him and he could feel himself perspiring under his jacket. Maybe he would take it off for just a minute or so. He shrugged it off his body and folded it over his arm, relishing how nice it felt to have a bare upper torso on a day like this. Cameron wiped some sweat from his brow and then set back to work again.

"Do I spend all my Saturdays here?" he repeated the question to himself, a small smirk setting upon his face. "Well, not typically. I usually work on weekdays. And seeing as it's a Tuesday, not a Saturday..." he trailed off and chuckled. It was understandable that she might get her days of the week mixed up - after all, it was summertime, and there was no school to keep track of. The only reason Cameron was aware it was a Tuesday was because of his damn work schedule.

He turned to the tools he'd grabbed before and picked up a wrench, starting to mess around with the underside of the car.

[audrey patton]

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andi's an idiot.

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TAG cameron! (kellyyyy)
LYRICS tangled up in me by skye sweetnam
WORDS three hundred and sixty-six words.
OUTFIT clickie here
CHARACTER audrey jenna louise patton
NOTES shorttt
CREDIT sophielizabeth of CAUTION 2.0.

[cameron sweet]

As Cameron observed the car parts, he began to come to a conclusion that the vehicle was okay, and that she'd be ready to go in no time. This was the tricky part of his job. Whenever there was a customer like Audrey (young woman coming in for an emissions check, obviously knows nothing about cars), the manager heavily suggested they play around with the truth. If the car was fine, it was recommended they make up a problem, and say there was something wrong with the engine or some bullshit like that. That way, they could beef up the price and the customer would never realize that the car had been fine to begin with. Cameron only did it every once in a while - usually he felt guilty, and he tried to limit his dirty business only to whenever the customer was rich. Judging from Audrey's car, she fit into the wealthy category.

Grunting, he slid out from underneath the vehicle and got back to his feet, wiping his hands on his jeans. He had cooled off a bit, so he decided he'd slip his jacket back on, even though it was still deathly humid. Cameron brushed some sweaty strands of hair out his face and looked Audrey straight-on.

"On Saturdays, I get my hair done. Sometimes, if I have enough money, I'll even get a mani/pedi as well," he joked, although he didn't crack a smile. If he had met this girl at any other time, he would have been loose, relaxed, and able to properly flirt. But because he was on the job, he was stressed out and scatterbrained. "No, but really, on Saturdays I do jack shit." He said a moment later, before stepping around her and gesturing for her to come follow him to the tiny office, where he'd have her fill out some paperwork.

"Overall, your car is seemingly okay," he told her as they walked, focusing his gaze on the door to the office. Cameron just needed to make sure he didn't make it too obvious that he was about to tell her a little white lie. A small fib that would cost her an additional fifty dollars. "But your tailpipe is having a few functioning problems. I can fix it up in about ten minutes, but it's going to cost you some money. However, if you leave it unchecked, it may give you problems in the near future." He was completely shitting her at this point, but he did his best to appear casual and collected. Cameron stopped at the door and pushed it open, holding it for her.

The air conditioning inside the nice little box of an office was immensely refreshing. He exhaled deeply and grabbed a clipboard off the desk, holding it out to her. "Fill out your information here," he murmured, leaning against the wall and jamming his hands in his pockets. Now that the sun wasn't bothering him so much, he could get a better look at Audrey. She really was pretty; she had a sort of unique beauty to her. But she also seemed aware of the fact that she was good-looking. Cameron could easily see her being a popular girl back at Stewart.

"Hey, you don't go to Stewart by any chance, do you?" he asked, wondering if he was wrong in assuming she was still a high school student.

[audrey patton]

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Audrey was slightly taken-aback by the seriousness with which Trevor delivered the list of what he did on Saturdays. Mouth slightly open, though curved into a smile, she laughed. She laughed again as he edited his statement, following him towards the office. “And I thought you were serious,”

[/color] she replied sarcastically, smirking slightly. She walked a bit faster, catching up with his stride until they were side by side.

“Well, maybe I can make this Saturday a bit more interesting,” she offered coyly, flipping her long red hair from her eyes. She raised a brow slightly as he went on about the tailpipe. “What kind of functioning problems?”[/color] she asked as they approached the door. She smiled as he held it open for her and walked inside, peering over her shoulder as he followed. She didn’t mind laying down the extra fifty dollars to fix the tailpipe – she had daddy’s credit card, after all – but she liked to be kept informed. Not that it was a very big deal to her at all.

Pushing all of her hair over one shoulder, Audrey took the clipboard from him. “Pen?”[/color] she asked, looking up at him expectantly. She probably had one in her bag somewhere, but there was so much shit in there that it would take forever to locate. And really, it just was not worth the effort. She looked down, reading over some of the questions on the sheet so she would know what to write when she got said pen.

Audrey looked up at his question. “I do, unfortunately,”[/color] she answered, settling easily down in a chair in the office. “Don’t think I’ve seen you around there, though. Do you go there?”[/color] Funny, she would have thought she’d notice him at school. She didn’t have a great affinity for names – it was frequent that she saw people she knew from school or had seen someplace or another, and just genuinely had no idea what their names were. But she was good with faces, especially faces that she would have a reason to be familiar with. Trevor was cute, and clearly not far from her age. That would be reason enough for her to recognize him.
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TAG cameron! (kellyyyy)
LYRICS tangled up in me by skye sweetnam
WORDS three hundred and sixty-six words.
OUTFIT clickie here
CHARACTER audrey jenna louise patton
NOTES shorttt
CREDIT sophielizabeth of CAUTION 2.0.

[cameron sweet]

This Saturday. Cameron thought it over for a moment. What was he doing this Saturday? Oh wait - of course. He was doing nothing, just like he always did on Saturdays. He gave Audrey another once-over, trying to decide whether hanging out with her would be enjoyable or not. It would definitely be more entertaining than sitting around his apartment being bored. But at the same time, it seemed like he'd be a bit desperate for company if he started hanging out with a girl whose car he'd fixed earlier in the week.

Pulling himself out of his thoughts, he grabbed a pen off the counter and handed it to Audrey. "Uhm, well, y'know... the usual problems a tailpipe would have. I mean, this kinda stuff happens all the time. It's pretty normal. But if it doesn't get fixed, then you'll have a problem." Here he was, yanking stupid answers out of his ass. If he managed to get away with this one, he would definitely not be able to hang out with Audrey later. Surely she'd return to the family and they would realize she had been ripped off, and then they'd be pissed. That would be the end of any plans they might make together.

Shit, he thought with regret as she reciprocated the question. He had to be more careful about this stuff. Upon asking someone if they attended Stewart, Cameron had to assume that the person would ask if he went as well. Obviously, he hated being asked that question. His answer always either sparked an awkward moment - well, a moment that felt awkward to him at least - or made the person too fascinated by the fact that he was a dropout. A lot of people changed their view of Cameron once they found out he didn't go to school, and that made him afraid that it would happen with everyone else he ever met.

But at the same time, Audrey didn't even actually know who he was. She still thought he was this Trevor Sanderson dude.

Cameron slowly took the seat beside Audrey, playing with his fingers as she filled out the papers. "Nope. Not anymore, at least," he mumbled. It had occurred to him to just lie, say he did go to Stewart, and avoid any weirdness that might have come with the truth. But he was pretty sure he was doing enough lying in this conversation. He was already ripping her off with her money; he didn't need to be even more untrustworthy. "I dropped out last year. I just wasn't into it anymore, y'know?"

He leaned his back into the chair and let himself get comfortable. After all, this was probably one of the only small breaks he would get all day. Once Audrey finished with the clipboard, it was back to the humid weather and greasy cars.