‘Have I ever told you,’ Dave began to muse from my backseat.
‘Here we go,’ I rolled my eyes, cutting him off. Jeanie – his sister, my wife – giggled from the passenger seat next to me.
‘No, this is a good one!’ Dave insisted.
‘I’ll bet you three hundred dollars, right here, that it’s not going to be a good one,’ I frowned at him in the mirror.
‘Well, that’s a rigged bet.’
‘Because it’s not a good one?’
‘Because you’ll just say it’s not a good one,’ Dave said.
‘I’m hurt,’ I said mockingly.
‘What are we actually talking about?’ Jeanie frowned.
‘I’ve lost track,’ I said. ‘But the longer we keep him distracted, the less likely he is to remember the inane story he was about to tell us.’
‘Hey!’ Dave scowled. ‘It was about the… the… dammit.’
Suddenly, my steering wheel began to judder and shake, and a screech echoed out of my engine block.
‘What the—’ I barely had time to say, as a black smoke started to billow out of the bonnet.
‘Ha!’ Dave cackled, as I quickly pulled us over. ‘Karma!’
‘You’re going to be late too, idiot,’ Jeanie rolled her eyes. His face dropped.
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘This is what I get for putting off getting that car service near Hawthorn’s main shops all week,’ I muttered to myself, unbuckling my seatbelt.
‘Hey,’ Jeanie reached out. ‘Don’t blame yourself. Nobody was telling you it had been too long and you definitely needed a professional mechanic to look at your car.’
‘Right,’ I smiled thinly. ‘Except for you, of course.’
‘Oh yeah, except for me,’ she nodded. ‘Every day.’
‘For weeks.’
‘Months.’
‘Right,’ I sighed.
‘It’s not that hard, man,’ Dave shook his head. ‘I’ve actually been to a super decent mechanic in the Malvern area that could look after you—’
‘No thanks,’ I grumbled, swinging open my door and hopping out of the car – barely managing to dodge a minivan that zoomed past me.
‘Hey, babe,’ Jeanie said to me quietly as I walked around to her rolled-down window.
‘Yeah?’
‘I told you so,’ she nodded, winding the window up.