Summer knelt beside the stranger, regretting it instantly when her knee found a patch of ice. “I thought California was supposed to be warm,” she muttered, and peered under the car. “Aha. I couldn’t find the bar the jack was supposed to hold, so I figured I was doing it wrong. I can’t afford a tow truck. And I can’t get the lug nuts off.” She held up the wrench to illustrate, and fixed it to one of the bolts, tugging ineffectually.
“I /had/ a pole, for extra leverage, but I had to take it out to make room for the last con, and now I can’t do it alone, and ARGH.” She looked up at him with a disgusted expression, hating the damsel-in-distress position she was in. “Will you help me?”
“Not this part of California. We’re forever cursed with bad weather and shitty neighbors.” Isaac started to change the tire with absent motions. He really didn’t seem to be having much trouble loosening the lug nuts. “You got a spare?” he asked, sitting back a moment to survey the work. He had everything laid out into neat piles, lug nuts here, tools here, picked up and replaced carefully so they didn’t knock one another out of line.
“Generally, I hear it’s a pretty good idea to just stay prepared all the time? Kinda minimizes the chances of being stuck in a situation like this.” But like he was one to talk, from all the times he’d jump headfirst into a situation with nothing but tooth and claw. Or in this situation, his own two hands.
Summer had been wrestling the spare out of the trunk the entire time he had been working, and rolled it over to him, panting. “Spare, Boy Scout. You’re amazing.” She took a moment to gasp in some deeper, lung-chilling breaths, green eyes flickering over the sheer tidiness he’d wrought of her frustration.
“Can I just keep you? Wow.” Straightening up, she shoved frozen fingers back into her driving gloves, flexing and slapping them on her legs in a futile effort to warm them back up. “I’m really bad at being prepared for certain kinds of things. Car trouble is really one of them. I /really/ appreciate this.”