The restaurant reservation is at eight, but Anna texts me at seven-fifteen:

wear something you don’t mind getting oil on.

I’m outside your place in five.

She pulls up in the butter-yellow Fulvia looking like a 1970s revenge fantasy: white linen blouse half-unbuttoned, dark jeans hugging her hips, those same thin leather sandals that make her ankles look criminal. The little coupe idles roughly at the curb, popping and snarling like it’s already in a mood.

She leans across and pops the passenger door. “Get in before it changes its mind.”

I barely have the door shut before she snaps it into first and we’re off, the narrow tires chirping as she bangs second. The car smells like hot oil, her perfume, and something faintly electrical. Perfect.

We’re ten minutes out when the engine starts missing. A cough, a shudder, then a wet stumble.

“Shit,” she mutters, eyes flicking to the temp gauge (normal), then the fuel (half).

Another stumble. The revs drop, surge, drop again.

Anna pulls over under a streetlight on a quiet stretch of Mulholland, hazards blinking. The engine dies with a defeated sigh.

Silence. Just the tick of cooling metal and both of us breathing.

She turns the key. Starter spins fast and healthy, but the engine is soaked; you can smell the raw gas.

“Flooded,” she says, almost to herself. Her voice is low, a little husky with frustration. “Of course it is.”

She starts the ritual without asking if I mind.

First slow pumps of the pedal, sandal straps flexing. Then faster. Then she’s holding it to the floor while cranking, the little car rocking on its soft suspension with every try. Nothing but whirr-whirr-whirr and the wet shake of a drowned engine.

I watch her thigh tense under denim every time she floors it, watch the thin gold chain around her ankle catch the dashboard light. The temperature between us climbs faster than the one under the hood.

After the fourth attempt she lets go of the key and slumps back, chest rising quick. A loose strand of hair sticks to her glossed lip.

“I’m sorry. It never does this with (She stops, glances sideways at me, realizes what she almost admitted.)

I reach over and brush that hair away with my thumb. “Keep going,” I say. My voice sounds rough even to me.

Her eyes flick to mine, dark and bright at the same time. She knows exactly what’s happening.

She turns the key again. This time she pumps slowly, deliberately, heel lifting off the floor mat so I can see the arch of her foot strain against the sandal. The starter screams. The engine coughs once, twice, almost catches, then drowns again.

She moans (small, frustrated, but unmistakably a moan) and slams the pedal twice, hard. The whole car shudders.

I slide my hand onto her thigh, high enough that my thumb brushes bare skin where the jeans ride low on her hip. She doesn’t stop me. She turns the key again.

This time when the engine finally fires, it’s sudden and violent: a barking roar, blue smoke rolling out the back as she feathers the throttle with quick, desperate stabs of her foot. The revs climb, fall, climb again until it settles into an uneven, furious idle.

Neither of us speaks. The cabin is thick with gasoline and want.

She looks over at me, lips parted, cheeks flushed deeper than the effort should allow.

“Reservation’s fucked,” she says, voice almost a whisper.

“Yeah,” I answer.

She kills the lights, lets the engine lope in the dark. Then she reaches across, grabs my shirt, and pulls me into a kiss that tastes like danger and high-octane.

The Fulvia keeps popping and missing beneath us, shaking the little bucket seats like it’s jealous. We don’t care. We’re already flooded, too.

The engine catches for maybe thirty seconds, just long enough for her to shift into first and roll us ten lazy feet, then it gulps, shudders, and dies again with a wet, final cough. The silence that follows is louder than the exhaust ever was.

Anna doesn’t swear this time. She just exhales through her teeth, slow and shaky, and stares straight ahead at the dark road like the car personally insulted her mother.

Then she turns the key again.

The starter spins instantly, healthy and merciless. The engine is soaked now, drowning in its own fuel. Every revolution sounds like someone slurping the last drops from a gas can.

She floors it. Holds it. The pedal kisses the carpet and stays there while the starter screams. Her calf is a tight, trembling curve under the denim; the thin strap of her sandal cuts a red line across the top of her foot. Nothing. Just raw gas vapor pouring out the tailpipe, sweet and choking.

She lets off, breathes once, then starts pumping, slow, deliberate, almost sensual strokes. One… two… three… four… Each push lifts her heel clear off the mat so I can see her toes flex and spread against the leather sole. The gold chain around her ankle glints every time the dash lights flicker.

Crank again. Whirr-whirr-whirr. A single lazy pop from the left bank, then nothing.

Her breathing is audible now, shallow and fast. She shifts in the seat, thighs brushing together, and I realize the friction isn’t just the engine making her restless.

Another round: pedal to the floor, hold it five full seconds, release, three lightning-fast pumps, floor it again. The car rocks on its springs like it’s trying to throw us off. The starter is starting to slow, battery protesting, but she doesn’t care.

“Come on, you bastard,” she hisses, voice low and wrecked. “You’re going to start for me. You always start for me.”

She’s not talking to the car anymore. Not entirely.

I slide my hand higher up her thigh, thumb tracing the seam of her jeans. She lets her knees fall open another inch open, giving me room, inviting. Her next pump is harder, almost violent, heel slamming down so the whole chassis jumps.

Crank. Whirr-whirr-whirr.

Still nothing.

Sweat beads at her temple, slides down in front of her ear. The linen blouse is sticking to her now. She turns her head, looks me dead in the eye, lips swollen from the kiss we abandoned.

“Touch me,” she says. It isn’t a request.

So I do, right there in the dark, while she keeps working the pedal like it’s the only thing keeping her sane, slow, rhythmic pumps now, matching the slide of my fingers. Every time she floors it she exhales a small, desperate sound that has nothing to do with the engine.

The starter is groaning, the battery fading, but she won’t stop. She can’t. The Fulvia rocks with every push, headlights dimming in time with her hips starting to move.

Flooded, furious, perfect.

We’re not going anywhere tonight.

And neither of us wants to.