Samantha froze halfway to the phone and turned and looked at me, eyes wide and shocked. The fact that she was ignoring a ringing phone told me that I’d fucked up as surely as a mechanic using the wrong oil in an engineer overhaul. My confidence - overconfidence, really - vanished, leaving me sputtering in the face of my boss. 

“Red,” he snapped, seeming to grow two feet taller and a hundred decibels louder. “You’re my best driver and I like you, kid, but if you’s disrespect me like that again you’s’ll be out the fuckin’ door faster than you can say ‘sorry.’ You understand me?”

“I understand,” I replied mechanically, though I didn’t. I had been so sure that I was right, and that people operated on a fundamental level of whether they were going to fuck or not. Samantha had been slightly taken aback when I’d talked to her earlier, but she hadn’t been upset. Confused, more like, but mostly about the fact that I hadn’t had sex at all. My declaration that we could partake in such a mating ritual hadn’t bothered her. 

Yet Larry had taken the same declaration as a massive sign of disrespect. Was it bad form to tell people you wouldn’t sleep with them? If so, how did I interact with people like Larry, who held very little interest for me as a romantic partner? Did the subject never get discussed at all? 

“She’s sorry, Larry,” Samantha said, hustling over and grabbing my arm. “Hungover a bit from last night, you know.”

I started to protest that I was not hungover, and that we’d had drinks two nights ago, but Samantha gave me a look so startingly fierce that the words died unsaid on my lips. I looked from her to Larry, then sighed. “That’s right. Just a little hungover.”

Larry’s expression remained dubious. “You’re a pretty girl, Red, but I got a family with a daughter as old as you. Remember that before you open your mouth.” Then he shrugged, his face softening. “She’s got an even bigger mouth than you. It’ll get you both into real trouble someday.”

“It won’t happen again,” Samantha said quickly.

“Sorry, Mr. Larry,” I offered weakly. Two steps forward, one step back. I just couldn’t help but put my tire in my mouth every time I spoke.

He shook his head. “Sorry don't deliver pizza, Red. I got two pies ready to go, what’re we mopin’ here for?” he asked, voice going back to its normal semi-shout. He turned to Samantha. “And you, I ain’t never seen a phone ring without you on it.”

Samantha leaned into my ear. “We’ll talk later. I want to know why you’re acting so weird.”

“Okay,” I muttered, turning away from her to grab the pizzas and the address. I couldn’t tell her the truth. That I was just a fire truck in a human suit, desperately trying to understand my new body and all the complications that came with it. I couldn’t control my physical desires. I didn’t understand how those came into play with others, or what the right moment was to do things. Emma’s teachings had been wonderful for showing me what to do. How to dress, how to act, how to feel my body.

But she hadn’t taught me when things worked. Why they worked.

I was no closer to understanding why people dated than I was on day one. How they moved on from casual conversation to closer conversation, and from that to physical intimacy. My body told me what I wanted whenever I was with a pretty girl, but nothing told me the proper way to get there. Emma seemed to just offer things up for fun. Samantha wanted to go through an elaborate ritual. Larry was offended when I tried to clarify where we stood. 

Why?

Life was easier when the most important thing I needed to worry about at any given time was how much gas was in my tank, or what the speed limit was. There were hard and fast rules that dictated what I could and couldn’t do. My mechanical systems were straightforward, each with a purpose and a designation. A set of blueprints dictated exactly how I worked, and how to fix me.

But life as a woman was full of ambiguity. Nebulous interactions without a clear answer as to what I should be doing, and another person on the other end with the same set of questions. When two cars were waiting at a red light or a four way stop sign, each knew what order to go because those laws had been long established, with procedures for who goes where and when… but there wasn’t a handbook for people. Nobody could tell me that if Samantha showed up for a date in a fancy dress, this should happen. There simply wasn’t a this, because there wasn’t a hard rule for it. Samantha might have wanted something that time, but other times she might want something else. Emma showing up in the same dress might want a third thing. All of those things that they wanted only mattered if I wanted the same thing. And everyone somehow needed to know what the other person wanted without discussion, rules, or systems in place. 

I spent the afternoon thinking about the insanity that I’d been born into. Delivering pizzas could be done almost on autopilot - I was back into a world of cars and driving and structured rules for how to exist. Back into the world that I knew, the world that I came from. 

I found myself missing it fiercely.

So many things had happened in the past three days that I’d hardly had time to grieve. To think about what I’d lost and how I’d died. Somewhere out there in the great steel town of Randle, Ohio, was a hunk of metal that had been me. Maybe it had been forged into something new. Maybe it was rotting in a junkyard. Maybe it had disappeared entirely on its way to the Great Scrapheap. I’d been a truck for fifty years… and now I was this. 

This bag of meaty, sexy parts. This wildly overconfident idiot that thought she understood people.

In truth, the only thing I’d ever understood was cars. I could feel the thrum of power in my Camaro as I sat at a red light. I understood exactly what was happening under the hood. Pistons firing, engine turning, oil filling the gaps, spark plugs igniting gasoline. It all made sense to me in a way that people never would.

“Thanks,” I said, patting the steering wheel. Samantha would probably think me insane, but in that moment, my car was as real to me as she was. “I wish you could have known me before. We used to be more alike, you know. Steel parts, American ingenuity. All of that. I miss it dearly. I miss being me. I never asked for this new life.”

The car seemed to vibrate all the harder under my fingers, and I wondered if she had a soul just as I did. No human had ever spoken to my truck form like this, and perhaps I was the first and only machine to have suffered such a terrible fate. My car probably thought I was crazy, if she even understood what I was talking about at all.

Still, the vibration felt good. I could feel the car rattling through my very body, and it was warm and comforting and familiar. It felt like home, back in Randle, Ohio. 

I closed my eyes, listening to the roar, feeling the shake as I pressed the accelerator lightly. This was living. This was life. This was-

A car horn blared behind me. 

“The light’s green, asshole!” called an angry voice.

I smiled in spite of his tone. Rules were rules, after all.