Not alone anymore

A man wakes up to a girl sleeping next to him that reminds him of him when he was young

I went to sleep hugging my pillow like i would if it was my girlfriend and simultaneously feeling pathetic for doing said. when i woke up i was hugging the cutest girl id ever seen. First thing I did was make one of my autistic noises “ah aHhh” as I did when I was presented with something that shocks but not frightens. I then tried to push her to wake her up to ask where she came from. She only turned over, seeing this i went into my walk in game closet, turned on up my computer and while waiting for my pc to boot I retrieved my CZ-75 I had bought due to it being the gun that Rally Vincent used in gunsmith cats and kept I close if she turned hostile. I got dressed in a slightly sullied train t-shirt and baggy jeans with any random pair of Nikes as I usually wore in any season (except for the addition of a heavy carhartt jacket in the winter or a flannel in the fall). I retrieved my beat up Louis Vuitton monogram wallet as I needed to keep that habit going.
I opened a racing simulator and drove my favourite car on my favourite track a spec 3 e36 on the automation test track I was gripping the corners and tearing at the wheel slamming on the brakes but while accelerating down a straight away out of a turn I missed a shift from 4th to 5th, which was unlike me as I always took care to shift smoothly as not to money shift, as my father had taught me to, maybe the thought of a strange pretty girl asleep in my bed was getting to my head. Either way I reacted by swearing the name Hermann Hagenmeyer and Karl Rapp, a futile effort as nether spoke English and both were long deceased, What this effort did result in was the strange girl in my bed murmuring something that to my autistic car obsessed mind comprehended as “what’s wrong with Getrag” this phased me greatly, to the point of me crashing my car in to a guard rail end causing the front bumper to deform and the radiator to be punctured in such a way as to burst several tubes in the core and causing most of the coolant to rapidly pour out of the radiator as well as the unique crumping of the hood causing the fly by wire throttle to lock open. This combination of factors caused the engine to rapidly overheat. after 30 seconds of this the short life of the virtual M50B25 ended in an unfortunate way. “Shit” i uttered as I ended that unfortunate session of driving with one thought in my head “how does she know about Getrag to the point of knowing the founder of it, my dad wouldn’t even know the founder of Getrag and he is the ‘most knowledgeable on cars person’ I know (though that’s not saying much)” after that thought I immediately came to the conclusion that I miss heard her. After putting that thought to rest I got out of my sim racing contraption and sat down on the office chair at the end of my bed and waited for her to wake up. To pass the time I opened my phone and started a game of sudoku even though I was so bad at it I’d never finished a game of it. It took ten minutes for me to drop it and check my notifications on facebook to see what happened with the controversial take I made on the sound of the exhaust system on the Lexus LFA, a car that I respected greatly but could never get behind the sound of it, just to scratchy and harsh for my ears. After reading and not acknowledging the comments of brain dead fanboys i closed Facebook as I had bigger things to deal with, she had woken up and was waiting for me to look up from my phone.

The first thing I did was put my hand on my Czech CZ-75 but not drawing it. With out being phased the strange girl said: I’m not gonna hurt you I want to hug you! (while throwing her arms in the air with her eyes closed). Several things I immediately drew from this: She has high functioning autism similar to me due to her immediately recognizing that I had a gun on me. (highly observant), she’s in a good mood (somewhat unlike me currently), she watches anime (no well adjusted person would do something like that and one thing anime fans are not is well adjusted), she probably likes me. After deducing everything that I could about her and noting that she probably did the same to me, she knows that I’m a loner (I hug my pillow when I go to sleep) and that’s all I could gather from what she most likely gathered from my actions. Though its hard to gather what someone else has gathered from yourself, I can’t be in someone else’s head…. Yet.
That train of thought was then derailed by another thought that I couldn’t make sense of without assuming several things about the strange girl in my bed. Why did she not react to me putting my hand on my gun? A thought for later I said out loud by habit of always saying something witty out loud usually for no one to hear. For a reason beyond me she didn’t react to my quip and after seeing this i asked her if she wanted a hug. (i'm slightly scared of women so being awkward around them is a given) her response was quiet and quick a short little yes, Almost a tremble but I didn’t want my years of anime watching to autocorrect my sense of hearing. Mustering up my confidence I asked her if she wanted to leave the bed and hug me standing up or not. She told me she wanted to stay in the bed, seeing my chance, I played the fool and asked her how I would give her a hug if she stayed in my bed, she smiled and said: get in the bed goofy!
You sure? I asked she said: why would I not be, you trust me and I trust you. I put up a sarcastic whine and say: Awww man but I just put my shoes on. ‘Please, pretty please?’ ‘No, I can get you breakfast if you want.’ ‘Waffles!’ She said, smiling at me. I looked at my phone the clock read 7:30 AM. This prompted me to get out of my chair and tell her that we’re going to Waffle House. ‘yay!’ She said quietly. I asked her if she needed anything from Walmart. ‘some shoes and socks please and maybe a b-br.’ ‘Umm? A what?’ ‘A bra..’ she said deflatedly. ‘Ooookay’
‘that’s uhh that’s umm yep uh huh’ i said in a daze. ‘Don’t worry about shoes and socks you can put on some of my socks and you can just have those blue Jordan’s on the flat bench. Your feet are about the same size as mine they’re gonna fit right on you.’ i said with a smile. After I said that I thought if i could wear the camo dunk highs and then I remember that I’m going to Waffle House and grab my old Air Force Ones, my CZ-75 and open my closet and grab my concealed holster and put my whole rig together, as I finished putting my gun away I drew my piece drop the mag and cock it i noticed that i the magazine was filled with cheap steel case Tula 9mm I grab a different magazine with some decent Smith & Wesson hollow points. As we walked downstairs she hugged me right before my left foot landed on the step. Her weight combined with the fact that I haven’t worn my Air Force Ones in while caused my foot to land sideways on the steps, this made my survival instincts go berserk and as I fell I rotated clockwise and seeing the end of the second flight of stairs I grabbed on to one of them and as I was hanging from it i was looking forward I then yelled: ‘I JUST LOVE PHYSICS!’ I then looked backwards and saw that she had face planted right into the love seat covered in pillows. I helped her up, she tried to hug me in return but I dodged it. As we walked into the kitchen she sat down at the kitchen table and asked for some coffee I started a pot of coffee and as I did I looked at the glorified clock and timer called an Alexa and noted the time “7:37am” and figured that the coffee would take about 5 minutes. After I came to this conclusion I sat opposite of her as she opened her phone and I looked out the window at the hole in the deck thinking about how I finally have a good excuse for putting it off when my phone buzzed and I checked it. I had received a text from “____” I looked up from my phone and met her gaze. This told me all I needed to know, her name was ____. We stared at each other until I asked her: ‘Why do want to go to Waffle House of all places? You could go to ihop or uhh… ihop. No woman I’ve ever known has ever wanted to go to Waffle House for.. anything.’ She said: Waffle House is only place that can cook waffles correctly and serve half decent eggs at the same time! (She said with enthusiasm, smiling with her eyes closed and tilting her head). The coffee machine went off. I looked over at it then back at her. You gonna pick up the phone? I asked her dryly . As I got up from my chair I looked over at her and she was just sitting there smiling at me with her eyes closed and head cocked to the left. While I was fixing her a cup of coffee I asked her if she liked cream and sugar in her coffee. she said milk and a spoon of sugar would be fine. I opened the sugar container and I noted the resistance of the rubber seal on the top. I dunked the spoon into the sugar and I leveled it with the lid from which the container that hid it from light. I dumped the sugar in a robotic way and lowered the spoon into the cup and stirred gently. I tapped the rim of the mug with the stirring spoon to remove any excess liquid as I did i thought about the possibility of her having autism and or adhd and most likely needing meds I added a splash of milk and brought the coffee to her, as I did I saw my pill bottles. “Methylphenidate 40 mgs” "Dexmethylphenidate 5mgs” respectively. Seeing these made me do two things. First, I asked her if she took medication. Second, I got a glass of water and as I took my pills she answered my question
‘yes, but I can’t remember what it was called but I do remember that they calmed me down a bit better’.
I told her that she could probably just use my medicine and that she could take it with her coffee. She nodded. I figured since she was about the same build as me, plus or minus a few pounds in muscle mass, the dosage that I took would probably be fine for her. This thought process ran through my head while I was taking the pills from the bottles, even though the idea that her build was about the same as mine (plus or minus a few pounds of muscle mass) would make it likely that she would do fine on my dosage was already realized before I even asked her if she took medicine. As I gave her my medication I told her that she was about my size so my dosage would most likely be fine for her. She shrugged her shoulders and said “probably” and took her newly prescribed meds.
As she did I thought that I should give her my backup medicine instead of my main meds so I don’t run out and can’t get it refilled. Putting that thought aside I walked outside to gauge the weather and by extension what I should wear and by proxy what we should wear. After a few minutes I decided that a thicker jacket would be fine for this weather and it being that time in fall where the leaves were already done falling and all picked up by the lawnmowers, but before the bitter snowless winter of Virginia sets in. As I walked inside I told her: ‘it’s cold enough out there to need a jacket’ She smiled and asked if she could look at them with me.
I obliged and went upstairs with her trailing behind me
and as she did I noticed something. She was walking slower than me and then rapidly running up the stairs. Something that I used to do and might do on occasion if I was in good spirits. But on the day-to-day I usually just walked upstairs like a normal person. She followed me back to my room and looked at my closet with me and the first thing she did was something that I would overlook every day of every month. My cheap Inuyasha cosplay that I bought in 9th grade. ‘Were you a nerd in high school?’ She asked in a playful manner. ‘I’m still a nerd, I always had something I’d obsess about. Sometimes the obsessions would ebb and flow but the 2 constants were always cars and anime.’
‘Cool! I was kinda like that.’ I soon found her a thick insulated flannel in a lighter but less than baby blue and black. ‘Here’, I said while handing it to her. ‘It matches your Jordans.’ She thanked me and threw on the long sleeve and as she did I grabbed a similar insulated flannel and put it on. We were at the foot of the stairs when I asked: ‘Do you want some jeans? It’s pretty cold, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, I don’t have heated seats in my truck’
She said: ‘why not’. I went back and got her some jeans and left her in my room so she could put them on in private. As she left the room she ran up and hugged
me around my waist (at idle my arms were always crossed as if I was always on edge when I was usually anything but). I was caught so off guard I let out a loud-ish yelp and then came to my senses. She said:’Did I scare you?’ I said in a very exasperated yet playful way: ‘yes you did’. She let go of me and thanked me for the pants. As we got to the end of the stairs I noticed that, through the mirror placed above the love seat that my apprentice had earlier face planted into, she reached for my left hand with her right but hesitated and returned it to it’s resting position. I made a note to hold her hand at some point. We walked to the garage door in silence until I opened it and revealed my 1991 BMW 535i touring in a state of disrepair, that state being the engine and transmission on a hoist awaiting a 5 speed manual transmission. “Wagon!” She said with a grin and ran down the garage stairs as I turned on the lights, it was only after these 3 actions that I even realised what she had said (and what it implied). ‘Wait, you like cars too?!’ ‘Yeah! I freaking love ‘em.’ ‘You like bmws?’ ‘Yes!’ She said. ‘What are you doing to this poor e34?’ She asked. I couldn’t form a reply to her as I was dumbfounded that she’s a car guy (girl?) to the point of knowing bmws by their chassis code, this pause to gather my thoughts made me remember what she said when i had cursed the name of Hermann Hagenmeyer and Karl Rapp while she was asleep and how I thought she replied with “what’s wrong with Getrag?” Maybe I wasn’t hearing things. She interrupted my train of thought with a quick ‘hey you good?’ ‘Yeah.’ I replied. Quickly remembering what she asked me I said: ‘Oh yeah, I’m swapping out the automatic transmission for a manual one.’ ‘Cool.’
I opened the small garage door and she swiftly followed.
Once outside we met my dark green 1988 s10 extended cab. ‘Boxy truck’ she said with a slight smile, as she did I noticed that her breath was condensing in the bitter cold air. In me realizing this I realized that I was looking at her a lot, more than stealing glances. I put that thought aside as I unlocked the passenger door for her and went back around and entered the driver side. I started it after properly wiggling the the 5 speed shifter.
‘It’ll be a minute before we can head off’
‘Are you running straight weight oil?’ She asked playfully as she put on her seatbelt. ‘Good point’. I put my seatbelt on, released the foot hand brake, put the truck in reverse and carefully edged the clutch to overcome the temporary static friction and to fight the ever present rolling friction. The LB4 that provided the torque necessary to move the S10 had bogged down and thus I gave it gas to keep it moving, enough that you could hear a distinct rumble from the Magna flow exhaust. At her hearing this she said ‘hello exhaust. What did you do to this?’ ‘Everything’ I replied in stride slightly dragging out the word. ‘I know that GM upgraded these along with the bigger vortec engines since they were pretty much the same but two less cylinders.’ I think GM, along with you, upgraded the heads and intake. Right?’ She says ‘Right on’ I replied with gusto.
‘Was it to slow?’ ‘Sorta. I wanted it a tad faster and to be a bit better on fuel’ ‘which I guess was wishful thinking since I put a semi aggressive cam in it’ ‘I didn’t even notice.’ She says