Part 1
  
I was leaning over the open engine bay of my old Ford turning wrenches in what was starting to feel like a futile attempt to get the engine back together and running. I had been banging on the classic pick-up on and off for a few months and didn't seem to be making any progress. Partly because I wasn't exactly a mechanic, and partly because I wasn't in a hurry to finish the project. I didn't really need the vehicle. It was more a form of meditation. Just to spend some time with my mind turned off and my paws busy.
The music in my ear buds was blasting and I bobbed my head along to the beat, so I wasn't aware that someone had entered my garage. I was just finishing wrenching off the last bolt on the valve cover when I felt a tug on the back of my pants. It surprised me out of my reflective state enough that I inadvertently bumped my head on the underside of the Ford's hood.
"Mother fucker!" I hissed as I rubbed a paw on the back of my skull. I yanked on the cord going to my phone to pop the buds out of my ears and extracted myself from the engine bay.
"You said a naughty word!" I heard a voice say.
I glanced down next to me to see a young cub standing in my garage as if she belonged there. She was a little bear with white fur wearing a pink tank top and jeans shorts. She regarded me with dark, friendly eyes.    She wasn't fat but she was pleasantly plump. Though that would be average for an ursine. She had a mop head full of white curly hair that had been pulled back into two bouquet of pigtails.
"What 'cha doin' in here?" She asked me.
"That's what I'm supposed to ask you." I said to her while I stroked my injured head. She looked at me with a puzzled expression. "What are  you doing in here, young lady?" I clarified for her.
She shrugged. "The door was open." She told me and pointed to the indeed ajar door. "I wanted to see inside." She looked at my truck. "This is the oldest car I've ever seen!"    
"It's not a... yeah, it's old. It's from 1968" I told her.
"Whoa! That's older than my dad!" She said with astonishment.    
"It's older than me as well." I said to her.
"How old are you?" She asked.
"Thirty-two." I replied.    
The cub giggled. "You're older than my dad too!"
I frowned. "How about that?" I said with an insincere wonder.
"I'm eight." She told me. "My name is Tammy, what's yours?"    
"I'm Steve." I said.  
"Are you a dog?" She asked.
"No, I'm... well, I'm a canine. I'm a gray wolf." I was getting a bit uncomfortable with her being there. "Tammy... shouldn't you be at home?"    
The little polar bear shook her head as she ran her paw over the battered chrome grill of the truck. "Mommy and Bill are resting so I had to go out and play, but I don't have any friends to play with. We just moved here and all my friends are far away. Even dad is far away." Her eyes brightened as a sudden idea occurred to her. "Will you be my friend, Steve?"    
"I don't think that's a good idea." I told her.
The little cub looked crestfallen. "Oh..." She looked down at her feet and shuffled them a bit. "I guess... I guess I'll go." She said quietly and headed for the door.
I sighed. I should have let her go. That would have been the safest thing, but the little girl had come into my garage on the off chance of finding a friend. She was wandering around the neighborhood because she had nobody to keep her company. She looked lonely as hell.    
"Tammy," I called to her as she reached to doorway.
"Yeah?"
"Would you like to help me fix my truck?" I asked.
Tammy's face lit up. "Sure!" She said.
We spent about an hour working on the Ford. We didn't get much done and I figured Tammy would get bored of it before long, but she seemed genuinely interested in helping. Mostly she handed me tools while I did the work. She didn't know any of the names of the tools, but she learned quickly. Before long she knew the difference between a socket wrench and an open end wrench, or a Phillips head and a flathead screwdriver. She was constantly asking questions between telling me about things that were happening in her life. Appearently Bill is her mom's new boyfriend and her parents are separated, but not really divorced yet. Her mother had moved here because that's where Bill was. Tammy doesn't like Bill and she's pretty sure he doesn't like her either. She and her mother have been having a rather strained relationship as well.
"Steve, are you married?" She eventually asked.
"No, I'm afraid not." I told her as I seated a sparkplug into the engine block.
"Why not?"    
"Hmmm... I guess because nobody ever asked me to marry them." I told her.
Tammy giggled. "You're supposed to ask the girl to marry you, not the other way around."    
"Really?" I said feigning ignorance. "No wonder I'm not married." I grabbed a rag and wiped my paws off on it. "Well, I guess that's enough for today." I declared and I turned to Tammy.
"Oh, good lord!" I said as I noticed how dirty she had gotten. Her white paws were blackened with grease from handling the tools. What's worse is she hadn't been careful of what she touched with those filthy mitts. She had smears of grease on her white furred face and paw prints on her clothes.    
She looked at her paws as if only then realizing how bad they were. She gasped and looked down at herself. "Oh, no! Mom is going to kill me!" She looked up at me with the beginnings of tears in her eyes.
"No, no, don't cry." I told her. "We'll get you cleaned up. Let's go inside." I took her by the paw and led her into my home.
I led her to the utility sink in the laundry room, the place where I usually get cleaned up after an oily day in the garage. I found a bucket she could stand on to reach and we scrubbed our paws clean standing side by side. Her white fur gave her trouble and I had to help her out with a scrub brush. Once her paws were good and clean I started to work on her face.
"Well, you're a pretty young cub under all that grease." I told her. "You have a boyfriend yet?"    
Tammy looked surprised by the question and managed to surprise me with the answer. "I did," she said, "but when we moved away he stopped calling me. I guess we broke up."
"That's too bad." I said, immediately curious as to what eight-year-old couples do with each other. Go to the movies and eat popcorn I supposed. "Maybe you can find a new one."    
She shrugged with a forlorn look in her eyes. It seems I had inadvertently stumbled over the reason she was so lonely.    
I scrubbed playfully at her nose to distract her. "You know, I just can't get the grease off of here."    
She pushed at me. "My nose is supposed to be black."    
"Ah," I tugged at her pink tank top, "is this supposed to be black too?"    
"No." She said sadly as she pulled the hem of the shirt to get a better look at the mess. There were several greasy paw prints on the front. Upon further examination I found that she had two distinct prints on each buttock of her shorts.    
"I have some stuff that might take that off." I told her. "I'm just worried it will take the color off too. I guess it doesn't matter since they're ruined either way. Let me find you something else to wear for a bit while I try to clean those."    
"Okay."
I went to my room and looked around. I finally found a long button up shirt that was even long on me, so it should cover Tammy pretty well. "Here you go." I said as I handed it to her.    
"Alright, you can go into the bathroom and--" I started to say, but before I could finish she stripped her tank top off and started to unbutton her shorts, "-or you could change right here." I finished.
Tammy wasn't overly modest about her body, undressing right in front of me like it was no big deal. She kicked off her shorts and stood in her pink and white spotted panties, which had been pulled down slightly in the back. This gave me a view of the top of her butt crack just under her cute little tail. She care that she was showing off her glorious white fur to someone who was practically a stranger.    
She struggled with the large shirt when she tried to put it on, so I gave her some assistance. Sliding her arms into the sleaves and rolling them up. Before buttoning the front of the shirt for her I used the opportunity to covertly admire the black tips of her nipples conspicuously poking out of flat, snowy furred chest.  
"Let's see what I can do with these." I said as I stooped over to pick up her clothes. The shorts felt suspiciously heavy so I went through the pockets. I found a smart phone with a pink glitter case protecting it.    
"You don't want me to wash this." I told her as I handed it back to her.
"Oh, yeah, thank you." She said as she took it. "My mom wanted me to call anyway." She moved into the kitchen and started to dial the phone.
I found the heavy-duty grease cleaner and started to apply it to the stains on her clothes. I used a liberal amount of the stuff before dumping them into the washer with detergent. I set the machine for hot and extra heavy before turning it on. Just as I shut the lid there was a tug on the back of my shirt. I turned to find Tammy looking terribly distressed with the phone clutched tightly against her chest.
"I need you to talk to my mom." She said to me with a low, conspiratory voice.    
"What?" I asked in confusion. "Why?"    
"She wanted me to come home for dinner, but I can't go home looking like this, so I asked her if I could eat dinner at my new friend Steve's house." She had an apologetic look as she told me. "I told her you were eight, and now she wants to talk to Steve's parents!"
My brow furrowed as I realized what she wanted. "So you need me to lie for you?"
"Yes! Pleeeease!" She begged as she handed over the phone.    
I took the phone from her and put my paw over the mic. "What's your mom's name?"
"Clara" She said.
"Last name." I insisted.
"Oh, uh... she goes by Holder now."    
I cleared my throat. Here goes nothing. "Hello, Miss Holder?" I said into the phone.
"Hello, who am I speaking with?" The lady on the other side asked.
"Steve Barret..." I immediately realized my mistake and added: "...Senior."    
"Hello, Mr. Barret." She said and I was a bit taken aback by her voice. She didn't sound nearly as mean as Tammy had made out when talking about her earlier.    "Tammy says she's invited over for dinner?"
"Well, yes, we'd love to have her if that's okay." I said to her.
Tammy's mother chuckled. "I'm sorry, it's just that I'm a little surprised she actually asked you first, my Tammy has a habit of inviting herself over to other people's houses."    
I smirked at Tammy. "Oh, she does, does she?" The little cub looked apprehensively at me since she was only privy to my side of the conversation. "Junior wouldn't dream of doing something like that. He's much too shy."    
"What are you having?" Clara asked.
"Um, tonight is pizza night." I said.
"That explains that." Miss Holder said. "Tammy loves pizza, are you sure she didn't invite herself?"
"No, no," I assured her, "it was Stevie's idea. He seems really taken with her. He doesn't have a lot of friends so I couldn't tell him no. So, um, Tammy doesn't have any food allergies, does she?"
"Oh, no." Clara said. "She can eat anything, and she pretty much will."
"That's good. Stevie has some issues with peanuts so we have to be careful." I grimaced at myself as I realized I was laying the backstory on pretty thick for a child I did not have.
"The poor dear."    
"So everything is good then?" I asked, hoping to end the conversation before I blew it somehow.
"Yes, I just wanted to make sure... " She paused and Steve could hear a murmur of someone speaking to her in the background. "Oh, um... I don't know if we can... Don't you think that's... We don't even know them... Alright, I'll ask."
"Mr. Barret?"
"Yes?"    
"So, Bill and I were wondering... um... you know, we don't get much alone time with Tammy around, and, uh, feel free to say no, but we were wondering if it wouldn't be too much of an imposition if Tammy and Stevie had a sleepover?" She asked.
I blinked dumbly. "Over here?"    
"I don't want to sound like I'm pressuring you or anything, we won't be mad if you refuse, but we could really use the time." There was a hopeful tinge in her voice.  
"Um, well I guess it is the weekend." I said. "I'll ask if that's okay with them."    
I covered up the phone with my paw. "Your mom wants to know if you wanted to stay here for the night." I said to Tammy.    
The cub's dark eyes widened at the idea and she hopped up and down. "Yes!" She said. "Yes! Yes! That's so cool!"    
"They seem thrilled with the idea." I said into the phone. "It's fine with me."    
"Oh, thank you!" Clara said to me. "You're a lifesaver. I'll definitely make it up to you."
"Don't worry about it." I told her. "It's my pleasure and you two have fun."    
"Goodbye, Mr. Barret."
"Goodbye." I said as I ended the call and turned smartphone back over to Tammy, who was excitedly dancing in place to unheard music. It seems I'm going to have a little unexpected company for the night.
"Is pizza good with you?" I asked.