Hot Laps (2 page)

And there’s not a thing wrong with that.

Engine Check – Teams will go through one last engine check before the main events
to ensure everything checks out.

Running always made me wake up. Anyone who knows me understands I hate to get up in
the mornings. Always have. But I workout every morning before work because if I don’t,
it takes me half the day to wake up.

As I moved around the gym above our garage, I did two sets of squats and then sat
down on a bench to relax for a moment and catch my breath. On the far wall where the
ceiling peaked was a series of black and white photographs of our family. Ones from
growing up to more recent ones. Those photographs were some of my favorites because
as odd as they were, my dad dragging me by my feet as I lay sleeping in a sleeping
bag to him dumping me in the pool to the ones where Dad is giving away Arie, his only
daughter.

Taking in and appreciating those photographs, I smiled. The kind of smile you felt,
where your heart was warm.

Someone once asked me if I liked my family.

My first thought was, what kind of question is that, who doesn’t like their family?

And then my next sobering thought, oh yeah, not everyone had a childhood like mine.

I loved everything about it.

Where else would one find a group of highly unstable natural athletes with obsessive
disorders, anger issues, and who are borderline alcoholics?

The Riley family.

Nothing about any of us was normal. For someone like me, it was heaven.

It’s why I still lived at home.

After my workout, I took a shower as hot as I could because, again, I still lived
at home and was the only child left there. Didn’t have to worry about pissing off
my older sister, Arie, who used to get so angry that I wouldn’t leave any hot water
for her.

Two years ago she got married and now lived about ten miles away on Lake Norman with
her husband.

My older brother, Axel, got married three years and ago and now has two kids and a
crazy life. Therefore, he’s not here anymore either.

Though I had graduated at sixteen, just turned eighteen, I stayed at home.

Why?

I loved my family.

And I was a mama’s boy.

When I finished with my shower and got my jeans and work shirt on, I jogged down the
dark mahogany stairs that led down to the kitchen of my parent’s home. Off the kitchen
was an eating nook where we had four cocktail tables that gave the room a bar atmosphere.
Around the tables were black leather accent chairs that were quite possibly the most
uncomfortable chairs ever designed. Whenever I sat in them I felt like some kind of
psychologist getting ready to spew psychobabble bullshit.

When I closed the door to the fridge after grabbing the milk, I saw Rosa, our housekeeper,
sitting on the table closest to the French doors leading out to the patio. She, too,
was eating breakfast and watching Dora the Explorer. Rosa thinks she’s Mexican. Actually
tells people she is. No one has ever believed her because it’s a known fact the only
Spanish words she’s learned have been taught to her by Dora.

As I poured my cereal, the mess on the counter beside the blender caught my eye. Whenever
Rosa made anything, she made a complete fucking mess. It probably would have been
cleaner if she would have just used a shotgun.

Sitting down next to her with a bowl of cereal, I noticed she was back on her smoothie
diet.

“Want some?” Rosa offered up her green drink. Every week Rosa started a diet to lose
weight. By Wednesday, she was back to beer, pizza, and burgers. Rosa wasn’t a large
woman but as Willie would say, she had about twenty pounds in each breast.

Dressed in tight spandex pants that she probably shouldn’t wear given her body structure,
and a sweatshirt, I gathered Rosa was either going to work out, just did, or maybe,
just contemplating it. I tend to think it was more of the contemplating.

When I didn’t answer, she pushed her drink my way again.

Dropping the spoon in my bowl of cereal, I gagged holding up my hands and pushing
the cup back at her. Anything green, especially spinach, made me want to vomit. Rosa
knew that.

“It’s good,” she said, mid-drink pulling the glass away. Some dribbled down her chin.

I gagged again and kicked her shin.

Pressing her lips together, no doubt holding back her laughter and drink. Reaching
for her napkin beside her she wiped her chin.

“Tommy’s in town. Tell that creamsicle fucker I want my panties back.”

“Gross, no.” My eyes raised in a glare.

Raising her glass once more she finished off her drink and then slammed her cup down
on the table. In the process, a few drops fell into my cereal. I pushed the cereal
away crossing my arms over my chest and then panicked slightly.

“Tommy’s home?” Rosa nodded, entertained seeing me sweat a little. “So that means
Mom and Dad are too?”

My parents had been on the road for two weeks, and would only be home four days before
leaving for the west coast.

“Did he see the mailbox?”

Rosa bit back laughter. “No. Cole put up a new one last night before they got home.
You’d never know it burned to the ground two nights ago.”

“Nice.” I nodded as she spoke, thankful Cole did something right for once and not
just making it harder on me. “I’ll have to thank him for that.”

“Don’t get to sappy. He’s still a dumbass.”

She had a point.

I got up after that and set my bowl in the sink. I was just about to wash it when
Rosa took it. “I better clean up. Wouldn’t want boss man to get cranky his first day
back.” I could almost hear the annoyance in her voice for my dad and his urge to have
our housekeeper actually do something. Not that she ever did.

As I was heading for the door, Rosa opened a bag of chips in the pantry and dumped
them in her mouth. What didn’t make it in her mouth fell to the ground at her bare
feet.

Apparently, this week she fell off the wagon a week early.

I loved living at home for many reasons. The food. My mom. Rosa and my dad. No rent
was cool too but it wasn’t that.

I can’t even begin to describe how much I loved my bed too. It’s like sleeping on
a marshmallow.

To understand why I loved living at home, it mostly had to do with my mom. I was a
mama’s boy. Always have been. She couldn’t, and still can’t, do anything wrong in
my eyes because who else would protect me when I filled my brother’s bed with itching
powder or glued my sister’s phone to her ear?

My dad sure as shit wouldn’t, he just said: “You pissed in your bed, you lay in it.”

Whatever the hell that meant.

Most of the time, I found a way out of it by either crying or batting my eyelashes
at my mom. They were long, thick and provided just enough shadow to hide a pair of
sparkly green eyes. I was definitely blessed when it came to being adorable and I
knew it. It worked well for when my plans for attacking didn’t roll well. Which happened
a lot when I was a kid.

Was I a bad kid? If you ask me, no.

If you ask my dad, yes.

I lied a lot but what kid didn’t? I hit my siblings, I got grounded, earned myself
a few spankings when warranted for the larger mishaps when I refused to listen and
I don’t know how many times I heard the words, “I told you so,” from both my parents
and my grandparents.

But still, I wouldn’t change any of it.

My parents were cool. I’d never tell them that. They let us be kids and have normalcy
even when we didn’t.

I think that’s why I was still at home.

My drive to the shop was about ten minutes. Every day when I get inside, Noah greets
me. He’s just like his dad, my Uncle Aiden. Never likes to be late.

We come in about eight in the morning. Noah gets here at six-thirty just in case his
fifteen minute drive from Lake Norman might have traffic.

“Did you hear there’s a new girl starting today?” Noah asked, watching me plug my
phone into the charger on my toolbox since I never remembered to charge it at night.

This wasn’t the first I’d heard about a new girl starting. And with this group of
guys, it wasn’t the last.

“In the shop?”

Noah laughed pushing his thick black hair from his blue eyes. “No. Could you imagine?”
he tried for a minute, then laughed again.

I’m not sure what was more entertaining right then, the thought of Noah, my dim witted
cousin, trying to think, let alone imagine a woman engine builder.

I’m not saying it couldn’t be done. It could. Leddy Motorsports had one and she was
good too.

Mostly I couldn’t imagine a woman engine builder here at CST.

We had a good team here now with me, Charlie and Noah. We pushed out engines weekly,
built about two hundred a year and managed not to kill each other. I for one loved
to piss them off and get them yelling at each other – which happened daily. Wasn’t
hard to do.

“Who’s the girl?” I already knew who the girl was but I didn’t say anything to the
guys because it wasn’t really a concern to me. Now I just wanted to see if Noah knew.

I kept my attention on the 410 engine in front of me knowing I needed to get this
one rebuilt and get the pistons in so I didn’t have to stay late tonight.

“Don’t know,” Noah sighed when he heard Charlie, who’d just walked in, dump his coffee
on the ground and cursed. Charlie had shaky hands. Dropped everything from tools to
hot coffee. “Haven’t heard yet.”

With the distraction of Charlie arriving, Noah left, leaving me to work for a little
while. I really wanted to get this shit done. I had plans with my grandma every Tuesday.

Since my grandpa died three years ago, I’ve been having dinner with her every Tuesday
and I wasn’t about to miss one regardless of this engine in my stall.

When I was fifteen, my grandpa was taken from us in Knoxville. I wasn’t there that
night and I was glad I wasn’t. It seemed hard enough for my brother, Axel, who saw
the entire wreck right before his eyes.

For me, I saw the video later and again, I was glad not have been there. Not only
was grandpa killed but also my dad was in the worst wreck of his entire life that
day. It was touch and go whether or not he would survive for a few weeks but he pulled
through. I honestly think if he wouldn’t have, the loss for us would have been too
much.

I believe, no, I know it would have destroyed my mom. It’d be hard for a kid like
me to explain but I knew enough that she couldn’t lose him.

Our family was forever changed after that day in Knoxville.

The way we moved on was simple, we just did. It wasn’t like us to dwell on something
we couldn’t change, or at least it wasn’t like me. I took to showing my grandma what
she needed to live for. I couldn’t help but want to help her when I found her crying
one morning when I went to check on her.

From then on, I took her to dinner every Tuesday night and every Sunday we had movie
night. Eventually Arie, Lexi, Lane and Cole joined in but Tuesday night was all about
us. We never told anyone we had this weekly ritual…it was our special time together.

And over time, she told me her entire life story. I learned a lot about our family
through her and while it was interesting, I also learned new inventive ways to fuck
with all of them. It was all in good fun and my sixty-seven-year-old grandmother had
a blast finding ways to prank our unsuspecting family members. Each week we had a
new target and when we ran out, it was a random draw.

When you thought about it, I couldn’t be a normal person to pull her out of her depression
she’d been slipping into nor was I that great of a listener but apparently, I was
what she needed.

While I had a few minutes, I checked my phone just to make sure she hadn’t sent me
a text message or anything. Sometimes she told me where she wanted to go, other times
she left it up to me as to where we went. I had one text message from her that just
read:
Jameson
.