Hot Laps (4 page)

After a series of parts owners stealing money and a misjudged fabrication specialist,
Dad had strict guidelines for hiring which explained why even a receptionist, was
someone we’d known for a while.

Though I doubt she’d remember, I’d known Hayden since I was younger but rarely ever
saw her. She was Tate’s niece and I’d met her when I was seven I believe. I remember
her kicking me in the balls for pushing her off the tire swing at the kid’s playground
in Daytona.

Hopefully she didn’t have the same reaction this time when we met.

I hadn’t finished disassembly yet when Charlie and Noah came back over and we talked
about getting two engines next door so they could be loaded on the trucks before they
left to California.

Charlie started pacing and rattling off the results of the dyno test we did wondering
why we couldn’t keep an engine in Dad’s car these days.

“Hey, Noah,” I smiled. “So what’s with you and Hayden?”

“Hayden?” his expression was blank for a beat, and then his cheeks puffed out as he
drew in a breath. Slowly he let it out as if he was thinking and then couldn’t recall.

“How do you know about that?” Charlie shot me a glare replying for Noah. He had a
better memory than Noah.

“Cole told me.”

Noah seemed confused for a minute and then smiled, remembering. “Nothing’s with us.
It was just a one-time thing.”

Charlie, as usual, responded with great annoyance towards me. “Stay away from her,
Casten.”

Charlie was on the verge of a mental breakdown these days, I honestly believe that
and Willie and I had determined this was because he wasn’t getting laid.

And if you knew Charlie, you understood why this was. He never shut the fuck up. He
always had something to say. I imagined that women just steered clear because of this.

There was a lot of commotion going on around us, conversation was easily disrupted.
We had nearly all the guys from JAR Racing inside the engine shop checking out Dad’s
engine and then working on preparing for their five week west coast tour.

“Hey, buddy!” Dave Richie, another guy who was hired to work with JAR Racing, patted
my back. Dave replaced Grady as the fabrication specialist but he also did a lot of
work on the cars at the track. He fit in well with Willie and Tommy and they had some
sort of three amigos thing going on.

Dave was quite possibly the worst addition to JAR Racing. And I don’t mean that in
a way where he was a bad guy, because he was actually one of my favorites, but he
was a bad influence on everyone. And, if you ask Willie, personally responsible for
his recent divorce.

He was a nice guy, just wild.

Dave followed me with heavy steps over to the dyno room where we had an engine in
there, Greg and Rusty stood outside with their heads turned toward the computer monitors.
They were responsible for research and development for CST which meant they spent
the majority of their time inside the dyno room.

Standing there, I watched Dave as he rubbed his hand up and down his beard. A nervous
twitch maybe, but he always did this. Dad usually gave him shit about it and told
him it made him look like some kind of creepy child molester. For the most part he
quit after that but when he got anxious, he rubbed his jaw.

“So Tommy’s car is out there …” Dave, who always fucking whispered in the middle of
a conversation, lowered his voice. “You gonna …” he shrugged and his voice returned
to a normal pitch. “Do what you normally do?”

Everyone, but Tommy, knew what I did. And if I didn’t know any better, they were just
as entertained by it as I was. It wasn’t some big secret.

“Why do you do that?” I looked to Dave for an explanation.

“Do what?” His eyebrows furrowed shadowing his dark eyes, and then released as he
blinked.

“Whisper? It’s hard enough trying to hear you with the dyno going and now you gotta
whisper. Speak up.”

Dave shrugged, as if my question didn’t even warrant an answer. “Hey, where’s that
new girl at?”

“Fuck if I know.”

Everyone was so caught up in this girl I found it actually entertaining. We hadn’t
had this much excitement around here since Willie’s wife showed up, thinking he was
alone in the sprint car shop, and gave him a lap dance. He wasn’t alone. Best show
I’ve seen in a long time and it’s a shame that got divorced because she was fucking
hot. Not only was he not alone in the shop that night, but there was also a GoPro
mounted to the wing of Rager’s sprint car that caught everything. And I do mean everything.

Cole found me again, and nudging Dave in the side. “Get this fucker to do it.”

“Why do I always have to be the one to do it? It’s us against him. You two could help
out too. Remember what Dave said.”

“What?” Cole looked confused, again.

Noah walked over and leaned against the wall watching Greg fight with Rusty for a
minute. Briefly it looked like they were actually going to hit each other but they
didn’t.

“What did Dave say?”

“You’re an idiot.” Dave replied, his eyes hardening. Dave had no patience for Cole.
None. Spencer either. They never got along.

“No,” Cole scratched the side of his jaw. “It wasn’t that.”

“If you can’t follow the conversation, Cole, don’t try.”

I suppose there’s a fine line with these guys between being an asshole and someone
just looking for a laugh. So I drew the line for them and decided to piss in Tommy’s
gas tank, for the third time this month.

“Shit’s about to get real,” I told Dave, walking outside.

Dave smiled in my direction with a diverted nod as he rounded the corner and headed
upstairs. “Uh-huh.”

Tommy’s car was parked in his usual spot marked Fire Crotch. No one else had personalized
spots but him. It was a joke my mom pulled on him and he never bothered to change
it, or park anywhere different.

I got out there, unzipped my pants and pissed in his gas tank.

Willie walked by with Axel’s helmet in his hand. “Are you doing what I think you’re
doing?”

“Tell me if you see him coming?”

“Why?” Willie chuckled, squinting into the North Carolina sun. “Would that really
matter?”

“No.”

When I got back in, Tommy was inside the shop talking to Dave who had returned, and
then Willie.

Willie said something to Tommy, and Tommy started laughing and looked in my direction.
I looked at the wall.

As you can see, usually I hid my pranks well but you can never be too careful.

I loved this place. I really did. I mean, look at my morning so far.

After I graduated, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do but that led me to working at
CST Engines with my cousins and eventually, I found what I wanted to do. Building
engines.

Where else could I work with a bunch of borderline alcoholics and crazy people?

By the time I was eighteen, I was building engines on my own and had a pretty good
understanding of how everything worked. My great grandpa’s business that he started
out of his garage one year had grown into a multimillion dollar operation and I was
a part of that.

That meant something special to me.

Around here, everything had changed drastically in the last few years. Now Dad was
running a full season in the World of Outlaws and managing the five cars he ran in
that series. It was a heavy load for sure but it’s what he loved. Every time I saw
him these days he was smiling.

After what he’d been through in his life – that’s all any of us wanted.

Speaking of him,
he
was looking for me and walking this way.

With a notable limp from his accident three years ago, Dad found me near the door.

“Hey, bud,” he said, coming around the side of my stall with his usual attire of
a hoodie and jeans. My Aunt Emma teased him that sense he was forty-six now, he had
no business wearing hoodies. Dad thought otherwise.

“Hey, Dad…ready for the west coast?”

“Yeah … should be a good time.” He rubbed the back of his neck looking over the engine.
“Gotta show your brother a thing or two about that high line.” He winked.

I flipped a wrench around in my hands leaning against the engine hoist. “What are
you guys like, four points apart?”

He laughed. “It’s still early.”

So far, Axel had yet to win a championship in his three years racing full time in
the Outlaw series. He’d come close, but hadn’t beat out Dad last year when they rolled
into Nationals with eleven points separating them. Dad won by three points.

I’d say Axel took it hard but he came back strong this year and was giving the former
champ a run for it.

Though most of our talk was about racing, he felt the need to lay down the law early
on. He was doing his engine check as Cole and I called it. Anytime he left town, we
both heard his speech.

“Listen to me, Casten, shit gets out of hand while we’re gone and you’re looking for
a new place to live. I mean it.” He gave me his best don’t fuck up look.

I winked at him. No way was I leading onto what I had planned for this weekend, or
the next five weeks while they were out of town.

“What happened to this thing?” I motioned to the blown engine.

“Hell if I know. It was running rough in the heats and Tommy made a few adjustments.”
His left hand scrubbed over his forehead. “Nothing helped though. Just let go half
way through the C Main.”

“So we got a new girl starting this week.” Dad smiled at the picture on my tool box
of me and Jack at his last birthday party. “She’s gonna help out Bailey in the office.”

“Really?” I winked and Dad knew. I already knew about Hayden but I had to tease him.

“She’s Tate’s niece.” A frown settled over him, then increased. “Be good.”

“Oh, well,” I knew how to get a rise out of anyone. “Tate loves me.”

“Yeah but you go around messin’ with his niece,” he shook his head giving me an irritated
look, “and he might have something to say about that.”

“She’ll love me. All women do.”

“You know kid, someday a girl is going to knock you on your ass.”

“As long as she f—”

He walked away covering his ears before I could finish. He knew exactly what I was
going to say. But I corrected myself and said, “As long as she’s
friendly
. I was going to say friendly.”

He didn’t believe me and raised his left hand flipping me off behind his back.

Blown – An engine that’s supercharged.

Do you want to know what I hate most when the morning light disturbs my blissful sleep?

Getting out of bed.

It’s really hard for me. Like
really
hard. Damn near impossible.

Maybe that’s why I’ve never had a job. Until now.

When the alarm clock went off Tuesday morning, I silently hoped that I had mistakenly
set it in error but then I remembered what today was. My first day at work.

It’s actually pretty sad that here I was nineteen, soon to be twenty in August, and
this was my first job.

Despite that, there I was, still in bed, and not motivated.

Last night I went out with my friend Anna. That’s really all that’s relevant right
there. We went out to celebrate my new-found employment.

The night was an intoxicated blur and I woke up with a keg in my room and my panties
in a red plastic cup beside my bed with a black sharpie scribble on it. I couldn’t
for the life of me tell you what it said. I don’t think the person who wrote it knew
either.

Rolling over, I stared at the ceiling trying to remember anything that might give
me a clue as to what actually happened last night. I’m used to the morning mystery
game. Granted, this was the first time I’d ever woken up with a keg in my room and
my panties in a cup.

It’s better than the mailbox. Try explaining that one to your dad the next morning
when he gets the paper and finds his only daughter’s panties in the mailbox with a
note that said: “
Thanks for the good time!
”

Yeah so, that didn’t go over well. It might not have been all that bad but I was sixteen
at the time. Probably something no dad wanted to find.