Hot Laps (44 page)

That was, until we spoke. She’s smart and it shows in everything she does. Me, well
I fit in well with the dysfunctional shit show I was part of.

“What are you doing here?” I gasped unable to control my tears any longer. “I thought
you were in school?”

Her first question?

“Why do you have a sign that says Fuck Fort Elite on your door?”

“Because it’s cool,” I laughed. “But seriously, how did you find me?” Mom and Dad
didn’t even know I moved in with Casten.

“Anna told me. I couldn’t let my baby sister have a baby and not come see you,” she
gushed, stepping inside and peeking in the blanket. “Oh my God!” she squealed clapping
her hands together in front of her face. “She’s so pretty!”

“Did Mom tell you?”

“No, actually Dad did. He was so excited to be a grandpa he called me at three in
the morning to tell me you had the baby.” She raised her eyes from the baby. “I’m
so happy for you.”

I shrugged. Fucking hormones. I thought that shit would have gone away once the kid
was born, but no, I was still dealing with it.

“Hayden …” Haley paused waiting for my eyes to find hers. “You know that mom loves
you. She does.”

“She has a shitty way of showing it,” I mumbled reaching for Gray’s bottle on the
counter. I was breastfeeding but my milk didn’t come in the way it should so I had
to supplement with formula.

Popping the top to the already mixed container, I shook it up and watched Gray squirm
a little. She knew.

“You know why I moved across the United States from her?”

“Because she’s a bitch?”

“Yep,” Haley handed me Gray. “I love Dad, but I honestly don’t see how he’s married
to that woman.”

We both shared a laugh. Haley watched me as I held Gray cradled in my arms watching
her eating.

I looked up at her and smiled. “What?”

“It’s good to see you like this.” Her smile was endearing. “The last time I saw you
was at my graduation party and you were drunk and smoking pot. Now you’re a mother.”

“It’s crazy to think this time last year I was stealing beer from my roommate and
jobless.”

“Don’t forget living in a trailer with a sign that says Fuck Fort Elite on it.”

“Classy, huh?”

“Totally,” her smile broke and I saw a touch of sadness. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.” I did miss her. I didn’t even realize how much I did until she
walked in. Now I didn’t want her to leave. We talked for hours and I couldn’t remember
a time when I ever felt closer to her.

Life changes in some strange ways sometimes. I didn’t realize how much my life had
changed until Haley said something. She was right. This time last year I was technically
a bum. Now look at me.

Sometimes we make decisions. Like taking a job we never thought would work out.

We make rash decisions. Ones we think will never work out. Like going to a party to
talking dirty with an engine builder.

We make decisions we think we’re going to regret. Like going on a road trip with an
engine builder. Sometimes those decisions bite us in the ass. Or the toe in my case.

Sometimes we’re left with a decision. Like having a baby.

Sometimes it just all works out.

Sometimes I wonder if everyone knows who they are. I don’t mean like where they come
from. I mean deep down. I didn’t know me. I didn’t know that I had parental issues.
Well, I did, but you get it. I was avoiding them by drinking. I never saw that. I
thought I was just having a good time. Did I want to live that way?

I thought I did. I was in denial. The thing was, some people are so set on believing
nothing is wrong, they actually believe it whether it’s true or not.

I’m not sure my relationship with my parents would ever be what it should. I’m also
not inclined to worry about it too much. I have my own family now and they are my
primary concern.

All it takes is one person to change your life forever. That one person can force
you to think and feel things you’ve never felt before. They change your color from
gray to electric blue.

When they change that color, they force you to rethink about who you are.

Did I want to live that way anymore?

I wanted some beer. I did know that.

Did I know why this happened?

Yeah, I forgot my shot, but looking at Gray, I’m glad I did.

Casten was right. It all worked out.

Gas Can – Large steel can used to fill cars with gas.

1 Year Later

“You and Charlie need to apologize or whatever,” Dad had said to me after I made the
decision to cut back at the shop and race more. “I hate to say it, but we need him
back there and he’s family.”

We did talk at the shop one morning. I was gloating that Gray had started crawling
when he came up and smiled. First smile I’d seen from him in so long I couldn’t remember
the last one.

For guys, it’s easy to reconcile. It was simple as, “Hey, man, no hard feelings?”

“Nope,” I smiled. “None.”

And that was that.

Before he let, he turned to face me. “You know that my problem was never with you
directly, right?”

“No.”

It takes a man with a lot of balls to say what he said to me that way.

I doubted Charlie and I would ever be as close as Cole and I were, but I had a new
respect for him after that.

Charlie shuffled his feet and then drew in a deep breath. “Around here, it’s kind
of … a Riley thing. Jameson owns JAR Racing and CST. Axel races. You race. Nobody
else in the family does. Nobody compares to you and Axel in Jameson’s eyes, and sometimes
those of us who work for him tend to think we’re not as good.”

“You’re better at engines than me, you know that, right?”

“I do,” he nodded in agreement. “I’m not saying it shouldn’t be that way either. You’re
his boys. We’re the Gomez boys. I knew Hayden a lot longer than you did and part of
me had a feeling you two would get together.” Charlie gave me a regretful stare. “I
loved her. I did. So …” he kept pausing and it was so unlike Charlie because he blurted
everything out most of the time. “Treat her right.”

There was a good part of me that felt bad about racing again because it meant less
time at CST. Ultimately, it was less time spent with Hayden and Gray, too.

We ended up building a house that spring after Gray was born on my parent’s property.
They gave us a two-acre plot next to Tommy.

Hayden was apprehensive about that, wasn’t sure whether she wanted to live near Tommy
but when I explained to her that we could put in some security cameras eventually
and spy on him, she was okay with it.

After that we used our previous home, the camper, to travel in since I was racing
more and more.

After the Chili Bowl, Dad came to me and asked me what I wanted to do. I loved building
engines, but part of me wanted to race full time.

“I would feel bad, you know? Leaving you and the guys at the shop hanging.”

He laughed. “Says the kid who destroyed my house,
twice
.”

“That was last year. I’m a family man now.”

“You’re twenty, a dad, and have a live-in girlfriend. Don’t go putting a title on
it now.”

I shrugged. “Sometimes I wonder if you will ever know my real age.”

“Hey,” he put his arm around me as we walked into the shop. “There’s worse things
to forget. At least I remember your name.”

“True.”

Dad let me make the decision to race myself. After the Outlaw season started, I decided
I would try it. I didn’t go in intending to be competitive. I just went out there
and had fun, the way I needed to.

That left me, once again, running the Chili Bowl the first next year right before
Gray’s first birthday.

Life was so different than it was back then and I now had over a dozen wins under
my belt. And I had one more by the end of that night. At twenty, I won the Chili Bowl
Midget Nationals.

Some say I’ll never be as good as my brother and dad. I say to them that it was never
about that. I’m an independent suspension.

We were all in the shop the day after my first Chili Bowl win looking at the car.
It’d definitely seen better days after I blew up the engine doing a burn out. Dad
and mom were teasing Hayden about the dress she bought for Gray to wear. She thought
for sure Gray would actually wear it but my spirited little girl wanted nothing to
do with dresses. She wanted my car. She wanted to play in dirt and had every toy race
car they made.

Gray just may be the first girl Riley racer.

And I had no problems with that.

“She’s not going to let you put that on her. She never wears that shit,” I told Hayden,
gesturing to Gray who was running around the shop in nothing but her diaper.

“Fine. If I show you will you stop being such an asshole and get her to wear it?”

I grinned and looked at my dad and then back to Hayden. “Show me and let’s see …”

“Son of a bitch …” Dad mumbled staring at my mom. “He stole my line.”

Everyone got a good laugh out of that.

Ultimately, Gray never got in that dress for her first birthday. She wore a diaper
and a tank top that said: Girls get dirty, too.

“You, my son, have met your match.”

I smiled watching Hayden arm wrestle my Uncle Spencer and then kick him in the shin
to get the advantage. Lately, I was thinking of asking that girl to marry me. Lately,
I thought maybe she’d say yes. “Yeah, I guess I have.”

He smacked the back of my head. “I wasn’t talking about her,” he made me look at Gray
who was, at one-year-old, throwing sticks at people who walked by and then belly laughing
if they tripped.

I’d never thought about it that way. Until now.

“Hey, Uncle Casten?” Jack called out holding my helmet in his hands.

“Yeah, buddy?”

“Can I have your helmet from the Chili Bowl win?”

I smiled, watching his face light up as I said yes.

Dad looked at me. “He’s been talking about your helmet for a week now. He was scared
you were going to give it to Gray.”

“Nah, she’d just throw it in the dirt right now.”

Gray came running up to me with Rosa running behind her. “Daddadadada …” she said,
or something like that.

I picked her up laughing when she pulled my hat off and placed it on her own head.
Her smile got me every time. It was exactly like Hayden’s.

Rosa came up, panting and holding her side. “No huyas de la mama.”

I had to laugh. She was constantly trying to get Gray to call her mama. “You’re not
her mama, Rosa. That would be really weird.”

Rosa put her hands on her hips and looked at Gray, then at Hayden standing near the
house, then me again. “Creo que se parece a mi.”

“No,” I shook my head smiling at her, “she doesn’t look like you.”

Rosa said something else in what sounded like Russian now and walked away from me.
Crazy woman.

Grandma made her way over to me, Gray went right to her as she always did. Hayden
never did join our Tuesday night dinners but Gray was a regular part now.

Standing near the house, blowing in her hands trying to warm herself up on this sunny,
but cool, North Carolina winter, was Arie. She was smiling and it felt good to see
her around more. Not far from my mom, they seemed to have been spending a lot more
time together. It was nice to see.

Easton stepped toward her, his palms raised and then whispered in her ear. She frowned
and then walked away with them.

“What’s with them?”

Dad shook his head as my grandma handed Gray back to me and walked toward my mom.
“Not sure.”

“Fuck,” Hayden sat down next to me and Gray. Dad excused himself, probably going to
check on Arie. “This beer is amazing!”

Gray took it from her and tried to get a drink. “No way,” Hayden said, tapping her
finger to her nose. “Not a chance. I already have one homicide on my hands with Sampson.
No way I’m losing you, pretty girl.”