Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (12 page)

“Chavez!” one of the
officers calls. I get up and walk over to him.

“Give me your right
hand,” he says.

I do and he goes through,
pressing my thumbs and fingers onto a touch pad which captures and stores my
fingerprints. I’m actually starting to feel a little bad ass when the officer
tells me to go stand against one wall.

It’s a wall with a lot of
horizontal lines, and there are numbers relating to height off to the side.
Fingerprints are one thing, but they’re actually taking a mugshot of me.

I’m not going to lie: I’m
more than a little scared right now.

They flash a picture of
me facing forward, then one of me facing to the side and then the officer tells
me to go back and wait on the bench again.

On my way, I ask him if
he knows how much my bail is going to be.

“I’ll have to check,” he
says, “but I don’t think it’s going to be all that much. You weren’t racing
anyone and you didn’t hit anything. You know what would have been even less
expensive, though?”

I could do without the
condescension. I’ll get plenty of that if I have to call my parents to bail me
out of here.

“Not speeding and getting
arrested in the first place?” I ask.

“That’s right,” the
officer says and heads up to the counter. He’s talking with another officer for
a moment and then he comes back, saying, “$1,000 cash or bond. You’ve got a
charge for reckless driving, one for speeding, one for improper lane change,
one for an illegal display of your vehicle’s power, one for—”

“Hold on,” I tell him. “I
was speeding and nobody got hurt. I understand you’ve got to charge me, and I
understand that you had to arrest me. Why, though, are you reading a list of
charges longer than what they had on John Gotti?”

“If it makes you feel any
better,” the officer says, “I’m pretty sure his charges would have been a lot
more severe.” He cackles like a hyena and walks off.

$1,000. I know in the
grand scheme of things, it’s not a prohibitive amount of money, but it’s a lot
more than I have on me.

I just sit here on this
bench, but after a little while, they decide it’s somehow important for them to
move me into a holding cell where I sit on a similar bench, only I’m now alone
in the locked cell.

Maybe I’m not cut out for
this stuff. I still think pulling over was the smart thing for me in that
moment, but in the end, I’m not sure how great a difference that actually made.

I know I’m just feeling
sorry for myself, but this is the way it always goes with me. Everyone else
does something and gets away with it. Then I give it a shot and I’m immediately
busted.

Obviously, I wasn’t
keeping my eyes open the way Eli told me to, but what are the chances I’d get
picked up so soon?

The metal door to my
holding cell buzzes loudly and unlatches. The door opens.

“Chavez, you made bail,”
a blonde officer tells me.

“What?”

“Come on,” she says.
“You’re outta here. Watch your speed and show up for court.”

I nod and get to my feet,
rubbing my arms from the pervasive cold of the building. The adrenaline’s doing
a better job, though.

The only people I know
who’d be connected enough to know I’m in here are Mom and Dad. Every election
cycle, they hold at least one fundraiser for the mayor. There’s no other way.

I follow the blonde
officer out of the cell and down a hallway. We get to a big metal door and she
hold up her id badge to it, unlocking it.

We’re in a little
airlock-like space and she opens the next door, saying, “I hope you learned
something. Get out of here.”

My pulse is thick in my
veins as I take a step forward and then another. When I come up far enough to
see Eli waiting for me, I run over to him, throwing my arms around his neck and
repeating the words, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

He embraces me, one hand
cradling the back of my head. He says, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Chapter
Ten

Dynamics of Power

Eli

“Hey, could you pass me
that flathead?” Mick asks, holding his hand out from under the hood of my
Galaxie we’re trying to get running again.

I hand him the
screwdriver and lean against the car, saying, “I still can’t believe you lost
your first race.”

“How many times do I have
to tell you I don’t want to talk about it?”

“I’d imagine quite a
few,” I answer. “Did you even place?”

“I came in second, thank
you very much,” Mick says. “Could you pass me the wrench?”

I pass him a crescent
wrench and continue, saying, “How far off the lead car?”

“I don’t want to talk
about it,” he says. “Why are you even here right now? You’re not scheduled.”

“I thought I’d come in
and mock you while also being helpful around the shop,” I tell him. “So, are we
talking you got beat by a few car lengths, or is it more like you may as well
have stopped halfway through because they’d already finished?”

“I don’t know, man,” he
says, his voice sharpening. “It was probably somewhere in between.”

“That’s embarrassing.”

“Pass me the aluminum
cylinder, would you?”

I walk over to the shop’s
mini-fridge and pull out a soda, then hand it to Mick.

He takes a long drink of
it and hands it back. “Thanks,” he says. “Seriously,” he says, “why are you
here? If you were actually helping out, that’d be one thing, but-”

“Hey, I got you a
screwdriver, a wrench, and a soda,” I interrupt. “Tell me those are things you
wanted to do yourself and I’ll take off right now.”

One thing I can always
count on is Mick’s insatiable laziness.

“You know, you wouldn’t
be talking so much crap if it was
you
up against Jax in the first race,” Mick says.

I cock my head to the
side. “I didn’t know he was in the tournament,” I say. “Why would he offer a
big prize and then try to win it himself? If he didn’t hold the tournament, he
could have just kept all the money and saved himself a lot of time.”

“How else is he going to
pay for it?”

“What are you talking
about?” I ask. “He’s just losing money.”

“I seriously doubt that,”
he says. “You’ve got to think with those two new cars of his, he’s already
pretty close to funding the big prize as it is.”

“What two new cars? What
would that have to do with anything?”

“Third and fourth places
lose their pink slips to Jax,” he says. “Did that not happen with you?”

“No,” I tell him. “Nobody
said anything about pink slips.”

“Ah,” Mick says. “He’s
probably just doing that in his races. I don’t know. The guy’s kind of a
freak.”

“Oh, hey, Jax,” I say and
I laugh my ass off as Mick’s head creates a surprisingly loud metal clang as it
jerks upward against the open hood of the car.

Mick’s looking around
behind him, frantically. He throws his wrench at me, saying, “That hurt so bad,
dude.”

“So, Jax is out there
collecting pink slips,” I say. “I was wondering how he was going to profit off
of this whole thing.”

“You had to know he had
some kind of angle, though,” Mick says.

“Yeah,” I tell him.
“You’ve still got your ZL1, though, right?”

“Yeah,” Mick says. “It
was only the slower half of the pack that had to give it up, but I got a little
worried there for a little bit. I was being outgunned by this unmodified
Koenigsegg, but luckily he went over a fire hydrant about a block from the
finish line.”

I wince a little.

“So,” Mick asks yet again,
“what are you doing here?”

“I’m taking Kate out to
learn how to double-clutch,” I tell him.

He’s laughing.

“You’re not taking her in
the Chevelle, are you?”

“It’s the only manual
I’ve got,” I tell him.

“All right,” he says.
“Just pull it on into the shop after you’re done and we’ll see if we can repair
whatever murder she puts your transmission through.”

I shake my head, saying,
“She’s actually a really good learner.”

“That’s right; I am,”
Kate’s voice comes from one of the open bay doors. “Hey, Mick, how are you
doing today?”

“Isn’t there something
you can do about this boyfriend of yours?” he asks. “Here I am trying to work
and all he wants to do is distract me.”

“Sorry, bud,” she says.
“He’s his own man. That’s kind of what I like about him.”

I hope she likes more
than that, but I’m happy enough with the answer.

“You ready?” I ask.

“I think so,” she says.
“I’m a little nervous getting in the driver’s seat of that thing, though.”

“I know,” I tell her. “If
you want, I can make some calls and see if someone would be willing to let us
borrow-”

“I’m nervous,” she says.
“That doesn’t mean I’m chickening out.”

Now I’m nervous.

Kate and I make our way
out of the shop, Mick gracing us with his prediction of how much repairing my
car is going to cost as we go, though I think $10,000 is a bit high.

“Where’s the flatbed?”
Kate asks.

“Oh, Maye’s got it right
now. She’s off picking up some jackass that decided to park his car in his
neighbor’s empty swimming pool,” I tell her. “I don’t know how the flatbed’s
going to do any good, but oh well.”

“You mean we’re just
taking it out?” she asks.

I slow my pace a little
and grab her hand, saying, “If you don’t want to do this right now, or if you’d
like to see if I can get our hands on another car, that’s cool.”

She scoffs and pulls her
hand away, saying, “I guess I just thought I’d have a little bit more time to
practice shifting before we got out in the open.”

“It’s all right,” I tell
her. “Double-clutching really isn’t all that difficult once you get the hang of
it. It can be a little awkward at first when you’re used to single-clutching,
but you shouldn’t have any problems with it.”

She doesn’t respond.

We make it through the
junkyard and to the Chevelle.

“There’s just one thing,”
she says.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“I’ve never driven a
stick,” she says. “When people talk about clutches, my mind goes to purses.”

And that changes things a
little bit.

“The clutch on the
Chevelle is pretty sensitive,” I tell her. “It’s one of the mods I got on it.
Are you sure you’re up for this?”

“I guess that’s really a
question for you,” she says. “It’s your car. The question is whether you trust
me not to break it or not.”

“It’s not that I don’t
trust you,” I start.

“Great,” she says and
starts untucking the cover from under the frame of the car.

“Nice try, but that’s a
sentence I’m going to need to finish before I give you the keys to the Angel of
Death there,” I tell her.

She raises an eyebrow and
looks over at me. “You named your car ‘the Angel of Death?’” she asks.

That’s right. I was never
going to tell her or anyone else that ever.

Oops.

“That was more an
emphasis thing, really,” I say, though I have no idea what any of that means.

“It’s your call,” she
says. “If you think I’m going to break your car, I won’t be mad. I’ve never
driven a stick and I know this isn’t just a car for you. That said, if you
do
let me take the Chevelle, I have a
feeling you’re going to enjoy what I give you in return.”

Trading my bread and
butter, my pride and joy, my sweet, ferocious baby for a “favor” or two doesn’t
really seem like a good option, intellectually.

I’m not sure if she’s
trying some kind of psychology on me or if she actually means what she says.
Either way, there seems to only be one choice that will do the least amount of
damage.

“All right,” I tell her,
“but if you get going over twenty before you’ve got single-clutching down, the
lesson’s over, all right?”

“I know, I know,” she
says. “I’m not planning on doing any racing today. I just want to get out there
and get the feel for driving stick.”

What I should be doing
right now is looking through the phone book for a car rental place. I should be
talking to Mick about letting us take one of his cars for the day or getting in
touch with someone else so we’re playing with a bit less power, but I don’t.

I just get behind the
wheel as Kate gets into the newly reinstalled passenger’s seat.

Today’s going to be a bit
rough.

There’s something in the
way Kate talks to me that just automatically shuts down the rational part of my
brain and makes me think whatever idea she has is a good one. Well, I still
don’t think teaching her how to drive a manual transmission in the Chevelle is
a good idea, but I’m still willing to go along with it.

“We’re going to find an
empty parking lot somewhere outside of town,” I tell her. “That way, if anyone
stops us while we’re out there, we just say we’re waiting for the flatbed
because we can’t legally take this out on the road, okay?”

Of course, if a cop goes
by and recognizes the car, there’s a good chance we get busted anyway. No
reason to tell her that, though. If anyone’s going to get in trouble, it’s
going to be me, and that’s exactly the way I want it.

“Okay,” she says.

So, we go.

We’re driving for about
half an hour before we come across an old church with an empty parking lot. It
was in a lot much like this one that I first learned to drive a manual. Of
course, that was some POS four-cylinder car that was so boring I don’t even
remember what it was.

I have a feeling both
Kate and I are going to remember this.

Pulling into the lot, I
go to the far end of the pavement before turning the car around to provide the
greatest amount of distance.

I run through normal gear
shifting, and then I demonstrate, having her watch my feet as we go. After a
few minutes of this basic instruction, though, it’s time to hand the keys over
to her.

I shut the car off and
hold up the keys, but before I release them into her hand, there are a few
things I’ve got to tell her.

“Please don’t kill my
car,” I tell her, though I could swear I had more prepared.

She giggles as she
snatches the keys from my hands.

We get out and change
places. I’ve never sat on the passenger’s side of this car. It’s weird: it
feels like a different vehicle.

I start, “Push the clutch
all the way down before-”

She turns the key,
interrupting me. Only, her foot on the brake and the gas, not on the brake and
the clutch and my gorgeous and extremely expensive car has what I can best
describe as a seizure and it dies.

I reach over, turn the
key and pull it out of the ignition, saying, “I’m not trying to be a dick here,
but if you’re not going to listen to me, we’re done for today.”

Her bottom lip pushes
upward for an instant and she turns to me, saying, “I’m sorry. I got excited
and my brain kind of shut off.”

“Okay,” I tell her. “Remember,
the clutch is on the far left, the brake is in the center and the gas, of
course is on the right.”

She shoots me a glance
like she’s about to chastise me for being so basic, but I’m shaking my head at
her. If she doesn’t listen, she could very easily do serious damage to the car,
and I don’t think that would make either one of us very happy.

“So, clutch and brake?”

“Yeah,” I answer, handing
her back the key.

Kate slips the key into
the ignition and pushes the brake and clutch pedals all the way to the floor.
It helps that I repositioned the seat so she wouldn’t have any trouble with the
pedals.

She looks over at me and
I nod.

Kate turns the key in the
ignition and the car fires up.

“Woo!” she cries. “
That
is so cool!”

My irritation starts to
fade. She may have gotten over-excited at first, but it’s good to see her
having this much fun.

“All right,” I tell her.
“First, ease off the brake and move that foot over to the accelerator.”

“Okay,” she says, looking
down as she moves her foot from the brake to the gas.

“Now, give it just a
little gas and slowly start releasing the clutch,” I tell her.

She presses down on the
gas a little hard, revving the engine. She eases off again, saying, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her.
“Now go again, just this time give it a little less gas and don’t forget to
ease off of the clutch.”

She gets the gas about
right, but releases the clutch way too quickly. The car jolts forward, shudders
and dies.