The Champion (Racing on the Edge) (52 page)

Jameson smacked him upside his head, rusty waves danced
in the breeze. “I blame you for this.”

After twenty minutes, everyone started to arrive. That’s
when the real fun began.

Van and Andrea showed up with the Lucifer twins who by
now were more civilized and practically adults. Lucas had just signed with the
Pittsburg Pirates to play professional baseball.  So he was here, in body,
much like Jameson, with his phone molded to his fingers. It’s always been my
experience around any professional athlete that they’re attached to their
phones.

Why?

Because there’s an endless amount of emails, phone calls,
Twitter updates, Facebook status
...
it’s
how they stay in touch with fans and publicists. As you can imagine, Jameson
hated all of that.

Logan hovered around Jameson since he was now working for
JAR Racing. Anything Jameson said, he now paid attention to. It still makes me
laugh when I think about Logan duct tapped to a chair and Jameson eating cereal
and acting as though there was nothing wrong with duct tapping a 6-year old
little boy to a chair.

Van and Andrea had just moved to the East coast to be
closer to us. With Van and Clint being around us pretty much 24/7, it was
almost necessary for them to live near us. Clint lived about a mile from us. He
was single and took our safety seriously. He was the one that followed us
everywhere. As he had his own family now, Van came when security would be an
issue.

“What time does our flight leave?” Aiden asked Jameson as
he approached him with Noah.

Jameson peeked at his phone. “Two hours
...
we need to get this over with.”

“Agreed,” Lane said from behind us. Little Lane was no
longer little Lane. At sixteen, he towered over me in height, looked identical
to Spencer except with blond hair and loved to race dirt bikes. Currently he
was racing on the WORCS series, which was the World Off Road Championship
Series that ran once a month primarily on the west coast.

“Hey Jameson,” Lane nudged Jameson’s shoulder. “Can I
come with you to Daytona?”

All the boys in the family loved Daytona.

Why?

Because of the women. Daytona was notorious for
half-naked women flaunting around. For teenage boys, this was a dream come
true, so I learned. Mine were still a little young for that. Thankfully, Casten
thought it was disgusting and Axel, well he didn’t see any of that. If it
wasn’t a sprint car or Lily West, he never looked twice.

Jameson laughed shaking his head. “Just keep your dick in
your pants kid.”

“Jameson!” Alley slapped his shoulder. “Don’t say dick
around my son.”

“He’s sixteen Alley
...
”
Jameson looked up to glare at her. “He knows he has one.”

“Regardless, don’t say that around him.”

“Mom
...
dad says
way
worse.” Lane defended with a grin of his own.

Casten jumped on my back after that smooshing his chubby
cheeks into mine. “Let’s go get me some ice cream mama.”

“I don’t think so monkey, it’s picture time.”

“
I
don’t think so. Don’t want to get my picture
taken today. Maybe tomorrow,” He shrugged letting his legs fall from around my
waist to dangle with his arms wrapped tightly around my neck.

“Okay everyone, let’s gather by the water.” Nancy called
out with Jimi giving everyone the eye. The one that meant you kids better
behave. No one in their right mind crossed Jimi either. If our family was a
kingdom, Jimi was the king.

Jimi was still racing on the Outlaw series with Justin,
Tyler, Cody and the new driver for JAR Racing, Rager Sweet. Jimi talked about
retiring but just like every other Riley in the family, racing was his life. I
had a feeling he was never going to retire unless he was forced to.

Soon we were all lined up near the water, although none
of us were actually looking at the camera. My kids were messing around, trying
to throw Noah and Charlie in the ocean. Lane was helping them. Lexi was
standing off to the side shaking her head at them. Lucas was on his phone as
was Jameson. Van was trying to keep an eye on a group of women gathered a few
hundred feet away taking their own pictures of us, stalking Jameson as usual.

Emma was screaming for Axel to put Charlie down. Aiden
was helping Noah out of the water by now when Casten pushed him. Alley and
Spencer were arguing about Lane going to Daytona with them. Nancy was smiling,
glowing actually and Jimi was glaring at everyone.

That’s our family.

You can’t allow us together all at once but what family
all got along?

None that I knew of.

The off-season for us was a time to reunite with
everyone. We were all so busy throughout the year and had little time to
actually be a family. We learned though after a few years, that’s how it was.
On any given weekend you’d find us spread all over the states. Early on I
thought this would work for a while and we’d have time to relax when we were
old. But then I looked at Nancy and Jimi. Here they were, in their late fifties
and still going strong. Nancy never complained that between running fan clubs for
Jameson, Axel, Casten, Lane and Lucas, she had her hands full. She wanted this
lifestyle as did everyone else. We lived for the times when the pits were cold
and we could let our guards down and be a family.

When the picture was finally taken Jameson pulled me
aside to say goodbye. “You’ll be there on Wednesday, right?” he asked softly,
his eyes searching mine. I knew he didn’t want me missing the
Budweiser
shootout.

“Yeah, Arie has her recital on Monday and then we will
head out.”

He frowned. “Tape it for me?”

“I always do.” My lips met his for a quick kiss. He had
other ideas about that, pushing me against the side of our Escalade. His hands
crept under my sweater, lingering around the waist band of my jeans. Leaning
into his warm embrace, the cool crisp air blowing in from the ocean caused me
to shiver.

Sighing, I pulled his face closer, sweeping my tongue
across his lips. My dirty heathen reacted. We may be thirty-six now, but we
still had that spark.

“I’m gonna miss you so much honey.” He whispered pulling
back after a few more kisses.

Casten beat on the window in the car. “Get a room old
guys!”

“He’s a little shit.” Jameson muttered. “I’ll be waiting
for you.”

I smiled taking in his sparkling green eyes, the tired
lines forming in his face as he squinted in the sunlight. Taking my right hand
that was wrapped around his neck I leaned my forehead against his, running my
hand over the stubble of his jaw. “I love you.”

“As I love you,”

Jameson left after that and the life of the racing season
began. There’s one thing I learned from Nancy as I sat there in the parking lot
watching my husband leave, you just go with the flow. That’s all we could do.

We were racers wives.

22.
        
Darlington Strip – Jameson

Darlington Strip –
Term used in NASCAR when a driver gets into the wall at Darlington.

“Don’t take it personal Jameson.”

I fucking hated those words. Despised them even. Anyone
who said that to me at the track, they better be ready for my temper and maybe
a fist or two.

When I think about my kids growing up, I think about
every meal I’ve missed with them. I think about every race of theirs I’ve
failed to make. I think about missing Arie’s birth or Casten’s first birthday.
I think about how many dance recitals I’ve missed. I think about Axel’s first
Dirt Nationals and the countless races on Sundays because I was racing. I think
about how many times I’ve missed Sway’s birthday since as it was the same
weekend Richmond race. Then there were the anniversaries that were interrupted
by the award ceremonies.

All these things ran through my mind whenever someone
spoke those words to me. So to say this wasn’t personal to me was bullshit.
This was personal. I put everything I had into racing including my time away
from my wife and kids.

Every lap I made, every race or championship I won was
personal to me for the simple fact that it’s time away from seeing my family.

Throughout the fifteen years I’d raced in the cup series,
I’d never had a problem with Paul Leighty. That was until the August Watkins
Glen race. The day’s heat wasn’t the only obstacle that day. Patience was.

Back when I was learning to race, I had to draw a line
back then. You wanted to go out there and give it everything you had but there were
times when you had to think, “How much will this set us back if I wreck? How
much will a blown engine cost me?”

After that, you look at everything differently. In turn
your driving style changes and patience plays a key role. That patience, for
me, was there now. Drivers like Paul, not so much.

Beside me and Colin Shuman, Paul was one of the most
aggressive drivers in NASCAR. He wouldn’t hesitate to trade paint with you each
Sunday. Like I said though, we’d never really had any run-ins together.

You see with Paul, unlike most, he never faded. His three
championships throughout his cup career proved that. He was just as fast on lap
two hundred as he was on the first lap. Being a soft spoken reticent, he never
got into it much, until Watkins Glen.

Everyone says you can’t go two-wide through the fast
uphill esses there. Well as it turns out, they were right. The thing with both
Paul and me this season was, you had two hungry racers both fighting for
position. I somehow clipped the inside curb causing my back end to hit his left
front. Before we both knew it we were off the track and picking out a nice
section of concrete to mark up.

I respected Paul. After all, we started the same season
in cup and I also respected how he raced me these past thirteen years. So when
we got back on the track after that, he pushed me up in to Tate causing him to
spin off in the grass and lose some ten positions on the restart. What he did
there was not respectable.

“Did you tell his spotter I didn’t mean to hit him back
there?” I asked Aiden. We frequently used our spotters to communicate with
other drivers.

“Yeah
...
apparently
he didn’t get the message.”

That was evident by the hand signals he provided me.

“How many laps is this thing anyway? I feel like I’ve
been out here forever?” We crossed under the bridge heading back into turn one,
Paul on my inside.

“There’s room on the outside if you need it.” Aiden added
when we approached the outer loop.

Kyle chuckled. “Two thirty six.”

“Oh geez. Did they increase it?”

“No.”

“Well it feels longer.”

Another thirty laps and bumping and banging with Paul, my
air went out in my helmet. While temperatures rose, so did my car’s internal
temperature. It was well over one hundred and thirty degrees in my car at that
moment. So add the temperature outside to my temper Paul already set free. I
was not in the best mood.

“I hate to say this but my air just went out.” I
grumbled. “It’s like a fucking oven in here.”

“Are you serious?”

“Do you honestly think I’d joke about that?” I laughed
despite myself.  “There’s no fucking way I can finish the race like this.”

We made a pit stop after that when they gave me a hose
that ventilated air coming in from outside the car. “What do I do with this?” I
asked looking at the hose during the last pace lap.

“Hook it up to your helmet. We couldn’t get it in there
with the net and still get you out in time.”

After some negotiating and yelling at my helmet and lack
of space in the car, it worked but did nothing for my mood.

As the race continued, Paul and I were running second and
third with just a few laps to go when he once again, got into my bumper on a
restart. After fishtailing briefly, I got it under control and managed to
finish second to Bobby with Paul behind me in third.

Wanting to show Paul just how pleased I was, I nudged him
on pit road after the race. In my mind, I got my point across. Done deal.

Well NASCAR had their own theory on that one. They didn’t
want other drivers getting into the habit of running into each other on pit
road. It was dangerous. We could hit either a crew member or an official doing
that sort of thing just by accident. I knew that and I wasn’t trying to hurt
anyone. I mean, honestly, I was going maybe 15mph. It’s not like I hit him
going full throttle and body slammed him. I had more respect than that. Last
time I looked, I wasn’t Darrin Torres. I was just simply expressing a little
concern for his lack of concern on the track.

Like I said, NASCAR didn’t see it like that and sent both
of us to the hauler to hash it out.

Paul and I left the hauler not speaking and it took weeks
to talk about what happened in Watkins Glen. He tried to talk to me when Casten
and I were leaving the media center after the Bristol race but I wasn’t having
it.

“Listen Jameson,” this was not the way to start a
conversation with me. “I just don’t see why you’re upset. You race everyone
that way.
You
can’t expect to run me off the track and me not get
upset.”

“I don’t race
you
that way, that’s the point.” My
eyes met his briefly. “I didn’t hit you on purpose.” I kept walking shocked he
couldn’t understand my response. Casten followed paying close attention to what
Paul was saying. Casten may be the happiest kid on the face of the planet but
if you mess with his family, he threw down.

“Jameson, just don’t take it so personal, it’s just
racing. And if I remember correctly, you got the last hit on me.” He said
condescendingly.

“I’m leaving,” I was thoroughly annoyed at this point,
and walked inside the hauler.