The Blind Date

by Alice Ward

  Whirling to leave, I grabbed my phone from the pocket of my khaki shorts. The background photo was the UnCaged Fitness logo, with the words: I WISH, the last two letters crossed out and replaced by LL. I WILL. That’d been my motto since I first made the decision to get in shape.

  Laura followed behind me a short while later, as I crossed the field to the parking lot. “Hey, Pudge.”

  I waved her away, irked by the old nickname, even though I understood why she still used it. “Shouldn’t you be at the Walmart meeting right now?”

  As COO of UnCaged Fitness, Laura had just about as tight a schedule as I did. Yale Law degree, whip-smart with financials, fantastic at making deals, it was hard to believe she was the girl I used to give head noogies to persistently in our childhoods. She had an important meeting with the folks at Walmart, finishing up the plans to bring an exclusive line of our fitness games at a more attractive price point to the average joe. But she was my right-hand girl at shoots like these because she’d spent most of her twenties fitness modeling herself. Since most of the women we were using weren’t professional models, I relied on her to get our subjects to relax for the camera.

  “Getting there,” she said. “So, what’d you think? This going to be the greatest ad campaign we’ve ever done?”

  “Yeah. By far. Tawny’s… um…”

  “Hot,” she finished. I’d been thinking good, but only in the sense that she’d make our target audience feel like getting off their asses and buying more CageFrees in the process. “Delicious. Alluring. And clearly willing to do anything you command of her, as are most of our female models.”

  I let out a huff of air. “I don’t dip my pen in the company ink, Laur. You know that.”

  “They’re models, not employees,” she pointed out.

  “No difference. I’m not interested in that,” I said flatly.

  “Okay, okay.” I knew she wondered what was wrong with me. I’d had my share of women, but all the ones in recent memory had been casual, one-night hookups. I liked women. Loved sex. But I had an empire to build, a mission to fulfill. “So check it, Pudge.”

  She shoved her phone under my nose before I could tell her to cut out the Pudge. I’d already been to the gym today, so I didn’t need that reminder. I stared for a second at the video playing. Looked like a NASCAR race. Fucking NASCAR. Who cared?

  “What am I looking at?” I asked, watching the damn cars go round and round. “You know I’m not one for NASCAR.”

  She snorted. “The only heterosexual man in Daytona who’s not. You are hetero, right?”

  “Hilarious,” I deadpanned, making a move like I was going to give her a smack across the head, which was nothing compared to what I used to do when we were kids. She put up a hand to block me, hardly worried, but kept the phone where it was. The cars in the video continued to loop around, like an exercise in futility. I strode forward, checking my own phone for the time. “What am I checking? I’m in a bit of a rush. I’m a busy man, remember? Things to do, people to see, company to run, your paycheck to sign.”

  “Watch,” she said, struggling to keep up with me.

  I was about to tell her that I didn’t have the time since I had a load of things to do at the office and a benefit that night. But then, something happened that made me stop in my tracks. One of the cars fishtailed, got T-boned by another car and went airborne, then landed in a smoking, mangled heap on the track. It was a particularly grisly accident and a shame for the driver, but I wasn’t sure what it had to do with me. “And?”

  “There,” she said as the car came to a stop and the pit crew raced forward. “Watch. Watch that.”

  A jumpsuit-clad figure jumped the wall and ran toward the wreck. When the figure removed its helmet, I looked closer. Pink cheeks, full lips, and big, dark eyes. A woman. A woman in the pit crew? “Where is this?”

  “ISM.”

  “No clue what that is,” I murmured, transfixed on the woman. She ran to the wreckage, and there were tears in her eyes as she hugged herself. Even under the circumstances and the horror clearly written on her face, she was beautiful. “Who is she?”

  “Emma James. Didn’t you read the stories?”

  I squinted at her. Of all the sports I participated in, and there were many, NASCAR had never interested me. I preferred to use my own body to produce results, not depend on some machine. Besides, I’d read all that shit about NASCAR drivers being unique athletes, but I couldn’t buy that they were as in shape or required as grueling a workout as your average linebacker. “No.”

  “Well, her brother was nearly killed in the Arizona 200 six weeks ago, and now she’s taking over for him. Before that, she used to be in his pit crew. Thing is, she trained right along with him and went to all the same schools he went to.” She smiled, studying her phone. “Now, she’s racing in his place. Word is, she’s even better than he is.”

  I shrugged. “So?”

  “So?” she repeated, punching me on the arm. “Big brother, are you that daft? Are you forgetting that one of our Like a Girl ads is going to be Drive Like a Girl?”

  I stared at Emma James again. My sister was right.

  NASCAR was one of the most viewed spectator sports in the United States, which meant a shitload of eyes watched cars race around an oval hundreds of times. I didn’t get it, but a huge portion of our population did… and I wanted to appeal to that portion.

  That’s what had led me to consider sponsoring a car in the Cup series. Since our headquarters were right in Daytona, it made sense. I even had the contract for one up-and-comer, a Kyle Someone-or-Other, sitting on my desk and had dodged several phone calls from his agent, wanting me to sign him. “Let me see that picture.”

  She’d paused the video of the girl as she wiped tears from her eyes. She’d run right out onto the oval, fearless. I could see determination behind the terror and couldn’t help but respect her. And… be drawn to her.

  “What’s going on here? Is this the accident where her brother…?”

  “Yeah.”

  In the video image, Emma was a sweaty mess, her wild black hair in a ponytail atop her head. Her skin was tanned and her eyes as black as buttons. But there was something about her… something raw and feline in the way she moved. She had the promise of a body under that unisex suit, too, which was a must for our fitness ads. I was used to looking at women’s bodies in a purely utilitarian way, so I was surprised to feel my cock twitch.

  Surprised and alarmed.

  Handing the phone back to my sister, I said, “I’ll think about it.”

  “Think about it?” Laura huffed as I walked away. “You better snatch her up before someone else does. She’s gold, I tell you. Pure. Gold!”

  I jogged up to my Porsche, throwing my folder and phone into the passenger seat. I might not have been into NASCAR racing, but I did appreciate fast cars.

  When I was inside, I plugged my phone up to the charger and frowned down at the image that was my screensaver… my reminder of who I never wanted to be again.

  Pudge.

  I was eight and a walking donut. Twenty years ago, everyone called me Pudge. In the picture, I’d been looking at the camera through black-rimmed Coke-bottle glasses and laughing, chocolate all over my chubby freckled cheeks, my Ronald McDonald helmet of hair flying in the breeze.

  Geez, I was an ugly kid. I’d been happy in the photo because the worst of the abuse was still a couple years away. It didn’t get really torturous until I was in middle school.

  There, it had gotten nearly unbearable. Girls ignored me, but the guys? Not so much. They were all sports freaks, wearing their favorite player’s numbers on t-shirts and caps. Their favorite drivers too. They’d go on about drinking beer in the parking lot and sneaking into the international speedway at night. By day, they’d usually beat the shit out of me, or just tease me in a way that left no bruises. The only solace I got was from sitting behind a computer, learning to code.

  That had been my life.

  Un
til one day, years later, I’d had enough. It was midway through my junior year in high school when I’d bought my first set of hand weights. I worked out in my room then, too embarrassed to step foot into a gym.

  Now?

  Nature and the good old passage of time had gotten rid of the freckles, my clown hair had mellowed to a somber shade of dark auburn, contacts had resolved the need for thick glasses and braces had taken care of my buckteeth. Growing several inches past six feet had helped even out the chubbiness, but it was the gym that had chiseled the rest of me. I had the six-pack. I could bench two-ninety and squat nearly four hundred. All it took was a two-hour workout routine every morning, a five-mile run rain or shine, and nothing but boiled chicken and egg whites for every meal.

  These days, I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro for fun. I relished competing in Ironman Triathlons because I actually enjoyed the feeling of ice-cold water on my skin. I traveled the world, giving speeches on how to promote a physically fit lifestyle. And I owned a multibillion-dollar fitness empire because I was dedicated to helping others do what I had to do on my own.

  I’d be an excellent case study for the bullied of the world, on how things did get better if only I’d allow people to see the “before” pictures of me. No, I guarded those fuckers with my life. Mostly, I just used them to inspire myself whenever I didn’t feel like going to the gym.

  It was also why my sister still called me Pudge in private. I’d asked her to do that as a reminder of the person I didn’t want to be again. I gave that red-headed boy a last glance before swiping the screen and tapping a browser. That was the past.

  I needed to focus on my future.

  A future that Emma James would be part of.

  Typing her name into a search engine, I frowned at how little of her was available on the World Wide Web. There were only a handful of pictures of her, and in all of them, she wore her pit uniform, but she was definitely cute. No, I had to admit it, she was more than that. She was mind-blowingly hot. And in a male dominated sport like racing, she had to be feisty too. Yeah. I guessed she could work.

  I tapped in a text to Laura, just two words: Get her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Emma

  Lifting weights usually made my body feel good. But that Friday, it wasn’t having any of that.

  It really just wanted me to crawl into bed and stay there. Maybe forever.

  The iron weights echoed through the vast space of the airplane hangar as I slid them into position, then screwed on the bolts to get them to stay. It was cooler in here, away from the hundred-degree Arizona sun, but my face was already dripping with sweat. Along with our old go-karts, I had my favorite thing in the world, my 1987 Canyon Red Ford Thunderbird I’d nicknamed Killer, as my audience. I’d gone about a million laps around the dirt track out back in that thing, and it was like my baby, so it should’ve inspired me.

  Wrapping the weightlifting gloves tight around my wrists, I sat down on the bench and wriggled under the bar. Then I tried to press the barbell over my chest.

  And I couldn’t.

  Seventy-five pounds was an easy weight for me too. A lightweight. I should’ve been able to lift it like it was nothing. Race car drivers needed muscles in their upper body to perform the longer, more grueling drives. Instead, my chest muscles screamed for mercy. I took a deep breath, trying to funnel all my determination into the muscles of my upper body. I managed to lift it off the support but knew the second I had it free that, without anyone to spot me, I was in trouble. Muscles trembling, I let the barbell clatter into place, then sat up and groaned.

  Barbell one, Emma zero.

  Last thing we needed was two injured Jameses in this house because injured Jameses were the worst kind of pissed off you could imagine. Take Brody, for instance. He’d come home from the hospital a few days ago, and since then, he’d become the dictionary definition of… silently enraged. Or maybe just bitter. Or simply sad.

  He didn’t smile, did nothing but lie in bed, and on the rare occasion he got his butt moving, just sat on the couch, looking out the window. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, and when I attempted any kind of conversation, he acted like I was a ghost he couldn’t see or hear.

  He’d seriously begun to worry me.

  I rolled my shoulders. My arms felt like jelly, like they’d never be normal again. I stretched my bi’s and tri’s, linked my fingers together behind my back to expand my chest, but I felt what it must’ve been like to be an eighty-year-old lady. My back muscles ached, my neck tendons ached, hell, body parts I didn’t even know I possessed were yelling at me.

  I’d thought I was in reasonably good shape, but apparently a three-mile run every day and modest weight lifting wasn’t enough. I could handle driving two hundred miles. That was the farthest I’d ever gone, and all we’d ever done on our little races in Phoenix. But just how little I knew and how pathetic I was became clear yesterday, during my first three hundred in Iowa.

  I hadn’t made it. Well, I had, coming in dead last, screaming and crying behind the wheel, delirious from the extended play of the G-forces upon my body, and the strain from keeping my arms erect in front of me for that long. To think, Brody wasn’t the only James who’d kissed his biceps. I used to be proud of my arms. My “guns,” I used to call them. Now, they ached, and my head felt like it’d been kicked repeatedly. I had blisters on my palms, even with the gloves. Forget my dreams of doing a big race like the TicketGuardian 500 at ISM or the Daytona 500. The way I felt, doing a five-hundred-mile race sounded like a fate worse than death.

  On top of all that, I’d had to deal with the Sandersons. They were assholes when it came to working for my brother, but they were a hell of a lot worse when they were working as my crew. Before I’d even gotten in the car, I had to deal with two pinched ass cheeks, half a dozen remarks about how they’d wished I would be servicing them instead, and a hell of a lot more comments about how girls like me didn’t have what it took to race.

  It just about killed me to see their smug faces when I’d proved them right.

  I’d never hated racing until that moment. In fact, the way I felt that night, soaking in a bathtub after the long, grueling ride home in our bumpy old piece-of-shit camper, I didn’t want to sit behind the wheel of a car ever again. I didn’t even want to look at one.

  Daddy said I’d done good. He said lasting a race like that was a feat in itself, never mind placing. But dammit, I’d played sports all my life, and I’d never come in dead last. I didn’t want exceptions made because I was female then, and I didn’t want them now. If it wasn’t good enough for Brody, it wasn’t good enough for me. And this sure as hell wasn’t good enough for me.

  Worse than how I felt was the knowledge that Daddy was worried. Had it been Brody, we’d already have had sponsors lined up. There had been three potential sponsors at the race that took his arm, and we knew for sure one of them would come through. But after the race, when Daddy announced I’d be taking his spot in the James team, they all pulled out. He tried to woo them back, but they weren’t having it, never mind that I’d put in just as many track hours as Brody had.

  My father couldn’t keep this little dream of ours going just on determination. We needed money — a lot of it. And to get money, I needed to perform.

  Which was why I’d gotten up at the crack of dawn that morning, intent on a three-hour workout. But my confidence was shaken. My next race was in a couple of weeks, in Kansas, and at two hundred and sixty-seven laps, it wasn’t much shorter than the last one. I’d like to say I was determined, that I didn’t care how much my muscles screamed or my head hurt. That even if my head exploded in the driver’s seat, I’d make it across that finish line at least ahead of half the other drivers and prove I belonged among them. But every muscle in my body seemed to be saying, No fucking way are you subjecting me to that torture again.

  I lifted twenty-pound dumbbells and started to work my biceps, but even those hurt. Damn, I was weak. I’d read about other drivers getting massages
after a race, and while before I used to think they were pretty boys, now I thought maybe they had a point. Sure as hell would’ve been nice to be working out in a gym with a masseuse to work out my kinks and maybe a juice bar right now. Instead, I had to deal with a wobbly weight bench and old, rusty pieces of shit in an old airplane hangar in the backyard of the shop.

  Not that I liked things fancy. I just couldn’t help thinking that the boys with sponsors, with real money behind them, good facilities, proper support, had an edge over me, and would whip my ass all over the oval.

  Maybe this was just a pipe dream. Maybe I’d never be better than them.

  I forced down the bitterness in my head before it could spiral into something like jealousy and finished the set. Then I worked my tri’s and my shoulders, ignoring their protests. When I was so exhausted I couldn’t see straight anymore, I ripped off the gloves, gave my dusty red baby a pat, and slid open the door to the hangar.

  The stifling Arizona heat assaulted me. I took a swig from my water bottle and blinked, adjusting to the bright sun. I walked across a field of scrub brush to the first open bay of the shop, where Daddy had his top half buried in the engine well of a truck that was older than me, as most vehicles were around here.

  My father was the best person on Earth, truly. He’d always been a fan of fast cars, driving them himself, but it was only when Brody and I got into it that he and my mom started throwing their life’s savings into it. And he’d always been behind us, one hundred and ten percent. Not only that, he was a big teddy bear with a heart of gold.

  “Hey, Daddy,” I said. “Where’s Brody?”

  “Where’d you think?” he said, backing out of the engine’s guts and wiping his hands on a rag.

  I looked at the door, which was the way to our upstairs living quarters, and frowned. Then I stood next to my father and surveyed the damage. I handed him a wrench. “That hose is about a thousand years old and made of Swiss cheese.”

  “I got this under control,” he said, nudging me. It’d been a long time since I’d helped Daddy in the shop, but I still knew my way around a car better than half the mechanics out there. “You go on up and see if you can talk some life into that brother of yours. I could use some help cleaning up around here, and one arm is better than none.”