Wheels of Steel, Book 1

by Pepper Pace

  ~Sweetheart, thank you for the kind words. I’m a big fan of the same music. Sweetheart in…HC? What’s that? TOP~

  Robin’s mouth dropped. Oh my god. Jason had responded to her comment. Her screen name was Sweetheart in HC and he wanted to know what the HC meant. She covered her mouth unsure of what she should do. Should she say, Hey it’s me Robin? Or…

  She began typing.

  ~Thanks for acknowledging my comments! I’m sweetheart in Hamilton County. Congratulations on reaching a hundred thousand hits. If I had talent like yours I’d be making beats all day and all night. Is that what you’re doing now? Sweetheart in HC~

  It took five minutes of waiting and then she received a response.

  ~Sweetheart, I am very psyched about the number of hits the song got! And making beats is all I want to do. Are you in to music? And check your inbox. I sent you a message there. TOP~

  Having never chatted on line before Robin was excited to be sending messages back and forth. It was like opening the Cracker Jacks box for the secret toy surprise. She quickly went to her inbox and was excited when it said 1 New Message. This was the first message she’d ever received on YouTube…or anywhere.

  ~Hi Sweetheart. Hope you don’t mind me private messaging you here. It’s almost eleven and I’ve had a hectic day. I thought I’d come online and check out some music and chill. Other than Wheels of Steels music, what have you been listening to tonight? TOP~

  ~Nothing. I came on specifically to listen to Wheels of Steel. I just learned about you guys this past week. I heard More Love and was blown away. Have I told you just how much I like that song? LOL! I have it playing now on a second window. Anyways, I’m really interested in knowing what you are listening to now. Care to share? Sweetheart in HC~

  ~I’ll share. I have a chill playlist. Accept my friend’s request and I’ll send it to you. TOP~

  Wow. Robin accepted the friends request marveling at how nice he was online compared to how nasty he had been to her in person. Maybe it was just her that rubbed him the wrong way. He certainly acted less disdainfully towards others. Actually today he had been fairly normal acting with her. It made her kind of sad that he might not like her because the person that had just shared his playlist was someone that she liked talking to. Could it be like that in person?

  Following his link that was entitled Chill Music she played the first song while she scanned the rest of the titles. She wasn’t familiar with this type of music. It felt like…hip hop elevator music. She chuckled. She liked it. She liked it a lot.

  She went back to leave him a message thanking him, but there was already one there waiting for her.

  ~I like your playlist. TOP~

  Oh my gosh…he was her friend now so could see her playlist! She felt her face burn because she had a few strange selections; Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band and Ode to Billy Joe by Bobby Gentry. He must think she’s a total dork! But these songs were ones that she remembered her father singing when she was a kid and so had stuck with her. It made her feel closer to him somehow by listening to these songs—knowing that they were still here even if he wasn’t. She loved old stuff like The Commodores, Earth Wind and Fire and Stevie Wonder just as much as she liked Miguel and Bruno Mars.

  Robin sent him a blushing smiley face emoticon as a response. His response was just ‘LOL’. When she went to sleep that night she had a smile on her face.

  Chapter 16

  The next day was Saturday and Jason spent the morning digging for breaks and playing on the net. He checked to see if Sweetheart in HC was available leaving her a link to a Curtis Mayfield Dubstep. He’d enjoyed meeting a new fan and looked forward to talking to her again. His phone rang and he cursed figuring it was his Mom making sure he hadn’t choked sometime in the few hours since he’d last seen her.

  But it was Link. “What are you doing?” He asked blandly.

  “Just fooling around in the studio. What’s up?”

  “Let’s go out to lunch. I’ll be over in fifteen.”

  “Ai-ight then.” He hung up, brushed his teeth and splashed his face. He didn’t bother with combing his hair, he just pulled on a stretchy headband to hold it all back. By the time he was lacing up his Timberlands Link was out front blowing the horn.

  “Want help?” Link called as he sent down the lift.

  Jason gave him the finger in response and the two friends smiled. Once he was securely buckled in Link pulled off. “What do you want to eat?”

  “I don’t care.” Jason replied. “How did drinking with Patty go?”

  “Um…I fucked her.”

  Jason started coughing, practically choking on his tongue. Link glanced at him.

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “No. And surprisingly it was…nice.”

  Jason stared at him. “Patty?”

  Link sighed. “We were drinking and talking-”

  “But isn’t Patty a…lesbian?”

  “I don’t know…I mean, obviously not. Maybe she’s bi, I don’t know. I do know that she likes dick. She LOVES dick-”

  Jason coughed. “Don’t! I can’t…I don’t want to visualize it!”

  Link shrugged.

  But Jason couldn’t stop poking at the subject, like a stiff dead cat in an alley. “Okay…how did you get to the point where you…?”

  “Fucked her?”

  “Sheesh! Yes.”

  “We went to Louie’s. We were calling each other bitches along the way. We had a couple of drinks and she told me that I wasn’t half bad. I told her that she wasn’t half bad. Then I was fucking her. I don’t know, dude! It just happened…”

  Link pulled into Perkins Restaurant. Jason just stared at him.

  “And you liked it?”

  Link nodded without hesitation. There was quiet until the two were in the restaurant and sitting at a table.

  “Are you going to do it again?”

  “I mean…I don’t like her or anything. It was just-”

  “Fucking.” Jason stated.

  “Right.”

  Jason swallowed and scratched his head anxiously. “I uh…kissed Amberly.” The last was mumbled.

  “Did you say that you kissed Amberly?”

  Jason peeked at him and then nodded.

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “Well…I’m not quite sure. Things started happening--you’re not going to tell anybody about this are you?!”

  “Hell no! You’re not going to tell anybody about me and Patty are you?”

  “No…like who would I tell?”

  “Amberly.”

  “Hell. You already know Patty is going to do that anyways.” A waiter came over and took their order. Since Link was around he decided on a club sandwich. Sometimes if the bacon wasn’t cooked just right it caused him to choke.

  “So,” Link said, almost too casually. “What was it like kissing Amberly?”

  “Terrible. I mean, not because she wasn’t a good kisser.” Jason blushed. “To be honest…it was the first kiss for the both of us.”

  “Dude!” Link leaned forward and stared at him. “I know you’ve been getting play-”

  Jason shushed him and looked around knowing that two guys in wheelchairs already garnered plenty of attention, especially considering that one of them had involuntary muscle.

  “I get play. It just stops short of fucking…and kissing.”

  “That’s messed up. Is it the spit factor?”

  “Most probably.” He had problems swallowing so at times he spit when he talked. Most girls didn’t care for spit. Strangely those same women weren’t repelled by sucking his dick.

  “So are you two…?”

  “No! No.” He thought about Amberly; kissing her. But it was the image of Robin’s face that caused his breath to catch in his chest, and the remembered erection during his massage. He decided not to mention the pact that they he and Amberly had made and thought maybe it would be better if she and Link were the ones that had the deal. He was by far the one
to go to if a mercy fuck was needed. The food came and they talked about stuff. And then Jason looked at his friend and tackled the hardest topic of all.

  “What about Wheels of Steel?”

  Link chewed his burger. “Well…” He swallowed. “We can just refer to ourselves as Link from Wheels of Steel or Top of Wheels of Steel. We don’t have to actually tell people that we’re disbanded, you know? We could just not make anymore music under the group. And as far as the CD’s; I don’t think we should make any more. And whatever money we’ve already collected just split; maybe at lunch Monday, we’ll get together and split what we’ve collected. I’ll contact the girls and let them know.”

  Jason nodded slowly. He had hoped that Link would say that he didn’t want to disband…but it was obvious that he was the only one that wanted to continue with it. He sighed, and of course had a short choking spell where he spit up partially chewed bread while Link thumped his back, threatening to lodge it more firmly in his throat.

  By then the waiter was hovering over him in concern and asking him if he was alright even when he was too busy coughing up his lung to answer. They left without having to pay their bill and then caught a movie filled with stunts, killing, and mystical powers.

  ***

  It felt great to catch up on her sleep. Robin didn’t get out of bed until nearly 10 am. Then she agonized over the seizure class that she would have to take later this afternoon. She finished up her chores quickly and then showered and left for the class.

  It was held in a large room on the top floor of an old building. It smelled faintly of mothballs and appeared to have once been used as some type of dance studio. Large mirrors covered one entire wall and the hardwood floors, though old and worn were still beautiful. There were several metal desks and chairs set up, and they reminded her of the old desks that used to be in her elementary class.

  People were just entering the room and signing in at a large table where a woman sat, taking money. When she got to the head of the line she paid her fee and smiled inwardly that the fee was the exact amount that Mary Louise had given her. She received a name tag and found a seat near the back of the class and spent the next three hours learning about seizures. It scared her, and relieved her. Halfway through the class she moved to the front of the room.

  Clonic tonic seizures is what Jason suffered; or commonly known as a Grand Mal Seizure. Clonic is when he stiffened and that lasted just a few seconds. And then Tonic is when he began to convulse. She had never seen him do that longer than a minute or so. Robin learned that it was normal to stop breathing, and she learned that people do not swallow their tongues. There was no pain associated with the seizure, and generally no memory of it. And this is the information that relieved her. That no matter how horrible it was to see, he would have no memory of it.

  They watched a movie which showed several different forms of seizures. And when they got to the clonic tonic her eyes began to prickle and sting. It was so horrible; seeing these people’s lives so controlled by these neurological mischarges in the brain.

  After the movie they were taught how to actually handle a seizure. It was very interesting and she became engrossed in the course. She knew to lay him on his side, not to put hands by his mouth, not to let him bump into anything that might injure him and most importantly, not to allow the seizure to last more than 5 minutes without getting help.

  They learned CPR, how to take a pulse, how to prevent choking. And when it was over they received a certificate that would be filed with the state. Robin was more than happy that she’d taken the course and left there feeling that she knew what to expect from Jason. These were the things that caused her to understand him better and to be more tolerant of his angry moods.

  After class Robin did some much needed grocery shopping and decided to pick up tissues for when Jason made a mess at lunch, and baby wipes as well as a small first aid kit which all fit nicely in her purse.

  When she got home later that evening she excitedly signed into YouTube and went straight to her inbox. There was a message from TOP and her heart raced in anticipation.

  ~Hi Sweetheart. I saw you had a Curtis Mayfield vid and thought you might like this Dubstep. Take a listen and tell me what you think. TOP~

  She couldn’t stop smiling. She liked how he called her Sweetheart. She quickly played the song. Her brow gathered. It was like…crazy Curtis Mayfield with a speedy drum beat! It made her want to dance and she found herself bobbing her head as she listened. Dubstep…what the hell was Dubstep? She did a Wiki search on it and found that it was electronic dance music.

  She sent him a quick message.

  ~Oh my god, that was CRAZEE, TOP! I never heard of Dubstep before. I wanted to get up and start dancing. Thanks for the education, now I’m off searching for more Dubstep! Sweetheart in HC~

  ~You never heard of Dubstep? It’s been around for over ten years. There are some really good artist out there; Mt Eden, Enigma. Here take a link to this one. TOP~

  They sent messages back and forth like that for a while. Robin suddenly felt bad for not revealing her real identity. She should have told him who she was yesterday…now it was just plain awkward. Should she just keep playing that she didn’t know him? If she told him who she was now, he’d probably be mad at her. But she had a purely selfish motive for hiding her identity; she liked talking to him like this and when he talked to her as his aid he wasn’t very pleasant.

  So who would it hurt if she just didn’t ever tell him?

  ~Sweetheart, do you have a yahoo or MSN messenger that we can chat on? It would make it easier to send messages back and forth~

  ~I don’t have anything like that. Hold on, I’ll download Yahoo~

  Robin had never chatted before. She did the download, following the prompts and ten minutes later sent Top a friends request wondering if he hadn’t bailed out and went off to do something else. But then he accepted it and Robin felt herself smiling broadly.

  ~So you have never done a chat on the net before?~ He asked.

  ~No, never. There’re little smiley faces all over~ She sent him ten emoticons.

  ~LOL, how old are you?~ Robin blanched. What should she say? Should she tell him the truth?

  ~Why?~

  ~You’re either too old to be familiar with chatting, or too young~

  ~Good point. How about I’m just too…out of touch? I’m older than 18 but younger than 30. How’s that?~

  ~Cool~ He sent her a thumbs up emoticon which caused her to smile again.

  ~So…why are you talking to me? Don’t you have a million fans to chat with?~

  There wasn’t a response for a long time. Robin hoped she didn’t come off as self deprecating; like I’m a loser and you’re a star. She was just curious. Why talk to her when there were over a hundred thousand hits on his latest video and probably hundreds of people to chat with?

  ~You make it seem like talking to you is a waste of time. You’re interesting~

  She sent him a crooked smile emoticon.

  Chapter 17

  Jason spent the evening chatting on line. He liked talking to the girl and though he could have done things like asking her for her real name or what part of Hamilton County she lived in, Jason didn’t. In some ways, her talking to him online meant that she wasn’t constantly looking at his jerking muscles or struggling to understand his sometimes slurred speech.