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

by Alycia Taylor

  I was sleeping in the backseat when the car started to move. At first, I was too scared to do anything. After all, I was only fifteen.

  It’s not like the Galaxie was that hard to steal. My dad had already messed with the ignition so he could start it without a key. I guess he got tired of spending all his time looking for them when he’d rather be drinking and driving. It’s only a guess. Apart from that, it was summer, and so I was sleeping with a couple of windows cracked.

  The nurses take us back to a small, private room and Mick gets up on the bed…willingly. I’m not sure if it’s because the last time he was in the hospital, he had Kate to check in on him or if he’s finally starting to get used to doctors, but when they put the heart rate monitor on him, his pulse is still in the double digits.

  “The doctor has a couple other patients ahead of you, but he should be in shortly,” the nurse says before leaving the room.

  Mick and I don’t talk.

  That day, being the unwilling backseat passenger in my own car, I thought I was going to be lucky to get out of there with my life. The car would likely be the price I would pay for whoever was behind the wheel to consider letting me go.

  I hadn’t been on the street all that long, but it was more than long enough to start hearing the stories.

  There are two worlds in this country, probably everywhere else, too. If you’ve got a place to live, a decent job, or a family to go home to, the apparent world feels almost like it was built just for you. Sure, it’s because everyone is trying to sell you something, but it can still feel pretty good if that’s the way you’re looking at it.

  If you’re on the street, without a home, without a family that you can—or want to—go back to, you’re an intruder in hostile territory.

  Instead of trying to get you to come in and buy something, people working their nine-to-five jobs spray hoses and call the police if you try to get anywhere near the entrance. When I first escaped my home, I never tried to go into a business if I didn’t have the money to pay for whatever they were selling.

  After a while of being kicked and pushed and told to get the hell away, though, I didn’t feel so bad about learning to steal. The way normal, “respectable” people were treating me and everyone else like me, it seemed only fair to take something in compensation.

  It was never easy, though. People tend to watch teenagers who look like they haven’t had a decent meal in a while.

  The funny thing is that nothing scared me more than being ripped off myself. If I’d gotten arrested and taken to jail, at least I’d know I’d have three meals and a nearly decent place to sleep.

  After about ten minutes of waiting for the doctor, the nurse pops her head back in, asking, “How are we doing in here?”

  “How long’s he going to be?” Mick asks.

  He’s been holding up well so far, but now he’s starting to sweat. His eyes are spreading a little further open, and I can almost feel the growing tension in him.

  “Don’t worry,” the nurse answers. “Dr. Chavez shouldn’t be much longer.”

  Dr. Chavez.

  “Isn’t that Kate’s-” Mick starts.

  “Yeah,” I interrupt. “That’ll be her dad.”

  Kate’s dad is a doctor, too, and she did tell me he worked at a different hospital than she and her mom. This is the only other hospital in town, but I’d never really thought about it.

  Having not met the guy, I haven’t developed the same drive to avoid him at all costs the way I have with Kate’s mom. That said, just because I haven’t met him yet doesn’t mean he’s going to be on my side.

  The nurse leaves and now Mick’s looking at me with the raised eyebrows and slightly cocked head that’s usually reserved for patients in a place like this. He’s looking at me with pity.

  “You gonna be all right, man?” he asks. “Do you have to go?”

  “I have no idea,” I tell him.

  For now, I just decide to stick around. The guy hasn’t met me, so I doubt he’ll recognize me so long as I keep my mouth shut.

  Still, I’m kind of hoping the nurse comes back again so I can ask her for a sedative.

  In an attempt to take my mind off of the looming disaster that meeting Kate’s dad is sure to be, I take my inner monologue and make it external.

  “Do you remember when we met?” I ask.

  “You mean, do I remember the first time I saved your ass?”

  He’s not wrong, but I’m still angry enough at him that I’m not going to bother mentioning that fact.

  “I was riding around in that backseat for I don’t even know how long,” I tell him. “When he stopped off for gas, I thought maybe that would be my shot, but he paid at the pump. I still don’t know how he didn’t see me back there under that crappy blanket.”

  “I still don’t know why you didn’t just get out of the back and get in the driver’s seat,” Mick says. It seems he’s glad to have the distraction, himself. “What was he really going to do? Throw you out right there at the gas station?”

  “I was fifteen and the guy was freaking huge,” I tell him.

  “Whatever,” he says. “It’s a good thing I happened by, is all I’m saying.”

  That’s true enough.

  While the guy’s receipt was printing, I told myself I was going to let him know I was back there, but I was frozen in place. For a minute, I considered just getting out of the car and running. I didn’t know if the guy was armed or what he would do to me when he found me.

  The only thing that kept me under that old, dirty blanket was the possibility that I could avoid being found until he parked the car somewhere and got far enough away I could just hop back in the front seat and get out of there. It didn’t quite happen that way.

  “Everything was fine until I got that tickle in my throat,” I say. “I held it back as long as I could, but after a while, I couldn’t help it. I had to cough.”

  If I hadn’t coughed, I wouldn’t have met Mick. Of course, if I hadn’t coughed, the guy probably wouldn’t have slammed on the brakes, pulled over, gotten out, and pushed me up against the side of the car with a knife to my throat, either.

  I could have done without that part.

  “I thought I was going to die right then and there,” I tell Mick.

  “Nah,” he says. “I’d already spotted the guy by the time the switchblade made its first appearance.”

  It wasn’t a switchblade. It was actually a rusted pocketknife, but Mick has a tendency to exaggerate things.

  “I remember just wanting you to go away when you first walked up,” I chuckle. “I didn’t know if you were there because you knew the guy and you were going to help him hide my body, or if you just wanted him out of the way so you could take the car yourself.”

  What did happen next was more of a surprise, though. I was just standing there, my hands up while Roid Rage held that little shard of infection and blood loss to my throat, when Mick moseyed on over and cleared his throat.

  “How’s it going, fellas?” Mick asked, though it didn’t seem like he was talking to me. “Looks like there’s some kind of disagreement here and I thought I could help.”

  Roid Rage told Mick to “Piss off,” but he just stood there.

  “You know,” Mick said to the guy holding a knife to me, “I think you’ll find you’re not going to get a lot of cutting action out of that blade. You’re not gonna hurt anyone with that unless you stab them, I don’t think you’re going to have time to do that.”

  The man pushed me against the car harder with his non-knife hand and turned toward Mick, lifting his two-inch blade a few inches in front of Mick’s eyes, saying something like, “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

  The man was on the ground a second later, doubled over and rolling around as he gasped for air. I remember in school, kneeing a guy in the balls—even if it was the only way to avoid a beating—was the kind of thing that would make a person lose friends.

  Mick’s knee shooting up between that asshat’s
legs, though: that was a beautiful thing.

  “It’s your car, but I’m getting us out of here,” Mick told me as he picked up the pocketknife Roid Rage had dropped on his way to the pavement.

  Before I got into the car, though, I made sure to give Roid Rage a good kick to the gut for trying to steal what was then my home while I slept in it.

  That’s how we met.

  Mick took me from being a stupid kid getting jacked on the side of the road and gave me a place to live with an actual roof overhead. It’s for that reason he and I aren’t enemies right now.

  We chat a little bit more about the early days before the curtain opens and a middle-aged doctor comes into the room.

  “So,” the doctor says, “you’re Eli, huh?”

  Here we go.

  “Yeah,” I answer. “I’m here about my friend, Mick, here, though.”

  Dr. Chavez, Kate’s dad, pulls up a rolling stool and grabs some latex gloves from a box on the countertop. His hands are prodding Mick’s face when he continues, “Yeah, I’ve heard about you,” Kate’s dad says.

  “I bet,” I respond. It comes off a bit hostile.

  “So, is this what you do?” he asks. “You find a girl that’s got everything going for her and you see if you can’t just turn things around on her?”

  “Not at all, sir,” I answer. Why am I calling him “sir?”

  “Listen, I’m sure you’re a decent guy or whatever nonsense you’re going to unload on me to try to get me to like you, but that’s my daughter,” he says. “Do you really think I’m just going to lie down and let you take her off the course she’s been on her entire life?”

  “Ow!” Mick interjects as Kate’s dad feels around my friend’s nose.

  “Yep, it’s broken,” Dr. Chavez announces. “So, what’s the big plan?” he asks me.

  “Big plan?” I ask.

  “This really hurts,” Mick says, “can’t you give me something before you start-”

  “Oh, don’t act like you don’t have something in mind,” Kate’s dad says. “One of the things about working in a place like this is that you really get to know a lot about people, and I’ve met more people like you than I’d have liked.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about me,” I tell him, though I doubt it’ll change anything.

  “Maybe not,” he says, rolling over to one of the cupboards and pulling out some tape. “I know my daughter, though.”

  “Do you?” There’s no way this guy’s going to like me. I may as well say what I think. “To me, it sounds like you and Kate’s mom have been going out of your way to make sure she stays miserable.”

  Mick is crying out in pain as Dr. Chavez grabs the bottom of Mick’s nose with the fingers of one hand and the site of the fracture with the other. He gives Mick’s nose a short, but hard tug, straightening it and before Mick can find his voice to scream in pain, Dr. Chavez starts—I don’t know what else to call it—forcibly splinting Mick’s nose.

  Mick, who’d been doing really well just lying there, has finally had enough.

  “Ow, ow, damn it, ow!” Mick shouts, knocking Dr. Chavez’s hands away from his face. “Okay, first off, I don’t know why you’re taking out your anger on him on me. Second off, this guy you’re sitting there badmouthing is at least as protective of Kate as you are! Oh, and by the way, you’re a horrible doctor.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kate’s dad asks.

  “I tried to make a move on her,” Mick says. “Why do you think I’m in here?”

  Kate’s dad looks up at me.

  “You did this?” he asks. “Well, I’d assumed you did this, but you were trying to protect Kate?”

  He doesn’t call her Kathryn like her mom does. Huh.

  “Yeah,” Mick answers for me. “So before you start punishing the innocent, maybe you should climb off that high horse and realize Eli’s on your side.”

  “So what?” Kate’s dad asks. “I’m supposed to think he’s suddenly a great guy because he beats up people who look at her funny?”

  “I didn’t beat him up because he looked at her funny,” I tell him. “He tried to kiss her after she’d made it very clear that she didn’t want him to.”

  Mick’s looking at me with wide eyes, shaking his head. I get the impression he’s worried that telling the full story might encourage the doctor to inflict some more justice on him.

  “Is that what she told you?” Kate’s dad asks me.

  “Yeah,” I answer.

  He leans back against one wall of the room. He asks Mick, “Is that what happened?”

  Mick’s hands are shaking and his face is a little paler than usual, but he says, “Yeah. I made a stupid mistake.” A beat or two passes before Mick adds, “I’ve paid for it.”

  I smile with half my mouth.

  “Well,” Dr. Chavez says, leaning forward again, approaching Mick’s nose again, this time with a lot more care and gentleness, “that certainly changes things, doesn’t it?”

  Something about the way he’s asking gives me the impression he’s not entirely serious, though I can’t put my finger on why that is. I don’t answer.

  “There you go,” Dr. Chavez says to Mick. “You’ll need to keep it clean and try not to mess with it, but that splint should help keep things in line until it has a chance to heal.” He looks back up at me. “So, someone tried to take something that my daughter wasn’t willing to give and that someone ended up in the hospital as a result, eh?”

  Kate’s mom is intimidating, definitely, but I’m starting to get the feeling her dad is more weird than anything.

  “I guess you could say that,” I tell him.

  “Well,” he says, pulling his gloves off, the latex snapping loudly, “I suppose maybe we should try this again. Hi,” he says, holding out his now bare hand toward me, “I’m Hugo, Kate’s dad. It’s nice to meet you, Eli.”

  “Seriously?” Mick asks, and I’m just praying my stupid friend doesn’t make a crack about the name. “Your name is seriously Hugo Chavez?” Mick repeats.

  “It’s a common name where I come from,” Dr. Chavez says and then looks down at his hand before turning his attention back at me. “You’re not going to leave me hanging, are you?”

  I reach out and shake the man’s hand. At first, I’m expecting him to use some of his doctor’s voodoo to hit a pressure point and make my heart stop or something, but it’s a normal, friendly shake.

  “All right,” Dr. Hugo Chavez says. “I’m on your side, but it’s not going to be easy convincing Kate’s mother.”

  I’m surprised and a bit confused, but I can’t help but smile. Glancing over at Mick, I say, “Well, it looks like I should probably start kicking your ass more often, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Mick doesn’t seem very amused.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kate’s Night

  Kate

  Eli’s coming by the house to pick me up, and I’m nervous. Mom’s not home, and I know Dad’s been saying for the last week that he’s changed his mind about the situation, but I have a hard time believing things are going to be smooth when Eli shows up.

  Oddly enough, though, when the knock falls on the front door, my dad makes sure he’s the one to answer it.

  I’m sitting in the dining room, just out of sight of the front room and the door, but I can hear the brief conversation very well.

  “Hey there, Eli,” Dad says. “Here to pick Kate up for the evening, huh?”

  “Sure am,” Eli answers, and I think I’ve landed in another dimension.

  Dad may not agree with Mom all the time, but you’d never know it. He never goes against anything she says.

  “Well come on in. She should be about ready.”

  It’s not like there have ever been that many guys stopping by the house, but I’ve never heard any of my dates spoken to with any kind of respect by either one of my parents. This just got weird for me.

  I get up from my seat and look around for something to do to mak
e it look like I’m getting ready. While I’m at it, I look for an explanation for why I’m doing this.

  Eli comes into the room a second or two after I drop the charade, and he glances over at my dad. Dad’s just standing there by Eli, his arms crossed and a big, goofy grin on his face.

  “Dad, I’m going to go out with Eli for a little while, is that all right?” I ask.

  It’s been a while since I asked because I always knew the answer to any question was almost certain to be no. Still, I’m a little off-balance at the moment.

  “Of course,” Dad says. “You two kids have fun and be safe out there.”

  That’s it.

  No yelling, no chastising, no forbidding of anything. For a second, I have to stop and ask myself when my dad stopped caring, but that doesn’t look like what this is.

  I don’t know what this is.

  “You got it,” Eli says, very much coming off the well-mannered gentleman I never dated in high school.

  I walk up to Eli and we turn to leave.

  “You’re not going to give the guy a hug at least?”

  I spin around to face my father. “What?”

  “I’m not saying I want the two of you trading gum in my kitchen or anything, but you don’t have to be afraid to hug your boyfriend in front of me,” he answers.

  I look at Eli and I look back at my dad.

  Now on the spot, I give Eli a quick, awkward hug and we start heading toward the door.

  “Don’t worry, bud,” Dad calls after us. “I’ll work on her mom.”

  The door is hardly closed behind us before I’m asking, “Okay, what was that?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Eli says. “Your dad and I kind of hit it off when I had to take Mick to the hospital last week, but I didn’t know he’d landed that far away from the fence.”

  “He loves you,” I tell him.

  Eli shrugs. “Hey, it could be worse,” he says. “He could always go back to hating me.”

  I don’t know why that sounds like the better option.

  We get into Eli’s Galaxie, fresh out of the shop with whatever broke most recently on it assumedly fixed, and we get in.

  Tonight’s plans are simple: dinner and an illegal drag race or ten. It’s really going to depend on how long it takes the cops to break it up, I guess. By the time we’re pulling up to the restaurant, though, I’d kind of rather just go home.