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

by Alycia Taylor

  I’m about to tell her to ease off the throttle a little bit, but she does it on her own. The tires catch and Kate lays rubber for at least fifty feet.

  I guess she didn’t need my help, after all.

  As we’re backing up toward the starting line, I’m telling Kate, “You know, it looks like you’ve got this down pretty well. If you want, I can hop out and save you about two hundred pounds.”

  She shakes her head as we come to a stop behind the start line.

  “I wouldn’t be behind the wheel if I still had any questions,” she says. “I wanted you next to me for my first race because I wanted you next to me for my first race.”

  I’m about to respond when the guy next to us starts his burnout. Apparently, he wanted an audience.

  The only thing is that he handles the burnout at least as well as Kate did. To be honest, just seeing the guy’s car, I was expecting him to stall it. Maybe I’m reading too much into a burnout, but this guy doesn’t seem like he’s just another rookie.

  I’ve never actually met someone driving that particular car who knew what they were doing. This might not go so well.

  The guy in the Charger comes back to the line and Kate’s revving.

  “This is it,” she says, putting the car in gear. “I can do this,” she repeats, “I can do this.”

  I keep quiet. She’s psyching herself up and the last thing she needs is me interrupting that.

  After a few seconds, a twenty-something chick comes out carrying her cell phone and I have no choice but to speak.

  “This is going to be a different kind of start than what we talked about,” I tell Kate.

  “What?” she shouts. “Why the hell are you telling me that now?”

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “Instead of dropping her hands, she’s going to turn on her phone’s flashlight and that’s your go signal. As soon as you see the light in her hand, go.”

  “Okay,” Kate says. “Okay, I’ve got this. I can do this.”

  I always hate starts like this because it’s never quite clear if the starter’s looking for the flashlight app or whether they’re just checking social media. It’s happened before.

  Without any warning, though, the light comes on and we’re off the line. Kate got the better start, but the Charger’s keeping it within a car length.

  Kate gets through her first gear shift perfectly and we pull ahead a little.

  There’s a crowd at each side of the finish line. We’re already halfway through the race.

  “Come on, you hunk of shit, come on!” Kate shouts as she loses a few mph on her next gear change. “Nitrous?” she’s yelling at me. “Do I hit the nitrous?”

  She’s never used it, and it’s not the sort of thing you want to get used to on the fly, so I tell her, “No. Just keep on it, you’ve almost got this.”

  She makes her final gear change about half a block from the finish, and we’re pulling away from the Charger as we cross the finish line.

  “Woo!” Kate’s screaming, and I’m laughing with glee as she eases off the gas.

  By the time we get to the finish line to settle up with the Charger, I can see the lights of the flatbed coming down the cross street.

  “I won, right?” Kate’s asking me as she shuts off the car after we’ve pulled off to the side of the road, out of the way of the next batch of cars.

  “You won,” I tell her and she lets out another cheer. “Not only that,” I tell her, “but did you ever see the first Fast and the Furious movie?”

  “Yeah,” she says.

  “You just beat Dom’s car,” I tell her.

  “I kick ass?” she asks, though she doesn’t wait for an answer. “I kick ass!”

  We kiss, and I’m laughing as we get out of the car. “Racing loosens your vocabulary quite a bit, doesn’t it?” I ask Kate.

  “Whatever, man,” she says. “I just won my first race. I really don’t care.”

  The guy with the Charger walks up to us, money in hand, saying, “You know, I didn’t think that was going to happen with that guy weighing you down, but whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. I haven’t lost a race like that in years.”

  So the guy didn’t turn out to be a noob at all. Icing, meet cake.

  He hands over the money and even manages a respectful nod before he gets back in his car and drives off into the night.

  We have to wait for the next two cars to get past, but once they’re out of the way, Kate tosses me the keys and I get behind the wheel of the Chevelle. I get it off the track as quickly as possible, but I take my time getting it up onto the flatbed.

  “That was so beautiful,” I tell her. “You were amazing.”

  “Did you think I was going to win?” she asks. “Be honest.”

  “I was confident,” I tell her. “Things can happen, but you’re a quick study and you’ve got balls like a freaking white whale.”

  “I’m going to make a guess and take that as a compliment,” Kate giggles.

  Once the car’s safely on the back of the flatbed, Kate and I are quick to get out. Mick tosses us the car cover while he gets the two tire-wide ramps secured onto the truck. We’re on the road less than a minute later.

  Kate and I are holding hands and Mick’s going off about how people are going to be talking about that debut for a while and everything’s going spectacularly well as we cautiously make our way back toward the shop on the other side of town.

  “I know you were nervous about riding shotgun with me, but I just wanted to thank you for doing that,” Kate says.

  “Win or lose, I knew I wanted to be there,” I tell her. “I just didn’t know if my added weight would affect the race.”

  “What made you finally decide?” she asks, squeezing my hand.

  “Actually, I swung by the strip club Desi works and she helped me put things into perspective,” I start, but I don’t continue.

  Oh no.

  Mick elbows me fast and hard in the ribs.

  Oh my God. What did I just do?

  “Desi? While I was down here, trying to figure out how I’m supposed to talk to these people, you were hanging out with your ex-girlfriend?”

  “Dude,” Mick says. “That’s just a rookie mistake. You hate to see it.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  How to Make Friends and Influence Strippers

  Kate

  I’ve been trying to act like I’m all right with Eli hanging out with his stripper ex-girlfriend, but it’s not working. Every time I say something about it, he’s so quick to assure me that they’re just friends; that whatever feelings they may have had for each other are all in the past.

  It sounds like a rationalization.

  I’ve really tried to just trust him, but I’ve been ignoring his calls and his texts. He’s stopped by a couple of times, but I’ve just been telling him I’m not feeling too well.

  We can’t keep doing this. Either we’re going to find a way to make this work or we’re not. Going back and forth would just be a slow, inevitable death to the relationship.

  I’ve tried more times than I can remember to avoid doing what I’m about to do, but I’ve got to know.

  The phone’s ringing.

  “Hey, how are you feeling?” Eli answers. “I was just getting some chicken soup together to bring over to you.”

  “Where does she work?” I ask.

  “What?” he asks. “Who?”

  “Who else?”

  “I don’t know if Desi would be cool with me telling people where she works, but I can give her your number and have her call you or something,” he says.

  “Yeah, that’s not going to do it,” I tell him. “If you don’t tell me, I’m sure Mick will.”

  “Kate,” he says, “I know what this must look like from the outside, but there’s really-”

  “If I had trouble believing nothing was going on with the two of you the first forty times you told me that, what makes you think forty-one’s going to make any difference?” I interru
pt. “You can’t tell me you don’t understand.”

  He sighs. “She works at Club Slick,” he says. “I don’t know if she’s working or not, but it’s the only place I know to find her. We haven’t seen each other outside of-”

  “Club Slick,” I repeat as I write the words on my hand. “Thanks.”

  I hang up the phone.

  Sure, I feel a lot like the overbearing girlfriend right now, but if I don’t talk to her, I may as well end the relationship right now.

  Either he’s telling the truth or he isn’t. I’d much rather have this turn out to be a huge mistake on my half, than just go on like everything’s fine while he’s making it with some stripper.

  The only problem is that I have no idea what she looks like. I just hope she’s there.

  I get to the club, and I try to ignore the men standing outside smoking as they ogle me as I pass.

  Once inside the club, I pay the cover and take a look around. There’s a stage with silent, scantily-clad women dancing on it, there’s a bar and there are a lot of guys trying to live down to the saying, “Men are pigs.” It’s pretty much what I expected.

  I walk over to the bar, and I ask the bartender if, “Desi’s working tonight.”

  He scrunches his face and cocks his head. “Desi?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “It’s short for Desiree. Is she on tonight?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, “nobody here by that name.”

  Yeah, it’s over. I get Eli’s hesitation in telling me where she works, but I can’t live with him lying about it.

  Eli’s cheating on me and I had to find out from the bartender at a strip club.

  Nice.

  I’m turning around, getting ready to leave, only I walk into a pair of outstretched arms, and a woman who’s wearing next to nothing is cooing in my ear, “Kate! I’ve heard so much about you,” the woman says. “It’s so great to finally meet you!”

  I squint as if that’s going to make some kind of difference. “Desi?”

  She puts her index finger to her bottom lip, saying, “Around here, it’s Judy. Some of the regulars can get a little weird if they find out your real name.”

  Okay, that actually makes sense.

  “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here, let me buy you a drink,” she says, putting her hand on my shoulder. I shrug the hand off.

  “I need to talk to you about Eli,” I tell her.

  “What do you like?” Desi asks me over the deafening music. “Are you into beer, liquor, wine…”

  “I’m into talking to you about Eli,” I tell her, this time making sure to lean in close enough and speak loudly enough she can’t pretend she didn’t hear me.

  “Okay,” she says and pulls up a stool. “What do you want to know?”

  It’s only just occurring to me that she’s under no obligation to tell me the truth here. How am I supposed to believe anything she says?

  “Kate?” Desi asks. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Are you sleeping together?”

  She laughs. “Well, you just come right out with it, don’t you?” she asks. “No, Eli and I don’t have that kind of relationship. We were an item for a while a few years back, but I hadn’t even seen him until his friend Mick brought him in here a little while ago.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  She shrugs. “There’s nothing I can say that’ll convince you.” The fact that it’s a statement and not a question throws me for a second.

  “Probably not,” I tell her. “I’d hope, though, that one of you would have the decency to just be upfront with me about it.”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  “Would anything I say stop you?”

  “Probably not, because this is something you really need to hear,” she tells me.

  “Then I guess you can,” I tell her.

  Desi gets the bartender’s attention and orders some water before continuing.

  “When I first spotted Eli, I didn’t know how to feel,” she says. “It had been so long… I missed him. I guess I didn’t realize just how much until he was right there. I don’t know how much he’s told you about our past relationship, but for a while there, I thought Eli was going to be the one.”

  My upper lip twitches on one side, but I don’t interrupt.

  “I don’t know, when I came down and started talking to him, I thought maybe this was our big chance to get back together. There was just one problem,” she says.

  “What’s that?” I seethe.

  “He wouldn’t shut up about you,” she says. “Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him go off so much about any topic other than racing.”

  “And what, is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “It should,” she says. “It’s the truth, after all. I don’t even think he was aware, but that night when he came in and you had your first race coming up-”

  “How do you know what I look like?” I ask.

  She blinks. “I’m sorry?”

  “You spotted me after I’d only been in here for a minute or two,” I tell her.

  “He showed me your picture. Actually, he showed me a lot of pictures of you. To be frank, it was a little off-putting that he went on with it so long,” she explains. “Why? How did you think I knew?”

  “Well, I haven’t seen any pictures of you,” I answer.

  “Nah,” she says with a wave of her hand. “He’s not interested in me the way he’s interested in you. It really is ancient history to him.”

  “Not to you, though,” I observe.

  “No,” she says, “not to me. Please don’t misunderstand me,” she continues. “I have no interest in making things harder for the two of you, but Eli was kind of the guy for a long time. That can be a hard thing to let go.”

  “So I’m just supposed to trust that you’re never going to act on these feelings?” I ask. “I’m supposed to trust that you haven’t already?”

  “Mind if we talk about this where we’ve got a bit more privacy?” she asks, leaning in close. “I’ll cover the cost of the champagne room. I just can’t sit and chat with friends on the job.”

  “Oh, you were so close,” I tell her.

  “What?” she asks, pulling away, blinking. She blinks a lot.

  “Is that where you take Eli when the two of you want to ‘talk?’” I ask. “It sounds like he’s been in here more than a couple of times.”

  “No,” she says. “As long as it looks like I’m flirting, there’s not a problem as that’s a pretty big part of my job.”

  “You’re doing a great job of fixing one problem by causing a bigger one,” I tell her. “Yeah, I’ll go back to the champagne room with you as long as you’re paying and you don’t have a legion of stripper friends in the back ready to tear me to shreds.”

  Desi furrows her brow, but a second later, she’s laughing.

  “Wow,” she says. “I’ve really got an uphill battle here, don’t I?”

  “I think that’s a fair assessment,” I tell her.

  Desi glances around and then reaches into her bikini top, pulling a fifty from beneath the fabric. She folds the bill, slips it between two of her fingers and gives it to me like we’re shaking hands.

  “All right, baby,” she says loudly, “let’s go!”

  Desi takes my hand and leads me into a back room that looks remarkably like Dante’s second circle of hell. She guides us through a set of black curtains into a small, semi-private space with a recliner and an end table.

  “We can talk in here,” she says, “but we’ll have to keep it a little quiet. If they think I’m not defiling myself in here for your entertainment, it could go bad for me.”

  “That’d be a real shame,” I mutter.

  “Listen,” she says, “I know that you’re angry, and I know right now that anger is directed at me, but there really is nothing going on between Eli and me.”

  “If that’s the case, you wouldn’t mind if I asked you to stop seeing hi
m,” I retort.

  Desi sighs. “If that’s what it’s going to take for you to start believing us, then I guess I’d have no choice,” she says.

  “You sound pretty disappointed about that,” I point out.

  She shakes her head, saying, “Eli and I were very close once. I was hoping we could be again. It’s not worth it if all our friendship is going to do is hurt people.”

  “Why are you pretending to go along with everything I say?” I ask. “Is that your plan to get me out of here?”

  “I’m not pretending anything,” she says. “Actually, I think I’ve given you a lot more than polite honesty. I think I’ve been a pretty good sport up until now.”

  “And now’s when that’s going to change?” I ask.

  “Look, if you don’t trust Eli, why are you even with him? You came down here for answers, and I’ve told you everything you wanted to know. My answers may not have been what you wanted to hear, but I haven’t been evasive, I haven’t tried to sugarcoat anything. I can understand why the idea of us spending any time with each other at all could make you a bit uncomfortable, but even if I were to never see each other again, who’s to say he won’t make friends with another woman?”

  “I’d settle for someone he never slept with,” I fire back.

  “I could sit here and lie to you and say that never happened with him and I, but we’re both going to have to settle for the truth, instead,” she says.

  “Let’s do that,” I tell her.

  “The truth is that Eli and I were together for a long time and we were very close. It’s also the truth that he is not even remotely interested in me anymore as anything but a friend. I’d offer to just stop seeing him, but I don’t think that’s really going to change anything, is it?”

  “Probably not,” I tell her.

  “Okay then,” she says, “then let me give you a piece of advice.”

  “I can’t wait,” I yawn.

  “Don’t waste your life being jealous of what you have,” she says.

  I furrow my brow. “What does that even mean?” I ask.

  “You’re acting like you’re on the verge of losing him, but what you’re not allowing yourself to see is that he’s more committed to you right now than you even know,” she says. “You’re acting like I’ve somehow stolen that from you, but I couldn’t do that if I wanted to. Eli’s not mine,” she says. “For what it’s worth, if you want me to stop talking to him, I will. I’d much rather be a little miserable myself than be the reason he is. Until you accept that you’re worthy of the kind of love that he feels for you, it’s never going to seem real. As long as you continue to believe that this person who seriously will not shut up about how much he cares about you is only out for his own sick gratification, you’ll never experience the joy that comes from being on the receiving end of that kind of affection.”