by Shey Stahl
“I was an asshole.”
“We’ve been friends our entire lives. You know what that girl means to me.”
“I’m sorry.” He sighed with a hiss to his voice. “I don’t know how many times I have to say it.”
“Stop saying it then.” I twisted my head and looked at him. “I don’t want to hear it anymore. I don’t give a shit that you’re sorry. You were my friend and you had sex with my wife.”
There were worse things than being lied to.
We all had faults, secrets, things we were not proud of. It was what made us human, whether we wanted it to or not. We lied, cheated, stole, sinned, everyone did it whether they say they did, or not. We did it in all manner of ways. As simple as, “No, officer, I wasn’t speeding.” When in fact, you were doing 67 in a 60.
As humans, we were exceptionally hypocritical.
To me, what really got me was the unknown. And I supposed that could go back to lying to.
I hated the unknown.
Why else would my best friend—the boy I’d grown up around a dirt track with—sleep with my wife?
Only he wouldn’t offer me an answer. I wasn’t going to accept his apology. That wasn’t an answer. That right there was an excuse. A sorry fucking excuse because he couldn’t come up with anything else.
I deserved an answer.
“I want an answer,” I told him, trying to keep calm, only it was a failed effort.
He couldn’t look at me. “I don’t have one.”
I punched the wall beside me in the hauler, my anger never fading. It was like the orange glow of hot brakes at night, seen from hundreds of feet away. “Make something up then. I don’t give a shit what it is, tell me a reason.”
Shane sighed, shaking his head. “We’d had a fifth of tequila and she kissed me…by the time I fully comprehended what was happening, we’d taken it too far.”
It was a punch to my gut. The images of the night resurfaced, trapped in the debased memory. Was I mad at his admittance?
I was fucking mad, livid. But most of all, I was a fucking mess over it. I couldn’t stop my body from shaking when I thought about that night and what I’d seen. It was a knife through my already bleeding heart.
I once had a cut on my foot that was deep enough I needed stitches. I didn’t even remember how it happened, but I remembered walking through the pits at Lincoln Speedway when I was something like ten-years-old, with my foot bleeding, not even realizing I was walking on rocks and tearing the wound open further.
That was exactly how this felt. I was ripping the wound open packing it with dirt and rocks.
Personally, I believed, when we made a decision we knew what we were doing. We knew damn well right from wrong. We were given free will and temptation could make us weak. I was not going to sit next to Shane and say I’d never been tempted, because I had. But what I did know was there was always a moment when my brain distinguished the right from wrong. He knew right from wrong.
“I know you’re never going to forgive me,” Shane mumbled, staring at his fidgeting bloody hands. “I don’t expect you to. I just want you to know that despite what’s happened, you’re still like a brother to me.”
“Brother?” I pushed back against the wall to create more distant between us wanting it, needing it. If I was close enough to him, I might punch him again. “You fucked my wife, Shane. My wife.”
“Technically I didn’t. We didn’t finish.”
Like it mattered to me. They still got started. It changed nothing as far as I was concerned.
“How would you feel if I would have had sex with Miya?”
“I would be angry,” he admitted, his eyes dark, imagining just that. It wasn’t a thought he wanted to have, because just like me, that was the worst feeling to imagine. Someone being intimate with the one person you are with. It was an act of betrayal that was never easy to forgive.
I wanted to say so much, but my jaw was too tight. I had to force myself to calm down before I could speak. “How do I know you two haven’t done this before?”
“We haven’t.” He appeared annoyed by the remark, the jab at him, that I would assume so little of him.
There were moments of quiet, and then he asked, “Can we ever be friends again?”
“Friends? Shane…” I tossed the shock in my hand on the floor, afraid I’d throw it at him. “I’m not sure I ever want to see you again.”
By the look on his face, he knew he had that coming. Nothing between us would ever me the same.
“Did you tell Miya?”
Shane nodded, his eyes focused on the floor. “Yeah, she knows.”
“And she forgave you?” I deduced by the way he couldn’t look at me.
I had to get up and leave after that. What hurt more than anything was that Miya forgave Shane.
Lily, she didn’t even give me the opportunity to forgive her. She walked away. Like it didn’t matter if she hurt me worse. I wanted to drive to Indiana that night and demand a damn answer. Demand she tell me why I wasn’t good enough.
When I left Shane’s hauler, I went over to my parents’ motorhome where they were camping for the weekend. I walked in, slammed their door and flopped myself on the couch.
Mom’s eyes went wide thinking Gray would wake up, but she didn’t. Didn’t even flinch. You never wanted to accidently wake Gray up. It would be like waking a sleeping bear from hibernation early.
Not wanting to wake Gray, I stood and paced the floor.
My mom knew me better than most. She understood what I was feeling and I didn’t even have to say anything. She always just knew.
She looked at my face, her palms cupping my cheeks. Turning my head left, then right, she frowned. “You talked to Shane, didn’t you?”
“Does it look like we did much talking?”
For the most part, everyone understood why I was angry, why I felt I had a right to be hurt. But it didn’t mean I had to stay that way. It was something I was choosing to be; it went back to free will.
I made my decision. And for the moment, that was the way I was going to be. Mad as hell over it.
“I don’t know what to do. I can’t handle this and the way she left…it fucking hurts. I want my boys.”
Mom looked at the coffee in her hands when she spoke. “I understand her pain to a point. She feels lost. Her baby died. That’s not easy on a mother.”
“But he was my baby, too. Why couldn’t she see that if anyone understood, it was me?”
“He was your baby. Nothing can bring him back and that’s not something most people understand.” Mom drew in a breath, looking over at Gray. “I wish I could help you, I do.”
“I know.” Both my parents were great at giving advice, but this wasn’t a situation where most had a lot to offer. It also wasn’t something where one piece of advice was going to magically fix anything.
“I just want to make it better for you, but I can’t.”
Twisting my head, I stole a slanted glance at her. “I don’t need you to make it better, Mom. I just…I don’t even know what I need. I want my wife to fucking understand that I was there for her. I was. She shut me out.”
“She knows you were there, Axel.”
“Are you taking her side?” My tone was a little accusing, but I supposed she understood given my mood.
Mom blinked then focused her eyes on me. “Heavens no. I’m not. I’m just saying, as a mother, I understood how alone she felt.”
“I felt that, too. I was alone. So why did she turn to him and not me?”
Mom shook her head, shrugging with uncertainty. “Only Lily can answer that.”
She was right. Only Lily could. But then again, there was six-hundred miles between us. Might as well have been a world away because that was what it felt like.
Axel
In-Lap - Any lap which concludes with a visit to the pits, especially a pre-arranged pit stop, either during a race or during practice or qualifying. Often drivers push hard to drive fast on their in
-lap (despite perhaps having worn out tires) in order to gain time during the pit stop sequence.
WHEN I ARRIVED HOME from Eldora that week, I was at home, drinking, when I heard a car pull up the driveway, and then a truck door slam shut. I figured it was my dad, or worse, my mom here to talk to some sense into me. But it wasn’t.
It was Casten.
Which surprised me because shit just hadn’t been the same with us since the night I blamed him. It was wrong and we both knew it, but I wasn’t in any place to say I was sorry.
He rang the doorbell so I walked around the broken glass of the vase I’d smashed four days ago and hadn’t bothered to pick up.
Casten didn’t smile when I opened the door, but his head was down, never looking at me.
Believe me, I felt like an asshole after I’d hit him. I’d hurt Casten more with what I’d said. He didn’t get offended or even emotional. I’d never even see him cry other than when Grandpa died and Dad was barely alive.
He’d cried then.
When I opened the door a little wider, Casten, raised a twelve-pack, and stepped inside without saying anything. Though I wanted to be alone, he had what I wanted.
Beer.
I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t even want to think.
Casten didn’t say anything for close to an hour. We just sat around the fire pit watching the flame.
Three beers in, he finally spoke.
“I’ve tried to put myself in your shoes. I’ve imagined what I would do if that happened to Gray and if Hayden slept with my best friend. Which is you. You’re my best friend, so that wasn’t exactly easy to imagine either. It wasn’t easy and it hurt. That’s when I saw a glimpse of what you’re going through. And it was only a glimpse. I can’t imagine having to feel the full weight of what you’re feeling. It’s…unimaginable. I know you do and say things you don’t mean to others.” He looked at me then, his eyes glossy and red. I felt the sting of tears, but nothing fell. I wasn’t capable of them anymore. “I love you, Axel. I know I shouldn’t have let him sit that close to the track and I’ll carry that with me forever, but it wasn’t my fault. He was out of the way of those cars and no one would have expected that to happen. It could have happened to anyone, even my daughter. It was an accident.” He shifted his weight and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his head hung down. “For a while I blamed myself. What if I’d been closer, tons of fucking what ifs. But I can’t do that because it wasn’t my fault. And you don’t get to put that kind of blame on me.”
Casten was right. I didn’t get to blame him. It wasn’t fair.
I didn’t say anything, I wasn’t good at this and he knew it. I wanted to say so much to him, but I wasn’t ready. He knew that, too.
Sensing this, he got up to leave when I cleared my throat. “Stay?”
A small smile tugged at his lips as he sat back down, slouching in the wooden chair with his eyes on the fire. We talked for a while, mostly about racing, and then he told me that Lexi and Brody had their second baby the other night. A girl, Willow Allison. For some reason, it tugged at my heart a little more than I thought it would since Lily had always wanted a girl.
“Have you seen Lily?” Casten asked, after about an hour when the fire was starting to burn down.
“Nope.” I finished the rest of my beer and Casten pulled four more from his jacket pockets. I laughed a little. He was always prepared. “She took the boys and won’t answer my calls. Served me with divorce papers.”
“Heavy.” He leaned forward and gave me two of the beers.
“Yep.”
“Did you sign them?”
“Nope.” I cracked open another beer. “She’s going to have to talk to me first.”
After Casten left that night, I laid in bed and stared at the nightstand where my wife had left her wedding ring, which I refused to move, with a note that said, “You win.”
It certainly didn’t feel like a win.
Holding my phone, I almost called her, begged her to hear me out and finally talk, but I didn’t, instead I stared at the screen until it turned black and saw my reflection in it.
I didn’t like what I saw. A man with hollow eyes and a blank stare.
I KNEW AFTER CASTEN and I talked, I needed to apologize to Arie. I couldn’t keep avoiding her as if I hadn’t called my own sister a slut.
Arie had been with Easton a little more and hadn’t been on the road with us since before Eldora. That changed when we were back at Williams Grove Speedway in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Arie never missed the weekend there, as it was one of her favorite tracks.
Tommy and I had the car unloaded and ready by two o’clock that afternoon. It was perfect just two days ago in Abbottstown, but I had no idea what we’d be met with once hot laps came around.
“I’m gonna go get tires.” Tommy said, tipping his head to the hauler.
“I’ll be back.” I gave him a nod toward Rager’s motorhome where Arie was sitting outside. Tommy smiled, knowing what I was going to do and headed the other direction.
Arie was with Jerry going over entry forms, her long hair pulled back away from her face in a messy bun. It was nearing the hundreds already and most everyone was either shirtless or wishing they were.
The hum of the generator and distant air tools seemed almost silent compared to the thudding of my heart when I approached my sister.
Sitting down next to her on a cooler, she wouldn’t look at me; instead, she started counting the forms in her hand and gave half of them to Jerry. “I already have your form, if that’s what you’re going to ask me.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Oh,” Still, she hadn’t looked at me, but a sarcastic smile presented itself. “Are you here to call me a slut again? Because if you are, Rager’s not in there. I’m not sitting out here waiting for him. It’s hot and he has his awning out.”
When I didn’t say anything, Arie stopped counting the forms and stared at me.
Jerry stood. “I uh…I’ll go check on the schedule for tonight.”
When Jerry was out of sight, Arie looked at me. “What do you want?”
“To apologize.”
Staring at my hands, I had no idea how to apologize or what to say next. Suddenly I wondered if Shane had felt this way when he was trying to figure out what to say to me that night in his hauler. I finally understood a little bit of that feeling. We said and did things in the heat of the moment and they weren’t always what we meant, or felt, or wanted to have someone else feel.
Was that why Lily and Shane did it?
Maybe…I may never know.
What I did know was that I hurt my sister by what I said.
“I wanted to apologize, tell you that I didn’t mean what I said, but I don’t know that you’ll ever believe me. I should have never said those things to you.”
Arie was never one to cry. She kept her feelings locked down most of the time and never let them show on her face. That was when I noticed a tear slip down her cheek, and then another. She was crying.
“Fuck…” I cursed running my hands through my hair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say those things. I didn’t.” I went to stand, knowing that maybe I hurt her too much for words. I knew the feeling and I knew when people needed space, give it to them because that was what happened to me. I needed space and no one was giving it to me.
“Stay…” Arie said softly, raising her left hand to wipe tears away while holding the stack of papers with the other. “I’m just a little emotional. Those damn pills I’m taking either make me cry or make me scream at people.”
I laughed, lightly, siting back down on the cooler. “I don’t think you’re a slut.” I told her, looking her in the eyes.
I could tell by one look at my sister she was masking so much behind her eyes, and maybe it was those ovulation pills she was taking, but I witnessed right before my eyes that mask slip up a little. She was scared of a lot more than anyone would ever realize. “He stares at me and g
ives me these looks like he knows the power he has over me and I can’t get away from him.”
She didn’t have to say who she was talking about because I knew. Rager.
“It’s not that I don’t want to be with Easton. I do. I love him very much. I want to love only him, but it’s not possible for me. So no, you don’t get to tell me how I should act when you have no idea what it’s like to be me.”
Running my hand over my sweating neck, I hung in there, trying to think of something to say to her and coming up with nothing.
“I feel bad for your situation and for what happened to Jack. And then with Lily…I just feel bad for you. But you don’t get to turn your pain on me and make me feel bad about myself and my life, the decisions I make. That’s not fair to me. If I could change what happened to you, I would. I would give you Jack back, but I can’t. I tried to talk to Lily that night, but she wouldn’t listen. You can’t tell a grieving mother how she’s going to feel. Just like I can’t tell you how to feel.” Arie heaved in a breath, longwinded, but I knew she wasn’t done. “And I’m mad at you because you’re my brother and you should’ve known me. I get that you were sad and all. That’s why you said those things to me, but they still hurt. You can’t take them back. They will always be there in my head, knowing my brother thinks I’m a slut.”
“I don’t think that.” Among the many emotions I was feeling right then, shame marred my tone and she knew it. Only it didn’t stop her from telling me everything she knew I needed to hear.
“I forgive you because you are my brother and that’s what family is for. They can make you feel good about yourself, or the worst, but all that matters is that you’re my brother and here for me to forgive.”
She had a point there. A valid one.
Arie leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. “I tried to stop Lily that night. I did.”
I shrugged dismissively. “I don’t think anything could have stopped her.”
Tommy came up to us on the golf cart with tires on the back. Reaching forward, he shut it off and sprawled out in the car with his arm over the seat. “Well this is nice to see,” he said, motioning to Arie and me talking.
