by Shandi Boyes
I arch my brow. Maybe she does know me? Even with my usual personality watered down with remorse, I’ve always been cocky – although I usually only unleash my bloodthirsty desire to win on a male opponent. Out bench-pressing my personal trainer at my local gym, or forcing Hugo to tap out on the boxing mat, those are the competitive games that keep blood pumping to the region my heart used to be, not competing against a woman who both confuses and intrigues me.
When the glint in Gemma’s eyes I can’t recognize weakens, my intentions to turn down her request do a complete one-eighty. Ignoring the uneasy feeling in my stomach that she has instigated more times than I can count tonight, I mutter, “The only way you're going to drive around that track is while wearing the full get up.”
Gemma’s eyes flare in excitement as she curtly nods her head. Her excitement fades when I add on, “Fire suit, helmet, and all.”
The smile her disgruntled moan caused widens when she moves into a pit station at the side of the track and drags a pair of coveralls up and over her dress. The sides of the legs are black and white-checkered in color and they have a red band around the midsection. After pulling the zipper all the way to her chin, she kicks off her heels and pulls on a pair of black boots. For how quickly she transforms from runway model to NASCAR driver, I’d say this is something she has done regularly. But from her flamed cheeks and wide-eyed expression, I’d say it is something she would prefer to do in private.
Snagging a helmet from a shelf at the back of the pit station, Gemma paces to me. If the moon wasn’t bouncing off her platinum blonde locks, and she didn’t have a face that can make a heartless man’s pulse beat a little faster, she looks like every other NASCAR driver out there. Even more so because of the determination in her eyes. Clearly, this is something she has wanted to do for a long time. I don’t know why, but the fact I get to help her achieve one of her dreams makes my chest puff high. Perhaps it is the desire to even the ground between us? Or maybe it is because I’ve always believed a good deed brightens a dark world.
I crank open my driver’s side door and gesture with my head for Gemma to enter. Her breathing turns excited when I lean over her shoulder to pull the five-point safety harness over the seat. Although Gemma is practically a stranger to me, I still don’t want her getting hurt. Just the idea of her getting in a wreck causes my hands to shake, making it hard for me to latch the harness together.
Peering into my eyes, Gemma stops my jittery movements with her hands while mumbling, “I’ve got this.”
After clipping the harness together, she exhales a ragged breath. “Alright, tighten me in firmly,” she requests. Her words are strong, but her eyes relay her uncertainty. From the way she watches me, I know not all her insecurities come from nerves; some of it resonates because she is unsure of my odd response to strapping her in.
Acting like I can’t feel the air shifting between us, I grip the tethers on the harness and yank down hard. The panic thickening my blood thins when Gemma grimaces, faking asphyxiation from the harness’ death-tight grip. Wanting to ensure there isn’t a space of air between the harness and her body, I give it another rough yank.
“Okay. Now I’m not joking, I can’t breathe,” Gemma wheezes, her whitening face adding strength to her admission.
“Good. Because that’s how it’s supposed to feel,” I inform her.
Gemma’s brows stitch. “It feels like I’ve gone back to my pre-teen days.”
When she notices my confused expression, she adds on, “My boobs have gone back to 2002. I’m once again flat chested.”
I swear, I gave it my best shot, but the instant the word “boobs” left her mouth, my eyes darted straight to her chest. Even knowing I shouldn’t be looking, it takes me several seconds to tear my eyes away from her wildly thrusting chest. It is nearly as tortuous as when I had to maintain her eye contact when the hood of my car exposed inches of her smooth thighs. Even with Gemma’s inquisitive glances agitating me, it doesn’t take away from the fact she is an attractive female with an enticing body.
After giving myself a few moments to get over the fact I fell for one of the oldest tricks in the book, I lift my eyes to Gemma. When I see the mortified look on her face, I realize she didn’t purposely set out to goad me. She appears just as mortified as I am over my lack of self-control when I’m around her.
Spending the past hour with Gemma is like being stabbed with a double-sided sword. Her inquisitive glances give me a moment of reprieve from the grief I’ve been wading through the past five years, but the fact a stranger can exonerate me at all adds to my agitation. When you’re sentenced to a life of misery, shouldn’t even a second of your time be suffocated by misery? Normally, I’d say yes. But for that thirty seconds I flew around the track, and for the forty minutes that followed it, miserable was not a word I could use to describe that time. Free. Encouraged. Me. If I could push them past the guilt curled around my throat, those are words I’d use to describe the range of emotions pumping through my veins right now. Words I never thought I’d utter again in my lifetime.
Ignoring the crosswire of emotions overwhelming me, I close the driver’s side door of my car and amble to the other side. When I slide into the passenger seat, Gemma bows her brow and glares at me. The longer she stares, the foggier the screen on her helmet becomes.
“What?” I eventually ask when I fail to comprehend what has caused her lightning fast switch in personality. She’s gone from her eyes beaming with apologies to looking like a woman who crushes balls for a living.
Gemma nudges her head to the side. “Are you going to put on your seatbelt?” Her words come out strained through the mouth guard of her helmet.
My right shoulder lifts into a shrug before I briefly shake my head. “I have nothing left to lose,” I mumble under my breath.
Gemma’s grip on the steering wheel tightens as she revs the engine of my car, sending a deep rumble through the seats. “Having nothing to lose means you just have a whole lot to gain. Put on your seatbelt,” she demands, her voice bossy and straight to the point.
Deciding an argument isn’t worth the effort, I pull my seatbelt across my body. The instant the belt mechanism latches into place, I’m thrusted into my seat from Gemma’s heavy compression on the gas pedal. For a woman who struggled to change gears not even an hour ago, she does remarkably well this time around. She shifts from first gear to second with only the smallest grind of the gearbox, and second to third is even smoother than that.
When she reaches the first bend in the track, my foot slams onto the floor of my Camaro as I search for the invisible brake. My heart rate reaches levels I haven’t achieved in years when Gemma glides my car around the bend without the slightest touch on the brakes. The back end of my Camaro drifts out, but with a cool and calm approach, Gemma admirably maintains control of my car.
My head flies back to check the timer on the side of the track. A ghost of a smile cracks onto my lips when I notice only twenty-two seconds on the clock have passed. That’s a stellar effort any novice driver should be proud of. When Gemma’s endeavors of switching from third to fourth crunches at the gears, I curl my hand over her tight fist and guide the gearstick into place without pause for consideration. Even though I can’t see her face through the reflective mask of her helmet, I know she is smiling. I can feel it deep in my bones.
Adrenaline scorches my veins when she hits the one-mile marker with only forty-two seconds on the clock. “Come on,” I silently chant. “Bring it all or go home crying.”
Like she can hear my private thoughts, Gemma increases her pressure on the gas pedal, and my gauge stops recording her speed. Even with guilt trickling into my veins at the excitement roaring through my body, I can’t stop the smile etching onto my mouth when Gemma releases a squeal, similar to the one she made earlier tonight, when she zooms over the finish line with an impressive time of 59.53 seconds recorded on the timer.
“I did it!” she squeals through the face shield of her helmet
. “One and a half miles in under sixty seconds!”
After pulling my car into the pit lane at the side of the track, she unlatches the five-point harness and curls out of the driver’s seat. She throws off her helmet and places it on the hood of my car before undoing the zipper on her race suit. I mimic her movements minus the removal of safety equipment.
“I swear on my grandpa’s grave that was better than sex,” Gemma confesses, her words breathy and laced with excitement.
A chuckle topples from my mouth before I have the chance to stifle it when she does a little jig on the spot. Her dance moves look like a bronco-riding line dancer had a baby with the person who invented the chicken dance. Her feet are kicking up dust as her arms flap out wildly at her sides. It is a hideous and oddly enticing boogie.
Hearing my laughter, Gemma snaps her eyes to me. Even with her cheeks flaming in embarrassment, she smiles a grin that makes me feel like I stepped back in time ten years. Back to a time when my only concern was not being the frat brother who drew the short straw as designated driver. It’s the type of smile that impacts me way more than I’d like to admit. A smile that forces stupid thoughts to trickle through my mind. Like, what if I pretend not to be me for just one night? Or can widowers take a night off from their grief just to feel normal for a few measly hours? But the stupidest ones, the ones that turn my blood black with anger, are these: what if my life didn’t end with Jorgie and Malcolm? What if there are still chapters of my story yet to be written?
The heaviness that cleared off my chest mere minutes ago comes steamrolling back in as a wave of guilt swamps me. The tightness around my throat firms as anger steals my ability to breathe. While Gemma yanks her race suit down her thighs, I charge for the driver’s side door of my car, more than eager to end this night before any more foolish thoughts enter my mind.
“Wait,” Gemma requests when I throw open my driver’s side door.
Even with my brain screaming at me to get in the car and leave now, my eyes unwillingly lift to Gemma.
“Good memories never fade, but there is no harm in suspending a moment in time for eternity,” she says with a smile.
In haste, she dumps her race suit into a bin on her left before placing her helmet back onto its rack. When she pivots around to face me, the urge to dive into my car and leave her here overwhelms me. Just like the past nine hours, her briefest glance stirs something deep within me. Something I want to dig out of my chest and bury in a pit where it will never be found.
Not noticing the switch in my composure, Gemma issues me another heart-strangling smile before pacing to my car. My brows scrunch when she leans into my car and removes a retro-looking camera from the front pocket of her suitcase.
“Have you ever just wanted to fully let go? To pretend that nothing matters more than making memories that will steal your breath away every time you think of them?” she asks after fiddling with the ancient camera.
I nod my head before my brain has the chance to protest.
“That’s what tonight is about: a chance to forget the things that will still be there tomorrow. The hardest part of waking up every morning is remembering what you spent all day yesterday trying to forget. Tonight has ensured I’m not going to wake up tomorrow with the same amount of regret I woke up with today. The bad memories will still be there, but I’ve added a few good ones as well.”
I remain quiet, unsure exactly how to reply. The weary haze in Gemma’s eyes shows she has her own set of issues she is dealing with, but there is a difference between us. Gemma is guarded and weary. Two faults that can be fixed with time. I'm broken. Nothing can fix broken.
My eyes squint, and I take a step backward when I'm blinded by a bright flash of a camera light. Gemma lets out a little giggle at my reaction before the sound of heels clicking on asphalt overtakes her laughter. It takes me several blinks to clear away half of the white spots dancing in front of my eyes. But even with my vision hindered and a stranglehold of emotions pumping into me, I can detect Gemma’s closeness when she leans into my side. It isn’t just the warmth of her body pressed up against mine that gives it away; it is the way her closeness calms the unease swirling in my stomach.
Before I have the chance to cite an objection, Gemma lifts the Polaroid to snap a selfie of us together. A grin unwillingly tugs my lips higher. I’ve spent the last six months as a bodyguard to a chart-topping pop group, so I know all too well how selfies are all the rage right now. But seeing Gemma take one of us with a chunky retro Polaroid camera brings a whole new meaning to the fad.
After snapping our photo, Gemma pivots around to face me while shaking the Polaroid image. Over time, our picture sneaks out of the blackness. Even with the odd angle because of our difference in height, and the fact we’re both wearing the effects of a long day, the photo is surprisingly decent. Gemma is wearing her devastating smile, and her eyes are bright and alive. My dark gaze exposes the range of emotion pumping into me, but against my wishes, the lines in the corner of my mouth are facing the sky.
“We aren’t friends nor enemies, just two strangers who are going to share the same memory for eternity,” Gemma mumbles, her voice filled with sentiment.
I lift my eyes from the photo to her. As the glint of happiness in her eyes dampens, I say, “Every person in your life was a stranger at one point.”
My statement has the effect I’m aiming for when Gemma’s eyes flare in excitement as her lips curve into a smile I’ll never forget. “Strangers can become friends just as quickly as friends can become strangers.” She tilts into my side like she did on the church stairs hours ago. “You just have to stop treating me like I’m the enemy.”
With that, she slips into the passenger seat of my car and fastens her seatbelt, shifting the air between us even more quickly than our selfie developed. After rolling down the window of my car, she drifts her lively eyes to me. “So what’s next, Mister? Am I going to show you up on the go-kart track? Or take you down during a round of glow-in-the-dark bowling?”
“You don’t want to go back to your hotel?” I ask, shock evident in my tone.
Gemma stares into my eyes for several moments before faintly muttering, “I don’t want to go back to reality.”
Chapter 8
“For future reference, if you had disclosed that carrying a gun was a requirement of your job, I wouldn’t have put Mr. Bunny on the negotiating table,” I inform as I crank my neck back to the large stuffed rabbit strapped into the back seat of Carey’s Camaro.
My love affair with Mr. Bunny was brief but long enough to last me a lifetime. Although his hairy face is as cute as fluffy clouds in a blue sky, he is nothing but icing on a very big cake from spending the last two hours with Carey in a twenty-four-seven amusement parlor.
I’m not going to lie, my endeavor to strong-arm Carey into the arcade was nearly as difficult as coercing him into the church hours ago. His unease only lasted as long as it took for me to challenge him to a NASCAR stimulator showdown. If he won, I agreed to leave the parlor without a single protest. If he lost, he couldn’t leave until we played one round of each game in the entire arcade. Carey thought he was a sure-fire winner. Considering Mr. Bunny is sitting in the backseat tells how the story really went. I won. I’m not bragging when I say I won by at least half a bonnet. If you asked Carey, he’d probably tell you it was a dead heat. Either way, it doesn’t matter. A win is a win.
Letting my cockiness get the better of me, I threw in one final showdown on our way out of the arcade. The best out of three in the duck hunting game would become Mr. Bunny’s owner. Let me just say, defeat has never been something I’ve handled well. Tonight is no different.
Pouting at being slaughtered and losing my beloved stuffed bunny, I return my eyes front and center. My brows furrow when Carey pulls his car into the driveway of my hotel and the odd expression of relief filters through his eyes. Although the ten minutes following our showdown at the training track was plagued with mood-strangling awkwardness, the last
two hours have been void of any confrontation. Carey still has a mysterious edginess attached to his composure, but he willingly participated in the broad range of activities we undertook the past two hours. He even instigated a conversation on how our twenty-minute drive to my hotel ended up being a four-hour long adventure fifty miles in the wrong direction.
When Carey parks into an empty space in the dimly lit parking lot, disappointment consumes me. Even tired after an exhausting day, I’d give anything for our night not to be over. Carey truly intrigues me, more than any man before him. Every second we spend together has me craving another. This is only the third time in my life that I’ve met a stranger whom I feel the need to get to know better. The first time I had this type of feeling, I was so young, the only thing I can remember is my dad’s dark eyes and gentle smile. The second time was when I caught the quickest glance of a stranger sitting across the room. That inquisitive stare not only saved my life; it saved his as well. So if I’m having the same feelings about Carey, it should be explored, not ignored? Shouldn’t it?
Masking my confusion with a neutral expression, I scan my eyes over my hotel. The Grand Hotel is not as elaborate as the hotel Ava and Hugo’s wedding reception took place in, but it has a nice vibe to it with a chandeliered driveway and sparkling glass facade. I had originally planned to stay at the hotel the reception was held at, but with my tenancy to leave things until last minute, this was the only hotel I could find in a thirty-mile radius of Rochdale that had a vacancy and advanced security features. Wesley, my roommate/best friend, said it served me right for leaving my booking until this morning.
Grasping the Camaro’s door handle, I shift my eyes to Carey. He is watching me with the same unusual mix of interest and uncertainty he has bestowed on me most of the night. His brows are stitched with confusion, but evidence of the smile that snuck onto his face during our playful antics tonight remains in place. Although not being able to read his true intentions is off-putting, the unique vibe radiating out of him is intriguing and pulse-quickening.
