Supercross Me (Motocross Me #2)

by Cheyanne Young

  “Something tells me the only acceptable answer is yes,” I say, which earns me a chuckle from my dad.

  The new guy walks over to the basket of burritos and fishes around, grabbing one without Dad’s name on it. “Good morning,” he says as that smirk transforms into something like a smile. “Hana, right?”

  I swallow the food in my mouth and give him a wary once-over. Only now that he’s standing next to me, towering like fifty feet above my head, do I realize that he’s wearing a black Mixon Motocross Park Staff shirt. “Yeah, that’s me. Who the hell are you?”

  “Hana,” Dad chides, and it’s almost like an automatic dad-reaction to hearing his daughter curse because he doesn’t even look away from his coffee as he pours sugar into it.

  The new tall guy lifts his burrito in a form of hello. “I’m Lincoln. I started working here a couple of months ago.”

  It takes everything I have not to flinch. He can’t know that I’ve already heard about him, this mysterious new track employee who allegedly has a crush on me. I peel off another piece of my burrito with all of the casual boredom I can manifest. “Cool. Well, nice to meet you.”

  “Definitely.” Lincoln stuffs the still-wrapped burrito under his arm and hefts a black laptop case onto the desk in front of a row of windows that overlook the track. “Maybe you can teach me some insider info on the track sometime.”

  “I’m sure you already know it all,” I say, spinning around in my chair so that I face the windows. The sun is rising, casting a bright glow over half of the track. The other half is buried in shadows from the tall dirt jumps.

  “I’d still love to hear from the expert.”

  Is he smirking at me?

  Is he flirting with me? I mean really, this soon? In front of Dad and Marty?

  A walkie talkie thunks down beside me and then Dad ruffles my hair, which is in a ponytail, so now I have to fix it. “I’m off to water the track. Call if you need anything.”

  Lincoln and I watch as Dad and Marty leave the score tower. If Dad knows about Lincoln’s supposed crush on me, he must not care very much. It took a little while before he let Ash and me be alone in small spaces together. Of course, now I’m eighteen so maybe he thinks it’s none of his business.

  My new companion sets up a laptop, plugging it into a dock on the desk next to me. “That’s new,” I say over a massive bite of food. “Portable computers in the tower? I can’t believe they’ve upgraded so much.”

  I may or may not be trying to sabotage whatever crush he may think he has on me by being completely disgusting. I bite off another bite and lean back in my chair, propping my feet up on the counter.

  “Yeah, I’m the tech guy.” Lincoln types in a password and focuses on the screen, booting up whatever programs he uses for his job.

  “I didn’t know we needed a tech guy.”

  “Ya’ll don’t need one full time,” he says, tossing me a quick glance. “Which is why I’m also the marketing director, the guy who answers the phone on weekends, and most importantly—”

  “So you’re a massive nerd?” I say, cutting him off. “I can’t believe this cool track has slipped into nerdom.”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” he says, running his tongue over his bottom lip. “If you think answering phones is nerdy, you should hear my main job. I am the peewee instructor.”

  “You teach little kids?” The peewees are the below five age group of little rug rats whose parents clearly don’t love them and therefore have bought them a dirt bike. We have a tiny kid track off to the side of the two big main tracks where little kids can ride without fear of their small bikes not making it up the big jumps. “I didn’t even know that was a thing here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He leans a little closer to the laptop screen, eyes squinting as he highlights a row of text. “Mr. Fisher has branched out into motocross training. He hired a few guys as contractors to teach riding lessons during the off-season and on slow days. Turns out I suck at trying to make it as a professional racer, but I’m a stellar teacher to kids.”

  “That’s really cool,” I say. Whatever self-imposed hostility I’d had over this new guy starts to melt away. I mean, teaching little kids is kind of adorable.

  “So what do you do here?” he asks.

  I hold out my arms, gesturing to my laid back position in Marty’s favorite chair. “Mostly I just wait for Dad to assign some mundane task. Unless it’s race day and then I’m swamped.”

  Lincoln’s long fingers type something on his computer and then the printer whirs to life in the corner of the room. “Oh, to be the owner’s kid. I wish my parents did something other than slave away at shit jobs. But yeah, race days suck. That’s why we get paid double.”

  He closes the laptop and slides it back into the bag, rising from the chair next to me. He gives me a little nod. “I’ll see you around, Hana.”

  And then he’s gone. And as if by magic, all of my longing for Ash falls off the high mental shelf where I’d hid it and comes tumbling down, ruining my mood. I don’t like Lincoln. I’m not even sure he likes me, judging by his professional chit chat just now. That’s fine, because I don’t want anyone to like right now. There is no room in my brain or heart to even consider letting someone else in.

  I stand up, looking for something to do in the tower, anything that will keep me busy and keep my mind off Ash. The paper Lincoln printed still rests in the paper slot, face down. I grab it and rush back to the door, yanking it open.

  “Lincoln!” I call out to his retreating form. He’s already down the stairs and a few yards away. When he turns around, there’s a playful look in his eyes. I hold up the paper. “You forgot this.”

  “Did you read it?” he calls back.

  “No.”

  I think he gnaws on his bottom lip but it’s a little hard to tell from up here. “Well, it’s for you.”

  “Oh cool, thanks.” I step back into the frigid room and get all the way back to my chair before I read it. It’s a memo template, probably printed from the internet, like something you would see in an office on a movie. Only, Lincoln has typed in his own message in all of the blanks and then printed it for me.

  MEMO

  URGENT? -yes

  FOR – Hana

  FROM –Lincoln

  MESSAGE – Would you like to have lunch with me and discuss all of those secret work topics you know but haven’t shared yet? (Pizza at Magic Mark’s, on me) I would have just asked you but something tells me you expect the utmost nerdiness out of me, so you get this memo. That’s what nerds do, right?

  *

  Molly’s brown curls bounce up and down as she reads the memo. “Aww!” she croons, her mouth forming a little puppy face of excitement for me. “That is so cute!”

  “Is it cute?” I ask, voice hushed in case we’re overheard. Which is unlikely, since we’re standing at the front of the track, pounding signs that advertise the next motocross event into the hard-packed dirt. There’s really no one around to eavesdrop. “Or is it kind of . . . I don’t know, forward? I mean, he just met me.”

  She makes this face like everything I’m saying is too much to believe. “Ya’ll are kids. He’s just being cute.”

  “He’s twenty-one and I’m eighteen,” I say, leveling the rubber mallet over the wooden stake in this sign. I throw all of my weight into the swing and the sign bumps down into the dirt half an inch. “We’re not kids anymore. He could have just asked me in person.”

  “Trust me, honey. When you’re in your forties, everyone younger than you is just a kid. And I think it was his way of trying to get to know you better, but not putting you on the spot. So you can easily say no if you want.”

  “If that’s the case, then why do I feel obligated to go?” I raise the mallet and bring it down as hard as I can, only to see it have very little effect on the sign.

  “Don’t do anything you don’t want to do,” she says while she struggles with her own sign. I try to hand the mallet to her but she shrugs me
off, preferring to stomp the thing the old fashioned way with her foot. “How about this?” she says, standing and wiping sweat from her brow. “I need you to help me with something in the house and it’ll take a few hours during lunch time. If you want, you can use this as an excuse to turn him down without it being weird.”

  The excuse to get out of this lunch with Lincoln is a welcome relief that calms all of the anxiety and guilt I’ve been feeling since he gave me that memo two hours ago. While she waits for an answer, I run through all of the reasons that I don’t want to go. They all return to Ash. If not for him, I’d probably be excited at the opportunity to spend time with a cute guy who likes me. And maybe Ash has moved on, I don’t know. But I haven’t. Maybe I won’t be able to move on at all until I know what he’s doing. Until I know that it’s officially over, forever, for good, for always.

  “Thanks, Molly,” I say, hefting the mallet into the air again. “I’d really like to help you during lunch.

  Chapter 5

  Eight months ago – October

  Ash was only a couple weeks into his professional racing career with Team Yamaha and already the world had changed. Well, my world at least. The daily routine of motocross and finding my place in the motocross family was just starting to become normal and then Ash got shipped away. He was flown first class to California where he met and mingled with all of the gods of the professional supercross world and got his name out there for the world to see. They sent him home with more dirt bike brand T-shirts and gear than he could fit in his bedroom.

  Some of it was being stored in our garage, and a few of the shirts were now mine. I figured that if I was a girlfriend now, I’d get the fringe benefits of stealing a shirt or two. Or ten. Ash didn’t mind, and the very act of wearing one of his shirts to bed made my heart warm in a way it’d never warmed before.

  It was Monday, and Teig was home sick from school. Molly was on a girl’s-only casino trip that she and some of the other motocross wives do every year, the kind of trip that sounds like a blast if you go with friends you’re really close with. Of course, Molly played it off like some kind of silly obligation and that it wasn’t her first choice to go and leave us all home without her like the helpless heathens we were.

  “I wish Molly were here,” I said, sitting on the edge of Teig’s bed while I placed a cold, folded washcloth on his forehead. “I’m doing everything she told me to and your fever still hasn’t broken.”

  Teig’s tanned cheeks were a shade paler than usual as he gazed up at me. He tried to talk but I shooshed him. “No talking while the thermometer is doing its magic.”

  He rolled his eyes, and when the digital thermometer finally beeped and I took it, he spoke. “Mom doesn’t need to be here. You’re doing a good job.”

  “Then explain to me why your fever is still one-oh-one,” I said, frowning. “You’ve taken the Tylenol and Motrin every four freaking hours, alternating each brand for whatever reason.” I sighed and handed him a bottle of water from his nightstand. “Drink more of this.”

  He took the bottle by wrapping both of his warm hands over mine. “Hana, I’m fine, really. It’s just a fever and I haven’t puked in a while, so I’ll be fine soon. A ton of kids at school have been sick lately, so it’s just something going around.”

  The doorbell rang and I stood, pointing my finger of authority at him. “Stay here. And get better.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said, saluting me right before he rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to his TV.

  The sight of Ash at my front door made all of the worry over Teig temporarily melt away. I still got that stupid rush of anxious but beautifully perfect butterflies in my stomach whenever I saw him. His dreadlocks went to the middle of his back and today they were tied into a low ponytail where he took one dread and wrapped it around the others instead of using a hair-tie.

  “Hey,” I said, a little breathless from the rushed jaunt down the stairs and across the house to get to him.

  “Hey,” he said back, grinning while his blue eyes sparkled in a way that simultaneously melted me completely and innocently mirrored those of his twin sister, Shelby. “. . . Umm, can I come in?” Ash asked, breaking my reverie. Heat filled my cheeks and I jumped backward, swinging the door open wide for him.

  “Sorry, I…” Knowing I couldn’t tell him the truth—that I’d been thinking about how perfect he is—I quickly thought up an excuse. “I’m just out of it today. Worried about Teig and all. Of course I want you to come in.”

  “It’s just a bug, Hana. He’ll be fine.”

  Ash stepped into the foyer and waited for me to close and lock the front door again. We were still so new in our relationship that he wasn’t yet comfortable letting himself inside and being at home. Later, he would be. He’d let himself in through the garage with the pin code I assigned for him (0336—his dirt bike number) and say hello to my parents and then surprise me by slipping into my bedroom while I was showering or otherwise not paying attention. For now, we were in that dawning phase of the relationship. Everything was new and unopened. Fresh and perfect. There were no fights or arguments on our relationship record, and we’d only made it to first base in the last few weeks . . . well, first on the way to second.

  We were really good at that.

  “So what’s up?” I asked, walking up to him and giving him my favorite kind of hug. The kind where I just stepped into him, wrapped my arms around his lower torso and let my head press against his chest. His arms always found their way around me, crossing on top of mine and holding me close, his muscles tightening in a way that made me never want to leave. “Don’t tell me you’re coming over to say goodbye.”

  “Not yet. I don’t leave until Friday morning.”

  I let out a little whoop and then backed up, taking him by the hand. “Netflix?” I asked, tilting my head toward the couch.

  “Actually, I want to show you something on the computer. It won’t take long.” At the mention of whatever was online, his expression beamed more than when he’d seen me at the door just now. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts and gave me this wide-eyed little look of excitement. “I think you’ll like it.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Show me.”

  In my room, Ash sat at my desk and pulled up a website for some motocross company. There were too many of them to remember, but by the look of their website, all jam-packed with articles and photos, I figured it was a big company. I stood behind him, looking over his shoulder as he searched the homepage for the newest article. “Ready for this?”

  I put my hands on my hips. “What could it possibly be? I already know you’re a professional now.”

  “It’s something that comes with being a pro,” he said by way of explanation. He clicked the trackpad and then looked over his shoulder at me. “I made the calendar.”

  “The what?” My eyes bulged. Chagrin and arousal hit me at the same time. Right there on the website, for the whole world to see, was an article about next year’s motocross calendar. More specifically: Motocross Men – the only thing hotter than your exhaust pipe!

  “Oh my god,” I said as I took over the mouse and scrolled down the website. There, in all his gorgeous motocross-god glory, was my boyfriend. Shirtless, wearing racing pants and boots, making his shy grin while he held onto a pair of goggles. He was standing next to Dylan Bakers, a seasoned professional racer, and they were in front of their dirt bikes. It wasn’t a scandalous photo or anything. It was actually cleaner than some of the others, but now people everywhere would be able to drool over my boyfriend for the entire month of April.

  After scrolling through the rest of the article, I went back to Ash’s picture and read the caption. It mentioned that Ash was the first rookie to make the yearly calendar—available online and at the races for thirty dollars each—with the proceeds going to charity.

  “What do you think?” he asked. When I looked at him, he was chewing on his thumbnail, and it hit me then that he was actually
nervous about it. “They contacted me the other day for a photoshoot, and I didn’t even realize it was for the calendar until they brought me the papers to sign. Kind of cool, right?”

  I kind of nodded and looked back at the photo. Not really sure how I felt about all of this, but certain that he looked downright hot, I saved the image as my computer’s wallpaper with a few quick clicks of the mouse. Ash chuckled and wrapped an arm around me, tugging me into his lap. “So you’re not mad or anything, right?”

  I turned to face him, letting my fingers tangle into his. “Why would I be mad? That’s awesome, Ash.”

  His shoulders relaxed and he ran his free hand through my hair. “Well it’s for charity and all, but Dylan was telling me how his wife gets kind of pissed about him being made into a sex symbol.”

  I scoffed. “She shouldn’t. She’s, like, the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen. She has nothing to worry about.”

  Ash’s hand squeezed mine. “Well, if beautiful girls don’t worry about their boyfriends, then I guess I’m in the clear.”

  I playfully punched him in the chest. “Is that supposed to be some kind of joke about you thinking I’m pretty?”

  “The prettiest,” he said. “Why, was it lame?”

  I leaned forward until my forehead was pressed against his. “Very lame.”

  “Sorry,” he whispered. “My sneaky compliments will be suave and sexy next time.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said, letting my fingers twist around one of his dreads. They smelled tropical. We sat like that for a while, me curled up in his lap on my pink desk chair, while the photo of him stared back at us on my laptop.

  “So, you’re like, totally famous now,” I said, titling my chin up to look at him.

  He placed a soft kiss on my lips and considered it. “No, not really. But maybe a little bit.”

  “I wonder what celebrity-type thing you’ll do next,” I murmured, leaning my head to rest on his shoulder. My finger traced the logo on his shirt. “You’ll get all famous and forget about me, the nobody loser in Hicksville, Texas.”