Happy Hour (Racing on the Edge)

by Shey Stahl

  “I think I’m getting the beef ribs.” Jameson replied with a big smile, rubbing his belly in anticipation. “Definitely the beef ribs.”

  “You’re showing an awful lot of excitement for food.”

  “I just spent the night in the woods with no food.” He gave me a folly glare. “I’m hungry. And did I mention that bear ate my damn Twinkies?”

  “Yes, you may have mentioned that a few times already.”

  Jameson giving almost every person in the restaurant his autograph and talking racing with all the men occupied most of the time waiting for our food.

  In my mind, it was hardly a date. I’ve grown to realize that this would be our life though. It would always be this way for us and I understood that as I grew up around this type of public adoration with other racers and saw it first had with Jimi.

  I felt bad for Jameson at times though, it can’t be easy. He knew when he chose this as his profession, this came with the job. At least he could still go out in public—most celebrities couldn’t even do that these days.

  One particular man had been standing there talking to him for fifteen minutes while Jameson’s food was getting cold.

  He gave him his time to talk and then very politely said, “It was nice meeting you sir, but I’m actually on a date here with this beautiful woman.” Jameson stood to shake his hand. “I should show her the attention she deserves.” He said with a wink towards me.

  “Oh—sorry,” The man apologized with sincerity. “It was nice meeting you, Jameson. Good luck this weekend at Chicagoland.” He turned towards me. “I’m sorry for disrupting your evening ma’am.”

  I waived my hand around. “It’s no problem.” I told him with a mouth full of potato salad, hardly attractive.

  Jameson laughed. “You’re adorable.” He said softly and began eating his ribs.

  Once he began, I couldn’t focus on anything other than him eating. The way he licked his fingers, the incredibly sexy way he chewed.

  Hot damn.

  It was like some sort of food pornography.

  I wanted to jump across the table, hump his leg and then lick all that sticky barbeque sauce from him.

  And I’ll be damned if he didn’t know exactly what he was doing with the smirk on his face. He knew all right.

  “How’s your brisket?” Jameson asked licking barbeque sauce from his thumb.

  “Stop doing that.” I glowered at him taking a bite of my brisket.

  He smirked licking the other thumb. “Doing what?”

  “You’re distracting me. All I can focus on is you licking your fingers.”

  Jameson leaned forward, his breath blow across me when he spoke. “Are you imagining what all my tongue can do for you?”

  “No, not at all,” I lied calmly. “I’m enjoying my meal.”

  “Bullshit.” He called my bluff. “I know you find this hot.” He ran his sticky barbeque finger over my lower lip. “You bite down on your bottom lip when you’re horny.”

  “Do not.” I stated releasing my bottom lip.

  He chuckled softly leaning back in his seat and placed his napkin on the table. Jameson glanced around the room, then turned his head to the side and smiled again. “I got something to distract you.”

  The pervy pigizzle in me wanted to drop to my knees under the table and see exactly what he had to distract me. I refrained only because this was his favorite restaurant and I’d like to be allowed to return.

  Taking a slow drink of water, trying to distract him and myself, I asked. “And what would that be?”

  “When are you going to marry me?” His green eyes smoldered.

  Say what?

  I instantly started choking on the water I had ingested; choking to the point of my face was the devils ass again, gasping for much needed air.

  Jameson moved next to me rubbing my back. “Breath honey...just breath,”

  “I...” cough. “Am...” cough. “Trying...” cough.

  The entire restaurant all gawked at me. And though they all seemed genuinely concerned, it was still incredibly embarrassing. I wanted to crawl under the table and hide.

  Jameson wrapped his arm around me, leaning into my ear, effectively blocking everyone’s view of me.

  It was a simple gesture that I appreciated very much at that point.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he whispered. “and that wasn’t my proposal. I may be a jerk but I can be romantic. I just want you to know that I am going to marry you, someday. I have every intention of spending the rest of my life, with you.”

  “Did you get that from a Hallmark card?” My voice was hoarse from all the coughing.

  “No, it’s my feelings.” He responded with so much sincerity that I started crying. In the middle of the damn restaurant, with Jameson’s arms wrapped around me, I was bawling.

  “Come on, honey.” Jameson lugged me closer. “Let’s get out of here. I want to take you somewhere special.”

  “Not the woods.” I responded instantly. “Please not the woods.”

  “No...not the woods...I’m not sure I will ever go camping again.”

  “Me either,”

  “Where are we going?” I asked when he pulled off Cloquallum onto a private dirt road.

  “We are going to the first place I kissed you.”

  I was quiet for a moment trying to recall the first time we kissed. There were a number of occasions growing up that Jameson had locked lips, back then it never led to anything, just kids being kids and experimenting.

  “Where was that?”

  Jameson’s hand rose to his heart. “I’m hurt you don’t remember.”

  I watched curiously as we drove through Elma, wondering which time it was.

  There was a few kisses that I distinctively remembered but I remembered my first French kiss most of all, because it was with him. We were thirteen; we had just spent the day swimming out at Summit Lake. Now I don’t even remember how it happened but we saw Spencer kissing his girlfriend at the time, so we decided to try it. I thought it was strange, wet, and sloppy.

  When Jameson turned down his parent’s old driveway, I remembered instantly where our first kiss took place.

  I hadn’t been there in a while, not for a couple years at least. They kept the house in Elma but his aunt Mary was living there now. The grass that was usually kept cut short during the summer, was now overgrown shadowing the long paved driveway. The tree we used to climb near the gates was still there, hanging across the creek as it always had.

  No one appeared to be home so Jameson drove out back to the quarter-mile clay track where he learned to race and place we spent the majority of our summer breaks growing up.

  “Now I remember.” I told him getting out of the truck.

  We stopped by the water barrels we used as the flag stand back in the day when Jameson turned towards me.

  “I was standing right here...we had met about a month before.” He smiled. “You were the trophy girl and of course, I won.”

  I laughed, remembering the silly little games we used to play back here when he was home. Nothing mattered back then, but when you’re a kid, everything mattered.

  Little games were your entire life—the reason you got out of bed in the morning. A kiss wasn’t just a kiss back then, it was all you thought about because to you, that was your world.

  I learned quickly not to take everything to heart back then and I felt comfortable enough around Jameson that I could just kiss him and it not mean anything to either of us.

  But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it made my thirteen-year old world to have someone like him around—someone that I could be me around.

  That’s why I cherished my friendship with him so greatly—I could be me.

  Jameson’s eyes focused on mine. The smells of summer surrounded blending with the rich scent of the clay from the track reminding me of those summers out here.

  Smiling up at him, I said, “You told me instead of the trophy, you wanted a kiss.”
<
br />   He pulled me against his chest, his arms sliding around my waist. “I didn’t wait for you to answer me, I just kissed you.” His lips were about inch from mine. “I was afraid you wouldn’t let me.”

  “I would have and I did let you.”

  His lips twitched into a small smile. “Yes you did.”

  Leaning forward, I captured his warm lips with my own.

  He kissed me back and then pulled away. “I didn’t mean to freak you out at the restaurant. I meant it though.” He admitted. “I will marry you, when you’re ready.”

  “What if I said I was ready right now?”

  “I would call Wes and have him fly us to Vegas.” He actually looked serious, which scared the shit out of me. “Let’s do it now.”

  “You’re lying,”

  “No I’m not,” his face grew solemn. “I mean that, Sway. I love you and I would marry you tonight if I had it my way, but I don’t think we’re ready for that.”

  “You’re right, we’re not. You’ve got issues.”

  “I know,” he agreed. “But at least I’m not the crazy one. I’m just the angry one.”

  “So we got an angry one, and a crazy one...what happens if we ever have a kid?” I asked.

  “Maybe between the two of us the kid will come out normal.”

  “Possibly, but highly unlikely,”

  “Oh well, being normal is over rated. It’s much more fun being crazy and angry.” He dove in for another kiss, this time it wasn’t an innocent kiss like the one it was when we were eleven.

  It was a kiss that had intention and meaning behind it. He was telling me with one kiss, that I was his, forever.

  We’d been sitting on the water barrels for about twenty minutes, talking about the races we had on this track when Jameson surprised me yet again by his comment. “Do you want kids?”

  “Huh?” I had no water to choke on this time, only my breath.

  “I...just...I don’t know...thought we should talk about things like that, you know, where we want our life to go?”

  I laughed at how nervous he seemed all of a sudden.

  “I do want kids, someday.” I snuggled against him, peeking into his vibrant green eyes. “But more importantly...I want them with you.”

  Jameson smiled. “Good.”

  “Do you want kids?”

  “Yes, with you, I do.”

  “Well it’s settled then.” I clapped my hands together. “We fly to Vegas, get married and then start on the kids.”

  “I’ll call Wes right now.”

  I climbed on his lap, straddling his hips. “I have a better idea—let’s get started on the kids much better plan at the moment.”

  Jameson reached for the button of his jeans. “You read my mind, honey.”

  “Let’s at least make it back home.” I kissed his lips once more before standing. “We wouldn’t want to attract any more cougars.”

  “That’s not funny.” He glowered at me. “Don’t joke about that.”

  Jameson left on Tuesday morning for Juliet Illinois, leaving me alone at home. I needed to spend some time with Charlie and I knew he didn’t have a lot of time by the way he was acting. It seemed overnight, his personality was beginning to change, which was actually entertaining if you didn’t let the fact that he was dying bother you.

  Charlie had always been a fairly reserved man, didn’t let anything bother him and rarely cussed. Now, he cussed like a truck driver and got riled up over everything. I found this entertaining because it was usually the Lucifer twins provoking him, not me.

  On Wednesday, they threw a baseball through the kitchen window to which Charlie almost had a heart attack. His expression was something similar to the time I pierced my lip in my Madonna stage...fear, anger and then rage.

  “I don’t care how it happened!” Charlie shouted the same way he did to me at that time and then realized the entire kitchen was full of soap. “What the hell happened in here?”

  I just stared blankly at all of them wondering when his head was going to explode.

  “You said you didn’t want to know.” Logan hid behind his mom with wide frantic eyes.

  “That was before I saw the soap.” His eyes just about bulged out of his sockets. “Now I want to know, what the fuck happened?”

  It was shit like that all week. I think the twins actually provided entertainment for Charlie, if not for him, it sure as shit was entertainment for me. For once, I wasn’t the one setting him off and the twins had found their new target.

  On Friday, I was on my way to the grocery store for Charlie when Andrea insisted I take one of the Lucifer twins. I had my own thoughts surrounding this request and it’d be a miracle if I didn’t kill one of them. Despite my concerns for committing a homicide of a six-year old, I smiled and said. “Of course,”

  “I don’t want to go with her!” Lucas wailed to Charlie.

  I don’t know what made him think I actually wanted to go in public with him anyways. I was completely against this.

  Charlie grumbled with a roll of his eyes looking over at me. “Do you even want to take him with you?”

  “No.” I admitted but smiled despite my anger. “Not really.”

  He turned to Lucas. “There you have it,” he said. “Apparently you’re no goddamn peach to be around either.”

  Lucas immediately brought out the tears.

  “He’s mad at me!” he wailed once again but this time with a tremendous amount of water and snot coming from his nose and eyes climbing inside the Expedition with me.

  “Stop it!” I yelled as he buckled himself in. “Stop crying.”

  “I can’t help it and you can’t tell me not to cry!” he yelled back. “I can cry if I want to!”

  “I’m not concerned with you crying, believe me.” I told him. “My only concern is with the snot coming out of you. Where does it go? On your hands? Your shirt? Your pants? Where is it all going?”

  Lucas hiccupped. “My sleeve, I guess.”

  I looked down, sure enough; his sleeve was slimmed like Turner from Hooch. “That’s no good.”

  And then he started crying again. I didn’t have the heart to tell him at that point all this crying wasn’t making me like him anymore. In fact, I didn’t like him at all right then.

  Amazingly, we made it back from the store, both of us, alive.

  On Saturday morning, I went out to get the mail. Mostly junk mail but one letter from the Washington State Department of Licensing stood out so I opened it. Charlie was sitting in his chair watching NASCAR qualifying while simultaneously reading the paper, his usual Saturday morning activity before he left to the track.

  “Dad, what is this from Department of Licensing?” I held up the envelope.

  “How the fuck should I know.” He grumbled straightening his paper with a flick of his wrists. “You opened it.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” I looked down at the letter. “It says here that you hit another car.”

  As if this was war, he finally looked up from the paper, his eyes narrowing from across the room. “I didn’t hit that car, they hit me. There’s a difference.”

  “What do you mean they hit you?” I stared at him, slightly perplexed because the letter said the car was parked at the time. “How can a parked car hit you?”

  He got up throwing the paper on the chair. “It’s exactly what I mean. I didn’t hit that car. End of story.”

  “Apparently it’s not the end of the story.” I laughed. “They’re taking your license away.”

  He didn’t say anymore, just stomped to his room mumbling incoherent profanities towards the Department of Licensing.

  I loved crazy people. They were so entertaining to me and made me feel more a part of society, one with my own.

  Picking through the rest of the mail, still laughing at Charlie, my phone vibrated on the counter. I glanced at the number and smiled instantly.

  “Hello handsome.” I answered balancing the phone on my shoulder. “How are you?”
>
  Jameson sighed contently. “God I miss you, honey.” I could literally hear the longing in his voice. “You don’t have any idea how much I hate not having you here with me.”

  “Oh, I have a pretty good idea. How’s qualifying?” I looked over at the TV to see what position he got but couldn’t distinguish the numbers.

  “I qualified tenth, not very good, but not bad either.” The muffled noises of engines broke through before I heard the raucous voices and the Spencer’s laughter.

  “You’ll do fine.” I reassured him.

  “I know.” He sighed again. “It’s just not the same when you’re not here with me.”

  “Only another week and we get to see each other.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.” He let out another long sigh. “It’s the only thing that keeps me going right now.”

  “You’re such a cheese ball.” I giggled again taking some left over pizza out of the fridge. “What will people think of you now, all domesticated?”

  “I know, but I love you. And I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks.” Louder noises echoed in the garage. Kyle was telling him he was needed but he ignored him for the moment. “Phillip called...”

  “Yeah, what did he say?” Placing two slices of the pizza in the microwave, I had to lean against the door to keep it closed. Yet another thing Lucas broke this week. “How’d the prehearing conference go?”

  “Chelsea didn’t show,” Jameson gave a relieved chuckle. “her lawyer said she’s dropping all charges.”

  “That’s great, Jameson. Now we just have to worry about Darrin.”

  That was a huge relief. The last thing Jameson needed right now would be for his fans to think he was some kind of asshole that went around sexually assaulting women.

  “You let me worry about Darrin.” He stated firmly. “I don’t want you involved in this.”

  The last thing Jameson wanted was for me to get involved in his problems, particularly when it came to Darrin. But as I said before, when it came to Jameson, this pigizzle knew no bounds.

  Since I wasn’t able to attend the race that weekend, I settled for watching it on television. Jameson’s engine blew up for the second weekend in a row after only seventy laps.