by Noah Steele
“Not a problem, but Derrek, you really should talk to us about things like this first,” she said, crossing her legs at the knee. “What if we had potential sponsors coming in with us?”
Derrek scoffed as he bent to pick up his helmet and headed toward the door.
“Then they’d have gotten a real hot show, too,” he said, patting Brent on the back on his way out. “Enjoy qualifying!” Diana rolled her eyes without turning to watch Derrek walk out and I laughed.
“Yeah,” I said, taking a seat on one of the other couches, “he seems to have that effect.”
“Oh, Aiden,” she said with mock exasperation. “You have no idea. Unless you do?” She kept her arms crossed over her chest as she stared me down from the next couch over. Steven was furiously jabbing at his phone beside her, no doubt busy with something online.
“It, uh, hasn’t been very long,” I said, crossing my own arms as I turned to look at her.
“Ah,” she said simply.
I waited for a moment for her to go on, but instead she walked over to the table and returned with a small plate of cheese and crackers and settled in before the qualifier got started.
Frowning, I stood up to fix my own small plate, and when Steven did the same, I rushed over to take the seat next to Diana.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” I said before biting into a small square of cheese. I chewed slowly, giving her time to respond, but she took a bite of her own cracker and pressed her fingers gently onto a napkin in her lap. “Is it dangerous?” I pressed.
Diana finally shifted toward me.
“It can be. Derrek’s one of the best. The boy spends more time behind the wheel of a car than anyone I’ve ever worked with. We’ve been together a long time. He drives smart even when he drives reckless. He drives to win,” she said flatly, her eyes almost sparkling at the mention of victory.
“And the more he wins, the easier it is for you to find sponsors, right?” I didn’t particularly care, but the more she spoke to me, the better my chances of changing her instant judgment of me. She didn’t look impressed by the question.
“Yes, well, sometimes it’s good to be easy, Aiden,” she remarked. Steven made a low sound involuntarily from the door, and I gave Diana the same snide once-over she’d given me. I stood up and left my plate on the couch behind me.
“You can have this, I’m not hungry anymore and you seem to be eating through yours pretty quickly,” I said with a sneer as I walked away. I’d just watch from the couch on the opposite side of the room. The further from the window, the better. I grabbed my phone from my pocket and sent Derrek a quick good luck text that he probably wouldn’t get until after it was all over anyway.
More and more people seemed to be filling the stands around the track, or at least the ones I could see from the viewing box. The tense silence was broken by a voice that boomed across the track from every loudspeaker.
“Gooooooood afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Motorsport Park for the 2019 Initial Drive Touring Cup Qualifier! Drivers, to your starting positions. We’re about to begin!”
There was an eruption of cheering and clapping from the stands as cars started slowly pulling into position at the start of the track just below me. A few of the drivers were wearing the same black body suit as Derrek, and with their helmets on, I couldn’t tell which one he was from so far away.
Not that it mattered; all the drivers would already be in their cars by now. Steven piped up to let me know that Derrek’s car was the only royal blue one and that his nickname on the circuit was, unsurprisingly, Royal Blue. He sat down beside me, still furiously tapping at his phone.
“You said you’ve never seen a race before? Maybe I can answer your questions,” he said enthusiastically. I gave him a quick smile, glad that at least someone in the room had manners.
“So how does it all work?” I asked.
“The qualifier can get pretty long. This first round will be eighteen minutes, and the whole thing decides starting positions for the major race of the cup,” Steven explained.
I blinked a few times and clenched my hands into fists.
“Oh, okay. I figured it would be, like, three laps on a difficult track,” I said. “You know, like Mario Kart.” Diana lifted an eyebrow on the other side of the room, shaking her head, and Steven half-shrugged beside me.
“No,” he replied. “Not quite.”
“How, uh, how many laps is it?” I said, the back of my throat starting to feel dry.
“As many as they can fit into eighteen minutes.”
I stared at Steven as seriously as I could, my face all lines and heaviness.
“How safe is it? There are a lot of cars on that track.” I swallowed the lump building in my throat. Steven shifted uncomfortably beside me.
“Cars leave the track for mechanical reasons, maybe one or two for wrecks. Accidents can happen,” he said, then leaned in closer. “I’m not allowed to post video of track accidents when they do.”
I could feel the color drain from my face. Steven clapped a hand on my shoulder and gave me a sympathetic smile.
“Don’t worry about Derrek. Diana wasn’t kidding. He drives smart.”
“Thanks,” I said as Steven walked back up toward the window to resume his furious phone tapping on the other side of the room. I stood up and paced around in front of the couch, biting at my thumb with one arm crossed over my chest. Derrek not racing smart wasn’t the problem. Derrek racing at all was the problem.
What did you expect, Aiden? I thought to myself. Did you think he was gonna stop being a driver after he told you he races for a living? I turned my back to the window and walked to sit behind the couch. Leaning my back against it, I pulled out my phone and propped my elbows up on my knees. Maybe it was a bad idea to accept Derrek’s invitation.
I couldn’t handle cars. Not since the accident.
Whatever it was that pulled Derrek and I together didn’t matter.
I shouldn’t have taken the risk. I wasn’t ready.
Goosebumps ran across my arms as engines revved behind me—qualifying had begun. My good luck text to Derrek was still unread. I busied myself scrolling through my photo reel, smiling at the screenshots of Derrek’s Knight profile. I scrolled further back, lingering on photos of me and Oliver at Elevensies, and my mouth dropped into a tight frown.
I still wasn’t sure why he’d lashed out at me, and I wanted to talk to him about it. I scrolled back even further, past screenshots of memes and selfies, until I finally found what I was looking for.
It was a picture of me at seven years old. My hair was the same wavy blond mess. I was wearing a pajama set covered in little stars and moons, and I sat beaming up at my mother from her lap, both of us sitting on the floor of the house I grew up in, surrounded by torn up wrapping paper and empty boxes.
I sat staring at it for a few moments, trying to ignore the rising and fading of engines behind me as Derrek and nineteen other drivers sped around the track.
Get up, Aiden. You can do it. It’s been almost twenty years. You’re in a viewing box away from the track. Derrek is a professional, he’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.
I closed my eyes, gripped my phone tightly, and stood up from behind the couch. From the corner of my eye, I could see Diana watching me quizzically, probably making more of her silent snap judgments. Taking a deep breath in, I closed my eyes and turned to face the window.
Opening them was a big mistake.
I had only ever seen a car move as fast as the ones on the track once before in my life. It looked like they were gliding above the ground, turning sharp corners like curving streaks of different colored lights.
My jaw tightened as my breathing became short and shallow, the viewing box blurring around me as my vision unfocused and the cars began to look even more like blurry streaks of light. Amid the roar of engines and the loudspeaker’s commentary, I could just barely make out a choked gasping sound.
Someone began
shouting beside me. It sounded like they were speaking through a fan, and apart from my own name, I couldn’t quite make out their words. I stepped backwards away from the window and lifted a hand to my ever-tightening chest, my other hand firmly holding my phone in a white-knuckled grip. The choked gasping was coming from me.
I could feel something hot streak down my face as someone reached an arm out to catch me in a forward slump, my phone thudding against the carpeted floor beside me, still open to the photo of me and my mother.
Tears streamed harder down my face, and I could just barely make out Diana shouting at Brent before he ran out of the room and she started screaming into her phone. I scrambled out of Steven’s grasp to hunch over my phone on my hands and knees, trying to focus as hard as I could on the photo.
That picture always worked to calm me down—why wasn’t it working?
My forehead met the carpet for a few short seconds before I was pulled backwards and found myself face to face with a woman who wasn’t Diana. I closed my eyes and struggled against the grip of whoever had lifted me off the carpet, my heart jumping every time an engine roared just below the viewing box.
Grunting as I freed myself, I bolted upright, screaming, and held my breath as I ran as fast as I could out the door, down the first set of stairs I could find, and onto a quiet stairwell landing.
I don’t know how long it took for my breathing to steady, but after some time, the haze gripping my senses seemed to lift and I wiped the tears from my cheeks. I stood up slowly and eventually walked long enough to find a bathroom, avoiding the mirrors as I bee-lined toward the sink and splashed my face with cold water. Sniffling in the deepest breath that I could muster, I stood up straight and took a look at myself in the mirror.
It had been a long time since I’d had a panic attack that bad. The medics Brent undoubtedly had gone to find were probably looking for me, if they hadn’t gone back down to the track already. Wiping my face down with a paper towel, I let out a long, slow breath, my jaw still clenched. My heart jumped again as the bathroom door opened and someone walked past me, and I hastily left to find the nearest street exit.
I was right. I should have stayed home.
I should have just patched things up with Oliver and talked to him about his crappy dating advice. If taking a chance on a different kind of guy meant risking a panic attack whenever we went out, then I didn’t want to do it. I shook my head as I followed signs back toward the information center where I arrived.
That wasn’t true.
It wasn’t a risk with every guy who wasn’t a boring slog.
It was a risk with Derrek.
If I added up all the time I spent talking to Derrek, either in person or via text, we had only known each other for about four days. After a single lunch date, he was already introducing me as his boyfriend, but I didn’t want a boyfriend who was all maybes and what-ifs beyond physical attraction.
But I knew there was more than something physical between us.
I wouldn’t have agreed to visit a race track if there wasn’t.
Derrek knew it, too, or he wouldn’t have expected to see me after my less-than-stellar reaction to his being a professional driver. I just had to know how bright the spark between us could get, or if it was already about to burn out.
“Aiden!” I froze, not recognizing the voice calling my name as I turned and found myself back in the now much emptier welcome area. It was Steven the social media guy, and he was coming toward me with something in his outstretched hand.
My phone.
I dug my hands into my pockets, not even realizing I had left it in the viewing box. Without a word, he handed it back to me and gave me a sympathetic smile.
“Thanks,” I whispered, immediately shoving my phone back into my pocket. Steven opened his mouth to say something, but I spoke before he could.
“I heard tires screech, and—”
“It wasn’t Derrek’s car,” he said. “Don’t worry.” I let out another long breath, relaxing my shoulders as I looked up toward the ceiling. “You must really care about him,” he went on.
I didn’t reply, instead offering Steven a weak smile and a quick nod. I didn’t want to be talking about my feelings for a practical stranger with another stranger.
“Thanks. I’m fine. I mean, I’ll be fine. I can’t finish watching, sorry,” I said quietly as I turned to leave. He waved as he also turned to leave, probably back to the viewing box to do his job. At the bus stop across from Motorsport Park, I unlocked my phone and stared down at the photo of me and my mother again.
It was so many years ago.
I wondered what my mother would say if she was standing at that bus stop with me. She’d probably be excited that I’d met a boy who made me happy. I was excited that after months of dating total duds, I’d finally met a boy who made me happy. No two relationships had the same story behind them anyway, right?
The buzz of a text alert brought my thoughts back to the present. Derrek had finally seen my good luck text, and someone—probably Steven—must have told him what happened in the viewing box.
Derrek: Are you still here? Are you okay? I want to see you.
The bus pulled up and I got on, taking an aisle seat by the back door as I stared down at my phone, thumbs hovering over the on-screen keyboard before pocketing it. I wanted to see him, too. I wanted to throw my arms around him and close my eyes and feel the heat of his skin against mine. I wanted to kiss him and breathe him in. I wanted to feel him, and I wanted him to want all those things from me, too.
I didn’t want Derrek the driver; I wanted Derrek the man.
Maybe I wasn’t ready to take the risk for either.
CHAPTER SIX
I took a long sip of my coffee behind the register at work and nearly jumped when a customer dropped a heavy art book on the counter in front of me. It had been a few days since my panic attack at the track, and getting to sleep the last few nights hadn’t been easy. That first night back home, I lay in bed for hours while my phone buzzed and rang and went ignored beside me.
I knew it was Derrek, but I didn’t know what to say. After hours of tossing and turning, I fell asleep only to bolt back up barely two hours later because of a nightmare.
The next two nights weren’t any better. I was doing everything I could to keep myself awake and my mind off things, but my phone was a relentless reminder that I couldn’t ignore the problem until it went away. I couldn’t text Derrek. I couldn’t answer his calls. Hell, even just thinking about him at work took my mind back to Motorsport Park, and I didn’t want to have another panic attack.
“So sorry, someone will be along to help you in just a moment,” I said to the customer, offering a weak smile as I left the register and signaled to an employee to take over before I slipped into the back room. I sat on the same pile of boxes that seemed to be a permanent fixture in the corner and let out a long sigh at the ceiling.
Whenever we had boy problems, Oliver and I would always talk about them together. Unfortunately, this was more than just a boy problem, and Oliver still wasn’t speaking to me.
During my sleepless hours since qualifying, I thought about getting up to interrupt his furious late-night writing sprints, but figured he’d probably just keep his headphones on while I stood there. I hadn’t even tried to tell him about my panic attack. How could I? He’d just drift further away as a friend if he knew I still wanted to be with the man whose entire career would always be a trigger.
He’d probably say something like why would you hurt yourself like that, or I won’t help you if you won’t help yourself. He wouldn’t be wrong if he did say those things, but it didn’t calm the storm inside me.
I stood up and began to pace along the back wall, running my hands along the spines of shelved books as I went. When I had first taken over the store, I would do the same thing to calm myself down, making a song out of the rhythmic tapping. Now it was just a series of annoying thuds.
Cursing under my breath, I
grabbed my jacket from the nearby rack, asked someone to lock up when it was time to close, and left for home. The day was already a write-off. I’d just go home and try—and probably fail—to sleep. I was so tired, I’d probably sleep through the night regardless of how early it was.
The wind pricked icily against my face as I walked to the bus stop, and soon I was rushing into my building and through the door to my apartment, leaving a trail of outerwear across the living room as I slouched toward my bed, stripped to my boxer-briefs, and climbed under the weight of my heavy blankets.
My head had barely touched my pillow before my phone buzzed again. Flipping onto my stomach, I reached over to my nightstand and thumbed at the screen. A few texts and six missed calls, all from Derrek. Covering my head with a pillow, I took a deep breath in and screamed the loudest scream I could into my mattress.
My chest felt like it was going to squeeze my heart until it burst. My head throbbed with the pain of having slept so little for the last few days. I turned onto my back and thrust the pillow under my head, closing my eyes. If I couldn’t sleep, maybe I’d just pass out for a few hours or something because of the fatigue.
Several deep breaths in and out later, it must have worked. When I slowly blinked my eyes open again it was considerably darker outside my window. I groaned as I sat up, blearily rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Yawning, I could taste the thick, dry feeling of deep sleep in my mouth. I ran a hand across my lips and shook my head as I stood up to get a glass of water.
I hesitated at the bedroom door, my hand white-knuckling on the knob at the faint tapping sounds coming from the living room. Oliver would be home and working on his book, and I didn’t think I could get to the kitchen without him noticing.
The power nap must have helped to clear my mind, though, because I shook the thought from my head. I was a grown man; I could have a serious conversation to save my longest friendship. Scrunching my face, I twisted the knob, threw the door open, and marched toward the kitchen.
