by Kat Ransom
“You’re just going to sit here drinking by yourself all day and night, eh?” Pop has his arms crossed over his chest and I feel like I’m a kid who’s just failed an algebra test and is getting a lecture about living up to one’s potential.
“Aye. Then I’ll leave for the next race and that’ll be that.” I can’t bear to upset Mallory anymore so I’ll have to avoid her until she goes home. To New York. I’ll stay in different hotels. I’ll tell Jack not to give me her hotel room number next time, no matter how much I beg him.
“Just gonna leave for the race…” he mocks me.
“Exactly. It’s the only thing I’m good for.”
“That’s rubbish,” he purses his lips and shakes his head at me.
“Is it, Pop? Is it really? Take a look around. What else do I have going for me? Got this stone monstrosity here, it’s been sitting in disrepair for ages.” I shrug and wave across the expansive property stretched out before us, “but I’m hardly here. Barely see you and Mum and Bram. Bram wants my help with karting and I push him away because I don’t want this for him. I can’t even,” I stumble and pick my words carefully. “I can’t even race like I want to. And now, I’ve fucked everything up with the only woman I…”
“Well, you’ve got quite the self-pity speech prepared,” he interrupts and does a slow clap a few times for dramatic effect. I wonder if I am this annoying when I act like a sarcastic jackass.
“It’s not pity, it’s just the truth.”
“You have things other men would kill for,” his voice gets sharp and he points at me. Ha-ha-sarcasm time is over.
He’s right and now I’m offending Pop on top of it all. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be ungrateful to you and Mum.”
“Ahhh,” he waves his hand to brush me off, “this isn’t about us. All we’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy.”
“I know, thank you.”
“Guess we didn’t do our jobs very well then,” he says, matter of fact.
“What? No. You and Mum gave me everything, you were wonderful parents. You are wonderful parents.”
“But you’re not happy.”
“Pop, come on,” I sigh.
“Well are ya’?”
“I thought I was.”
“And now it’s gone and…”
“And now I know what I don’t have and what I really want.” Too bad I’ve fucked it all away.
“So let me ask you again, what are you gonna do about it?”
“Pop, I can’t, you don’t understand. There’s more going on and I’ve messed it all up too badly.”
Pop sits back in his chair and stays silent while he kills off his drink. I know better than to get another refill for myself. I don’t want to hear that lecture, too. “Aye, I’m just an old man, I wouldn’t understand,” he rolls his eyes at me.
“Fucking hell,” I huff, this isn’t over.
“I may not know everything but I’m the one who was beside you at every race since you were a lad. I know the type of horse shit that goes on, that has always gone on. And I know how my own bloody son drives!” He fumes at me, his face getting red.
My head jerks up, I search his eyes.
“I’m old but I’m not stupid,” he answers my question.
Fuck. He knows about Celeritas. He knows enough, anyway. I drop my head in shame. “I’m sorry,” I murmur.
“You’re a bloody eejit, is what ya’ are,” he waves his hand at me again and looks off into the distance.
“What?” I’m not necessarily debating that I’m in idiot, but hearing it from him is surprising, still.
“You want to make us proud, eh?”
I look away and swallow hard. I’m a grown-ass man and will not tear up in front of my pop. I nod.
“Then be happy. Your mum and I don’t care two hoots about how ya’ do it. Never did. If you wanted to be a ballerina, I would have made ya’ a dress. But you wanted a kart so that’s what I built.”
I rub my eyes and can’t stop a chuckle with the thought of Pop sewing pink tutus. Mum would have loved it, though, stuck in that house with the three of us boys.
We sit quietly for a long time watching the fire. Millions of thoughts race through my mind.
Eventually Pop stands. “Well, then come on. I need help fixing the tractor and I want to get the yard mowed before it rains again.”
I don’t know why he won’t just let me pay someone to mow the fucking yard. Or let it go feral for all I care. He says it gets him out of the house and I don’t argue because I suppose he is bored being forced into early retirement because of me. He does seem to enjoy the behemoth riding tractor, which, as a man, I can support.
We make our way to the garage and Pop enters the alarm code and raises an overhead door, flips the lights on. My championship car is in here, wrapped in her cover. A couple of supercars sit inside too, covered in an inch of dust, the only clean one is the McLaren Mallory drove up and down the road. The damn Harley is here, resting on the custom hydraulic motorcycle storage rack.
I’d give anything to pull it down and ride all over the Hebrides with her again. Not do anything but drive along the coastline and feel her against me again, feel her trusting me to take care of her and keep her safe. But I can’t even offer her that now because her trust is gone.
She’s countries away working for Digby DuPont and she’s doing it because her dream is still alive and she’s fighting for it. I feel like the biggest piece of shit on the planet.
“Grab a pry-bar and come help me get the deck off this thing, eh?” Pop has made his way to a far corner of the garage where he’s got the big diesel tractor and mowing deck pulled inside.
I open a toolbox and grab the pry-bar and the socket set I know we need and shuffle over to him. “What’s my old kart doing down?” I pause in step and ask him.
“Oh, I was just tinkering the other day and thought I’d see if it still fired up.”
“Does it?”
“Dunno, didn’t get around to it before your Mum called me home.” He goes back to leaning over the tractor deck and starts loosening bolts.
My old kart is down on a work stand, rusty exhaust pipe and the plastic side pods sticky from garage grease and grime. It’s been hanging on the wall ever since I bought this place and finished the garage. It was the first vehicle I made a spot for in here. Now the hand-painted #15 on the front and sides is faded and the plastic cracked.
The fiberglass seat is so small, from five year old me. The span of my outstretched fingers now covers the circumference of the steering wheel. The engine components still look decent only because they always leaked, they were all used parts Pop and I scavenged from other projects. But that leaking oil has kept the key engine parts from rusting.
If I replace the spark plug, flush all the fuel and lines, maybe it would start. I’d never fit in it to drive it again and the tires are long since dry rotted, but I can almost hear its high pitched whine and I kind of just want to hear that sound again and remember the simpler time.
Pop looks up from over the tractor deck and wipes his greasy hands in a shop rag and watches me running my hands over the kart. “Always regretted I could never afford a real pro kart for you. We didn’t have one until you got sponsored.”
“It was perfect, Pop.”
“You always fought hard for what you wanted on the track, Lennox. Even when you were a kid, they messed with your kart because they couldn’t beat ya’ fair.”
“I know,” I nod.
“You quit fighting,” he tosses the rag onto a shop bench.
“I’m so fucking tired, Pop.” I lift my head from the kart and glance at him.
“Then you’re fighting for the wrong thing.”
Twenty Nine
“When the bombs drop, darling, can you say that you’ve lived your life? Oh, this is a high time for hypersonic missiles.” - Sam Fender - Hypersonic Missiles
Mallory
“It has to be soon, I can’t keep this up in front of Len
nox, even if he deserves it,” I tell Aria as we plot and scheme from my tiny flat.
“You don’t want to be even more of a hypocrite, you mean?” She mumbles at me and sashays her head.
“You’re supposed to be here to be supportive, not reasonable and mature,” I put my hands on my hips. “You were never this big of a fan of David, you know.”
“David is not the hottest man alive. Lennox Gibbes is,” she retorts.
“I wish that were enough,” I sigh and my mood immediately sours. I’m like a fish out of water flopping back and forth between emotions these past two weeks. Angry, sad, angry, sad.
“I know, honey, I’m sorry,” she rushes to my side and hugs me. “I’m only saying, you have no proof that he really did cheat.”
“He has no proof that I slept with Digby, either, but here we are.” I sniffle into her shoulder.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right. Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” She takes me by the shoulders and forces me to look at her, “Happy and in bed with that delicious man candy?”
“Don’t say candy,” I chuckle and think of Big Tits the nanny who lasted for twelve whole hours. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. If we can’t pull this off with Digby, Lennox will never be out from under this corruption. He’ll never be happy and it will all have been for nothing.”
Except for the memories. Despite everything, how much I hurt, I wouldn’t trade them. I would do it again, god help me.
“Well, then let’s get back to scheming.”
Aria flew over when I hit rock bottom after arriving home to Aylesbury. Lennox had told me he loved me, then he left me. The next forty-eight hours were bad. There was ugly crying and I am embarrassed to admit that in a moment of weakness, I got out of bed and tried to break into his flat desperate for anything of his to hold in my hands. I blamed sleep deprivation, but as soon as I told Aria about my B&E, she was on the next flight.
She brought me tea in bed and forced me to eat. She let me wallow until she’d deemed that the appropriate amount of time had passed, and then she dragged me up and made me take off Lennox’s clothes. We even burned the stupid Talker Distillery hoodie in the meadow out back in a wine-fueled feminine war cry. And then it became time to get to work on the mission at hand.
Operation Destroy Digby.
I have flirted, fawned, inappropriately pawed, giggled, batted my eyelashes, and led that pig on for nearly two weeks now. When he got suspicious, I posted photos of him and me on my social media knowing Lennox might see it. I said horrible things about Lennox to Digby that I did not mean. I hope when this all goes down, Lennox will hate me a little less and know what I was really doing.
The door buzzer interrupts Aria and me and we shoot one another a knowing glance.
“Hello?” I speak into the security unit on the wall.
“It’s Digby, let me up.” I press the buzzer and wave my arms frantically at Aria to hide any evidence of our plotting. The coffee table has notebooks full of Digby’s daily schedule, anything useful we’ve dug up on his family, friends, or personal life. With all of our recognizance work, we would have made fine detectives.
Slamming the last of the evidence into a kitchen drawer, I open the door for the biggest douchebag the world has ever seen. “Hi handsome,” I place my hands on his chest and croon up at him.
“Mallory,” he wraps a hand around my ass and pulls me into him. “I stopped by to ask if you’re coming to my place to work tonight?”
“Hi, Digby!” Aria waves like a rabid fangirl from the kitchen, drawing his attention away. Not only is she the best friend a brokenhearted girl needs, but she’s been my scapegoat. I can’t possibly stay at Digby’s place because Aria is in town. Never a moment of intimacy because that darned Aria is always underfoot.
“Aria,” he sighs when he sees her. “Still in town, are we?”
“She’s your biggest fan, be nice, baby,” I gush at him and pull his chin back to look at me and nibble my bottom lip. I know exactly how to work this idiot. Just dangle a shiny object in front of him and stroke his ego and he can’t help himself.
Moron.
“Mmm,” he moans at me, “she could join us, you know.” He wags his eyebrows in Aria’s direction.
“I want you all to myself,” I purr and run my fingers along his belt loop. I want you all to myself alright, in a prison cell, you creep. I don’t imagine the spoiled rich boy will actually do any time, his kind of money can buy all the fancy lawyers he’ll need to avoid jail. He just needs to get permanently ejected from Formula 1. But it still brings me unbridled joy to imagine this spoiled rich boy in prison with proper inmates.
“Naughty girl,” he runs a finger down my throat and past my cleavage.
“Soon,” I whimper like an Emmy Award winning actress on a daytime soap opera.
He tells me we’ll be traveling together to the race in Silverstone in two days. I feign excitement. Then he slaps me on the ass and slithers out of the flat to whatever rock he lives under.
As soon as we hear the exterior door shut, Aria and I jump around as if we’re covered in spiders and trying to brush them off.
“Did he seriously just suggest a threesome?” Aria shakes her arms and shivers in disgust.
“I’m going to throw up, oh my god he’s such a creep!”
After we’ve both washed our hands and arms with antibacterial soap and Aria comments that we’re going to have to sage the flat to get his evil out of the building, it’s time to get back to plotting.
This has to happen quickly. I don’t know how long his phone will keep those videos in the Recently Deleted folder and I don’t know if they can be recovered after that. Plus, the Silverstone race is the home race for Celeritas. I want to take them all down on their home turf where it will hurt the most.
They’re all going to pay, like in one of the greatest horror movies of all time, Stephen King’s 1976 classic, Carrie. When they dumped a bucket of blood on her at prom and girlfriend had had enough, these fuckers are going to pay.
Ok, so maybe there won’t be buckets of blood, I don’t think, but they’re gonna pay.
After an exhaustive Googling, like the professional sleuths we are, I’ve decided that I need to just take the whole phone. There might not be time to send the videos, the wifi could be down, there are too many variables. I need to take the whole phone and pray the videos are still on there or else we’ll have to get high tech. Aria is still investigating what our options look like if we have to pay someone to get deleted files off or figure out if the videos are in Digby’s cloud.
I’m going to have to take the phone and make a run for it. It has to work, it just has to.
“Ok, so Stage One is finalized. We need to cement the steps for Stage Two, you have to be sure.” Aria says.
“You’re frightening when you’re so cold and calculating,” I snicker.
“Me? You’re the one over there cackling about buckets of blood!”
But, she’s right. I’ve been dawdling over Stage Two. It’s time to put up or shut up. I pick up my phone.
“Hey, Cody, can you talk?”
◆◆◆
I am trembling with nerves, shaking so bad my voice is wavering. It’s time. Stages One and Two have been finalized. Stage Three depends on how tonight goes but my crew and I are ready to pull the trigger.
I have a crew, because that’s how I roll, now.
“Buck up, buttercup,” Aria tells me from our hiding location outside the Celeritas administration building where we’ve stalked Digby to. We’ve monitored his schedule and he’s right on time where he should be. There’s no more time to spare. Everything is in place. It’s now or never.
Aria takes my hand. “One last time, are you sure? There’s no coming back from this…”
“I’m doing it,” I tell her.
“Then I’ve got your back, girlfriend,” she nods stiffly. “I’ll be ready.”
“Thank you,” I whisper and wipe the sweat from my p
alms.
I take a deep breath, fill my lungs, clench my fists to get them to stop shaking, and then I leave Aria behind in the bushes and take my first step toward the admin building and whatever awaits me after this.
I waive my keycard and enter the building, taking the path I know well now. Opening up the gym door, right on schedule, Digby is on a treadmill and should be finishing up any minute. I’m wearing a short, tight-fitting red dress with a plunging neckline and heels, which I’ll have to ditch quickly if things go according to plan.
Digby pulls his earbuds out and raises an eyebrow at me. Excellent, those earbuds are attached to his phone just as planned. I swing my hips and stroll toward him. I look like a two-bit hooker, which I think is exactly his type. He rakes his eyes up and down my body.
“My, my, what is this?” He asks pushing buttons on the treadmill to slow it down.
“Like what you see, sir?” I run my hands down the sides of my torso.
He steps off the treadmill and stands before me. A drop of his sweat hits my arm. Antibacterial soap isn’t going to cut it this time. I’ll need bleach. Industrial strength bleach.
“I like it very much, what’s the occasion, Ms. Mitchell?” His sweaty finger traces the neckline of my dress.
“We’re finally alone,” I run my palms up his disgusting wet tee shirt.
“Is that so?”
I nod and bite my lip. “Take me to your place, I can’t wait anymore.”
He moans at me and analyzes my face for a moment while fiddling with my hair.
Come on, you stupid little weasel.
In a second he grabs a towel from his treadmill, wipes his face off then throws the sweaty towel back on the treadmill and puts his phone and earbuds in his short pockets. Taking my hand in his, we’re off.
You don’t even wipe down your equipment, pig.
Outside, we begin the walk to his residence building. His hands are all over me. I giggle loudly knowing Aria is following the sound of my voice from the bushes. She’s sneaking like a prowler in case things go south and I need an emergency extraction. I’ll need her skills for our exit plan. God, how did I get so lucky rooming with her in college when everyone else got stuck with some psycho?
