I sat parked behind the bush in front of Layla’s house. It had been a week since I talked to her, and I got her contact details from Caleb so that I could arrange to pick her up. I only made a single quick phone call to confirm the meet up time and location. Despite the massive urge I had to text her or invite her out before the race, it still felt weird that she was a High School chick and the same age as my brother. I didn’t want to make my attraction to her so obvious right away.

It had been hard enough for me to admit that I was attracted to her myself, but every time I had been working under the hood of a car in the shop, my mind always tended to wander towards her. I just couldn’t wait to see her again.

I checked my watch, and it was 11pm on the dot. Just like magic, when I looked up, she came running around the corner of the bush and ducked inside my car.

“Hey,” she said and smiled.

“Hey…” I replied, and my eyes were glued on to her. She wasn’t wearing a t-shirt that night; she was wearing a silk blouse with thin straps exposing her collarbone and shoulders. She had on matching loose black shorts, and a pair shiny black flats. Her hair had been pressed perfectly straight, and it was my first time seeing her with makeup on.

Damn. She looked sexy.

She pulled on a strand of her hair and looked at me with questioning eyes. “Is everything okay?”

I shook my head out of its trance. “Yeah…” I swallowed and put The Beast in gear. “You look nice,” I said as I started to pull away.

“Thanks. I hope it’s not too much.”

“No… it’s… perfect.” I immediately wanted to take back my words as soon as I said them. Perfect? Something about her was making me think and say things that were incredibly cheesy.

She continued pulling on her hair. “I’ve been looking forward to tonight. I mean, looking forward to going back to the races.”

“Me too,” I said. I cleared my voice. “I heard your friend didn’t want to come tonight.”

“Ummm… yeah,” Layla groaned. “Don’t tell Caleb, but I don’t think she wants to go to Prom with him. She doesn’t want to make it weird.”

I nodded. “I won’t say anything, but don’t worry about Caleb too much. Trust me when I say that he doesn’t have a problem with girls. He’ll probably be bummed for a day before he finds someone new. What about you? You have Prom as well, right?”

“Yeah…”

“Who are you going with?”

“Umm… I don’t have a date yet.”

“What?” I asked. “Why don’t you have a date?”

“Just haven’t found the right guy to go with, I guess.”

“Well, you gotta get yourself a date, and go have fun.” Even as I spoke, jealousy at the thought surged through me. “Your prom is a once-in-a-lifetime event. You’ll want to remember it forever.”

Layla shrugged. “I guess so, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal if I don’t go.”

“Well, okay. Up to you.”

We continued our way up to Rolling Bluff, and after parking, got the night started with food. Caleb raced again, and this time he beat an Aston Martin Vantage by a mile. Layla seemed to really be into the races this time around, and every time there was a drag we’d make playful bets with each other on who would win.

“Hey,” a voice rang out from behind me as we sat on the bleachers. I turned around to see Samantha standing right behind me. “Mason…”

“Oh, hey Sam,” I said.

Layla turned to look at Samantha, smiled, then looked away shyly as if she was trying to stay out of our businesses.

“I gave you my number, but you didn’t call or text me all week?”

“Well, I was going to. I just didn’t get around it. I don’t know, Sam…”

“What is it?” she asked.

“I just did some thinking, and what’s done is done, you know? We had our chance. But I’ll always love you as a friend.”

Samantha stuck her hand on her hip and touched her forehead with her other hand. “Friends?” she huffed. “Really, Mason? After all we shared, you’re going to say something like that to me?” She looked over at Layla. “Is it because of this bitch?”

Layla looked startled at the question, and my brow furrowed in anger.

“Hey, Samantha… Leave Layla out of this.”

“You were hanging around with her last week and now you’re up here with her again.” Samantha looked around the crowd. “And this time she’s not with her friends. She’s just here with you alone.”

“Layla and I are friends too, okay?”

“Oh stop, Mason,” Samantha chided. “When was the last time you had just a friend ride shotgun with you in sprint? I don’t remember that ever happening.”

She did have a point.

“Look Samantha, we can talk about this later, but you don’t need to worry about Layla.”

“Later? That’s what you told me last time, so I won’t hold my breath.” She crossed her arms angrily and started storming away.

Once she was out of earshot, I scooted closer to Layla. “I’m so sorry about her. It was totally inappropriate for her to call you a bitch.”

“It’s okay,” Layla said. “People say mean things when they’re angry.”

“Well,” I said. “You’re really mature for your age. You know that?”

“Thanks.” Layla smiled.

The rest of the drag races finished up, and Layla and I made it to The Beast for the sprints.

“You ready for this?” I asked as we fastened our seat belts.

“I’ve been waiting for it a whole week now,” she replied.

We pulled up to the starting line, and I could see Benny standing off to the side with Caleb, Benny waving and Caleb making hand signs. Benny had made another big bet on me that night and was hoping for another payoff.

“That guy over there with Caleb is like my uncle. He’s introduced me to street racing.”

“He was in the Corvette last time?”

“Yeah, that’s one of his cars. He races them sometimes, but mostly he likes to put them together. I work at his shop, not far from my home.”

“You work at an auto shop?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I don’t know. I just never thought about what you did outside of racing or working on your own car.”

“Cars are my passion. I could live peacefully off of my street racing winnings, but nothing is quite like fixing up cars or turning them into badass racers like The Beast right here.” I patted the top of the dash.

Tina strutted out in front of the racers, raised her hands, and several racers started revving their engines.

“Here we go,” I said.

Layla braced herself right before Tina dropped her hands.

I stepped on the gas and shifted gears, getting a much tighter start off the finish line than before. Only a couple cars managed to pull out ahead of me, but that was expected. The Beast was a heavy car, so lighter cars with good acceleration always got the jump. But in no time, we were speeding down the Bluff going well over 100 miles per hour.

As we wound a narrow bend, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Layla wasn’t quite clinging on for her life like last time and was actually smiling. She looked a little scared, but it was nothing like the first time she rode with me in my car.

“You’re not holding on,” I said.

“What?!” she said over the roar of the engine.

“You’re not holding on!”

She looked at me intently and bit her lip a little bit. “Because I trust you!”

“You trust me?” I asked. “Are you sure about that?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

That made me grin, and it almost made me want to push that trust a little bit. I pushed my foot into the clutch, switched gears, and accelerated so fast that it caused Layla to jump a little bit and get forced back into her seat.

Directly in front of us, going down the bend, was the same Lotus which was close to winning the race last time.

“Take his ass!” Layla yelled insistently.

I laughed. “With pleasure.”

I pushed The Beast hard to catch up with the Lotus, and when we were right behind him, he drove expertly to keep me from passing him, but once he hit a wide turn, he took the turn a little too wide, giving me just enough room to squeeze in between him and the wall of rock on the other side.

“Wooooooo!” Layla yelled.

“Yeah!” I grunted. I tilted my chin towards the cassette player. “I think we’re missing something.”

Layla hurriedly reached under the seat to pull out my collection of old cassettes. “Red one?” she asked.

“How about you take your pick this time?”

“I dunno,” Layla said and pulled a black one from the lot. It was unmarked like all the rest. “How about this?”

“Sure,” I said.

She popped it in, and in a few seconds Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train started blaring through the speakers.

“You know this song?” I asked as Ozzy started heckling in the intro.

“Nope,” Layla replied. Once the beat kicked in, she added, “But I like it.” She held her hands up and yelled out “Wooooo!” as we screeched down the steep hill.

She was even more amazing than last time. She was really letting loose.

We reached the bottom of the Bluff, and I was tapping one of my hands on the steering wheel with the beat of the song when we pulled onto the main road. I shoved on the gas to get us going down the straightaway, but immediately to my right I caught the glimpse of a couple police cars hiding behind a boulder. Beside the police cars was our lookout’s cars, so I can only assume that he had somehow gotten busted.

“Fuck!” I yelled, and as expected, one of the police cars immediately flipped on its lights as soon as he caught sight of me.

“Holy shit! The cops!” Layla said and pulled her hands up to her face. “Are they going to arrest us?”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

I pulled out my cell phone and sent Caleb a message to warn him and the other drivers of the bust, and I flew down the straightaway as fast as I could, the police officer a few hundred yards behind me. I was far faster than him, and I knew that there was no way he would catch me alone, but then another police car pulled out from another hidden crevice on the side of the road, and then another. It was clear that local police had a whole sting set up for that night.

It happened every year at least once. The police would gather forces and try to bust as many racers as possible in an effort to discourage people from racing around Rolling Bluff. Usually they’d catch 3 or 4 and after sitting in jail a couple days and making bail, the racers were right back at it. But it was more than a little difficult to round up cars that were equipped with Hemi engines, turbo boosters, and NOS, and because of the small amount of street traffic around the Bluff at night, after their yearly roundup, they would rarely make another appearance ‘til the next year. In reality, the cops preferred for the illegal racing to happen at Rolling Bluff rather than forcing us to move to a busier area where they knew the risk of a bystander getting hurt was much, much greater.

But damn. Why did they have to pick a night when I had Layla with me? She looked like she was about to shit her pants, and the last thing I wanted was for an innocent girl to get in any trouble.

“My dad is going to kill me,” she cried.

“Relax,” I said, reaching a hand out and gently squeezing her shoulder. “I’ve got this.”

I sped up on to an exit ramp that led to the freeway, and the cops followed. Layla grabbed onto the side of her seat, and was pushing herself so hard against the back that her ass was lifting up. “Oh my god! There’s cars everywhere!”

I weaved in between the cars on the road who were all going about 55 miles per hour, while I was doing 120. I knew it was dangerous, but if we were going to lose the cops we had to get somewhere that had places to hide.

Cars honked loudly as we past and when we drive a little too close to them, they swerved. I prayed that I didn’t cause any accidents.

In my rearview mirror, I could still see the red and blue lights of the cops, though they were much further behind me now. They were a lot more careful when driving around other cars. But then ahead of me, yet another cop emerged from an entrance ramp, and suddenly all the progress was practically lost.

“They’re fucking everywhere,” Layla wailed. “I think you should just pull over.”

I glanced over to her as I continued to weave through traffic. “Remember what you told me earlier?”

“What?”

“You said you trust me, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then. Trust me.”

Layla swallowed hard and then shook her head.

“Sit down in your seat and hold on tight, okay?”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

I whipped through a group of cars and could see about a quarter mile stretch ahead of us that wasn’t jammed up with vehicles.

“We’re going to count to three.”

I reached under the dash to make sure the safety switch for my NOS was released.

“1…, 2…, 3…”