It’s been twenty four hours. One entire day has passed since my dad picked me up from the county jail, patted me on the back and said, “Son, let’s not have this happen again.”

The first thing I’ve noticed about civilian life? Twenty four hours sure pass a hell of a lot faster when you’re at home than it does when you’re locked in a jail cell. It still feels like I just got out. My chest is tight and my mind keeps falling back to old habits, like expecting to be freezing my ass off at night because I only have one shitty wool blanket. I’m up at the crack of dawn, six a.m. according to my cell phone which is also weird and foreign to me because I went so long without the damn thing.

But I am no longer in jail. I have to keep reminding myself of this fact. I was arrested, slapped with a four month sentence by a judge who can’t stand young guys with promising careers in anything other than bookish college stuff, and I served my time. I’m out. I’m done. I can’t keep dwelling on it.

Luckily, county jail wasn’t anything like how it’s portrayed on TV. There are gangs and the food is shitty and people get their ass beat on a daily basis, but if you stay low and keep to yourself, you’ll be okay. At least that’s what I was told on my first day by Joshua, the head guard of the C block where I was kept. He was in his mid-twenties and was a huge fan of motocross. He recognized me immediately. I can’t even pretend to deny it—he respected me as a local dirt bike racer and therefore he gave me preferential treatment while in jail. I’m grateful for it, that’s for damn sure.

I’m lying in my bed, my real bed, at my parent’s house in Los Angeles. It’s just after six in the morning and I’m wide awake because I’m used to the jail lights being flipped on at six every day. Here, the lights are off and my parents are asleep and the only sound is the gentle hum of the air conditioning.

It is so very refreshing to be back in the real world again.

I make a vow to myself that I won’t fuck up to that magnitude ever again.

I don’t regret what I did. Luke Brady was asking for an ass whooping, so I gave it to him. I just kind of regret the timing. Had this happened a few months earlier, when I was still seventeen, I probably could have gotten off easier. But now I’m a legal adult, and I get to go to big boy legal adult jail when I screw up.

Never again.

I breathe in deeply, then exhale slowly, counting to ten. I only make it to seven before I’m out of air, so I do it again. It’s part of the anger management training they had me take in jail, and while it’s relaxing to breathe like this, it doesn’t really help me much because I don’t have an anger problem. I’m actually a pretty cool guy—at least I think so—and I’ve never lost my temper in all of my life until that stupid day last winter.

God, what was I thinking?

I’m stuck here in bed, too early to do anything, too alone to distract myself, and these thoughts roll back to me. The day that I screwed it all up. I was at a regional race in Anaheim, at one of the best amateur motocross tracks in the country. We’d all just finished taking a few practice laps before the race would begin and I was feeling good. My bike had new suspension and it ran like a dream. The dirt was perfect and the sun was shining. It was the perfect California day.

I had a girlfriend and I thought things were great.

For the record, this is pretty much exactly where I screwed up. I trusted her. Now I can’t even think of her stupid name without thinking of everything she did to screw me over. I call her The Ex in my head now. It gives her less power that way. I even changed her name in my phone to The Ex, and believe me, it’s not because I’m still talking to her. It’s almost like she had some kind of psychic connection to my jail cell because the moment I got into my dad’s truck to drive home yesterday morning, she called me. I didn’t get the call until I was back home and charged my phone, but still.

My jaw tightens as I look over at my phone on the nightstand. She’s called me five times in the last twenty four hours. I’ve ignored every one. I’m not sure if I hate her or if I hate myself for trusting her. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. The Ex and I have known each other for years. She’s a track bunny, the derogatory term for girls who hang out at motocross tracks trying to snag a motocross guy. We’d been friends for a long time and it was never anything more than that because racing is my life and it takes up all of my time. I’d seen her hop from guy to guy (as track bunnies do) but she never dated them very long. She’d always come whining to me, saying guys were stupid.

And I guess she was right about that part because I ended up dating her, which makes me the stupidest one of all.

But when I started dating The Ex a few months before the incident that landed me in jail, I thought it would work out okay. We were friends, so we knew each other’s quirks and personalities. It was late one night after a particularly awesome day of racing in which I’d won every moto I entered, and I was high on the win. She’d ambled up to me in her short ass shorts and threw her arms around my neck and said she was so proud of how well I raced that day. Then she kissed me.

I remember thinking it was weird because we were just friends but then there she was, groping me and shoving her tongue in my mouth, and like I said, it was a good day, so I just went with it. Next thing I knew, we were dating.

Things were fine. I liked her, and she liked me. She was always at the track so we saw each other a lot, and she knew everyone there so she didn’t whine and complain when I was busy with the races. My other friends always had trouble dating girls who weren’t into motocross because they’d get upset when their boyfriend had to go to races every weekend. The Ex was cool with it.

And then the incident happened.

There I was, at the track, on the day of the regional races. Practice was awesome, everything was awesome. Then I rounded the corner and walked by Luke Brady’s arrogantly huge motorhome that he drove out to all the races so he could relax in style. And there she was. The Ex. Sucking face with Luke himself, the guy who tried every single weekend to beat me in a race but never could.

“What the fuck?” That’s really all I remember saying, even though I’ve relived this event in my head about a million times over the last four months.

The Ex turned around slowly, untangling herself from Luke’s arms, like she wasn’t in a hurry. Almost as if she’d planned this. She said something about how I was being a terrible boyfriend who only cared about racing. Luke said something about how he was a better lover than I was and how he was about to be a better racer.

I saw red.

Luke threw the first punch, but I threw the next two dozen. The cops said if I hadn’t kept wailing on him after he’d been knocked unconscious, I might not have been punished as severely. I don’t know what took over me. Betrayal does that to a guy, I guess. I’ve been over it in anger management classes multiple times now and it still blows my mind. I am not an angry person. Not usually. Sure, dickhead drivers on the road piss me off, and I’ll get upset with myself if I screw up while racing, but I never get that mad. I never assault someone.

But I did, and I have to own it. And now I’ve paid my debt to society and life goes on while I try to put my own back together. I’ve often wondered if what The Ex and Luke did to me was done on purpose. Word is, they’re still dating, but who knows if that’s true because I refuse to get online and check it out.

All I know is that I was barred from racing that day and for the rest of the season due to unacceptable behavior as outlined in the race rules. And Luke got to race that day without me, which means he won. It was almost as if he planned it.

The guys in jail all say that the best revenge is to live a better life than the ones who wronged you. And that’s the problem. I can’t figure out how to do that if I’m not back to racing. I’ve been banned from racing at all the local tracks, and the ban will stay in effect unless my agent can talk them into giving me a second chance.

If that doesn’t work out, I’m not sure what the hell I’ll do, but my life won’t be better in any way, shape, or form, unless I’m on a dirt bike.