By the next day, things haven’t changed. It’s been forty-eight hours since I became a free man again and I’m still lying in bed, awake early. Yesterday was a complete waste. I’d wanted to go for a run or hit the gym, but all I did was sit around. I even let my mother cook me lunch and dinner like I’m some kind of lazy asshole. She didn’t mind and she said I should take a few days to recover from something as traumatizing as jail time.
But now that it’s day two, I don’t think that’s a great idea. I need to get back to my life. I need to sleep later because I used to love sleeping, and then I need to hit the gym and work until my cardio levels are back to where they used to be. I need my dirt bike. I need the track. I need my old life back.
So I force myself to stay in bed another hour, wishing I could fall back asleep. By 7:15, I realize it won’t happen, so I climb out of my bed that somehow feels a little too soft now and I put on some track shorts and a pair of running shoes. It’s warm enough to go shirtless, and my tan has totally disappeared as of late, so I that’s what I do.
I head outside and hit the road and run. Music blasts through my earbuds as I jog, the upbeat rhythm motivating me to run faster and longer than my muscles want me to. There’s plenty of weight training in jail, and I did a lot of it, but cardio is harder to come by when you’re stuck in a cell the size of a walk in closet. But now I am free. My shoes smack against the pavement while I run, the early summer air is clear in my lungs.
I close my eyes and jog for a while, wishing I could stop but knowing I can’t. And then the song stops suddenly, making me open my eyes again. My phone is ringing loudly in my earbuds. I pull it out of my pocket and look at the screen.
The Ex.
Ignoring the call, I start jogging again and I try to get back into the groove of running. I quickly realize that shit won’t happen. She has called and she has ruined my morning by making me remember her, and Luke, and the incident. It’s as if all of my ambition to get back into shape has just whooshed out of me like a deflated balloon at the end of a kid’s birthday party.
I slow to a walk and turn around on the sidewalk, heading back in the direction of home. All I want more than anything is to get back to my old life, the way things used to be before the incident. Before The Ex fucked it all up by being a massive slut.
After I’ve caught my breath, I call my agent, who answers on the forth ring. “Adams? You out of the slammer?”
He always calls me by my last name. “Yeah,” I say, gazing around at the neighborhood street that’s lined with nice homes and palm trees. “I’m out jogging, getting back in shape for my next race.”
He snorts. “Ain’t happening anytime soon, Adams.”
“Why the hell not?” I say without using my anger management techniques.
“You fucked up bad,” he says, and I can tell he’s a little sorry for me by the tone of his voice. “I mean, I’m trying, don’t get me wrong. I get fifteen percent commission from your sponsorships so I care about you man, but you lost all of those when you assaulted a fellow racer.”
“I beat up the guy who was sleeping with my girlfriend,” I say. “It had nothing to do with motocross.”
“Except he was also a motocross racer, Adams. You know this. I’m trying to get you back, okay? Just give me some time.”
“Good,” I say. I’m moving slower than a freaking snail right now. “Let me know when you hear back from the racing commission.”
“I will,” he says. “But you might want to start looking at other career choices. You know…just in case.”
It takes everything I have not to snap right here and now. Other career choices? There is nothing else for me! I am the fastest racer on the continent and everyone knows it. I’m finally old enough to go pro and all I need is the freaking permission to do it. Motocross is first and foremost about racing dirt bikes, but it’s also classified as a family sport so there are conduct rules to follow. The Ex made sure I broke the biggest one.
How the hell is my life ever going to get back to normal now? Either I give up completely and go to college for some bullshit degree for some bullshit job that will never make me happy, or I work harder than I’ve ever worked. I train and I ride and I prove my worth to the commission. They’ll put me back in the races and I’ll become the pro racer I’ve been dreaming I’d be since I was a little kid.
I see our house in the distance and I consider jogging another lap around the block, even though my chest aches and my muscles are exhausted. Maybe this isn’t what I’m supposed to do. Maybe I can’t just come back home and train like I used to and hope that everything works out. Home is part of the problem. California is where I got arrested. Where I served my time. Where my girlfriend cheated on me, because she made sure to tell me in explicit detail while I was being loaded into the back of a police car that she fucked Luke for weeks before that day when I caught them.
California is where it all went wrong. I need to get away. I’ve got money saved up from all the years I’ve been winning races, so theoretically I could go anywhere. But I’ve only ever lived here in LA. Where the hell else is there to go?
Exotic and beautiful places come to mind. Backpacking through Thailand, jogging on the beach in Maui. But I’m not exactly sure I could bring a bike with me to those places. No, I need somewhere basic. Some place I can train and be alone and get away from all the bullshit of real life here in LA. Preferably a place with no girls fawning over me because their main goal in life is to bang a motocross racer. I need somewhere where no one knows my name. Where I can start fresh and figure out where the hell my life is going to go from here.
And then it hits me.
I don’t even remember the name of the town, that’s how small and insignificant it is. Five years ago my grandfather died and left everything he had to me because he hated my dad for reasons my dad has never shared with me. He had a house on a few acres and about three thousand dollars in his bank account. It all went into a trust because I was under age at the time but now that I’m eighteen, the property is all mine.
It's a house to live in and land to build a dirt bike track on. And it’s in the middle of nowhere. There won’t be girls there to distract me, and there won’t be camera crews or motocross magazines asking me questions like they would if I went to one of the local dirt bike tracks here. No, it will be perfect.
I can be alone. I can train and get back in shape. I can wait out however long it’ll take before I’m allowed to race again. And the best part is that no girls like The Ex will be there trying to distract me. Girls only lead to trouble, as I’ve recently discovered. I need to be alone. I need to recharge and start over. This is going to be absolutely perfect.