One week later, I’m all settled in. I feel like some kind of badass adult doing everything all by myself. My dad has always talked about finding independence and becoming a man and all of that, and I think I finally understand what he means. I feel pretty fucking bad ass being out here alone.

Of course, I couldn’t do everything alone. Turns out you need a license to operate heavy machinery, but renting the backhoe came with the guy who runs it. He’d never built a dirt bike track before, but we watched some YouTube videos—because everything on earth can be found on there—and we figured it out. There’s now a lake in the front yard that’s about half filled with water from a recent rain, and now I have five jumps in the back yard. It’s a small track, but it’s tight with sharp corners just like the arena cross tracks back home. We roughed up the grass with the blade of the back hoe and made a pathway between the jumps. It’s a little rudimentary, but it’ll work. And the more I ride on it, the more I can wear the dirt into a real dirt bike track.

The only shitty thing? My bike still isn’t here. The shipping company had some problem with heavy rains and construction so my delivery has been delayed. I spend the days watching HBO, which I had installed the day after I got here because really, what kind of a life is it without HBO? And I spend my nights outside near the fire pit, burning some of the firewood my grandfather left piled up near the shed. You can see the stars out here. You can’t see anything in LA besides airplanes. It really is beautiful being out here in the middle of nowhere.

It’s also lonely.

The Ex still calls me every day, usually a few times. She’s resorted to texting now, too, and I’ve held strong and ignored every single one. I can’t lie—sometimes I feel like answering. Sometimes I want to talk to the bitch and ask exactly why she did it. She’d seemed genuinely unremorseful when it all went down, so it doesn’t make sense now that she’s calling me so much. You don’t call someone you cheated on, right?

So yeah, deep down, this stupid part of me wants to talk to her. I just want to know why. But every time I feel like caving and answering her call or responding to her text, I stop myself. I get this vision of Luke Brady sitting next to her, laughing at everything I say. I picture them working together to piss me off more. Every time I do that, it’ll piss me off just enough to stop myself from talking to her.

But then it’ll be late at night and I’ll be sitting by the fire all alone and I wonder if she misses me. If she ever cared about me. If any part of our relationship was even real. When we were together, I was busy all the time. I rode my dirt bike every day, hit the gym every day, raced every weekend. That kind of schedule is hard for girls to handle when they’re dating a motocross guy, but The Ex never seemed to mind it because she was already in this world since her little brother was also a racer.

Plus, she left me for Luke, who also rides so that can’t possibly be it. I think I was a good boyfriend. I tried, at least. I was loyal and I didn’t flirt with other girls. I listened when she talked and I had flowers sent to her house when I didn’t get to see her that week. But what do I know? Maybe I suck at everything. Which is why I’m focusing on dirt bikes from now on.

I focus on working out while I wait for my bike to be delivered. I hit the protein shakes before and after my workouts, and I jog a few miles a day to build up cardio. Contrary to what people think, you actually need to be better at cardio than weight training to be fast on a dirt bike. Racing takes a lot out of you, so you have to train hard.

I’ve taken over one of the guest bedrooms and cleaned out some of the weird stuff that was in here. Now there’s just a bed, a nightstand and dresser. I had a new mattress delivered and bought some new sheets for it. The dresser that’s here is filled with sheets and linens and I’ve been too lazy to unpack it and put my stuff in, so I’m living out of a suitcase. But I did make my own personal touches to the room. I brought some posters of Zombie Radio, which is arguably the best rock band on the west coast, and I also brought my good luck poster. It’s from when I was thirteen years old and Jeremy Sola gave it to me at the supercross races. I was star stuck because Jeremy was a professional racer at the time and I told him I wanted to be just like him. He told me about the importance of training and working hard, and then in addition to signing a poster of himself for me, he grabbed one of the bike model’s posters and signed it as well.

The bike models are just hot women who wear skimpy clothing and prance around the dirt bikes at local races. They’re on calendars and posters and magazines, always posed next to a bike. My poster has a Yamaha F250 dirt bike on it, with this blonde big boobed model leaning over the front of it. Jeremy signed the poster with these words of advice:

As soon as you look at this poster and see the bike before the girl, you’re ready to be a pro racer. -Jeremy Sola

It’s kind of dumb I guess, but now I realize more than ever how true it is. I need to focus on the bike. On the sport. Not the girls. Not any girls.

Now that my room feels more like mine, I really enjoy living here. I had thought about taking over the master bedroom but it was just too weird sleeping the room my grandparents used to live in, so yeah. I didn’t. My mom has offered to come down and help me clean out the place. We could have a garage sale and get rid of all the junk and then fix up the house to be my vacation home or something. I told her it’s a great idea, but I’ll have to wait until the summer is over.

This is my summer to be unplugged from everything but motocross.

The next day, I wake up to the ear-splitting wail of a truck backing up. I put on some flip flops and go outside to where a box truck is slowly reversing down my driveway. It’s early as hell and I have to piss, but I rush out anyway because I’m psyched to finally get my bike.

It all arrives in perfect condition. The bike, the gear, and my tool box. I’m pretty sure the delivery guy thinks I’m some kind of lunatic with how excited I am, but screw him. This is a good day.

I throw on my gear and crank up my bike, reveling in the smell of the exhaust. That’s the smell of the greatest sport on earth. I’ve been dying to check out my makeshift dirt bike track, and now it’s finally time.

I rev the throttle, slip on my helmet, and grin as I take off.