CHAPTER FIVE
Oliver and I didn’t speak when he got home. I fell asleep on the couch, take-out left half-eaten on the table beside me, and it was all still there when I woke up shivering. He must have stormed right past me into his bedroom.
I knocked on Oliver’s door when I woke up from my unexpected nap, but I received no response. He liked to be left alone when he got into moods like that, but I felt guilty knowing that he also felt bad about what he said.
It would have to wait.
I didn’t want to be late for Derrek’s race, so I showered and dressed as fast as I could, agonizing over the perfect ensemble. What did people even wear to watch people drive around in circles really fast? I finally settled on a comfortable pair of slim black jeans and a fitted green button-down shirt under a grey cardigan.
Oliver’s door was still closed when I left my bedroom and bee-lined for the front door, worried I was going to miss the bus.
Luckily, I caught it just before it pulled away from the stop near my condo. Motorsport Park was pretty far into the west end of the city, but an hour and a half later, after two busses and a lengthy subway ride, I was finally outside the track. Derrek had texted me instructions to find the right place once I got inside. It was a more extravagant venue than I thought, but cars and racing weren’t exactly my areas of expertise.
An information desk in the middle of the welcome center caught my eye and I rushed over while texting Derrek that I had arrived. He was probably busy doing…whatever it was drivers did to prepare for a race while their cars were being tuned up. The desk attendant, a smiling dark-haired woman, looked up at me as I approached.
“Welcome to Motorsport Park! What can I help you with?”
“I, um,” I muttered, my throat already feeling dry. “I’m here to see the race today?”
She checked her watch before turning back to face me.
“No races today. You must be here for the qualifier happening this afternoon. Whose team are you with?” Her hands were already floating over the keyboard angled to her right, ready to look me up.
“No, I’m not staff or on a team or anything. I’m here to watch the qualifier,” I said. Thankfully, my phone started buzzing in my pocket, and Derrek’s voice greeted me when I turned from the desk to answer it, mouthing a hasty apology.
“Aiden! Where are you? I came to the welcome center to meet you,” Derrek said.
“Hey,” I said before mouthing a thank you to the information desk attendant and walking back toward the main doors. “I’m at the info desk. This place is huge!”
The welcome center was getting busier, too. I must have arrived just before a huge group; the short walk from the info desk to the main doors was a minefield of bodies moving quickly in the opposite direction. I turned on the spot and kept walking slowly backwards, looking for Derrek as I went.
“Meet me at the main doors, Derrek. It’s getting—”
“Crowded in here?” Derrek finished as I stepped backwards and walked right into him. A smile spread across my face as my voice caught and I turned to hug him. He gripped me close to his body with his one free arm, the other cradling a sleek black helmet against his hip.
“You came!” he said, leaning forward to kiss me.
“Well, yeah, you invited me, didn’t you?” I said, turning to walk beside him as he led us forward through the crowd. More than once, I snuck long looks at his tight figure as we walked. His racing attire, clinging to every muscle of his body as he moved, was a sleek black and blue body suit emblazoned with the logos of several major brands—probably all of his sponsors.
People were stopping around us to pull out their phones and take photos of Derrek in his racing gear. Maybe he was more high profile than I thought. As more and more phones began popping up in the crowd, Derrek linked his arm with mine and began walking a little slower.
“Um, Derrek, I—do you—can we get out of here? This is a lot of people,” I said frantically.
He looked over to me as my eyes darted in too many different directions to count and picked up his pace.
“Sorry, I just wanted to show you off a little,” he said under his breath.
I blushed and began to walk even faster, practically dragging him through the crowd beside me. Every so often he nudged my side and pulled me in the right direction. After a few turns and some steps up, Derrek finally unlinked his arm from mine and opened the door we had stopped in front of.
“I don’t have a lot of time, but you can watch from here with my team,” he said, stepping aside to let me through.
My jaw nearly hit the floor.
“Wow,” I practically breathed as Derrek put a hand on my back and ushered me in.
The viewing box was gorgeous. There were three black leather couches facing out over the race track, and the left wall had a table that ran across its entire length, covered end-to-end with glasses, champagne, and spreads of bread with expensive cheeses whose names I couldn’t pronounce.
It was a far cry from the Derrek who shared a take-out burger from Elevensies with me.
Derrek sidled up behind me, his breath hot on my ear. He mentioned watching with his team, but we were the only people in the viewing box. I smiled as he wrapped his arms around my waist.
“We always go all out for these things to schmooze with high-profile sponsors. I may have forgotten to mention you’d be the only guest today,” he said, resting his chin uncomfortably on my shoulder. I ducked down and spun, poking a finger sharply into Derrek’s chest as he fell forward and caught himself.
“You are crazy. This is too much!” I turned toward the back of the room and leaned with my back against the wall, crossing my arms. “No, I guess it’s better to say it’s not really what I was expecting,” I said, watching Derrek as he popped a cracker with a little square of cheese on it into his mouth and grinned.
“I told you, my team is watching with you. They’re high-rollers, used to living it up with clients and potential sponsors all the time. I guess they just go all-out for themselves sometimes, too.” Derrek made his way over to me as he spoke, propping himself against the wall with one strong arm as he leaned forward and kissed me.
As our lips met, I pushed myself off the wall and wrapped my arms around Derrek’s waist. His kisses burned with a rough heat that shook my body as we moved slowly from the back wall to one of the couches away from the window. His tongue snaked its way toward mine as he clutched my shoulders, rooting me to the spot, as if afraid to let me go. His breath was hot, and as our lips met again and again, I could feel my pants getting tighter around my swelling bulge.
Derrek gripped my shoulders and pushed me down onto the cold leather of the couch, sending a shock through my body. I looked up to see a hunger in his dark eyes and his lips pulled into a grin that made my skin prickle with a foreign feeling. I barely had time to lift myself up before Derrek was on top of me, pulling off my jacket as we kissed with a fierce heat.
A soft moan escaped my mouth between our lips meeting and parting. Derrek gripped the sides of my face with tender strength. When he pulled away from me again, I snapped forward and caught him in another kiss, biting playfully on his lower lip. His eyed widened in surprise and I pulled my head back.
“S-sorry, I thought you’d be into that,” I said softly.
My heart nearly dropped into my feet when a voice by the door answered.
“Quite the show, gentlemen, but I’m afraid Derrek has a qualifier to get to,” said a woman’s voice. I could hear her trying to stifle a laugh at having walked in on us. “Who do we have joining us today?”
I shrugged my jacket back on and bolted up from the couch, turning to see a shorter woman in a very sharp black blazer and pencil skirt, her crimson blouse form-fitting underneath. She gave me what I was sure she thought was a subtle once-over before walking in and extending a hand. Two men followed behind her, similarly dressed in black suits and ties and red shirts.
“Diana Alvarez,” she said, shaking my hand with a firm grip. “Sponsorship Coordinator. This is Brent Cline and Steven Lee, in charge of security and social media, respectively,” she continued, gesturing to the two men behind her who each shook my hand in turn.
There was a pause that went on a few seconds too long as they waited for me to introduce myself. I felt Derrek jab me forward with an elbow and I stumbled as I spoke.
“Hi! Hi,” I said awkwardly. “I’m Aiden, Derrek’s, uh—”
“Boyfriend,” Derrek interjected from behind me. I whipped my head around toward him, beating back the chill that tore through my chest at his words. His eyes darted quickly from my rapid blinking to the soft, pink circle my lips made, my mouth hanging open dumbly as everyone stared.
We hadn’t really talked about what we were to each other, and here he was introducing me as his boyfriend without another thought. He scooped a hand around my waist and led me away from the others into a corner, our heads close together.
“The faster she stops talking, the better,” he whispered, and I shook my head.
“I, um, I can pretend to be?” I said. Derrek shot me a broad smile.
“I don’t want you to pretend,” he said, his dark eyes scanning my features. I nodded sheepishly. I liked the sound of it. Derrek gave me a sly grin that I couldn’t help but return. Clearing my throat, I turned back to face Diana and her colleagues.
“I’m his boyfriend. I was invited to watch from here with you,” I said, trying to muster all the confidence I could. For such a small woman, Diana had a very intimidating presence. She gestured toward one of the men—Brent—to watch the door, while the other took a seat on the couch Derrek and I had been interrupted on, Diana joining him not long after.
“Not a problem, but Derrek, you really should talk to us about things like this first,” she said, crossing her legs at the knee. “What if we had potential sponsors coming in with us?”
Derrek scoffed as he bent to pick up his helmet and headed toward the door.
“Then they’d have gotten a real hot show, too,” he said, patting Brent on the back on his way out. “Enjoy qualifying!” Diana rolled her eyes without turning to watch Derrek walk out and I laughed.
“Yeah,” I said, taking a seat on one of the other couches, “he seems to have that effect.”
“Oh, Aiden,” she said with mock exasperation. “You have no idea. Unless you do?” She kept her arms crossed over her chest as she stared me down from the next couch over. Steven was furiously jabbing at his phone beside her, no doubt busy with something online.
“It, uh, hasn’t been very long,” I said, crossing my own arms as I turned to look at her.
“Ah,” she said simply.
I waited for a moment for her to go on, but instead she walked over to the table and returned with a small plate of cheese and crackers and settled in before the qualifier got started.
Frowning, I stood up to fix my own small plate, and when Steven did the same, I rushed over to take the seat next to Diana.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” I said before biting into a small square of cheese. I chewed slowly, giving her time to respond, but she took a bite of her own cracker and pressed her fingers gently onto a napkin in her lap. “Is it dangerous?” I pressed.
Diana finally shifted toward me.
“It can be. Derrek’s one of the best. The boy spends more time behind the wheel of a car than anyone I’ve ever worked with. We’ve been together a long time. He drives smart even when he drives reckless. He drives to win,” she said flatly, her eyes almost sparkling at the mention of victory.
“And the more he wins, the easier it is for you to find sponsors, right?” I didn’t particularly care, but the more she spoke to me, the better my chances of changing her instant judgment of me. She didn’t look impressed by the question.
“Yes, well, sometimes it’s good to be easy, Aiden,” she remarked. Steven made a low sound involuntarily from the door, and I gave Diana the same snide once-over she’d given me. I stood up and left my plate on the couch behind me.
“You can have this, I’m not hungry anymore and you seem to be eating through yours pretty quickly,” I said with a sneer as I walked away. I’d just watch from the couch on the opposite side of the room. The further from the window, the better. I grabbed my phone from my pocket and sent Derrek a quick good luck text that he probably wouldn’t get until after it was all over anyway.
More and more people seemed to be filling the stands around the track, or at least the ones I could see from the viewing box. The tense silence was broken by a voice that boomed across the track from every loudspeaker.
“Gooooooood afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Motorsport Park for the 2019 Initial Drive Touring Cup Qualifier! Drivers, to your starting positions. We’re about to begin!”
There was an eruption of cheering and clapping from the stands as cars started slowly pulling into position at the start of the track just below me. A few of the drivers were wearing the same black body suit as Derrek, and with their helmets on, I couldn’t tell which one he was from so far away.
Not that it mattered; all the drivers would already be in their cars by now. Steven piped up to let me know that Derrek’s car was the only royal blue one and that his nickname on the circuit was, unsurprisingly, Royal Blue. He sat down beside me, still furiously tapping at his phone.
“You said you’ve never seen a race before? Maybe I can answer your questions,” he said enthusiastically. I gave him a quick smile, glad that at least someone in the room had manners.
“So how does it all work?” I asked.
“The qualifier can get pretty long. This first round will be eighteen minutes, and the whole thing decides starting positions for the major race of the cup,” Steven explained.
I blinked a few times and clenched my hands into fists.
“Oh, okay. I figured it would be, like, three laps on a difficult track,” I said. “You know, like Mario Kart.” Diana lifted an eyebrow on the other side of the room, shaking her head, and Steven half-shrugged beside me.
“No,” he replied. “Not quite.”
“How, uh, how many laps is it?” I said, the back of my throat starting to feel dry.
“As many as they can fit into eighteen minutes.”
I stared at Steven as seriously as I could, my face all lines and heaviness.
“How safe is it? There are a lot of cars on that track.” I swallowed the lump building in my throat. Steven shifted uncomfortably beside me.
“Cars leave the track for mechanical reasons, maybe one or two for wrecks. Accidents can happen,” he said, then leaned in closer. “I’m not allowed to post video of track accidents when they do.”
I could feel the color drain from my face. Steven clapped a hand on my shoulder and gave me a sympathetic smile.
“Don’t worry about Derrek. Diana wasn’t kidding. He drives smart.”
“Thanks,” I said as Steven walked back up toward the window to resume his furious phone tapping on the other side of the room. I stood up and paced around in front of the couch, biting at my thumb with one arm crossed over my chest. Derrek not racing smart wasn’t the problem. Derrek racing at all was the problem.
What did you expect, Aiden? I thought to myself. Did you think he was gonna stop being a driver after he told you he races for a living? I turned my back to the window and walked to sit behind the couch. Leaning my back against it, I pulled out my phone and propped my elbows up on my knees. Maybe it was a bad idea to accept Derrek’s invitation.
I couldn’t handle cars. Not since the accident.
Whatever it was that pulled Derrek and I together didn’t matter.
I shouldn’t have taken the risk. I wasn’t ready.
Goosebumps ran across my arms as engines revved behind me—qualifying had begun. My good luck text to Derrek was still unread. I busied myself scrolling through my photo reel, smiling at the screenshots of Derrek’s Knight profile. I scrolled further back, lingering on photos of me and Oliver at Elevensies, and my mouth dropped into a tight frown.
I still wasn’t sure why he’d lashed out at me, and I wanted to talk to him about it. I scrolled back even further, past screenshots of memes and selfies, until I finally found what I was looking for.
It was a picture of me at seven years old. My hair was the same wavy blond mess. I was wearing a pajama set covered in little stars and moons, and I sat beaming up at my mother from her lap, both of us sitting on the floor of the house I grew up in, surrounded by torn up wrapping paper and empty boxes.
I sat staring at it for a few moments, trying to ignore the rising and fading of engines behind me as Derrek and nineteen other drivers sped around the track.
Get up, Aiden. You can do it. It’s been almost twenty years. You’re in a viewing box away from the track. Derrek is a professional, he’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.
I closed my eyes, gripped my phone tightly, and stood up from behind the couch. From the corner of my eye, I could see Diana watching me quizzically, probably making more of her silent snap judgments. Taking a deep breath in, I closed my eyes and turned to face the window.
Opening them was a big mistake.
I had only ever seen a car move as fast as the ones on the track once before in my life. It looked like they were gliding above the ground, turning sharp corners like curving streaks of different colored lights.
My jaw tightened as my breathing became short and shallow, the viewing box blurring around me as my vision unfocused and the cars began to look even more like blurry streaks of light. Amid the roar of engines and the loudspeaker’s commentary, I could just barely make out a choked gasping sound.
Someone began shouting beside me. It sounded like they were speaking through a fan, and apart from my own name, I couldn’t quite make out their words. I stepped backwards away from the window and lifted a hand to my ever-tightening chest, my other hand firmly holding my phone in a white-knuckled grip. The choked gasping was coming from me.
I could feel something hot streak down my face as someone reached an arm out to catch me in a forward slump, my phone thudding against the carpeted floor beside me, still open to the photo of me and my mother.
Tears streamed harder down my face, and I could just barely make out Diana shouting at Brent before he ran out of the room and she started screaming into her phone. I scrambled out of Steven’s grasp to hunch over my phone on my hands and knees, trying to focus as hard as I could on the photo.
That picture always worked to calm me down—why wasn’t it working?
My forehead met the carpet for a few short seconds before I was pulled backwards and found myself face to face with a woman who wasn’t Diana. I closed my eyes and struggled against the grip of whoever had lifted me off the carpet, my heart jumping every time an engine roared just below the viewing box.
Grunting as I freed myself, I bolted upright, screaming, and held my breath as I ran as fast as I could out the door, down the first set of stairs I could find, and onto a quiet stairwell landing.
I don’t know how long it took for my breathing to steady, but after some time, the haze gripping my senses seemed to lift and I wiped the tears from my cheeks. I stood up slowly and eventually walked long enough to find a bathroom, avoiding the mirrors as I bee-lined toward the sink and splashed my face with cold water. Sniffling in the deepest breath that I could muster, I stood up straight and took a look at myself in the mirror.
It had been a long time since I’d had a panic attack that bad. The medics Brent undoubtedly had gone to find were probably looking for me, if they hadn’t gone back down to the track already. Wiping my face down with a paper towel, I let out a long, slow breath, my jaw still clenched. My heart jumped again as the bathroom door opened and someone walked past me, and I hastily left to find the nearest street exit.
I was right. I should have stayed home.
I should have just patched things up with Oliver and talked to him about his crappy dating advice. If taking a chance on a different kind of guy meant risking a panic attack whenever we went out, then I didn’t want to do it. I shook my head as I followed signs back toward the information center where I arrived.
That wasn’t true.
It wasn’t a risk with every guy who wasn’t a boring slog.
It was a risk with Derrek.
If I added up all the time I spent talking to Derrek, either in person or via text, we had only known each other for about four days. After a single lunch date, he was already introducing me as his boyfriend, but I didn’t want a boyfriend who was all maybes and what-ifs beyond physical attraction.
But I knew there was more than something physical between us.
I wouldn’t have agreed to visit a race track if there wasn’t.
Derrek knew it, too, or he wouldn’t have expected to see me after my less-than-stellar reaction to his being a professional driver. I just had to know how bright the spark between us could get, or if it was already about to burn out.
“Aiden!” I froze, not recognizing the voice calling my name as I turned and found myself back in the now much emptier welcome area. It was Steven the social media guy, and he was coming toward me with something in his outstretched hand.
My phone.
I dug my hands into my pockets, not even realizing I had left it in the viewing box. Without a word, he handed it back to me and gave me a sympathetic smile.
“Thanks,” I whispered, immediately shoving my phone back into my pocket. Steven opened his mouth to say something, but I spoke before he could.
“I heard tires screech, and—”
“It wasn’t Derrek’s car,” he said. “Don’t worry.” I let out another long breath, relaxing my shoulders as I looked up toward the ceiling. “You must really care about him,” he went on.
I didn’t reply, instead offering Steven a weak smile and a quick nod. I didn’t want to be talking about my feelings for a practical stranger with another stranger.
“Thanks. I’m fine. I mean, I’ll be fine. I can’t finish watching, sorry,” I said quietly as I turned to leave. He waved as he also turned to leave, probably back to the viewing box to do his job. At the bus stop across from Motorsport Park, I unlocked my phone and stared down at the photo of me and my mother again.
It was so many years ago.
I wondered what my mother would say if she was standing at that bus stop with me. She’d probably be excited that I’d met a boy who made me happy. I was excited that after months of dating total duds, I’d finally met a boy who made me happy. No two relationships had the same story behind them anyway, right?
The buzz of a text alert brought my thoughts back to the present. Derrek had finally seen my good luck text, and someone—probably Steven—must have told him what happened in the viewing box.
Derrek: Are you still here? Are you okay? I want to see you.
The bus pulled up and I got on, taking an aisle seat by the back door as I stared down at my phone, thumbs hovering over the on-screen keyboard before pocketing it. I wanted to see him, too. I wanted to throw my arms around him and close my eyes and feel the heat of his skin against mine. I wanted to kiss him and breathe him in. I wanted to feel him, and I wanted him to want all those things from me, too.
I didn’t want Derrek the driver; I wanted Derrek the man.
Maybe I wasn’t ready to take the risk for either.