Do you see me there, staring at the judges as they sit in their boxes, ready and willing to hand me a number based on my performance?
I’m the one leaning against the brick wall in my jersey and riding pants, helmet in hand. There’s a good portion of the crowd tonight who don’t even know I’m here.
Now do you notice me?
No one around me has yet because I’m hidden in the shadows, unwilling to give up my privacy just yet. I’ve kind of enjoyed my time away from the spotlight because, in some weird, twisted way, I found myself again, and I never even knew I was lost.
Funny how that works, isn’t it? Takes losing something for you to appreciate what’s in front of you. Took one life ending for me to find the one I needed all along.
In the shadows I remain, watching the stadium fill with patrons, all awaiting a freestyle motocross event where we go head-to-head, throwing unbelievable gravity-defying tricks to be judged.
And after four months of being out of it, I’m here, and I’m ready and willing to give them something to judge. It’s more than that. Sometimes, I want to tell them, you know what, go fuck yourself for even thinking you can just hand me a number based on the way you feel I performed.
But then again, that’s the sport, and if I want to compete, I’m forced to deal with this side of it.
Speaking of judging and handing down a number, here’re some numbers for you.
Four. The number of months I’ve spent recovering and relearning all the tricks I’d already perfected.
Two. The number of titanium rods in my neck holding the plates in place that in turn fused my vertebrae together. Gnarly, huh?
Five. The number of weeks I spent practicing the triple again.
Ten. The number of times I’ve successfully landed it.
It’s better than one. The total number of times I landed the trick before I did it in Madrid.
For me, doing stunts and tricks on a dirt bike was where my love for racing started. It was real, riding and having fun, and pushing myself for the sheer hell of it.
When I was healed, getting back into the throwing tricks again wasn’t hard. Having lived this lifestyle since I was four, it was like coming home once I got back on the bike.
After the headaches, blurred vision, sensitivity to lights, nausea, confusion, irritability and intensive physical therapy on my neck and shoulder, which I had endured over the last four months. . . I was definitely ready to go back.
When the doctors told me, “You’ll be out for the rest of the year,” I laughed at them. Fuck them. They don’t know me.
No injury would keep me away that long unless I was dead. But it did knock me out of contention for another X Fighters championship and the X Games. Luckily for me, Honda and the majority of my other sponsors had stuck by me.
I understood though, at some point, you have to decide what you’re willing to sacrifice to be the best.
In freestyle, you get injured. Plain and simple. There’s no way around it. But it’s not about that. It’s about how often you can compete injured, or even how badly. It’s your ability to compete once you’re hurt is what sets you apart from the other guys.
Broken bones, torn ligaments, concussions, all part of the game. At some point you realize if you can bend your knees enough to get them on the foot pegs, you’re good to go.
If you can make out the ramp or the one in the middle, also good to go.
Trust me, I’ve tested this theory.
Pain is tolerable. Not competing, not a fucking option for me.
Ricky finds me. At first, he doesn’t say anything. He’s waiting for me to talk to him and is why I connect with him on a deeper level than most would think. Ricky’s advice to me has always been, “If you think you can, do it,” because he knows I think I can do anything. Up until Madrid, I would have told you to your face, I’m invincible, and there’s a good part of me that probably believes that bullshit. The thing is if there’s even a fraction of, “Well, maybe I could do it,” I’m trying it.
Ricky once took us to Lake Havasu for the summer to get away. The only season we took off from the outdoor motocross schedule when we were younger was the season my dad died. I was four and had yet to start racing much, so I suppose I didn’t take the season off, did I?
You’d have to understand my mindset at four though. I thought I was a racer already and that right there should tell you everything you need to know about me.
Anyway, I remember that trip because it was the first of the six times I’ve broken my arm. We were standing on a cliff and everyone was jumping off into the water. I was told to get down, twice, by Ricky and then finally he let me go with my brothers.
Tiller was the first because, at five, he didn’t know fear. Still doesn’t. Then Roan jumped. It was my turn, and I got a little scared, started crying and Ricky said to me, “You’re the one who climbed up here.” I still remember him rolling his eyes and looking at me like, really, dude? Now you’re scared? But then he said, “If you don’t want to jump, don’t. But I’m not standing up here all day. You either do it or you don’t.”
I remember staring at him and thinking, “Well hell, if he doesn’t care, then I’m not jumping.” I think I was only up there because my brothers were doing it.
And then he said one more thing to me. “Shade, if you say you’re going to do something, do it. Don’t think about it, because the moment you question yourself is the moment you bail. You may not physically give up, but a part of you has. Be all in or get out. There’s no room for half-assing.”
So I jumped off the cliff. I was four. I couldn’t swim by the way. But my brothers were there along with a bunch of other people to save my four-year-old self.
How’d I break my arm?
Tiller’s head. Landed right on him.
The point to the story?
Ricky wasn’t going to let me get away with walking away from this. Not when I said I was going to be the best and was determined to do just that.
“What if I can’t?” I ask, leaning my elbows against the handlebars, my words brimming with anxiety, regret, and self-disgust.
“You can.” He waits for me to look at him, and when I do, he smiles. “Somewhere in that fear is clarity very few will ever experience.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, do you?
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, I’m in my pit, reporters hovering, fans asking for my autograph and yes, everyone knows I’m here.
Do you see me there? The hunch to my shoulders, the tension rolling through them?
I’m scared. I’m nervous. I’m. . . I don’t know what I am other than lost in a moment trying to decipher what it is I’m feeling and what Ricky was talking about.
Scarlet rubs my back and speaks quietly. “Are you okay?”
So she turns my head with her hands on my face, forcing me to be still, giving me no choice but to look at her. When I do, she drops her hands.
It’s then I see it in her face reflecting back at me. It’s all there, on every part of her. It’s her heart speaking to mine, telling me I can do this. Not for her. She’d never ask me to do anything for her. That’s the glaringly obvious difference between her and Rhya. It’s for me.
“You ready?” she asks, curls blowing in the subtle wind. She tries to contain them, but it’s useless, and she takes my hat.
I let her. It looks better on her, and the thought of her wearing my hat spikes my blood and softens my nerves.
“I think so,” I tell her, cool and relaxed, leaning into the bike and leaving my shades on. While everyone is optimistic, my anxiety increases with each person who asks if I’m okay.
But this girl, her “You ready?” spans further than the question.
It’s an “I love you, you can do this.” Assurance.
It’s an “I’m here for you.” Loyalty when it matters.
Cupping my face, she brushes her thumbs under my eyes and lifts my sunglasses.
She searches my face until our eyes meet. “If you’re afraid of falling, don’t look down.”
If you’re thinking to yourself, why’d she say that, you don’t understand the meaning of it.
“I love you,” I say, barely parting my lips over the words, and I know she’s never seen me this scared.
Pressing herself closer to me, my bike separating us, she fills her voice with confidence when she assures me she loves me too.
Did you notice that’s the first time we’ve said it?
It’s certainly not the first time I’ve felt it.
Pulling her lip between her teeth, she bites down suggestively. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, and I wasn’t sure when to.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What?”
“I once used your toothbrush?”
I’m not sure she meant it to be a question, but it comes out like one. I laugh. “By the look on your face, I don’t doubt that’s true. . . but that’s not what you were going to say, is it?”
She shakes her head, nervously. “I no longer work for you,” she blurts out.
It takes me a few seconds to understand the meaning but when I do, it’s like being hit in the chest. You heard her, right?
Do you know what that means?
My body does, instantly, instinctively, blood rushing and heart pounding. I drop my face lower, parted mouth finding skin, and I grip the seat between us. I blink and breathe, and the world around us seems nonexistent. “Let’s go. Fuck this competition. I want you.”
Scarlet giggles, pushing back, creating distance, her hands on my shoulders. It’s a good thing my bike is between us, or she’d feel my rock-hard dick digging into her like it is into the fender. “No way. I don’t have sex with losers, so you better go out there and win.”
I take her left wrist in my hand, brushing my lips over the soft skin, her racing pulse beneath my tongue before my teeth graze her lightly. “The moment this is over, I’m fucking you.”
“It’ll be a miracle if we make it to the car,” she teases playfully, unknowing that there’s a good amount of truth to those words.