One For The Road - Chapter 26: Chapter 26

"Katie Moore," Daniel Henderson said before I could even set my jacket on the chair in front of me. He had a stack of papers on a table, and he smiled at me. "Let me buy you a drink."
I held up my hand. "Hold on a second. Why am I here?"
"Well," he paused, "I went ahead and wrote an article using the information you shared with me, and I wanted you to read it over."
"You what?"
"I would never publish it without your permission since you told me all of that wonderful information after a few drinks, but I think it would be a great way to get you back in the spotlight."
What? I was perfectly still in the spotlight. I was just off the stage for a quick break.
I looked this Daniel fellow straight in the eye. "No."
Who the hell did he think he was? I didn't need anyone to take my words that I spoke in confidentiality and twist them to make me out to be someone I wasn't. No matter how he spun my story, it wasn't his to tell.
He hesitated for a moment. "What?"
"I have everything under control. I don't need you to get me back in the spotlight. I did that by winning the All-Star Race."
"Of course," he said. "But consider this—"
"This is a little insulting, Danny Boy. If you're looking for a way to make a few bucks, you can go ahead and write an article about the hottest female athletes. I'm in fourth place, after Sloane Stephens, Amanda Kessel, and Alex Morgan."
"Sounds like quality journalism."
"Then maybe you should stick to baseball." I tucked my jacket into my arms. "I've got the world right where I want it right now. I can handle my own career. Thank you and good night."
I walked out the door without another word. I had gotten my point across. Unless I was paying them to manage me, I didn't need anyone's help.
Cleveland, Ohio. What a shithole. But it was my shithole, and I loved it anyway.
If Lake Erie weren't in the way, it would have been relatively painless to get there from London, Ontario. Great Lake my ass.
Once upon a time, when I first signed with Roger Truscott Racing, Griffin and I went on a thousand-mile road trip for publicity and fun from Akron to Baton Rouge. We got a little distracted along the way and hit up Cincinnati, Nashville, and New Orleans, but it was the moment I convinced myself that I had finally made it. Sweet, naive twenty-three-year-old me was a fucking idiot.
This second road trip wasn't nearly as long or with a person nearly as fun, but it was a road trip nonetheless. Drake and Josiah would have been decent company if they had just let me, a professional racer, drive, but there was something about the male brain that rendered them unable to relinquish the controls.
So I sat next to a fucking robot the entire five-hour trip and texted Griffin. He had a race at Pocono that weekend, and if I could make it happen, I planned on going to watch. After all the support he had given me over the years, it was the least I could do for him. Drake, Josiah, and I could make a fun vacation out of it if they wanted to come.
The Cleveland tournament was set up so that some of the more notable combat robotics teams in North America were seeded against smaller teams. At Team Sacrilege, we had our work cut out for us, but I lived for challenges. They didn't intimidate me at all.
Sixteen teams were set up in a bracket, and I smacked Drake in the shoulder until he told me that Amazon was listed as the second seed.
Maybe I'd get a chance to fight Megha Ratti once again. She was a classy, humble woman, and as much as I admired her on a personal level, there was no way I would let myself lose to her again. I couldn't. Fighting was in my blood, and I needed to put on a show. After all, Josiah only seemed to think that I was good for one thing: my name. And I couldn't dare prove him right.
The tournament was set to begin in just over twenty-four hours, and I sat at the foot of my hotel bed and ran a brush through my hair as I stared at a grey wall. There were no paintings or photographs or anything anywhere in the room besides a dying plant on the bathroom sink.
Classy.
There were very few people who genuinely wanted me around. Truscott, Josiah, Daniel, they all just liked the fame built into my name, but I wasn't dumb enough to let them set the script for my life. I was far from book smart, but I was smart enough to know that it meant that I had some people who cared: Griffin, Drake, Annie, and Paul, who took care of me on and off the track when I had no one.
What more did I need, really?
Someone knocked on the door. "Katie, are you busy?"
Drake.
I dragged myself to open it up. "Not at all. I'm really bored actually. I've done some self-reflection, so I'm clearly desperate for something to do."
Instagram wasn't an option for me since I didn't even want to think about Daniel and his stupid, demeaning offer, so TV was probably my next best option. But I didn't even want to do that. Oddly enough, all I wanted was to do nothing.
But that was not very Katie Moore-like, so I just had to act like I was down for whatever.
Drake laughed. "What do you have to reflect on? You're pretty close to perfect."
I rolled my eyes. "You're so full of shit. You've done your fair share of pointing out my many, many flaws."
"Are you hungry?"
I wasn't really, but I nodded anyway. He seemed into the idea of food at the moment, and maybe it would fill a little bit of the emptiness that crept into my stomach.
As soon as I could kick the shit out of someone else's robot, I would feel better. I just knew it. But the only problem was that I had to wait.
"There's actually this really cool place–" I began, but Drake cut me off.
"You okay?"
I hesitated for a second. "Uh, yeah. Why do you ask?"
"You've just seemed off the past few weeks. Ever since you got back from the All-Star Race."
That was probably due to the fact that I was formulating an escape plan, trying to steal Josiah's girlfriend, thinking about my new old Corvette, and missing the hell out of my best friend, but overall, I was pretty damn okay.
"I'm gonna be honest with you, Drake. I was a mess the first time you met me. I had just lost my job, and I had nothing to look forward to. That's changed. Lots of things have," I said.
Drake nodded. "I can't imagine how you felt." He chuckled to himself. "I know I shouldn't, but I can't help myself from worrying about you sometimes."
"Don't waste your time with that. It's better if you just don't feel an—" Before I could finish my thought, Josiah barged his way into the conversation after shutting the door behind him.
"Are we getting food or not? You guys are seriously pissing me off with all this flirty bullshit," he spat.
"Someone's hangry," Drake said.
I nodded. "And there's no flirty bullshit, okay? My flirty bullshit is all for your girlfriend."
"One of these days, someone is going to kick your ass. It might be me. Watch your mouth and your back," Josiah said.
If I hadn't shut up to keep myself from losing my job, why the hell would I change my ways for him? Annie deserved better than both of us, and if I could just get her to see that, then every stinging no would be worth it.
The three of us headed back out to go eat, and by the way Drake put his hand on my lower back, a fear that maybe the flirty bullshit wasn't actually bullshit rose into my throat. I didn't make him stop, though. A tiny part of me found it reassuring.
Even though we slept in the same bed back in London, he had never really gone out of his way to close the physical and emotional distance between us at all. That was perfectly fine with me, and maybe I was just reading into it too much, but it had been a long time since I let myself feel something for someone else. I just couldn't afford to waste my time or sanity on another Tyler Bailey.
But I had quite a bit more free time without Griffin and racing though, didn't I?
No, Katie. If I wanted to work my way back to NASCAR, I couldn't waste any time on something like this.
And I was probably just making something out of nothing. I wouldn't have even noticed anything if Josiah hadn't mentioned it in all of his hangry splendor. Or if Annie hadn't done her art psychology voodoo bullshit on me.
This time, Drake and Josiah handed the steering wheel over to me, and I took us straight to my favorite burger drive-in down in Akron.
I needed a shit ton of tater tots and a shake to keep myself from thinking anymore.
Later that night, even though there were no clocks ticking to keep me awake, I still couldn't fall asleep. I told myself it was pre-fight jitters.
I flipped on the light and the TV, and hopefully, ESPN would put me to sleep. They played a bunch of baseball highlights, and sure enough, the Toronto Blue Jays were one of the teams featured. They lost. They were miserably bad, and I couldn't blame Daniel for wanting to follow the story of an almost winner.
Of course, that was another one of the things I didn't want to think about, so I flipped through the channels and finally settled on one that only spoke Spanish. Even though I couldn't understand what they were saying or what was happening, it was super clear that they were all horrible actors. This would definitely shut my brain right off or at least entertain me until the fight.
Someone knocked at the door.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, there's barely any sound coming out of the TV," I muttered before I got up to yell at whoever wanted to complain about it.
I opened up the door, and there stood Drake.
Oh fuck no.
"Can we talk?" he asked.
"Can't sleep?"
He shook his head. "Nope. I figured you'd be up too."
"Why would you think that?"
"Your light's on, and you're usually up this late."
I stepped out of the doorway and let him inside. "Well, I tend to overwhelm myself with shit I can't control despite putting on a cool, detached facade, or at least that's what Griffin seems to think."
"You miss him?"
I nodded. "More than anything. He was all I had besides racing."
"Well, now you have me and Annie." He smiled and took a seat on the couch.
"Did you want to chat about anything in particular, or are you just bored?"
"Just bored." He looked at the TV. Thank God. "What is this? A Mexican soap opera?"
I shrugged. "I don't know, but it's kind of funny. The facial expressions would make good memes." I took the spot on the couch beside him with my legs underneath me. "You know, I figured you'd be pissed at me for not getting eight hours of sleep before the tournament tomorrow."
"Neither am I, so I can't be mad without being a hypocrite. That's one of my biggest pet peeves."
"And yet, you're friends with Josiah."
Drake let out a laugh. "He's been my teammate since high school, and he has his good qualities. It'd be hard to find someone to replace him anyway."
"You found me in Vegas. How hard can it be?"
Neither one of us said anything for a moment as incomprehensible drama unfolded from the TV.
"We were in Vegas for a tournament. Why were you there?" Drake asked.
"Well, I figured my luck had to turn at some point, and if I was going to have something go my way, it couldn't hurt to be in Las Vegas."
Drake smiled. "Flawless logic, really."
"Whether it was money or finding someone who thought I was worth more than a sack of dog shit, I knew I'd find something there."
"How much of an asshole was your old boss anyway?"
I laughed. "He was fucking ridiculous. I did everything the right way, earned my shot, and he still didn't want to pour any resources into my team. Griffin was a proven winner, so he got everything."
"Then why would he even have a second car in his team?"
I shook my head. "Maybe one day I'd beat the odds, and he'd reap the rewards without any investment. I don't know. I'm pretty sure he's senile."
"Well, he would have to be to not realize what he had. He had one of the quickest learners and most determined drivers out there."
"He really did." I turned back to the TV before I could accidentally on purpose encourage Drake to keep going with this delightful flattery.
"Katie," he said, but I didn't turn to look at him.
I didn't know his intentions, but I had to look out for myself and my goals before anything else. It was sweet that he wanted to get to know every side of me, not just the robot-fighter buried deep down in my soul. Not many people had the patience for me and the million miles of road in my mind.
What could a little detour hurt? I was just going to leave him eventually to get my life back on track.
"I'm getting real sick of the flirty bullshit," I said, and before I could talk myself out of it, I boosted myself up onto my knees to his height and kissed him.
It was all still bullshit, but this bullshit was gonna make me feel damn good.