One For The Road - Chapter 44: Chapter 44

Since Annie had my house key and Griffin had my spare, when I arrived back in Baton Rouge, the first place I had to go was Griffin's. I hadn't told him that I'd be back, and maybe I was hoping to surprise him, but sometimes it felt like he knew what I was going to do before I knew.
I had gotten used to a few luxuries on the road throughout my life, such as the ability to go faster than sixty miles an hour, but there was something about arriving in style in a freshly redone old car. Griffin would lose his shit when he saw it.
As I walked up to his front door, there was country music with a fiddle playing and several other cars in the driveway and on the street.
A party? I sure as hell picked the right day to come back, then.
A ray of light from the streetlight reflected off of one of the side mirrors on the cars, which was probably the last glimpse of myself that I could get before I headed inside. I had spent hours upon hours on the road, and I looked like it: my eyes were shadowed with dark circles, my hair stuck in every direction I didn't want it to go, and my sweatpants were wrinkled.
But who the hell did I have to impress? The last thing I wanted was someone all over me.
I turned the doorknob, and the door swung open. "Are you seriously having a party without me?"
"Katie?" Griffin turned from his seat in the living room. "I thought you were in fucking Canada."
But before he could even stand up to greet me, a dog jumped up from its seat and ran up to me while it barked the whole way.
He got a dog?
The border collie puppy jumped up onto my legs as far as it could reach, which was only up to my thighs, and I scratched its little ears.
Griffin smiled. "Her name's Penny. She's literally the best dog in the entire world."
"So you got lonely without me?" I said.
"What can I say? I missed having a high-pitched voice barking at me all the time."
I laughed, and I looked up at him and the rest of the people there. Penny continued to jump on my legs, but there wasn't much weight on the little girl.
Griffin's party really wasn't one that we used to throw together; instead, it was a small get-together with several faces I recognized but didn't necessarily know. But there was one I knew. Elizabeth Tonkin.
He replaced me with a dog and another dog? Could people slap me in the face any harder?
"What the fuck is she doing here?" I asked and gestured in her direction.
"Relax. She's dating one of the guys on my pit crew. You remember Craig?" Griffin asked.
I let out a breath. I was getting a little too used to people finding me replaceable.
"Of course I do. He was the reason I had to stop fucking everyone in your garage," I said.
"Wait, you fucked everyone on Griffin's team?" Elizabeth asked.
"Well, that's the achievement I was going for, but I only got halfway through before they figured out what I was doing, and word spreads quickly between coworkers," I said.
"As well as venereal disease, apparently," Elizabeth said.
How fucking hilarious.
I walked over to where everyone was sitting, and Penny followed right on my ankles. She had stopped barking, but she wagged her tail as she ran between my feet. "You know, you sure have a lot of nerve to start talking shit even though you're the one who stole everything from me and started this," I said.
"I really don't want to have this argument again, Katie. I didn't steal anything from you. You lost your own job, and I replaced you. What the hell is so difficult to understand about that?" Elizabeth said.
It wasn't nearly that simple, though. Sure, she took my car and my crew, but she also took my spot in NASCAR and flipped it to the exact opposite of myself. She was someone who did as she was told and kept her personality locked up for only herself. There was nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that she tore down my legacy like I wasn't the reason she ever got a chance.
Before my falling out with RTR, she was racing in Europe, and when my spot opened up, she packed everything up and came home way faster than should have been possible.
"You know that's not what this is about," I said. A lump rose up in my throat, but I clenched my jaw and hoped that would hold me over for the moment.
"Then what is it about? Why do you blame me?" she asked.
I hesitated. She knew I had every reason not to like her, that she replaced my emotional, good driving with a shitty robotic version that hurt her own teammates. I didn't blame her for anything, but she took the pieces of what I destroyed and built something neither one of us wanted, but Truscott did.
I turned to Griffin instead of responding. "Can I fight her?"
"Not on the pine flooring. Were you raised in a goddamn barn?" Griffin said.
"I've told you this before, and I'll say it again. I looked up to you, Katie, but all you are is vindictive and jealous. If you're not getting your way, you hope no one gets their way," Elizabeth said.
"There's something insulting about getting piss-tested all the time. Why the hell doesn't it bother you?" I asked.
"Because I know I'm not drunk, on drugs, or pregnant," Elizabeth said.
Or because she was a goddamn idiot who didn't mind getting treated like shit just to keep her spot.
I wasn't really sure what I was expecting when I finally returned to Baton Rouge, but something didn't live up to it, and I was left feeling like something was missing. Maybe it was just that I was tired and didn't even feel like sitting through the get-together, but I just wanted to be left alone to die or some shit.
I sat down on the arm of the chair Griffin was sitting in. "Do you have my spare key here? I gave mine to my friend Annie, but she decided to go to New York instead."
"She just decided that?" Griffin asked.
"I can't complain about it. She's the type of person who refuses to put herself first, and I'm happy she's finally doing what she wants, even if she doesn't exactly know what it is yet," I said.
Griffin nodded. "It's somewhere. I don't remember where the hell I would have put it, but it's somewhere."
"Then can I just take a nap upstairs in the guest room?"
"Sure. I kind of turned it into a playroom for Penny, but as long as you don't mind her toys all over the floor, it'll be fine."
I really couldn't care less about Penny's toys, so I headed up there. I had woken up in the guest room after partying a little too hard on multiple occasions, but I didn't mind sharing a room with a dog. She really was a sweet little puppy.
In the middle of the floor, there was the bed, and all around it were Penny's toy cheeseburgers and bones and stuffed ducks. An odd selection, but she clearly was a dog of taste. As I headed over to the bed, I stepped on one, and it let out a sad squeak.
Same, little squeaky cheeseburger.
I had done everything that I set out to do. Annie was no longer stuck in Josiah's claws, I was back in Baton Rouge ready to schmooze my way back into a car, and all the pressure fell on me to make or break Team Sacrilege's run in the tournament. Everything was exactly the way I thought I wanted it, and yet somehow, there was still an emptiness in my stomach.
Before I could sulk any longer, Penny came trotting into the room and hopped up on the bed. Maybe she heard the squeak from before, or maybe she just thought I was the shit. Either one was fine with me.
"Oh, honey, I don't know if you're allowed up here," I said, but she couldn't understand me. Instead of putting her back on the floor, I pet her tiny tummy. "At least you like me."
I wasn't sure who the hell decided that diamonds were a woman's best friend, but that shit wasn't true. Dogs were way better than any rock.
"Penny, come here," Griffin said as he showed up in the doorway, but the dog didn't move from next to me. "Is she bothering you?"
"Nope. We're best friends now," I said.
"She's probably gotten used to your scent from that bed since she loves playing either here or outside."
"My scent is still on this bed? How often do you wash the sheets?" I asked.
Griffin shrugged. "I don't know. How much are you supposed to?"
"That's fucking disgusting." I stood up, but Penny didn't seem to mind that revelation and stayed put. I scratched behind her little ear. "I'm sorry I ruined your party. I just really don't like Elizabeth."
"You didn't ruin anything, Katie, but I kinda want to know why you're here. I thought you had some big robot fighting thing coming up or something."
"Well, I did, but we kind of had an argument, and I guess Drake thought that while Josiah and I are both shitty, he brings more to the team. I didn't really know where else I could go, so I'm here now."
Maybe out of all of it, the worst part was that I thought I finally got Drake to open up to me right before that. It was all I wanted for months (besides to go back to racing), and he kissed me and pushed me out the door.
For someone who was so scared that I would play with his heart, he did a damn good job doing it to me.
"They kicked you out?" Griffin finally said.
"Kind of. I was already going to go, but Josiah said that he couldn't stand being on a team with me anymore, so that sealed the deal. Shame on me for getting emotionally invested in them." The first tear fell down my face, and although I wasn't sure who in the fuck authorized that shit, I sat back down on the bed and put my face in my hands. There wasn't anything Griffin could do, so why the hell was I crying in front of him?
"You know, I didn't actually get the chance to tell you that I missed you and that I'm glad you're here," Griffin said. "It's too quiet around here and at the track without you."
That sure as hell wasn't true since I already had plenty of permanent hearing damage from the engines of the cars, but I let myself smile.
He took a seat next to me. "I figured you were upset since you didn't actually try to fight Elizabeth and decided that a nap was better than my shitty party."
"Yeah, this doesn't really live up to what we've gotten used to," I said with a slight chuckle.
"Just figured I'd thank my guys for a good season. Chances are we're not gonna win at Talladega, and we had a good run. It just wasn't enough, and that's my fault," he said.
"What do you mean? You literally won there in the spring."
"After the first and second-place cars wrecked."
I rolled my eyes. "After the second-place car was a dick and wrecked the first-place one, if we're being accurate here. You can't go into a must-win race thinking that you're not gonna win. I'm pretty sure that's the easiest way to fail before you even start."
That was how I approached life, and sometimes I was wrong. But that meant that sometimes I was right, and those were the best reasons to keep moving forward.
Team Sacrilege made their choice, and I made mine.