One For The Road - Chapter 48: Chapter 48

"You have some concerns?" I asked. "Well, I can assure that I thoroughly enjoy winning and making sure everyone knows that I'm—"
Moretti cut me off. "It's not that we think you can't win. It's that your focus seems to be somewhere else most of the time."
"Like where?"
"Yourself, usually." He paused for a moment. "And I'm only saying this because I believe we can have a good working relationship in the near future. I just need assurance that you'll give everything to win."
"Everything?"
There were a few standards I had, like not wrecking someone for a win. I had been on the other side, and it was easy to get over the hurt of losing, but there was something that always lingered in my mind at a place like Talladega. It wasn't because I couldn't win. Instead, it was because that track always took something from me.
And for fuck's sake, I was at Talladega to support Griffin first, and then I decided to make the most of my time and give this guy a moment to talk to me. He had an empty car to fill for the next season, and I was in no rush to get back behind the wheel.
Well, except I was, but he didn't need to know that I was desperate.
"Well, not everything necessarily, but it's important to us that we know that you'll comply with the rules," he continued.
"Is this about the drug testing? Because all I'm asking is that it's done fairly and not just to catch me with something in my system, which you won't find."
"Would you be willing to do one now?"
I bit down on my lip and a piece of skin flaked off. "You've gotta be fucking joking."
He shook his head.
I really was a goddamn idiot for believing that everything would be different this time around. But this man didn't know me. He only knew what everyone wanted him to think about me.
But instead of losing my shit, I smiled. I needed a goddamn job before I started bitching like that again. "I would. I'll do it right now."
He rose his eyebrows. "That's reassuring." No sarcasm, just surprise.
It was almost like the only thing I was addicted to was everyone else's bullshit.
"Well, thank Christ, because I never know what's the right thing to say anymore," I muttered.
"We don't have access to all of the testing at the moment, but I'll take your word for it for now. Like I said, it's reassuring that it seems you've learned from what happened with Roger Truscott," he said.
Learned? What the fuck did I learn? To be nice to sponsors who had money?
"I also wanted to ask you about what you've been doing in your time off," he continued.
That was much more answerable. "It hasn't really been time off since I was just driving a robot in Canada, but that's over."
"You don't sound as convinced as you did with everything else you've told me."
And maybe I wasn't convinced, but I had to let that go. I surrounded myself with options, and there came a time when I had to pick one of them.
If the next time I saw Josiah we were both burning in hell, there wouldn't possibly be a happier ending to that shit show, but Annie was a completely different story. And Drake was somewhere in between.
The room turned into a furnace, and either I died on the spot and was waiting for Satan to open the firey gates to hell or I was about to fucking puke.
"Katie?" Moretti said.
I looked up at him.
I wasn't going to hell. What the fuck was I thinking?
"Are you okay?"
I shook my head. "Of course I am."
Before I could make myself look like a drunken idiot, I got up from my seat and slunk outside just in case I was about to throw up. While the trailer was air-conditioned, the open Talladega afternoon air was about a hundred degrees cooler.
That could have gone better.
It sure as hell was hilarious that if I didn't have that meeting with Andre Moretti, I probably would have been fucking hammered and enjoying the race, but even though I wasn't, there was no way in hell my reputation wasn't going to sway his interpretation.
But it wasn't like I could go back in there, tell him that the thought of committing to leaving Drake and Annie behind made me sick, and ask him to let me drive the car just for fun when February came around. No. That opportunity was gone.
I may have failed, but it was on my terms. And that was the one thing I took pride in: being able to fail my way.
I turned to the trailer. Fuck you. Fuck that goddamn boiling garbage shit hole.
I couldn't even sit down at the side of Griffin's treadmill as he jogged a warmup before lifting and tell him that I fucked up again. And he would assure me that I didn't fuck everything up, but I wouldn't listen because I was too busy staring at his forearms, and he would laugh once he figured it out. But that couldn't happen. He was too busy having everything I couldn't.
Before I could head back to Griffin's pit box to watch the rest of the race, the door to the trailer swung open.
"Katie?"
I looked over at Moretti without a word. That friendly vibe still hadn't disappeared. Strange.
"Are you okay?"
I shrugged. "I don't know what the hell is wrong with me. I guess I just got overheated or something."
"If you ever want to prove to the world what you already know, you have to get out of your own head. You know you can drive. You know you can win here. You have to stop overthinking and putting pressure on yourself. God knows there's enough of it already."
There was no one who knew it more than me that I was actually the world's biggest underthinker, but I nodded anyway. He was right that I knew I could win. But was it on Team Moretti? I had tricked myself into thinking that with RTR and Sacrilege, and that didn't end well for anyone.
"I should probably head back to the sixty-six's pit box now. It's a must-win situation, and I want to be there to support him no matter what happens," I said
"You're still friends with him?" Moretti asked.
I nodded. "Of course. If you want the truth, we're a hell of a lot more than that."
It wasn't exactly a secret, but it still wasn't his business. If he was willing to work with me, I would have to be a complete asshole not to meet him in the middle.
I was human, after all. I needed something to do to keep myself busy and alive.
"It's nice to know you have a sense of what's important," he said.
What in the actual fuck did he hear about me? I wasn't a monster.
But if I had to be positive about it all, at least we were getting all these surprises out of the way now. Apparently, it was easy to think of someone like me as a hedonist without an ounce of substance in her heart. Everything I did fed into that and there was no one to blame but me, according to Truscott, but he always seemed to forget that I was a person and not just a piece in his fucked-up machine of a team.
Everyone thought they knew me by my Instagram photos or by what I puked out when someone shoved a camera in my face and asked me how I felt about the most recent race I lost. There were very few people who knew a damn thing about me, and that list was Griffin, Annie, Drake, and a few others.
But I just had to stop putting pressure on myself. That was just what I needed to hear. Thanks.
Everyone was entitled to their opinion about me, but most of the time, they were basing it on something that wasn't me and were incredibly wrong.
Just before I headed back to Griffin's pit box, I gave Moretti a nod. "I hope we can work something out in the near future. It's not a secret that I need a job next season, that's for damn sure."
"We'll be in touch," he said, and I made my way back to the track.
Since Talladega was one of the most chaotic and unpredictable races NASCAR had, it was the perfect one to make sure that no one knew who would be in the final eight cars for The Chase to the Championship. The drivers with either a win or that were in the top eight in points moved on to the next round, and since Griffin was some fifty points below the cutoff line, it was obviously a race he had to win.
He won my must-win race at Talladega, and maybe he could pull it off again.
Superspeedways were famous, obviously, for their high speeds and huge wrecks from too many cars all clumped together as they flew around the track. It was why people loved places like Daytona or Talladega, and there was a certain prestige to any wins there. Humans liked destruction and devastation (of course, I was no exception), and when they told me that they watched the races for the crashes, I just smiled and nodded. It was easy to forget that there were people in those cars.
There were two lines of cars going a hundred and eighty-five miles an hour around the track, and even though my ears were damaged beyond repair, I put on a pair of earplugs to save what little hearing I had left.
The sound of speed rumbled in my chest and down my legs. It was part of the reason I fell in love with the sport in the first place, and even though there were a few people who told me to sit down and pick flowers, I liked to think that most people thought there was nothing like the enthusiasm of a young girl.
On the track, the outside lane seemed to be the faster choice at the moment, and the ten car led that pack back to the start-finish line. Griffin was holding his spot in fourth place. It was way too early to get desperate, and the trophy for Talladega was an iron monument to patience and finesse. It weighed just about as much as I did, and the one in Griffin's designated trophy room would look fantastic with a twin.
There were still a few laps remaining in the first stage of the race, and even though the points Griffin would get from being in fourth place wouldn't be anywhere near enough to qualify him to the next round, the further back in the pack he was, the more likely it was to get caught up in trouble. If he wrecked, his day and season were finished without the success he expected from himself and his car.
He was going to win, but even if he didn't, I'd still keep him around, probably.
His crew chief was on my right, and he and the lead engineer pointed to something on one of the screens. Griffin talked about his team quite a bit, but I never actually remembered his crew chief's name unless Griffin said it. They hadn't worked together nearly as long as Paul and I did, but they sure as hell were a winning combination.
When the stage ended and the track quieted down, I was going to use the lull to say hi to my former crew chief, even though he was Elizabeth's now. It wasn't his fault that he worked for the ninety-five team and not just me, but he was too good for her. Hell, he was probably wasting his talents working with me.
Winning was a team effort, though, and someone needed to act as the driver's psychologist, bad news-messenger, and tough decision-maker. I was just glad I had a chance of stealing him back to my new team with Moretti.
Of course, it was still a hypothetical team, but Andre Moretti said that we'd be in touch.
I smiled. I hadn't fucked that up nearly as bad as I thought I did.
Tyler Bailey crossed the start-finish line first, making him the stage one winner at the Talladega fall race, and although he didn't have a win in the Round of Eight yet, he was almost completely a lock to make it to the next round on points.
Gross.
But when Griffin passed him for the lead eventually, it would make it a little more special for both him and me. Because fuck Tyler.