by Amy Sparling
“They’re lucky crutches,” Jace explains to me when I give them both a weird look. “They’ve got me through a few broken bones and Jett’s used them twice.”
“Good ol’ Crutchy,” Jett says, winking at me. “I named them when I was five and Dad had broken his ankle. I wasn’t very creative.”
I roll my eyes and open the truck’s back door to retrieve our luggage, but Jace stops me. “I’ll get this stuff, hon.”
“Thanks,” I tell him, then I rush ahead to open the back door for Jett.
“You’re the best,” Jett tells me as he crutches on by me and into the house. He leans forward and gives me a kiss, then hobbles into the kitchen. I can hear Brooke crying from another room, which is probably where Bayleigh is.
Upstairs, Jett settles onto his futon, with snacks and drinks next to him and a video game loaded into the Xbox.
“I think you’re all set,” I say, surveying the scene I’ve put together.
Jett leans his head back on the futon and gives me a sultry look. “I’m missing one girlfriend,” he says, patting his lap. “Come here.”
We make out a little bit, but I cut it short because tomorrow is Monday and my first college classes start. I scoot off his lap and sit on the futon next to him, keeping my arm wrapped around his shoulder.
“I love you, but I need to go.”
He frowns, jutting out his bottom lip. “But I’ve heard that kissing makes bones heal faster.”
“I’d love to see the scientific evidence on that,” I say.
He grins and slides a hand up my leg, his fingers sliding under the hem of my shorts. “Let’s do our own research.”
My stomach flutters. I pull him closer and kiss him, parting my lips and letting his tongue do some exploring. His touch sends a fire up my belly, and before I know it, I’m allowing myself to be pulled onto his lap once again, my body grinding against his, his hands feeling up my shirt. I grab his hair and lightly tug his head back, breaking our kiss.
“I have to go,” I say, grinning at him.
“I know,” he says. He grabs my butt and rocks me against him. “You’re free to leave whenever you want.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. It’s after ten at night and I have school at nine in the morning. “I love you,” I say just before I climb off him and try to gain my composure.
“Love you more,” he says back, giving me a wink.
Downstairs, Bayleigh stops me before I leave.
“What’s up?” I say, trying to look cool and not like I just made out with her son.
She shifts Brooke onto her hip and gives me a sad smile. “Just wanted to give you a little warning about Jett. He’s just like his dad,” she says, rolling her eyes in this sarcastic way. “When he gets hurt, he’s going to be pissed that he can’t ride, and it might feel like he’s mad at you. But he’s not, okay?”
My brows pull together. “He seemed okay just now.”
“That’s good,” she says. “But six weeks is a long time. If he starts becoming an asshole, just know it’s not you that he’s mad at. He’s mad at himself, okay? Don’t be afraid to put him in his place if he starts being an ass.”
I smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good,” she says, patting my arm. “Have a good night. And good luck at school tomorrow!”
Chapter 6
Jett
The weird thing about a broken leg is that it doesn’t hurt so much after a couple of weeks. My arms hurt more than anything because they’re sick of using the crutches, but my foot feels okay. Too bad I can’t actually walk on it yet. I have four more weeks before I can get a walking cast and even then, the doctor doesn’t want me riding a bike just yet.
This whole situation sucks balls.
Keanna’s taking college classes, so to fill the void, I’ve been doing her job at The Track almost every single day. All I have to do is sit behind the counter and deal with customers, and it’s boring as shit, but at least I feel useful. The worst part is when my friends come in to ride and I know they’ll be having a blast on the track while I’m stuck here, immobile and wasting away.
I hit the gym in the evenings, working on arms, chest, and back so I can stay at least a little bit in shape. I do everything I can to stay busy, but it doesn’t help much.
By October, I’m fighting a losing battle with depression. All I want to do is hit the track. Feel the bike underneath me, the motor roaring in my ears. I want to travel again and revel in the feel of being the first racer to fly over the finish line jump. But now Clay gets that privilege and I’m stuck at home.
The boredom is driving me crazy. I don’t know how Keanna handles working at The Track so much. Just a couple of weeks being stuck behind this counter drives me crazy. I don’t want to be inside, I want to be outside, on the track.
It is nice that I get to see my girlfriend more often, but she’s stressed with midterms and college essays and reading assignments, so she’s kind of in her own world.
On a particularly cold October day, everyone must decide to stay home because I’m stuck sitting here in the front office for three hours without seeing a single person. My mom is at home with Brooke, and Dad is giving a lesson. I’m not sure where Keanna’s parents are, but she’s in class right now, a three hour lecture on history.
I doodle on a notebook until I run out of paper and then I look around the office for something else to distract me. But there is nothing, and that heavy weight of depression that’s been lurking around the corner is closer than ever.
I can’t ride and that pisses me off.
I’m bored, and that pisses me off.
My leg isn’t healed yet, and that also pisses me off.
But none of these things are what’s causing the depression. I think it finally hit me, something I guess I’ve known my whole life but always chose to ignore. This…this boring empty day is exactly what my life would be if I didn’t have motocross.
While Keanna is getting an education and making something of herself, I’ve got nothing. What would happen if I suddenly wasn’t able to ride anymore? If I got fired, or injured too badly? I’d become a huge burden on my family. Keanna would have no reason to be with me anymore. She’d have lots of opportunities to meet college guys who are better than me and can give her the life she deserves.
I let these thoughts consume me for the next hour. Anxiety fills my thoughts, followed quickly by anger and depression. Without motocross, I am truly nothing. I can’t go off and create my own dirt bike track like my dad did. I have no skills, no talents. Just motocross.
I turn to the work computer and pull up the local college’s website. They list all of their academic programs, but nothing really stands out to me. I don’t want to study the earth, or do financial accounting, or produce music albums. I don’t want to do any of this crap.
A deeper level of panic hits me when I realize that I can’t even come up with a backup plan if everything about college doesn’t fit me. There’s not a single college degree that interests me. Plus, where would I find the time for a fallback education in case motocross doesn’t work out?
What the hell have I been thinking all my life?
Only idiots think they can become famous and keep that fame forever. I need money. A career. A backup plan.
I’m so stressed I’ve developed a migraine. I look under the front desk for some aspirin, but I can’t find any. My crutches are next to me, but the thought of hobbling down to the break room sounds like too much effort for my already exhausted brain. I lower my head to the counter and close my eyes, letting the cool stainless steel surface wash over my forehead.
“Babe?” Keanna’s voice is soft and tender, just like she is in real life.
My eyes flutter open. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep, but my migraine is still here, thundering around in my skull. Keanna peers at me, looking overly concerned, just like she’s been since the day I got hurt. Her hand touches my back.
“Are you okay
?”
I shrug and sit up slowly, the pain in my head rocketing around with the movement. “Just bored.”
Her lips press into a thin line. “You look sick.”
“My head hurts,” I add.
“What about your leg? Do you need some pain meds?”
I nod. “Please.”
What I don’t ask for is enough alcohol to knock me into a drunken stupor. Being able to forget about all of my flaws sounds like a perfect idea right now.
“Baby, you seem weird,” Keanna says a few minutes after watching me down my pain meds. She’s sitting on the stool next to me. We can’t leave since The Track is technically still open for a few hours, even though no one is here.
I look over at her, a lie balancing on the tip of my tongue. It’d be easy to tell her that I’m fine. That nothing at all is wrong. But she’d know better.
“Just thinking about life,” I mutter, taking another sip of the water she’d brought me.
“Baby…” her hand slides up and down my back. “You’ll be back on your bike in no time.”
“Yeah, until I get hurt again.”
Her hand stops moving. “You don’t get hurt very often, Jett. It probably won’t happen again.”
I shake my head. “You don’t know that. It’s all chance. But it’s worse than chance…chance is that you might get hurt in a car wreck. What I do is choose to ride a dirt bike all the time, and that’s a much more dangerous thing than driving.” I slam the bottle of water down so hard it makes her jump.
“What I’ve chosen is a career that will most definitely get me hurt over and over again.” I look at her, noticing for the first time that she’s wearing the dark purple scarf I’d bought her from my trip to Washington. I swallow. “What happens when I don’t recover in a few weeks? What happens when I fuck up my knee or my wrist or my head, and I can’t ride anymore?”
Her gaze darkens. “Baby…you’re just thinking about the worst right now. It’s going to be okay.”
I shake my head and stare out the window in front of us, looking out at the empty fields across the road. “Underneath this motocross thing, I’m a nobody. A total loser.”
“You are not,” she says, standing off her stool. “You’re an amazing person. So what that your leg is broken? You’ll heal and you’ll be fine.”
I shrug. “I just can’t stop thinking about how one day I might not recover fully and I’ll be off the team. One day will come where I can’t race motocross anymore. What will I do then? You’ll have a fancy degree and a good job and I’ll be stuck being the idiot loser that you have to take care of.”
She laughs. It’s a little chuckle at first, but then she bursts into pure, unfiltered laughter. “Oh my God, Jett…” she puts a hand to her chest and forces herself to stop laughing.
I sit up straighter and cross my arms over my chest while I wait for her to stop laughing.
“You think I’ve got this shit figured out? I have no idea what I’m doing, either. Nobody does. I don’t even think most adults know what they’re doing.”
I frown. “How are you so cool with this? I’m potentially a big failure with no career prospects to fall back on.
She shakes her head. “That’s not true. You have this place, The Track. You have experience and skills and fame. You could become a reporter on motocross, or a race announcer, or the manager of a team like Marcus. You could do all kinds of things.” She reaches for my hand. “Besides, baby. You still have a lot of racing ahead of you.”
“What if I don’t?” I say softly, as I stare at her hand in mine. “What if the next crash is what does me in? Stops me from racing forever?”
She shrugs. “What if a meteor crashes through the roof in three seconds and kills us both?”
Everything is quiet for a few seconds. I look up at the ceiling, then exhale. “Glad that didn’t happen.”
She punches me in the arm. “See? Everything is fine.”
I reach out and run my fingers down her chin, taking in how purely beautiful she is and how she has the ability to be calm and serious when I’m freaking out. I breathe in deeply and then pull her toward me for a kiss.
“Sorry I freaked on you, baby doll,” I whisper against her lips. “I’m just not having a good day.”
“Not every day is a good one,” she says, pressing her forehead to mine. “But no matter what, I’ll always be here with you. Sink or swim, win or lose.”
I grin, and some of my fear washes away beneath the power of her loving gaze. I wrap my arms around her and tug her toward me. She gets off her stool and positions herself between my legs, her hands finding their way around my chest.
“We’re soul mates,” she says. “Where you go, I go.”
“What if where I go is Loserville?”
She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter where we are. As long as we’re together.”
Chapter 7
Keanna
I can’t believe I thought my college history class would be easy. This is all the internet’s fault. My instructor, Mr. Garrett, has high ratings on ratemyprofessor.com, and everyone says he’s a super easy teacher and it’s not hard at all to get an A. That’s the exact reason I chose his class when I signed up.
Now that I’m a few weeks into the semester, I should leave a bad review on all of those former students because they are totally wrong. Mr. Garrett is nice enough, but his entire curriculum involves listening to him lecture on various unrelated history stories and then taking a test over a million vocabulary words. I spent the first couple of weeks of class wasting my time taking notes on his lectures. They literally don’t matter at all. I think he just likes to lecture to hear himself talk.
At the end of the week, he gives us a ten page (or longer) print out of just history vocabulary words, and that’s what the test is based on. And then the text is the very next day. I wish he would give us the vocab words at the start of the week, so I could spend my hours in class studying instead of listening to him go on and on about history.
I adjust positions on my bed. My legs and back ache from sitting up so long hunched over my study sheet. I straighten my legs and stretch my arms over my head.
There’s a soft knock on my door.
“Come in,” I call out.
The door opens, and I look over.
And scream.
Jett bursts into laugher and pulls up the hideous Halloween monster mask, revealing his normal face underneath. “Oh my God, I got you,” he says, leaving the mask on top of his hair while he crutches himself into my room.
My heart is still racing from the split second of total fear, and I put a hand to my chest, taking a deep breath. “I will get you back,” I say.
He winks. “I’d love to see you try.”
The bed sinks when he sits down next to me. He pulls off the mask and tosses it to the floor, then leans his crutches against my dresser.
“Still studying?”
“Yeah,” I say with a groan. “I’m sick of it, but I only know about half of these terms so far.”
Jett takes my vocabulary list and looks it over. “When’s your test?”
“Tomorrow.”
“What? What kind of asshole gives a test on Halloween?”
I chuckle. “College classes don’t care what day it is.”
“That’s crap,” he says, frowning. He slides over to the foot of my bed and holds the list in front of him. “Do you want me to ask you the word or the definition?”
“You don’t have to study with me, babe.” I reach for the papers back, but he holds them out of my reach. “I’m serious. It’s super boring.”
He shrugs. “I’d rather be bored with you than bored without you.”
It’s a simple sentence, but it makes me blush a little. I love that he can still do this to me, make me feel special and wanted even after all these months of dating.
I lean back against my headboard and let him ask me the questions. We study until I’ve got them all memorized, at least enough that I’
ll be able to choose the definition off Mr. Garrett’s multiple choice test.
After our study session, I make some popcorn and bring it back up to my room, and Jett turns on Netflix. He leans his back against my headboard, his broken foot out in front of him like a large rock at the foot of my bed. I lean against his chest, my feet curled up underneath me. I love the way his arm holds onto my shoulders, and how every time I lean against him, it’s like his arm is magnetized to hold onto me. He never forgets that I’m right here next to him.
“So my mom told me we’re on candy duty tomorrow,” Jett says.
“Try not to eat it all like you did last time,” I say, elbowing him in the stomach. He laughs.
“Do you think I can wear this mask?” He pulls it back over his head. It’s some kind of hairy monster with a snarling mouth. “Or will it be too scary for the little kids?” His voice is muffled from the mask.
I tilt my head. “You’ll be fine. I mean, it’s not much difference from how your normal face looks.”
“Oh, I’m going to get you for that one,” Jett says. He dives on top of me and begins tickling my sides. I squeal and fall back on my bed, struggling to get him off me. His creepy monster mask hovers over my face.
“I love you.”
I shake my head. “I’m afraid I can’t love a grotesque monster like you.”
He lifts up the mask, and his normal gorgeous face smiles down at me. “What about now?”
My lips slide to the side of my mouth and I take a long time, like I’m thinking it over. “I guess,” I say with a sly grin. “But I mean, I’m not seeing much difference from when you had the mask on.”
He kisses me. “Better sleep with one eye open, sweetheart. Me and this mask have a lot of scaring to do.”
He winks at me and I roll my eyes. “I can’t believe it’s already Halloween. Seems like this year just started.”
“Are you saying time flies when you’re spending it with me?” he asks with that cocky grin of his.
I grab his shoulders and pull him down for a kiss. “Something like that.”