by Mia Carson
I gunned the car out of the hotel courtyard and roared off, watching his hunched form retreat rapidly in my rearview mirror.
James
“Go ahead, fuck whoever you want,” Summer yelled at me. “It’s no surprise to me!”
She roared off and I just stood there, breathless, feeling like my heart was falling out of my chest. How could I have been so stupid? I looked around at the guests and staff pretending not to notice what had just happened, and there was Suzi.
“And you can be sure you won’t be getting any more of this,” she sang, indicating her body, loud enough for everyone to hear. Using all my restraint, I ignored her. Any sort of scene would not have done any good, so I signaled the valet over. I gave him a hundred dollar bill and told him he could have another if he got my car here in two minutes and had the hotel ship my luggage home for me. He raced off to bring my Maserati, and in one minute and fifty-seven seconds, I was on the road away from the Four Seasons. I felt like I might be staying at the Hyatt next year.
It was almost exactly 1700 miles between Austin and Monterey. That’s about twenty-four to twenty-five hours. Longer if I stopped for the night, which I planned to do, probably in Tucson. That was a lot of time to think. I was going to leave it all at that, but within fifty miles, I’d changed my mind. I wasn’t going to let us end like that. I couldn’t believe I’d hurt her so badly. I couldn’t believe she had come to find me, to give us a chance to be together, and I had blown it. I couldn’t just stop caring about her, wanting to be with her. I couldn’t let it end without fighting for her, so I made some phone calls from the road and managed to get Summer’s cell number. It took a few tries before she answered, and she hung up as soon as she realized it was me. I kept blowing up her phone until she actually picked up to talk to me.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“Summer, I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was being filmed.” Damn, that was a really lame-ass excuse. “I didn’t choose to be with them.”
“That’s not what it looked like to me.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. I just wanted to go to bed by myself. They were waiting for me.” I paused to give her a chance to say something. I took her silence as permission to continue. “Look, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I didn’t invite those girls into my room. I was tempted, but I couldn’t go through with it. They left really pissed off. Why do you think she showed you that video?”
“It didn’t look like you couldn’t go through with it,” she said quietly.
“If you’d watched for another few seconds, you’d have seen me walk out.”
The line was silent for a while. “How did she know to show it to me?” asked Summer eventually.
“I don’t know.” I really had no idea. “I told Suzi I couldn’t be with them because I thought I was in love with someone else, so maybe when you showed up looking for me, she put two and two together…”
“You think you’re in love with me?”
I didn’t want to have this conversation over the phone while I was doing ninety on the I-10.
“Listen, I’m heading back to California,” I told her. “I’ll be home in a couple of days. Can I fly you out there?”
There was another long pause. I had to fight to stay silent. “I don’t know, James. I have a lot to think about.”
“How about I call you when I get home?”
“I guess,” she said. She sounded so sad, and it hurt to hear that in her voice. She hung up, and I felt I should leave her alone for a while.
***
Ten or eleven hours later, I checked into the Ritz-Carlton overlooking Dove Mountain a few miles north of Tucson. I’ve always really enjoyed a good, long drive. I was worried that being able to think of nothing but Summer all the way here would be hard, but after our phone call, I felt much more optimistic. I knew she had a commitment phobia, and seeing me with those other girls couldn’t have helped, but she knew I suffered from the same thing. Additionally, I may have just accidentally said ‘I love you’ in a roundabout kind of way. That had to mean there was some hope for us, right?
So I spent the rest of the drive enjoying fond memories of Summer and planning ways to win her over. From my new hotel suite, I managed to get a hold of her office and the closest thing she had to an assistant. Of course, she wouldn’t give Summer’s address to me, but after I’d told her a wild, romanticized version of what happened this weekend, leaving out the al fresco sex and unplanned three-way, she agreed to help me. She sounded thrilled that Summer might finally begin a proper relationship, so I gave her the details of one of my credit cards and we planned some surprises.
The next day’s drive passed in a blur of excited thoughts about Summer, imagining her reactions and hoping I’d made the right decision. I hardly knew her. I knew she liked nice cars, expensive clothes, and good scotch. I knew she loved sex and got a kick out of not wearing underwear. I knew she hated racing and wasn’t keen on racers, but I didn’t know why. I hoped it would be fun to discover the answers to all these mysteries, but what if we weren’t compatible outside of a physical relationship? I got excited every time I thought about her, sure, but what about when the newness faded? What if she insisted, like I expected any girl to do, that I give up racing?
My hands began shaking on the steering wheel as I realized the depth of what we could be getting ourselves into and all the ways it could go wrong. It didn’t change my mind, but I was more nervous than ever.
Summer
Seeing James with those two sluts shouldn’t have upset me. From the start we’d talked about nothing but non-commitment, so why was I so broken up over him with someone else? It looked, too, that at about the same time he was with them, I was being disappointingly fucked by Derek. I think I’d call that being a hypocrite.
There were so many problems. It seemed so similar to how my father would have behaved, exactly how I would expect any man to behave. They were all capable of professing undying love and fidelity until some free pussy opened up right in front of them. I guess I shouldn’t have been upset.
It was just… I had never dared to dream I could be with someone. I never, ever considered letting my guard down with someone until James. And as soon as I did, look at what happened. Every expectation of being with an immature racer playboy was what I got. I felt foolish, stupid that I’d got my hopes up, an idiot for trusting someone, and that I had been right to keep myself at a distance from people all these years. Somehow, though, these realizations didn’t make me feel any better.
I called Geoffrey and told him I was suffering from something. I was sorry, blah, blah, blah, but the groundwork was laid for someone else to take on Dunlop. I needed to be away from that scene right now or I’d never be able to concentrate. A couple of days and they’d assign me another project, and then it would be business as usual. Back to my old, confident, fuck-me-and-get-out self.
My excuses to Geoffrey made, I decide to veg for the day. It had been a long time since I’d done that. Sure, I was likely to spend some of the time feeling sorry for myself or thinking about James, but the rest of the time I’d be eating chocolate, Skittles, or chips, drinking the occasional glass of Talisker eighteen-year-old, and binge-watching Game of Thrones.
I was doing just that when my cell phone rang. I sent it to voicemail because I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone, and I was enjoying watching some of the main characters being particularly despicable to each other. It rang again, an 831 area code. I had no idea where that was and was sure I didn’t know anyone there, so they could suck it. It rang again. That was it. Whoever it was clearly thought their issues were more important than mine, so I answered it to tell them otherwise.
“This had better be good,” I demanded.
“Summer.” It was him, and it sounded like he was driving. “Can I talk to you?”
“I don’t want to speak to you right now,” I said and hung up. Wow, I hadn’t expected to hear from him. I’d drawn a line emotionally through us, I
thought. Yet, an annoyingly large part of me was happy to hear his voice. So happy that I started shaking. Given these conflicting emotions, I wasn’t ready to decide how I felt just yet. I wanted to forget about everything for a while and figure out what to do another day, but my phone kept ringing. He was not going to let it be, so I let out a long breath to calm myself, steeled my nerves, and answered him.
I let him say what he needed to. It was hard to stay mad, considering I had had sex with someone else as well. And then, not directly, maybe even accidentally, he said he thought he was in love with me. My heart leapt. I sat up in bed and my breathing sped up to match the pounding in my chest. My head swam, and I couldn’t think about anything else, couldn’t listen to the other things he was saying.
I did make out that he asked me to visit him at his home in California. There was no way I could give him an answer to that right now, so I told him I’d think about it. We hung up, and I stayed still and quiet for a while, trying to decide what to do but failing every time my heart screamed at me to go see him. Part of me longed for him, longed for his touch, but another part of me was so scared, terrified about how this could turn out. The only thing was I couldn’t figure out if I was scared that we’d hurt each other or scared that we’d actually work as a couple.
The day drifted into the next, and I was woken around mid-morning by a knock at my door. It had to be a delivery, so I yelled to leave it on the porch. I was in no way presentable to the world, even to a UPS delivery man. I had to fix myself up, anyway, so I showered, put on some fresh, comfortable clothes, made some coffee and toast, and went out to see what had been left for me.
Waiting outside was a wicker basket containing two bottles, some small tins, and an envelope, all wrapped with a big red bow.
Really? If he was sending me gifts, he really had no idea who he was dealing with. Maybe we wouldn’t work as a couple after all. I brought it inside, set it on my kitchen counter, and stripped off the plastic wrap. I looked at a Lagavulin 37-year-old single malt and a bottle of The Balvenie 40-year-old— about ten thousand dollars’ worth of scotch. There was also a selection of fine cheeses and crackers and a white envelope. I opened it, and out fell an airplane ticket. One-way, first class, to Monterey via LAX.
I wasn’t about to let him buy me off with baubles and fancy gifts. I needed some time before I even thought about meeting him at his home, and I needed him to know I wasn’t the kind of girl who was impressed by shiny things. Part of me was actually a little angry that he thought presents might sway my decision, but I was impressed with his choice of gifts.
The next day, I went to work, but when I got home in the evening, my front lawn had been covered with flowers. I wasn’t a savage, so while flowers were a clichéd romantic gesture as far as I was concerned, I could appreciate their beauty. And the selection I’d come home to was astonishing. So many colors and forms…I didn’t know enough about them to know what they were, or how much they cost, but I knew they were expensive.
I felt like he genuinely wanted me for a second, but then I felt insulted again. I knew James was a wealthy playboy racer, but I was starting to wonder exactly how wealthy. If he was obscenely rich, which it looked like he might be, this seemed like just another example of how the rich thought they could buy whatever they wanted, including people’s feelings. If he could afford to send me ten thousand dollars’ worth of whisky, it meant that ten thousand dollars’ worth of whisky was no big deal to him, which made it basically worthless. I made a call.
“Are you home yet?” I asked him as soon as he answered.
“Yup, safe and sound.” He sounded so damn cocksure, like he was ready to receive a big ‘thank you’ and an ‘I love you.’
“Good,” I said, “then you have time to stop whatever other crap you have heading to my house.”
“What?” he sounded confused and disappointed. “You didn’t like the whisky? The flowers?”
“I’m not a hooker to be bought with your great wealth, James,” I spat at him. “I poured the scotch down the sink. I need you to come up with something real, not a gesture you can simply pay someone else to arrange.”
I hung up and turned my phone off. If we were going to have a relationship, I wasn’t going to let his money put him in a position of power. I needed to know he wasn’t going to treat me badly before I let him into my heart, and I needed him to know he wouldn’t be able to just say sorry and by me a rose if he did betray me. I wasn’t going to end up crying over him for days at a time like my mom did for my father.
I took the rest of the week off and left town. I headed across Texas towards the mountains, into New Mexico, and climbed up to Santa Fe. It was a good ten-hour drive through a lot of bare, scrub-covered fields broken up by small, poor towns that had grown up around enormous grain silos. But it was also beautiful, with mountains in the distance on three sides. I loved driving through the old Santa Fe town where the buildings took on the orange clay, adobe shapes and looked like nothing else in this country.
I reached my destination and parked outside one of those picture-perfect houses and rang the doorbell. Mom answered, her little white west-highland terrier, Jasper, under her arm, and smiled. She looked stunning—still glamorous, but then, she was only in her mid-forties. Her hair was still long and black, like mine, and her figure still trim. Jasper barked excitedly as she invited me in.
We caught up for a little while, then went out for dinner. Mom suggested a drink while we waited. I’d brought the Lagavulin 37 to give to her, and she was mightily impressed—as if I’d really pour either of those bottles down the sink. At least James would be pleased if he knew we’d enjoyed them. Damn, it was smooth.
“Well…” She smiled, enjoying her drink. “Whoever gave you this stuff, if you don’t want him, send him to me!”
“That’s what I needed to talk to you about, Mom,” I said. “I think I might actually want to be with this guy, but I’m scared.” And I told her everything. I’ve always been able to tell her everything. I needed her to tell me what to do.
“So, he has great taste in whisky, exceptional taste in women… What’s there to think about?”
“He’s a motorcycle racer,” I said. Somehow, I’d forgotten to include that point earlier.
Mom took a long breath, mulling over this news. “You know,” she began, pouring herself another three-hundred-dollar glassful, “some of the best years of my life were with a racer.”
“And some of your worst years,” I reminded her.
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
“You don’t remember the years of fighting with Dad?” I asked her. It was a stupid question. Of course she did.
“I remember fighting, sure,” she said, “but I also remember the feeling when he came home. How happy we all were in those weeks between races. I think your mind remembers a lot more fighting than there actually was.”
“But you were always arguing because he was screwing around.”
“No, we weren’t. We argued because I thought he was screwing around. I could get possessive back then. I would have a couple of drinks and start a fight because he wanted to go to races without us as you got older. He swore it was because he didn’t want you there in case he got hurt. I would accuse him of just not wanting us around, cramping his style.” My mom stared at a picture of my dad on the wall, sitting on his race car, smiling, and waving.
“But he was unfaithful, right?” I asked. I’d always assumed I knew what happened with my parents.
“I never had any proof,” she admitted. “He never acted like he was. He never tried to spend any more time away from us than he had to. I spoke to your Uncle Reggie”—he was not my uncle really. Reggie was Dad’s team boss—“years later. I asked him, and he said he never saw your dad with anyone but us.”
“So he really just wanted to keep me from seeing anything bad?” I muttered. I felt crushed. How could I have harbored this resentment against him for so long when all he did was look out for me?
“That’s right, angel.” She smiled at me again. “Remember, racers are just people. People that do an unreal job. They’re not more or less arrogant, immature, or anything else than the rest of the planet. Sure, some are cheating assholes, but some are nice guys. The worst thing about dating a racer is you both know he’s going to get hurt at some point, and no matter what you say, he won’t admit to it.”
“So I’ll never get him to quit racing?” I asked her.
“Not if you want to keep him. He’ll have to quit on his own,” she said. “You might persuade him to quit, but he’ll hate you for it eventually.”
So all this time I’d assumed the worst about people like James based on some misunderstood behavior of my father’s. I felt, simultaneously, like a great weight lifted off me and a terrible hole grew in my chest. I could be free, free to love and enjoy life with James, but it hurt when I thought about the way I must have made him feel. What if I’d driven him away? All my resentment towards him because he was a racer was unfounded, yet I’d been kicking him for it all along.
Later that night, as I lay in bed, it all sank in. I hated myself for misjudging my father. I cursed myself for projecting that onto James, a man I could be in love with. Tears rolled down my face as I tried to get my head around all the choices I’d made in my life, all the people I must have hurt, thanks to these walls I’d kept myself behind.
***
I stayed with my mom until Sunday, then headed back to Austin. I was trying to pluck up the courage to tell James how I felt about him, but I had no idea where to start, what to say, or if he was even still interested in me. I felt like shit for not responding better to his gifts, but above all, I wanted him to call and tell me he still wanted me. I desperately wanted to call him and tell him I couldn’t wait to see him, but that last part of me wouldn’t allow it. I still didn’t want to show weakness, and I wanted to be chased.