Rocky Road

by Anna Cove

  "Fine." I slapped the arm of my chair. "God, you two are terrible."

  "Yes." Billie pumped a fist and raised her hand toward Tanya. Tanya met it with a slap.

  I sighed. I couldn't help but join in their glee. Despite the sticky wet lemonade at my hip, despite my casts, despite it all—I was going on a trip. I could still live. My heart thrummed with life and my brain swirled with anticipation of what was to come. Sure, traveling might be harder than remaining my bed all day, but so what? It was a new adventure. And when had I ever shied away from adventure before?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BILLIE

  I went right from the airport to the home base office. The ride there was alternately beautiful and ugly, full of highways and then forests. Then I fell asleep, missing the rest of the ride.

  When I arrived at the cement building doubling as home base, before I even finished paying the driver, my father stepped out of his Camaro and charged toward me. I contemplated asking the driver to take me somewhere safe, but I would have to face my father eventually. I was old and wise enough to know it would only get worse if I ran.

  The car door closed behind me with a slam, taking with it the peace I had found with Krysta.

  "Good, you're not dead," my father said. "Where have you been?"

  "My friend was in an accident. I went to see her," I said levelly. The plane ride had left me feeling stiff, the nap in the car a little muddled. Seeing my father made my insides stiffen as well.

  "Which friend?"

  "You don't know her," I said, crossing my arms. I didn't want him to know about Krysta. She was mine. "Look, I know you're going to want to grill me, but I did what I had to do, okay? I'm thirty. I get to make these decisions now."

  "Sure." My father examined his fingernails. The calmer he looked the more I had to worry about what came next, and right now, he was all cool calm. "You do recognize that you have to deal with the consequences of your actions though, right?"

  "What consequences?" I swallowed down the saltiness rising in my throat. Had Ed thrown me off the team? He'd been the one to suggest I go, after all.

  "Your mechanic Amanda seems to be trying to replace you."

  I scoffed. "She would never do that."

  "I wouldn't be so sure. In fact, Ed mentioned something to me the other day implying you might be on the outs. You could lose your position like that, you know." He snapped his fingers. "No other team will take you on after this. They all see you've lost your edge."

  My edge. My edge. It was all about the edge. What the fuck was that anyway? You couldn't exercise to achieve your edge. You couldn't find your edge. It was this elusive stupid thing. "You're making a big deal out of nothing. I suggested Amanda to take my place while I was gone. She's helping me out."

  My father folded my arms and shook his head, his green eyes wide and magnified more by his thick glasses. "After all we've given up for you. All those racing fees. Everything."

  My stomach dropped. My throat closed. The air seemed to thin around me. "I've done the best I can."

  "I'm not sure your best is good enough."

  I turned away from him so he wouldn't see my face crumble and wrenched open the door. It was as if, after my time with Krysta, I'd lost the carefully curated armor I'd developed over the years and he'd found a way through. It sent my mind tumbling, my throat closing.

  Why would he say such a thing? He knew I could do this… didn't he? He had believed in me when I was twelve. So what was with all this talk lately? He was my manager. Weren't managers supposed to support?

  Heat rose in my cheeks as I turned back to him. "What are you saying? Are you saying I should quit?"

  "I'm saying you should fight for your spot. Right now. Look."

  I turned to where my father was pointing. Ed was watching someone in the simulation machine all the way across the hanger-sized building.

  A burning sensation spread across my chest, followed by a sinking as I strode over to the simulator. It was Amanda in the driver's seat. I could see her sleek blonde ponytail peeking out. Neither had noticed me yet. I slowed and watched Ed's reaction.

  "Yes," he said on a whisper. "You've got it. Last corner. Oh, God, you're amazing," he said.

  Spots formed in front of my eyes and my breathing sped. My God, my father was right. What had her time been that he had reacted that well? Sure, I'd been the one to suggest he look into Amanda as another driver for the team, but I hadn't thought she would be good enough to warrant that kind of praise. Nor had I expected my job to be in jeopardy because of it. I dropped my bag to the floor, not bothering to cushion its fall.

  Ed's head snapped to me. "You're back."

  He seemed happier than usual, lighter. He smiled, looking, for once, like a normal old guy rather than a shrewd race team owner.

  "What's her lap time?" I asked, trying to keep my voice even, though it vibrated with controlled anger.

  "19.54," Amanda said, beaming. She had lifted herself from the cockpit and was leaning against the machine, looking like a fucking model.

  "Yippee," I said, slipping into a dull tone. I couldn't help it. A mixture of emotions crowded my chest. What if Ed saw more potential in her, even though she was less experienced, and chose her for the rest of the races? What would I do then? What would my life be without IndyCar? Who would I be? Without it, I was boring. A nobody. The pain in my stomach throbbed. Maybe it had been there all along due to the threat of losing my career. Had I misread it all this time? I mean, just thinking about watching from the sidelines made me want to vomit. "Let me try," I said.

  As I crossed the distance to the simulator, I wiped my mind clean like a white board. Thoughts of Krysta, thoughts of my exhaustion, thoughts of Amanda, it all went away. Everything narrowed to this moment.

  The simulation started, and I fell into the world in front of me. I passed between two cars, hit the perfect angles on the curves, floored the acceleration on my car, never letting up. I only checked my lap times when I was finished, and when I did, I saw one at 19.45 seconds, just above the current records at the Phoenix raceway.

  "Yes," I said, stepping out the car, my heart pumping, my body full of adrenaline. "That's how a pro does it."

  "That's my girl." Ed smacked me on the back. "You're really back now."

  "Do I still have a job?" I asked, my hands shaking with excitement.

  "Of course you do," Ed said, his smile beaming.

  My father gave me a thumbs up.

  In the celebration, Amanda peeled off. My excitement instantly vanished, replaced by a heavy dose of guilt. What a dick. Why had I done that? Amanda's time had been excellent, especially for a rookie, and she deserved recognition for it. I didn't have to destroy her moment to prove I could do better.

  "I'll be right back," I said. I ran after Amanda as her ponytail vanished behind the door to the break room. I burst inside, out of breath. She leaned over the counter, her shoulders sticking out of her back like wings, her head bent over her hands.

  "That was an amazing time," I said.

  "Not as good as you." She turned around and crossed her arms. She hadn't been crying and I thanked God for that. I couldn't deal with her tears, not now. But she looked disappointed nonetheless. "I don't think I'll ever make it to the pro level."

  "You're so close," I said. "You've just got to keep trying."

  "I have been trying. It just seems that nothing I can do is good enough."

  "You're still young," I said.

  She shrugged and I felt no better than dog turd on the bottom of her shoe. All I'd wanted to do was to make the lives of women better, and what had I done? I'd made Amanda feel worse. I'd made her doubt her truly amazing accomplishment. "How about I show you some tricks next week?"

  "Really?" she asked, her face brightening to its former glory. "You'd do that?"

  "Of course."

  'Thank you," she said, nodding. Then she broke away and gave me a quick hug.

  "No, thank you. It's so wonderful to hav
e you on my team. You're a great support and I want you to know I can do better. I'm not going to let you all down next week."

  "Of course not. You're Billie Page."

  Indeed.

  I had to win for these people. For myself. To solidify my place and this team's place in racing. In order to do so, I would have to work harder than I had ever worked. And that's what I did for the next week. The days stretched into seventeen-hour marathon sessions of planning and working out and strategizing, of molding the car to my hands and my body so it would become an extension of me on the track. Of press conferences and sponsor calls, and prep for commercials. At the end of the day I could barely manage a shower before I fell into bed asleep. More like half-dead, my body and brains jelly.

  Krysta left me alone, for the most part, but she remained on my mind. Only once did I doubt my decision to invite her, during the moment where I thought Amanda would replace me. After that, I performed better than I had in years. It was Krysta's influence. If this was how I reacted when she wasn't even here, how great would it be when we were on the road together? It seemed, just being around her gave me a new lease on life.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  KRYSTA

  It takes thirty-two hours to drive from St. Petersburg, Florida to Phoenix, Arizona. That's only a day and a half if you drive straight without breaks. This would be something that my teenage self would have done readily. Hell, even my normal twenty-four-year-old self could imagine a time where I would have driven across the country with only one other person, switching on and off. But it turns out, with only one woman driving and another one in throbbing pain, it takes five days. Five, grueling, seven-hour days on the road to get to Phoenix, Arizona.

  I'm not going to lie and tell you it was easy. It was so hard that by the last day, as we arrived in Phoenix, I seriously considered leaning out of the van and toppling Tanya to the ground with my hands around her neck.

  Somehow, I managed not to do that, and once I settled in my chair, the desert heat took my breath away. With it went my anger. I welcomed the dry air into my lungs as a replacement for the humidity of Florida and other southern states we'd passed through.

  I'm here, I thought. I'd done it. I crossed the country with a broken right ankle and a crushed left foot. Though tired, I felt elated. How small my life had grown so that a simple trip was an accomplishment, but I couldn't help but smile as Tanya pushed me into the hotel. I pulled out a stick of gum and shoved it in my mouth to wake me up.

  This was a new beginning.

  A long line wound its way through the cavernous lobby of the hotel, but we didn't have to wait. A bellman took us from the back of the line to the manager at the front—because of the wheelchair or Billie, I wasn't sure. Either way I wouldn't complain.

  I rocked back and forth in my chair, trying out the new wheelchair gloves I'd bought on Amazon for the trip, while Tanya told the manager Billie Page had booked a room for us. The manager frowned as she finger-pecked her keyboard.

  "Hold on just one moment, please." She picked up the phone.

  There was a brief moment I thought Billie had forgotten me, or that she had deliberately not booked us a room. Those fears were assuaged in the next moments as the manger stuttered into the phone, her long mascara-clumped lashes fluttering over her cheekbones.

  "Yes, yes, of course, Ms. Page. I don't see the reservation. We'll still need you to come down to verify... No, I don't—of course. No, you don't have to bring proof. We will do what we can to rectify the situation. Okay. All right. I'll see you in a few moments. Thanks."

  My stomach clenched. She was coming down. The insides of my gloves moistened with sweat.

  It had only been a week, but so much had changed. Every day had been stuffed with visits to the doctor, to the hair salon, packing, and finding snippets of rest when I could. And then the journey, of course. With all the preparations, I'd barely had time to connect with Billie. Hopefully she didn't think I was ungrateful. Hopefully she didn't regret inviting me.

  With every ding of the elevator my head whipped to the corridor. Every time someone emerged and it wasn't Billie my heart thudded harder.

  What business did I have being there?

  Stop it, Krysta. The real Krysta would never have doubted herself. She would have smiled through it all, seen it as simply another adventure rather than a test of her worth. I'd taken so many steps toward my old self in the past week and more, this final step was proving the hardest of all.

  I knew Billie as soon as she stepped out of the elevator, before I even saw her face. It was her purposeful gait I noticed first, that step I'd come to know so well. The echoing voices of the people in the lobby, the cavernous space and the large windows, it all fell away. All that was left was her.

  She was more beautiful than even my memory. Her hair fell in layers, framing her face. She wore jeans and a tank top, her sleeve of tattoos on full display. I rolled toward her. She caught my eye and the exhaustion lifted straight from her shoulders like an untethered helium balloon.

  "Well, hello there," she said in a sultry voice, sauntering toward me.

  If I could have stood and pushed her into the elevator and taken her right there, I would have. The urge ran hot and fast in my veins, but I put a tiny bit of pressure on my feet and a surge of pain ripped through my ankles, reminding me of my limitations.

  Fuck. I closed my eyes and bit down on the gum, releasing a rush of minty flavor to bring me back to the present.

  "Are you okay?" Billie asked. She knelt at my side and held my hand.

  I forced myself to laugh it off. "Yeah, I'm fine. I thought I could walk there for a minute. Silly me."

  Billie frowned.

  "So, what's the deal?" I asked, trying to change the subject. This was not a good start to showing her I was back to normal, but I wouldn't let it deter me too much. "Are they holding our room hostage?"

  Billie stood, nodding at Tanya as my caretaker approached. "I'm going to see if I can work that out. I don't know what happened. They say it was a glitch in the system, but I have a feeling they just overbooked for the Grand Prix and banked on some people not showing."

  "That's dickish."

  "You're telling me. Stay right there."

  I twisted around and followed the swing of her ass as she walked away. I could watch her walking away for an eternity. Her hips swaying, her hands stuffed in her pockets. Her swagger said, I'm cool, but don't fuck with me or you'll discover the badass side.

  Yeah, I was definitely feeling more myself.

  Tanya whistled low. "I swear. If women were my thing, I would be all over that."

  "If I weren't in my chair, I would, too," I said without thinking.

  Tanya chuckled low. "You know, they say that orgasms help heal. Why don't you try and find out if that's true?"

  "Tanya," I said through a laugh. "Is that your professional opinion? Get laid?"

  "Yes, it absolutely is."

  Billie gestured in my direction, her voice rising to a point where I could catch the sharp edges of it, but not make out the words. She was so hot when she ordered people around. My mind flashed to how we could do that together, in bed. How we would fit together now in this new situation. Doubt floated in, too. What if she found me unattractive now? She had offered me a position in her team, so this wasn't purely a social trip.

  You know what? The old Krysta wouldn't have cared. The old Krysta would have felt the ache in her center and would have done anything she could to fill it.

  Billie broke away from the manager and strode toward us with a room key in her hand. "They only have a fucking double bed left," she said. "I'll take it and you two can have my room."

  Disappointment flooded me. What had I been thinking would happen? That she would say… okay, yeah, let's do it, Krysta! Impractical. No, I actually had to go for this.

  "Do you want to rest?" Tanya asked.

  "I'm not tired," I said. "What about we go out for lunch?"

  "I'm really beat, Kryst
a girl."

  "Billie?" I asked.

  My heart thumped in my chest as I waited for an answer. Billie seemed to consider for an exceptionally long moment. A moment that made the doubt strengthen once again.

  Then she shrugged. "Sure, we can talk over your plan for my social media pages."

  "Okay?" Tanya asked.

  "Yeah, that sounds great," I said.

  Tanya plucked the key from Billie's hand. "Sounds good to me, boss." She practically ran to the elevator, her day bag over her shoulder. As the doors closed, she mouthed to me, "Do it."

  "What did she say?" Billie asked.

  The doors closed. I twisted around in my chair so I could look into her face. Swaths of pink stained her cheek. Her lips were parted and she looked a little breathless. Doubt be gone. It was time for the old Krysta to take charge. "I'll tell you later. Let's eat first. I'm ravenous."

  ...

  BILLIE

  Ravenous. She was ravenous. Had that been a double entendre or was she serious? It was hard to know, but if I knew anything about Krysta, it was a double entendre.

  What could I do with that? I didn't know what to do with that. When I'd invited her, it had been as a friend. As a professional. I hadn't let myself consider much more.

  As I was pushing Krysta through the foyer to the doors outside, the two sides of my life's equation crashed. Ed walked under the overhang to the hotel entrance, dressed in a suit that looked far too hot for the weather, and plucked his sunglasses off his face. If I had been by myself, I might have been able to slip into the crowd, but with Krysta, there was no way I could hide.

  Shit.

  His eyes scanned over me and past me, and just as I was about to sigh with relief, they shot back. My throat dried. Why was I so scared of him seeing me with Krysta? I had nothing to hide. A relationship or friendship wasn't illegal in this sport. Plus, she was helping me now with work. This was the perfect time to introduce them, even if just on the professional level to start.

  "Hi, Ed." I smiled, waving at him. "This is my new social media manager, Krysta. Krysta, Ed, the owner and coach of Team Gianetti."