Racing the Sky

by Layla Dorine

  “So, what do they have you do, anyway?” Terry asked once they were on the road.

  Nicky just grunted and glared at the buildings they passed, desperate to ignore him.

  “I mean, is it exercises or weights, or are you just pushing against their hands or something?”

  Glaring in Terry’s direction, Nicky turned the radio up so loud that Terry cringed and waited for the speaker to blow, but he didn’t dare turn it down again.

  Once at the therapy session, it didn’t take Terry long at all to understand why Nicky had given up. Everything about physical therapy made Terry uncomfortable, from the individuals strapping on prosthetic limbs, to the jagged scars and mangled bodies. Terry’s heart had begun to race as soon as they’d arrived, and there was nothing he wanted more than to hurry up and get the hell out of the building. He had thought he’d be waiting in the car until it was time for Nicky to leave; instead, he found himself sitting beside Nicky as the physical therapist tried to get him to squeeze a ball while, for his part, Nicky did nothing. Terry couldn’t even tell if he was trying or not, but the physical therapist seemed upset with his lack of effort and spent the hour encouraging Nicky.

  Terry had tried once to add his own bit of encouragement to the conversation, but Nicky had fixed him with a glare that left him speechless.

  “I can’t,” Nicky declared, forty-five minutes into what was supposed to be a ninety-minute session. “I want to go home now.” The last had been said while looking directly at Terry. Terry didn’t know if this was a statement or a challenge, but the arrangement between him and Nicky was too fragile to survive a confrontation.

  He stood, not even bothering to listen to what the physical therapist had to say. “Then we’ll go,” he said, before wheeling Nicky back out of the building. When Nicky gave him a grateful smile, Terry couldn’t help but feel as if he’d made some progress. It was like old times, taking Nicky home, heading to their kitchen to throw together lunch, only, as he stood at the counter making sandwiches, he realized he couldn’t recall the last time he’d made lunch for Nicky. Usually it had been Nicky making lunch for him.

  He was still thinking about that when he left Nicky to watch TV, while he headed into work. Nicky had done so much for him over the years, from shopping for both of them to surprising Terry with his favorite things every chance he got. From slices of cheesecake snuck into the fridge at work, labeled with messages from Nicky, to homemade caramel corn at Christmas. The truth was, Nicky had spoiled him, and Terry had done very little in return. It was a fact that left him with no small amount of shame as he pulled up to the shop and headed inside.

  The rest of the week was the same. Nicky allowed himself to be taken to PT, but did very little while there, besides firmly insisting that what they were asking him to do was impossible. Each day Terry would give in, ignoring the protests of the therapist, take Nicky home, make him lunch, and put snacks where he could reach them; and each day, Nicky said only what few words he had to. By the end of the week it was decided that Nicky would not be continuing his sessions; at least not until he made up his mind to make an effort. Frustrated, Terry stood by and listened to Nicky telling them how he was unfixable, finally understanding why he was there. He was the one person who wouldn’t dare challenge Nicky, and Nicky was taking full advantage of it.

  “I don’t know what the hell to do,” Terry insisted later as he stood outside the house with Vic.

  “How about telling him the pity party is over, and it’s time for him to get his ass in gear and work to see how much use he’s able to recover?”

  “And you know exactly what he’ll do if I say that shit to him. He’ll kick me to the curb and that will be it.”

  Vic glared at him with a look of disdain and shook his head in disgust. “Still a selfish prick, I see.”

  “What the hell do you mean, selfish? I’m trying to help him.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re trying to help yourself,” Vic pointed out. “You’re trying to trade enabling him for forgiveness, and that’s not what Nicky needs right now. He needs people who are going to be tough on him, who are going to insist that he try despite the fact that he has zero chance of racing again. He needs people who are capable of giving him options outside of racing, and he needs to know that he can’t be a dick to everyone just because he’s hurting. You’re an enabler, Terry. You were never good for him, but it’s so much worse now.”

  Terry ducked his head. He knew Vic spoke the truth, but hearing it hurt like hell.

  “Go away, Terry, and if you really give a shit about Nicky, don’t come back.”

  Terry glanced at his truck and then back to Vic before trudging away with his head down. He thought about going home, but instead he just rode around aimlessly, ending up at the old track he’d always loved. He was glad to see that it was mostly deserted; only one car sat in the gravel lot. Too bad he recognized it as River’s. He was about to put his truck in reverse when River appeared from behind a jump and headed toward him, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

  Terry watched with apprehension as River approached the passenger side of the truck and climbed in uninvited.

  “Glad you could join me,” Terry grumbled. “Yeah, sure, climb right in.”

  “Dean’s been talking about replacing you,” River began, not even beating around the bush.

  “Yeah, I know. I’ll work it out. I already promised to help him on some stuff after hours.”

  “That doesn’t help us avoid getting backed up while we’re waiting for you to come in,” River pointed out.

  “Look, I’ll be there when we open on Monday. Nicky isn’t doing PT anymore, so—”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “’Cause he gets there and refuses to do anything but sit and tell the therapist that he can’t do the exercises, so they want him to wait to come back until he is willing to try harder.”

  “So push him to try harder! What the hell, Terry? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be there for?”

  “It isn’t that simple!” Terry snapped.

  “Why?”

  Terry sighed and stared out the window, listening to River drum on the dash until he finally decided to answer. “Because Nicky only wanted my help because he knew I would feel too guilty to make him do anything he didn’t want to do. I can’t help him,” Terry admitted. “He won’t put in the effort. Hell, he’s completely given up on himself. He asked me to help him kill himself.”

  River went still, the drumming dying away until only the echo remained. “When?”

  “A week ago, when he called work the day you took my phone.”

  “Did you tell Vic?”

  “No, I… I just started picking him up for PT and trying to hang out with him when he’d let me.”

  “You should have told Vic.”

  “What the hell was Vic going to do about it? What the hell are any of us going to do about it? He doesn’t have any family. No one can force him to do anything he doesn’t want to.”

  River sighed and combed his fingers through his hair. “You should’ve known you’d be the last one he’d be willing to listen to.”

  “Yeah,” Terry muttered. “But all I kept thinking about was that it was a way I could make things right.”

  “You didn’t think he’d use it against you?” River finished for him. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound like Nicky, more like some shit you’d do.”

  Terry hung his head. “I’m scared,” he said softly. “I think it’s going to get worse. He doesn’t give a shit about himself right now. I don’t trust him not to do something stupid when no one’s around.”

  “All the more reason you should have told Vic,” River admonished. “For fuck’s sake, Terry, his well-being is more important than whether or not he’s pissed-off at you!”

  “I know; okay? I-I…” Picking at one of the scuffs on his jeans, Terry looked up at River with desperate eyes. “I broke up with Dirk, made him move out and everything. Finally admitted to him that I nev
er stopped loving Nicky and had completely screwed everything up by being jealous. I told Nicky too. Not like he even acknowledged it, but I’d hoped knowing would…” Terry sighed heavily and waved his hand toward the window.

  “You’d hoped it would what? Make him forgive you? Take you back? Forget all the shit you put him through? You guys were bad for one another, Terry, and more so, you were bad for him. You were selfish and self-centered, narcissistic and downright rude, and he fuckin’ let you. Never once did he try to point out what a douche you were being. He just followed along and hero-worshipped like almost everyone else. Away from you, Nicky was awesome, down to earth, laidback, and cool. With you, he was just a shadow. To be honest, I hated when you guys were together. I always wished you’d just get the hell out of his life and stay out of it.”

  Terry frowned and met River’s blue eyes. “Is that the way all of you see me? That I’m just some asshole who wants people to follow him and tell him how great he is?”

  River fixed him with a pointed stare. “It’s kinda how it comes across.”

  Terry shook his head. “I liked the attention from winning races. It was nice to be good at something. I never thought I was being arrogant about it.”

  “Yeah, well, you were. You’ve been that way as long as I’ve known you, which is why I never came around to hang out unless Nicky was on his own. Maybe you should work on changing that before you hook up with someone else and end up breaking them down, or repeating the cycle all over again.”

  “Got no plans to hook up with anyone for a while,” Terry admitted.

  “Good, ’cause you seriously need to figure out what was so fucked-up in your life that you crashed a bike into someone you supposedly loved, just to try and prove you were the better racer.”

  Terry had no answer to that. He’d never considered that there was anything wrong with him that pushed him to work so hard or strive to win all the time. There was nothing wrong with competition, healthy competition anyway, but then there was nothing healthy about the way he reacted to losing, or what he’d done to Nicky in response to it. In the back of his mind he heard a faint old voice, and pictured the proud, weatherworn face of the woman who used to take care of him. An image of his grandmother in a flour-stained apron, hands on her hips, feet wide in a defiant stance as his parents packed him up to go home, came unbidden to his mind.

  “He’s got thirty more minutes of sitting to do,” his Grammy told his parents.

  “Oh, come on, Mama, we’ve got to get going. No one has time for this,” his father complained.

  “Which is precisely the problem,” the older woman informed them, standing between them and the corner, where she’d ordered him to sit. “You spoil the boy so much he thinks he’s always got to have his way. It’s high time he learns that the world doesn’t revolve around him.”

  “I’m sure he gets the point,” Terry’s mother insisted, “but we really have to be going now.”

  Terry’s grandmother checked her watch and then shook her head. “In twenty-seven more minutes.”

  “For crying out loud, Mom!” Terry’s father threw his hands up in the air. “We have someplace we need to be, and if we don’t hurry we’ll lose our reservations.”

  “So?” Terry’s grandmother began. “What you’re saying is that some fancy dinner is more important to you than making sure your son learns discipline. Well, I’m not too busy to see to it that he learns his lesson. If you’re in that big of a hurry you can go on to your dinner and come back for him when you’re through.”

  “What, and waste all that gas? Come on, Miriam. You’re being ridiculous. What could the boy possibly have done to make you be so hard on him?” Terry’s mother asked.

  “I’m not being hard on the boy. I’m trying to make the boy think about what he did,” Terry’s grandmother pointed out. “I sent the kids down to the fishing hole after lunch, told them I’d call them back when the cookies were ready. Well, they came running hell bent for leather as soon as I called for them, only Jenny was just a little bit faster than both the boys and your Terry decided to give her a shove because he was none too happy about that. She hit the corner of the porch and scraped up her arm pretty good, and he refused to apologize, so he got no cookies and I told him he could either say he was sorry and mean it or sit there until six ten. Well, it’s only five fifty-seven, which means he’s got thirteen more minutes before he can get up.”

  “You made him sit there all this time and refused to give him a treat!” Terry’s mother exclaimed. “That’s cruel. You can’t just withhold food from a child.”

  “It wasn’t food, it was a snack, and I’ve never seen anyone waste away from lack of cookies.” Miriam huffed. “What if Jenny had hit her head on the steps? She could’ve split it wide open and had to get stitches. How would you have wanted me to handle that? You let him get away with too much, the both of you. Someone has to hold him accountable.”

  And hold him accountable she had, and made him sit the full amount of time before letting him go.

  It was the last time his parents had allowed him to go there without them. From that day forward he was sent to daycare after school, or signed up for after-school activities provided as a thinly veiled child care service. To tell the truth, he’d missed his cousins and the warmth of his grandmother’s kitchen. It had been years since he’d gone back to visit and it had never again felt like home the way it had when he was a child. Maybe he should head out there, spend the weekend with her if she’d let him, go fish by the creek and sit on her old porch swing with some lemonade. Maybe she’d even have some advice for him if he could just figure out the right questions.

  “…ey, Terry, are you even listening?”

  Terry jerked. Blinking, he stared around at his surroundings, trying to remember what the hell he’d been doing before his mind had drifted back a decade. River was looking at him expectantly, but for the life of him, Terry didn’t have a clue what he’d said. “Huh?”

  “Yeah, I’ll take that as a no.”

  “Sorry. Just spaced out there for a moment.”

  River glared, gripping the dash. “No shit. But what else is new, right? The conversation isn’t about you, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “No, I just...” Terry rubbed the back of his neck, trying to decide how much to tell River. “I was thinking about what you said. It reminded me of the past is all—mistakes I made when I was a kid. Mistakes I guess I keep on making.”

  “Well, get your head on straight and think about what’s best for Nicky, ’cause that’s the only thing that should matter to you right now.” Before Terry could say another word, River shoved open the door and climbed out. “I mean it. Think about what Nicky needs, and what he doesn’t. Then do the right thing for once.”

  The force with which River slammed the door rocked the truck, but Terry couldn’t even be angry about it. For the longest time he just sat there, thinking.

  ***

  River called Vic when he was a block from their place to let him know that he was dropping by, and to give him a heads-up about what had taken place between Nicky and Terry. What he didn’t tell Vic was that he’d stopped off at home and grabbed his laptop, with every intention of helping Nicky find a live-in treatment facility where he could get his head on straight and get away from all the enablers. He knew Vic wasn’t going to like the idea of sending Nicky away, but River was convinced that it was the best thing for everyone involved. Vic needed to settle into his new job, Nicky needed to get healthy, and Terry needed to figure out his issues and fix them; and maybe when it was all over there might be some threads of friendship left between them. He found Nicky in his usual spot in front of the TV and wasted no time in turning it off.

  “Okay, so here’s the deal,” River began before Nicky could protest. “You’re an asshole.”

  Nicky blinked, stunned.

  “Terry told me about how you’ve been guilt tripping him into letting you slack off at rehab. We all know Terry is a bastard, but t
he only person you’re hurting right now is you, so quit it.”

  Nicky’s eyes narrowed. He leaned away from River. “None of it is any of your business.”

  “When friends of mine are hurting themselves, or letting others hurt them, then, yeah, I’m gonna step in and get involved. You need rehab, Nicky. I don’t care how frustrated it makes you, the need still remains.”

  “I can’t do it,” Nicky said automatically.

  “Bullshit,” River snapped. “It hurts and it sucks and it isn’t going as fast as you’d like it to, and, no, it isn’t going to change the fact that you can’t race anymore. But unless your only desire is to spend the rest of your life as an invalid, you’d better get off your ass and do something to change things.”

  Nicky ducked his head and looked down at his hands. The scars on his arm still stood out, red and angry, and those weren’t even the worst ones.

  “Why bother when everything’s ruined?” Nicky said softly.

  River glared, despite the fact that Nicky couldn’t see it. “What’s ruined, besides racing?”

  “Me!” Nicky snapped, gesturing to his damaged arm, the scars on his face, and his leg. “Look at me. I’m like Frankenstein’s fucked up cousin!”

  “No. Not nearly so bad. You’re in one piece, and scars don’t ruin a person, they just make them unique.”

  Nicky was quiet.

  “There has always been more to you than just racing,” River went on. “Those bikes you designed are like nothing on the market right now. There’s no reason we can’t build them and start a brand.”

  “I don’t want anything to do with bikes, or racing, or building anything,” Nicky insisted.

  “Fine, then we’ll find you another hobby,” River insisted. “Why are you being so quick to quit on yourself?”

  “I-I just…” Nicky began, still looking down. “Supercross was the only thing I ever wanted to do. Well, besides freestyle. I wasn’t going to build bikes to start a brand; they were just for me and Terry to ride. It was the only thing I’ve ever been focused on, and I don’t know what to do now that it’s gone.”