by Amy Sparling
You can’t trust a girl when you’re famous. I love my teammates but they’re all dumbasses for letting these girls win them over. I don’t care how happy they all seem now – it’ll end. It always does. I know that better than anyone.
Avery is standing inside the restaurant, her cute little lawyer outfit looking totally out of place in this casual environment. She smiles brightly when we walk in, but she’s not hiding much. I can tell she’s nervous as hell, and desperate to please Marcus enough to keep this job. I don’t blame her—it sounds like a pretty sweet gig.
A tiny woman with big curly hair brings us to a table for six, and in the commotion and shuffling to find a place, I realize I’m left to sit next to her. I glance at Zach and Aiden and they’re both eyeing me like they’re pleased. Idiots. If they think making me sit next to the new girl is going to make us hook up in the bathroom or some crap, they are sorely mistaken.
I pull out my chair and sit down, immediately noticing the faint smell of flowers from next to me. It must be her perfume. It’s a soft smell, pleasing and cute all at the same time. I don’t think I’ve ever known a girl to smell so good. I clear my throat and look at the menu.
Marcus is sitting directly across from me, and as usual, he leads the conversation by yammering on about all kinds of crap no one cares about. Then, when the food comes, he turns the conversation to Avery.
“Welcome aboard, Avery.”
“Thank you,” she says. She takes a sip of her drink and blanches.
“What’s wrong?” Keanna says.
“This is root beer, and I ordered Coke.”
“You should tell the waiter,” Keanna says.
She shakes her head. “No, it’s fine. I’ll drink it.”
I can tell she’s annoyed though, and I can’t say I blame her. Root beer is gross. I flag down the waiter. “Her drink is wrong,” I say. “She needs a Coke not a root beer.”
“Oh!” the waiter says, flashing her a worried look. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. I’ll get you a new drink right away.”
Avery bites her bottom lip and looks over at me. “Thanks,” she says, a little sheepishly.
I turn back to my food. Aiden kicks me under the table. I don’t bother meeting his gaze because I know I’ll see that goofy grin on his face. I just helped her get the right drink—it’s not like I flirted with her.
Marcus smiles at Avery. “So how’d you like your first day?”
“It was crazy but fun,” she answers.
“That’s pretty much how all days are with these guys,” Keanna says. She’s sitting on the other side of Avery. “You’ll get used to it. Also, you don’t have to dress so nice.”
Avery chuckles, but Marcus nods. “Yeah, you can dress casually for this job. The guys are a bunch of slobs most of the time.”
“I resent that,” Aiden says.
“You only have like five shirts,” Marcus shoots back.
“That I bring with me!” Aiden retorts. “My closet at home is packed.”
I ignore most of the chatter and just eat my food. This is how it always goes. The guys talk and bullshit and hang out and I’m just kind of here, usually keeping quiet. The only time I’m really paying attention is when Avery talks. I listen to her answer everyone’s questions. She’s from some small town called Green Leaf, recently graduated from high school. She’s younger than I thought. I’m the oldest of the group at 21. That’s three years’ difference.
Wait, why am I even thinking about this? Who cares?
I try to tune out the rest of the dinner conversation, but I learn more about her anyway. She clearly doesn’t know motocross very well. Maybe she’s not some obsessed fangirl. Maybe it is just about the job for her. Good. She’s less likely to throw herself at me like the guys seem to think.
Marcus pays for the entire meal with his Team Loco credit card, and then we’re walking back out to the parking lot. I absolutely do not care that I’m about to leave Avery’s presence. At least that’s what I tell myself. Having her here tonight really changed the whole atmosphere. It wasn’t just another group dinner like always. It was… interesting.
“We’ll meet back at the Dallas airport at five in the morning,” Marcus says.
Avery’s eyes widen. “Five in the morning? Tomorrow?”
Marcus laughs. “Yes, ma’am. You’re on the schedule now. I guess I should probably email that to you… but yeah, we’re heading to the first training camp first thing tomorrow.”
“Where are we going?” she asks. She’s got this cute as hell look in her eyes, like she’s absolutely thrilled at the idea of leaving town.
“Louisiana,” Marcus says.
“Heading to my home track,” Aiden says. “Should be fun.”
“Oh!” Keanna says. “You’ll get to meet Jenn. You’ll love her.”
Avery nods. “Cool.”
Her eyes meet mine, briefly, before flitting away again. And in those few seconds, I’m suddenly damn sure I’m going to miss that smell of her perfume for the rest of the night.
Chapter 6
Holy crap.
Talk about a whirlwind experience. I started the day hoping my interview would go well and now I’m ending it ten hours later with a job and a plane ticket for tomorrow. I’ve been hoping and praying for this internship ever since I first saw it online but I never imagined it would happen his fast.
I’m giddy as I make the long drive back home. I call my mom to tell her the good news and she immediately goes into protective mom mode. She wants to make sure this whole gig isn’t some scam to kidnap me or rob me or something else equally horrible. She stays on the phone with me the whole time I’m driving back, doing her research online. Eventually, she believes me. The evidence online is enough to know that Team Loco isn’t a scam. They’re legit and they’re famous. People are constantly posting pictures of the guys on social media, and Marcus is all over the internet too.
When I get home, Mom has already put her Vera Bradley travel bag on my bed for me. It’s small enough to be a carry on but big enough to hold a few days’ worth of clothes. I stand in my closet and wonder what I should wear for the trip. They told me I could dress casually, but how casually? Keanna was wearing regular clothing, so I decide to dress like that. Marcus sent me the itinerary and we are fully booked up for the next two weeks.
Tomorrow we’re flying to Louisiana first thing in the morning. I have to be at the airport at five in the morning, which is less than eight hours from now. Then we’re doing the first training camp all day and then heading back to the airport and flying to Alabama that night. Then the next day, Sunday, is another training camp in Alabama and then we’ll have Monday free but we’ll still be there. Tuesday morning we fly out to Florida. The rest of the time is pretty much the same thing – lots of flights and never staying somewhere more than one night. We fly back home on the thirteenth only to fly out again the fourteenth, so I have four days of clothes to bring.
I bring two oversized T-shirts to sleep in, lots of underwear, and a few casual outfits. I also pack one nicer outfit in case we need it for an event or nice dinner. By the time I’ve finished packing, showered, and slipped into bed, I only have five hours until I need to head to the airport. I’m so excited and slightly terrified and I have no idea how I’m going to sleep when the whole world is waiting for me to explore it.
Both of my parents drive me to the airport in the morning. Despite being eighteen years old and a legal freaking adult, they make me feel thirteen again as they both get out of the car at the airport drop-off line and hug me goodbye. I really hope none of the Team Loco guys are witnessing this right now. I make my way into the airport and through the security line and soon I’m at my terminal.
It’s still so early that the sun isn’t out, and darkness fills windows that wrap around the terminal. I find Marcus and all of the Team Loco racers passed out on the plastic waiting chairs. Keanna is curled up in a ball in the chair next to Jett, her head resting on his shoulder. They look like a f
amily of sorts, all sitting next to each other, passed out without a care in the world. I suddenly have a desire to be a part of this family. All of them (except for Clay) were nice and welcoming to me. I hope this will be a fun adventure.
I take a seat in the empty row of chairs that face them, and that’s when I realize that not all of them are sleeping. Clay sits across from me, his head down, but his eyes open. He’s listening to music on his phone again. I notice his eyes flit to me for just a second, and then he looks back down. Well, hello to you too, jerk.
Soon, more people filter into the terminal and the noise starts to wake up everyone else. Keanna rushes over to me and we go get a coffee from the Starbucks down the way. I try not to think about Clay and how unbelievably unfriendly he is, because it shouldn’t matter. But it does, in a way. We’re coworkers now, and we’ll be seeing each other a lot. And, one of my biggest fears is that Marcus will ask me to pull off another miracle with Clay, by making him do stuff he doesn’t want to. I’m not sure if my charm and sneaky comments about teammates will work on him again.
I try to put it out of my mind, and focus on the good stuff: I have a job! I get to travel!
Soon we’re boarding the plane, and I’m so excited I don’t think about him anymore. We’re all sitting in business class, which is bigger and nicer and has two seats per row instead of three. I check the ticket in my hand, hoping I’m sitting next to Keanna, but I see her sink down in the seat next to Jett and I realize that of course we wouldn’t be together. Aiden and Zach sit next to each other and Marcus sits next to an older woman who isn’t with our group.
I look at my seat number. C2.
And then I see my seatmate.
Clay.
He’s already sitting in the aisle seat, so I’ll have to step over him to get to my window seat. His head is leaned back against the seat, his eyes closed, while he listens to his earbuds. I suppress an eye roll and open the overhead bin. None of the guys have any luggage because the Team Loco rig arrives with it and the dirt bikes, but Keanna had a backpack that she shoved under her plane seat.
I have to lean up on my toes to fit my bag in the overhead bin, because at five-foot one inch tall, I am practically too short for everything. While balancing on my toes, I manage to shove my bag up there. Then I realize another problem. The door of the overhead bin swung upward when it opened, and now it’s too high for me to reach and pull back down.
I stretch as tall as I can possibly get but my fingers are just a little too far down. Silently, I curse my mom’s side of the family, who have all passed down the ultra-short genetics that have put me in this situation. I glance around, but business class is pretty empty this early in the morning and everyone on Team Loco is already sitting down, half asleep.
“Jett?” I whisper toward him, but his eyes are closed. Keanna is snuggled up against his arm, but I try whispering her name anyway. She doesn’t turn around.
I look back at my overhead bin, wondering if I can find a flight attendant or something. If Clay wasn’t sitting in the aisle seat, I’d crawl up on it, but obviously I can’t do that now. Kicking him in the leg would not help our very cold relationship.
I gaze up helplessly at the stupid bin.
“Need some help?”
I don’t even recognize the voice because I guess we barely talked the last time he spoke. His voice almost sounds friendly, if you didn’t know better. Clay is watching me, a curious but amused expression on his face. I step back, my butt hitting the empty aisle seat behind me. “Do you mind?” I ask sheepishly.
He smirks and stands up, filling the empty aisle space with his height and the smell of his cologne. I don’t know what brand it is, but it’s something fresh and crisp, probably with the words mountain, cool, or ocean in the title. With his phone in one hand, he reaches up with the other and snaps the lid closed. It takes two seconds, if that.
Then he moves out of the way and watches me. I realize, stupidly, that he’s waiting for me to slip past him and sit in my window seat.
“Thanks,” I mumble, before doing just that.
The refreshing scent of his cologne hits me again as he sits back down. He’s so tall, his knees almost press into the back of the seat in front of him, whereas I have plenty of room. I guess there are some advantages to being short.
I notice he doesn’t say anything after I thank him. No “you’re welcome,” or “it’s no problem.” You know, stuff normal people say. Clay is cold and quiet and keeps to himself. It’s a little weird, especially since the other guys on Team Loco are all pretty outgoing and fun. I feel like we all got to know each other last night at dinner, and everyone seems to like me. Except for Clay.
So Fate decided to be mean to me and make us sit together. Cool.
I settle into my seat and stare out the window as the plane begins to taxi out to the runway. I understand how everyone else is so tired—it is just after sunrise after all—but I’m too excited to sleep. This is my second time flying in a plane and although we’re just going one state over to Louisiana, it’s something. You can’t see the world unless you start somewhere, right?
I eagerly watch the ground as we take off, and everything below gets smaller and smaller. It’s exhilarating, being in an airplane. Once we’re up in the clouds, I settle back and take my phone out of my pocket. My headphones are wrapped around the phone, and they’ve gotten tangled up from being in my pocket all day. I work to untangle them so I can watch some of the Netflix shows I downloaded last night.
By the time they’re untangled, I notice something that’s not good. The cord is frayed where it meets the plugin on my phone. Crap. I put the earbuds in my ears and open up Netflix, but as I suspected, no sound is coming out. I wiggle the frayed cord, trying to find a position that will make them work.
But it’s useless. They’re ruined.
I noticed the rubber of the cord starting the crack the other day, but I thought they’d be fine. I have no other headphones. I’m not about to be that jerk who plays loud videos on her phone on a plane. Luckily the flight is only an hour long, so I’ll just have to suck it up.
With a sigh, I yank the broken earbuds out of my phone and crumple them up in my hand. Then I set my phone in the pocket on the back of the seat in front of me.
Clay’s hand reaches across the armrest that divides our seats. He opens up his palm, and there’s a single wireless earbud in it.
I look over at him, wondering why he’s offering me a single earbud. He holds up his phone. “Wanna listen?”
I swallow. He’s offering me –well, maybe not friendship, but something. Something better than being cold and aloof toward me all the time.
I take the earbud and put it in my ear. Clay’s music fills the silence. It’s some kind of slow hip-hop song. I’ve never heard it before, but I like it. This music fits him. I smile gratefully at him.
His lips twitch just the slightest bit and then he lays his head back against the seat again. It wasn’t exactly a smile.
But it was better than nothing.
Chapter 7
The town of Breaux Valley is like something out of a horror novel. The air is humid and sticky, despite the fact that it’s December in every other part of the country. Maybe this tiny little Louisiana swamp town is stuck in some kind of time warp where it’s always summer. Even if you can get used to the heat, the smells are something else. It’s like a swampy earthy stench everywhere that is so unlike California that I feel I’ve fallen into some kind of fantasy world. Like, the place where the villain of the fantasy world lives.
The only good thing is that they have a pretty decent track for it being such a small town. There’s a motocross track that rivals the professional ones, a separate supercross track, and two kiddie tracks. That’s probably why Marcus chose this location, that plus it’s where Aiden lives.
I honestly don’t know how he lives here in the offseason. Cali is so much better. Sure, it’s expensive and my studio apartment is the size of a shoe box, but t
he air is fresh and the weather is nice. Aiden actually chose this place instead of Orlando just to be with his sister and girlfriend. That’s some dedication. If I were him, I would have told them to move to Orlando.
We all meet up at the track early in the morning, and I discover one other good thing about this stupid “training camp” scheme that Marcus invented. It’s a closed track. They’ve got the gates locked and they’ve posted that the event is only for the kids who signed up and their parents, which means I only have to be tortured by little kids all day, not the raving public. Since this is Aiden’s hometown, he’s told us all about how many fans there are, and how he can’t visit here without being bombarded by them.
Just a few months ago, we all came up here to hang out with Aiden while his wrist was broken, and I remember all too well how many fans there were. Now, they’re all banned from coming today, so thank goodness for small blessings.
Unfortunately, that small blessing isn’t enough to overpower the massive pain in my ass that is today. Marcus gives some speech about teaching the youth and giving back and blah blah, while a group of twenty-four kids stare on excitedly with their parents. We’re each getting six kids for the day and we’ll be training them on separate parts of the track.
The new girl—Avery, I guess I should get used to calling her by her name—hands out T-shirts to all of the kids, and most of them tug the shirt on over their riding jerseys. She seems better now that she’s doing something. Earlier on the plane she looked like a deer caught in the headlights. I can’t believe I ever thought she was a fangirl trying to sneak her way into the group. I watch her bend down to face level with one of the kids and help him buckle his helmet. She smiles at the kid. She’s a much more genuine person than most of the people I meet.