Shift by Ginger Scott
18
It’s easy to fall into our routine. Me and Tommy under my hood, Hannah pacing around us, complaining about the heat until drivers show up and she can talk shit about them. Tommy gets pissed when Hannah says something a little too loud, but a minute later, he joins in, ripping on the lame puttering of some kid’s muffler.
“You used to love the loud muffler shit, too, ya know,” I tease Tommy.
“Pfft, yeah. When I was twelve.”
My friend circles the Supra as I drop the hood, his eyes set on a line of cars about a hundred yards down the road. I step in next to him and nod.
“Rookies,” I say.
“That’s what I thought, too,” he answers.
There are four of them, probably friends who grew up watching the Fast& Furious movies so they think they know shit about racing. Definitely punks from money because their rides are tricked out like mad with custom wraps and high-dollar wheels and shit. Nothing so far says fast to me, especially the drivers.
My friend is reaching for his wallet, a sign that he smells a sucker the same way I do. Tommy doesn’t like the money part of this game, but when it’s easy . . . like this? It seems foolish not to invest.
I wipe my hands clean from the little tune-up work we just finished and trek across the street to welcome the new guys. Hannah saunters down the middle of the road, her lemonade cup refilled with water she got from one of the guys we know from the tracks down south. Every one of those newbie assholes turns their heads, and while one of them whistles, another makes a joke—probably about her ass—while leaning into his friend’s ear.
I’m gonna fuck them up on the road.
My eyes on my targets, I reach out as Hannah gets closer and snake my hand around her body until my palm finds her ass. I pull her into me. My gaze stays on the competition while I kiss her, and three of the four assholes instantly avert their eyes. One of them, though—the one with the pointless-ass designer sunglasses perched on his probably-permed hair—keeps right on looking.
“You find your guy?” Hannah says as our kiss breaks, her mouth hovering around my ear.
“Sure did,” I say through a smug grin.
I move my focus to her and she lifts up on her toes to brush our noses together, wrinkling hers and bunching up her lips in the cutest way. I’m sure Tommy is catching this little show and wants to punch me again, but he’s gotta prefer his sister being with me over one of these douchebags.
“I’m gonna start the race,” she says, slipping back down to her heels.
She drops her sunglasses on her nose and slinks her hand around my chest, then bicep, as she walks around me. I swear, those denim shorts did not show off that much of her ass cheeks this morning. I’m hypnotized by them as she walks back toward her car, the only thing to break me out of it Tommy’s firm palm flat on my chest as he pushes me a few steps back.
“All right, that’s enough. I can only be so cool with this. Besides, you need to save that focus for sundown. We got some bets to make,” Tommy says.
I spin until I’m walking in sync with him, acutely aware of the tightness in my jeans, an aftereffect of his sister’s sexy-as-hell exit. I roll my shoulders while we walk to shake off the tingles left from her hand, and shove my hands in my pockets as we approach our targets.
I know a few people out here. It’s hard not to run into regulars when you race this circuit. But we all follow a code —nobody jacks with anyone else’s game. Everyone has something going. Like Jimmy, the guy with the Dodge Challenger who I’ve beaten so many times he flat out refuses to race me. We make eye contact as I pass, and I catch the slight tick in his lip, a flash of a smile that lets me know he’s already made a bet with one of these rich dudes. As far as they know, though? None of us know each other. We’re all just a bunch of gearheads who want to drive fast.
I’m headed right for the guy who watched me kiss Hannah with a little too much investment. Every fiber of my soul wants to flex and show my cards early just to make him feel small, but I keep it in check, balling my fists in my pockets and forcing my voice to come out meek.
“Hey, guys,” I greet them, plastering a toothy smile on my face that makes me feel like such a fraud. Tommy shakes beside me with a short, silent laugh and coughs to cover it. He’s always had a hard time keeping a straight face when I play the part of a sucker. I’m going to have to change it up a little this time, only because my mark saw me kiss Hannah. My normal character wouldn’t flaunt something like that.
“What’s up?” The guy I’ve picked out lifts his chin to acknowledge me, then pushes up from leaning on the hood of his car. His eyes flick over my shoulder, probably to Hannah laying out on the top of her car. I curl my fist to release the need to punch him in the eye, then pull my hand free.
“I’m Dustin. Mind if I check out your rides?” I hold my open palm out, same stupid grin on my face.
My mark closes the distance, squinting as he sizes me up. I’m about an inch taller than he is, which I bet he hates, so I slouch to make it less evident. He takes my hand and I let him go ahead and squeeze just a little harder, waiting for the flicker in his eyes when I know I’ve got him. He holds it back, longer than I expect. I have to give it to him, but it comes when our handshake ends.
“Your girl over there. She’s . . . something,” he says. I pass him and move toward his car, mashing my molars together.
“She’s my sister,” Tommy grunts, and I’m glad he stepped in so I don’t have to.
“She’s hot,” one of the assholes says, laughing at his boldness. My chest fires up and I’m willing to drop this charade now for the pleasure of punching him.
“Yeah, but she’s a real bitch,” Tommy says. I laugh to myself, my face turned away from the new guys. Tommy is both pretending and being honest. They love each other, but like siblings who spent a lot of time together growing up. Sometimes, he legit thinks his sister is a bitch. I wonder if he knows the things she calls him.
“That’s a pretty sick wrap job,” I say, running my finger along the matte green that covers most of the Subaru. I bet it’s silver underneath, and I bet his daddy let him drive it right off the lot and into some detail shop that overcharged him for the job. My finger snags on the sharp edge under the mirror and I smirk, knowing this shit is going to peel by the time June rolls around.
“Yeah, had to do something to show off the two-point-four liter twin turbo the right way.” He rattles off probably the only thing he knows about his car. And I bet among his friends, it’s celebrated and awed over, as if he’s some bad-ass because he bought a stock car that goes fast. And it is fast. But not fast enough to beat me.
“Siiiiiick,” I say, exaggerating my response to the point that I catch Tommy again trying to stifle his laughter.
“I know, right?” the guy says, popping his hood for me to take a look. What an idiot. If he was playing me, he wouldn’t give me access to the inside of his ride. Tommy moves in next to me and we both glaze over, our suspicion confirmed.
“Nice,” Tommy drones. The guy doesn’t catch the hint of sarcasm in his tone.
“Real nice,” I add on, just to layer it thick.
Tommy and I briefly make eye contact as we back away from the engine. It’s been awhile since he set something up with me. Out at the Straights, drivers pony up because that’s how it’s done. It’s a respect thing. We’re all upfront, and most of the people who race up north are serious about the craft. Racing me on the Straights has become a sort of honor, and a lot of the drivers have side bets going about their times or how close they can come, so they make cash even if they lose.
Down here, though, racing is a hobby. It’s playtime for prep-school assholes. May as well give these guys the full experience.
“I don’t know, Dusty. I think maybe you can take this car. What do you think?” Tommy says, setting me up.
I grab at the back of my neck and turn to look at my Supra, that to the layperson—which these guys totally are—looks like a piece of shit.
“I don’t know, Tom. My car’s pretty old. They build these new models so fast,” I say, gleefully cataloguing all the custom work going on under my hood, things these guys would be clueless about. Hell, I bet I could pop it and show them what’s going on and they’d only see a mess and think I was a joke.
“That a Supra?” one of the guys asks. I shift a little on my feet, uneasy that one of these guys knows enough to at least understand what the body of my car is.
“Yeah. I bought it on OfferUp. What did it cost me, eight hundred?” I fake ask Tommy.
“I think it was nine, but you overpaid,” Tommy says in a wry tone. I wink at him, loving the extra effort he’s giving to this con.
“I might be able to match that thing on the road”—I gesture toward the bright green car—“but hell, I’ll probably blow a gasket before we make it halfway through the race.”
“You think? I bet it’ll hold just long enough,” Tommy lies, rubbing his chin as if really thinking about it. If anyone is blowing a gasket today, it’s one of these four assholes.
“You up for a race, man?”
And there it is. I cover my mouth and pretend I’m considering his offer, but underneath my fingers, I’m grinning like a fool.
“I don’t know. Maybe?” I play on, pulling out the cash in my pocket. I have two hundred bucks to my name, money I’ve kept stashed in my center console as emergency funds. I unfurl the bills and turn to look at Hannah. She’s sitting up on the car now, resting back on her elbows. She lifts a hand and waves to me and my heart literally sings.
“She’s gonna be so mad if I lose the money,” I say, putting the bait out there.
“Maybe you won’t lose,” the guy says.
“Yeah, maybe you won’t lose, Dusty,” Tommy repeats.
We are all going to laugh so fucking hard about this later.
I turn back to face the guys, pinching the two hundreds in my fingers, staring at them as though I’m really mulling this over. I roll my head a little and push the money back in my pocket, then step back toward my enemy.
“All right, sure. Two hundred on the race,” I say, holding out my hand again. He takes it, chuckling through our gentleman’s agreement. His friends try to hide their own arrogant laughter behind his back. They think they’ve conned me, and it’s going to feel so good to smoke this guy in the first six seconds on the road.
“What did you say your name was again?” I ask. He actually didn’t say, and he knows he didn’t.
“Aiden.” He lowers his glasses to the bridge of his nose, though the sun will be down in a matter of minutes.
“Aiden.” I repeat his name, nodding. “Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, you, too . . . Dusty.” Their laughter spills out as I walk away. They ate my character up and it is so satisfying to hear them be so confident. Tommy and I bump elbows, the move innocuous enough that it doesn’t appear to the guys behind us as if we’re gloating. But we are gloating. And we’re going to enjoy every minute of this. Now to go make some side bets and really rack up the cash.
* * *
This isn’t my turf, so I wait my turn. The night’s starting to drag on, though, and for a few minutes I am nervous the Scottsdale boys are going to bail.
Bless Hannah and her extraverted personality and her legs and hips and those way-too-short-shorts. She slips into the crowd of guys running the order and manages to move me up. I think they mostly want to see her kick things off, and while I want to punch the rookies for staring at her ass as she slips between my car and the Subaru, I’ll settle for ruining their rep out here on the road.
Oh, and taking their money.
And then, maybe, a punch in the face.
“Gentlemen!” Hannah juts her hip out as she shouts, and Tommy pats the roof of my car as he backs away.
I roll the window up and narrow my focus so the only things I see are the reflective dots that fade out down the road and Hannah’s long, slender arm in the air.
It’s less formal out here. Nobody shouts “start your engines” because our cars are already revving and our windows are up. It’s a matter of anticipation, and watching for the hair trigger sign that the starter’s hand is about to fall. I have the edge because I know Hannah, and I know she likes the drama. It’s one of the reasons everyone loves Ava Cruz starting races out on the Straights. She has a way of making something benign feel rare and special, filling the air with crackling anticipation that bubbles under the low hum of the engines.
Hannah’s created that spark here, tonight.
My lip ticks up on one side because I like it.
My hands feel the grip of the wheel and I move my right palm to the gear shift, my hold on it loose and ready. My pulse settles in at a rhythm I like. Originally, I planned to make this close. Or closer, at least. But then those dickheads gawked at my girl’s ass, and now? Now I’m going to embarrass them.
Hannah’s hand falls just as my eyes blink, and I let instinct take over. It’s clear Aiden doesn’t know how to handle his car, and within seconds, I’ve cleared his length. A quick glance in my mirror lets me know he’s struggling to handle the steering while trying to push his way back into a chance in hell.
That chance left the minute I got behind the wheel, asshole.
I’m at one-twenty faster than I’ve climbed there before, and my body swells with dominant blood. There’s nothing now but me and the road. My gaze zooms ahead, to the marker, and I play with the edge of the gear shift as I approach it, flirting with how I’ll make this turn. My lead is so long that Aiden will have to watch, so I want to make it special.
I punch the brake and flip around, barely skidding offline before passing Aiden and roaring back ahead. I imagine him swearing and shaking a fist out his window, and that cartoonish visual amuses me as I sail back to the place I started, not even bothering to roll through the finish line at top speed. I downshift and pull to the side in time to make room for the Subaru to speed through the line of cars, and I’m out of my car before Aiden slows enough to turn.
“Uh, I thought we were going in subtle,” Tommy says, clapping his hand on my back.
I shrug.
“I decided to make a point instead,” I answer.
“And that point is . . .”
I turn to walk backward as we head toward Hannah and Aiden’s friends. There’s a flash of green in her hand, which relaxes me because it means the guys paid up and I don’t have to fight for my winnings. In the past, when I’ve shown guys up, they’ve gotten defensive with the money. There’s an unwritten rule about welching on bets on the streets, and once you do it, it’s damned near impossible to get let back in. That doesn’t sink through for some people, though. I’ll give the Scottsdale boys this—they know enough to not fuck around with the cash.
“Nice race,” Hannah says, her lashes low and eyes hazed above her proud, faint smile.
Tommy exaggerates an eye roll and gives us some space. I pick her up and swing her around in a complete circle while I kiss her. She wraps her legs around me and tucks the roll of money into the breast pocket of my long-sleeved T-shirt, patting it twice for safe-keeping.
“You’ve got company,” she says in a low voice, glancing beyond me.
I set her down and instinctively move her behind me as I hear the rumble of the Subaru pulling up.
“Yo, that was bullshit!” Aiden says, stepping in close enough that I smell stale smoke on his breath. Fucking cloves.
“Not sure what you mean there. I thought you drove that thing pretty well,” I say, playing up the naïve nice-guy routine.
The grin on my face is stretched with fakeness, and I work hard to keep it plastered there while Aiden turns and laughs toward his friends.
“This guy,” he says, thumb pointing to me over his shoulder.
Someone else would probably take his fist in their teeth, but I’ve been hit plenty of times so I see it coming seconds before he twists and fires away.
I dip so his arm sails over me and his balance falters, then I rush forward and knock him to the ground, my knee in his stomach and my hand around his throat. I’m not pressing hard, but enough to let him know I can if I want to.
“You’ve got a learning curve, Aiden. That’s all. You bought a nice car, but if you’re going to race it you need to get yourself a good mechanic, or take some auto shop at school. Maybe make some new friends who know how to do more than put stickers on perfectly fine paint jobs.” I hold his glare, his teeth showing as he grunts out his labored breath. I give him a wink and let him go, making sure to take a few steps back so he can’t sweep my legs. People are always brave a few seconds after an attack. His head will clear, though, and he won’t want me embarrassing him again.
“Fucking hustled me, you prick!” He spits at me, the kind that sprays and splatters innocent bystanders. He’s made even more enemies now, so he’s left to stumble back into his car and drive off with his friends scrambling to catch up.
“My lips to God, Dustin, that shit never gets old,” Tommy says, slinging an arm over my shoulder. I shake my head.
“No, it does not,” I agree.
I get a subtle nod from Jimmy, who’s about to obliterate someone else with his Challenger. We never speak, part of the code, but it feels good to earn that silent respect. Nothing against the hobbyists who come out here; one day most of these guys will look back on their lives and reminisce about those times they drag raced out in the desert. I bet their stories get embellished in the retelling, and I bet getting smoked by guys like me never comes up.
But for guys like Jimmy? I’ll be part of their stories. Like that nod of respect, when they talk to their grandkids about coming out to the desert to race, they’ll mention how they once lost to Dustin Bridges. Their kids and grandkids won’t have to ask who I am. They’ll know. Everyone will know.
I’m comfortable in the fantasy, and with my arm around my girl, sharing laughs and smiles with my best friend, for the first time in a very long time, everything in my life feels damn near perfect.
Thing about me, though? Feeling perfect has always been a warning sign of the hailstorm of shit about to come. The sensation raises the hairs on the back of my neck first, and before I can fully turn and slip from Hannah’s warm embrace, the cruel and cold creeps in to steal my fantasy.
“Let’s see how fast you are now, asshole!” Aiden shouts. His arm hangs out of his car window as he cruises by, what appears to be a nine millimeter Glock—same brand as the one Colt sometimes carries—gripped in his hand and aimed right at my passenger side back tire.
The crack of the first shot echoes across the desert, the reverb playing off the nearby mountainside. My hands search behind me for Hannah, relief coating my stomach when I feel her arms and am able to back into her chest and shield her completely. Tommy rushes to stand at my side, helping to block his sister.
Hannah’s body jolts against me at the second shot. This one has Tommy sprinting toward Aiden’s car, a wrench from his tool set clutched in his hand. I let my friend show the aggression, not that my body isn’t seething with it. Right now, though, Hannah is my priority. Second on that list are the two flat tires that are going to cost a goddamn fortune—more than the couple hundred bucks won tonight—to replace.
Tommy hoists his wrench at the Subaru as it speeds away, falling short several feet only to spark as it clanks against the asphalt. My friend stares at the bright green car covered in stickers as it grows smaller in the distance, soon the only thing visible the glow of two tail lights.
“Shit!” my friend shouts, kicking at the road as he turns to face me. He’s threaded his hands behind his neck, and his teeth grind with anger. I should probably look just like him, and I’m a little surprised I don’t.
“How are we getting your car home?” Hannah croaks. I turn to look at her over my shoulder and reach out a hand. She takes it tentatively, probably waiting for me to lose my shit like her brother. I won’t, though. No sense in that. I’m used to haters. I was raised by them.
“I’ll use your donut, and I’m sure someone here will give me one of theirs. We’ll get home fine. Slow, ha! But . . . we’ll get home.” At my joke, her hand sinks comfortably into mine and I bring her into my chest, hugging her and swaying her a little to calm her racing heart.
I always thought the day would come when clashes like this wouldn’t frighten me. I thought I’d be older, but I guess seventeen is the magic number. I’ll be eighteen soon; what better time to feel invincible.