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When Shade’s at a meeting with Red Bull and Honda, talking about the upcoming X Fighters season, Scarlet sits in the truck with me. I smoke, and she tells me to stop.
“Honda wants you to attend the final round of After Dark in Vegas in two weeks. Are you going to do it?”
I think about her question and sigh. I thought about competing a lot during those three weeks. When I’m on a bike, it’s the only true sense of freedom I’ve ever felt. I defy gravity, logic and sanity and essentially, I come to life when airborne. That feeling, the rush it gives me taunting disaster, it’s about being free and doing what you want with no idea how it’s going to end. If only for a second, my mind is nowhere else.
I can’t give them up. For me, that’s why. If only for seconds, I’m free from everything else. The sponsors, the brand of me they’re creating, the women, the other riders. In those seconds, I’m alive only for me.
“Yeah,” I finally answer, laying my head back against the seat, enjoying the coolness of the fall air. “I’m planning on it. Wasn’t sure if Honda still wanted me.” Given my drug-addled, hate-filled past, I behaved in ways that caused the industry shame. I wouldn’t have blamed my sponsors for dropping me after the way I acted. It wasn’t right, and I can’t even tell you why I did it other than rebelling. But still, they didn’t drop me. They covered, blamed my disappearance on my shoulder injury and hyped my return.
“What are you gonna do?” Scarlet asks, handing me my cell phone I didn’t have with me in rehab.
I stare at it. Sixty missed messages. None from her. “With what?”
She pauses, takes a drink of her iced coffee and stares at me. I say nothing. She rolls her eyes, hanging her hands on the steering wheel. “You know what. Amberly. River. Her birthday is in three days.”
I shrug, having no real plan of action. Other than groveling like a goddamn fool and hoping she finds pity on me. That could work, couldn’t it?
Probably not. “I don’t know.”
She twists in the seat, knocking her hand to my knee. “Well, in the books I read, the hero does something courageous to win the girl back and prove he’s worthy.”
“I can do courageous.”
Scarlet gives me that look. The one that screams, dude, you’re an idiot. “I said courageous, not stupid.”
I laugh. “Is there a difference?”
“Yes.Yes,there is.”
“Nah.” I shift in the seat, uncomfortable. Scarlet hands me an invitation.
“Are you going?”
It’s the invitation to River’s fourth birthday party. And while I don’t think I should go, I doubt anyone in attendance wants me there, I can’t not go.
“I need the flower fromBeauty and the Beast.”
Scarlet raises an eyebrow, never looking up from her phone. “The enchanted rose from the movie?”
Of course she knows the name of it. River and Scarlet cried together at the end of when we watched it. All fifty times the three days I had her. “Yeah. Is that possible?”
“Not unless you plan on stealing it from Disney.” And then she looks at me. “Dude, no.”
“Fine. Can you get one like it?”
“Why?” Check out her face. She’s excited, isn’t she? She thinks this is me being courageous. I guess it might be, huh?
My nostrils flare and I close my eyes. “Fuck, because I asked you to. That’s why.”
“Is it for a girl?”
Scarlet doesn’t know when to quit.
I run my hand through my hair, tugging hard at the roots. I need a haircut, but then again, Amberly and River both like my Mohawk. “Maybe.”
She grins, as though I’ve told her I’m in love for the first time. And I guess—in a way—I am.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. It took me weeks of those dumb sessions I didn’t want to be at that I paid attention to some of what they had to say. What really hit home was when Grunner, the crazy fuck he was, threw a copy of “Tao Te Ching” at my head one night and said, “Stick it up your ass.”