Page 12

TWELVE

KIT

The cluster of racers made a mad dash for Ashley, enveloping her. I started forward, but Trent held out a hand, holding me back. “I’ll grab the book. You start the car.”

I backed away from the melee. I doubted a five-day race would be decided in the first few minutes, but Trent took off as if it might. He rounded the crowd, coming up behind Ashley. He whispered into her ear, placing a hand on her shoulder before grabbing his guidebook and sprinting back in the car. Despite starting at the back of the crowd, he sped to the front, sliding across the hood and through the passenger side window, Dukes of Hazzard style.

“What the hell, Texas?” I shouted, flinching at all the injuries that could have happened thanks to the rust-covered hood and the barely stable window.

“We gotta go!” Trent pumped his fist like we were at a club.

“This isn’t an actual race. It’s a rally, and you’re going to break the car pulling shit like that,” I scolded, shifting the car into drive. “We don’t even know where we’re going yet.”

“Just drive.” He flipped through the book with a worrying speed. A level of speed that meant he wasn’t reading anything.

Loud engines roared to life, and gravel crunched as the other teams sped out of the parking lot. Caught up in the adrenaline, I started driving. Where? I had no idea other than we’d end up in northern Florida by the end of the weekend. I followed an S-Cargo van painted to resemble a snail out of the parking lot and toward the highway.

“So, our first stop is…” I waited for Trent to fill in the blank.

He hunched over the handbook, eyes flitting between the book and his phone. “Um, I’m not sure.”

“That’s great.”

Rather than follow the S-Cargo, I pulled into a gas station. Trent jolted up, eyeing our surroundings. “What are you doing?”

“Pulling over until we figure out where we’re actually going.”

“I’ve got it covered.”

“Do you?” I swiped his phone from his hand. “Big Rocks Virginia? What the hell does that mean?”

He grabbed his phone back with a shrug. “Fuck if I know. This book is in code.”

Sure enough, the instructions weren’t great. The list of stops was vague at best, completely indecipherable at worst.

“Big sombrero!” I pointed to one. “I know where that is.”

“How about ‘Horse demon?’ Got any ideas for that one?” Trent shook his head. “No wonder the other team had the giant map. They probably spent the last week searching for weird shit online and hoping it ended up as a stop on this dumb race.”

I bristled. “What happened to ‘we’re going to win this thing?’”

“I thought we could win by being really fast, not knowing…whatever this is.”

I laughed. “Well, I’m glad you know your strengths. Speed, not smarts.”

“I’m plenty smart. Just not about where I can find my weight in corn.”

“It doesn’t say that.”

He pointed to an entry on day one scenic route. My eyes traveled down the list of stops, pausing at “Post a photo with your weight in corn.”

“I sort of feel like we need to take that route.” My back ached, and I rubbed the back of my neck, already overwhelmed. I’d barely slept, worrying over Derek the night before and waking up early. And now I was on a rally with a guy who drove me nuts. It wasn’t exactly a recipe for a good time.

Trent nodded. “Alright, corn route it is. I’m pretty sure the Jolene reference means we’re heading toward Tennessee. I can fill in the blanks. Unless you want me to drive.”

“Do you know how to replace a clutch?” I asked. He shook his head with a golden retriever grin. “Then, no, I don’t want you to drive.”

“Then trust that I’ll get us to the stops. We gotta do this, Team All Drive, No Clutch!”

At least that was a decent team name. Better than the lack of a name I came up with and a hell of a lot better than Kitten and Texas Hit the Road. “I hope we’re not foreshadowing a future breakdown, but it’s not bad.”

“You’ve got to love it because it’s officially our handle.” He flipped his phone toward me. I caught a quick glimpse of the profile photo of me glaring at Trent from the driver’s seat.

“Nice,” I deadpanned.

He turned the screen back toward him. “I like it. It definitely gives the vibe that we have going.”

“Exasperation?”

“Yeah but mixed with burgeoning respect and admiration.”

I snorted. “Is that what you think is happening? How many times have you been hit in the head?”

“Not as many times as you’d think.” He peered down at his phone and smiled. “Great news! I have decoded the three stops. You’ve got to get on the highway going west here.”

I eased the car into the lefthand lane, turning onto a side street. “You figured it out while setting up a team account?”

“Alright, maybe ‘decode’ was the wrong word. I contacted a friend.”

“Is that code for an employee?”

Trent clearly outsourced most of his life. The lack of clean laundry and the sparkling clean house had only been surface-level indicators. Surely, he had an agent, an assistant, staff.

He shook his head. “Barbie and Ken. Or Mike and Hayden, rather. They gave me their number, offered to help us out if we needed a hand, being newbies and all.”

And apparently, he also outsourced his navigation duties.

“An assistant, though?” He stroked his chin. “I don’t hate the idea. If it didn’t sound so much like cheating, I’d give it a whirl. But we’ve got this.”

“We barely have a clue.”

“We have directions. At least through the next couple of stops.” He rapped the window with his knuckle. “Take this right.”

I followed his directions, waiting for him to cue up a podcast and enjoy some silence. He closed the handbook and reclined back into his seat, eyes on me. “So, why are you doing this, anyway? Like, the real reason.”

My jaw tightened. “Didn’t I already tell you? It’s my dad’s car. He wanted to race it, but he can’t. So, I’m doing it instead. Besides, it’s fun.”

“You don’t look like you’re having fun.” His eyes seared onto the side of my face.

I trained my eyes on the road. “I would be having fun with Derek. He knew how to drive stick.”

Trent frowned. “I’ll learn. This rally just doesn’t seem like your deal.”

“My deal? You have no idea what ‘my deal’ even is.”

His lips tipped up in a grin. “I know a little bit about you. You play kickball, you study a lot, you signed up for this rally because your dad didn’t race this car, and you don’t like me.”

“Okay,” I relented, with a grin that matched his. “Maybe you know a little about me.”

An awkward silence stretched out between us, and I glanced over to Trent, expecting to find him huddled into his phone. He shifted in his seat to face me.

“My dad died a couple of years ago. The car was his project.” The words tumbled out, a well-rehearsed accounting of what happened without getting into the messy emotions. “I couldn’t just get rid of the thing until I…I don’t know, achieved his dreams.”

“Your dad wanted to participate in a shitty car rally?” His tone wasn’t flippant, but curious.

“He wanted to race it. You know, back in the seventies, it was probably fast. But then it just sat in the driveway and once every year or so, he’d tinker with it.” I sighed, pursing my lips and pushing away a slew of memories before continuing. “I checked out a couple of different options: salt flats, hill climbs, autocross.”

“Right, so you could have spent an afternoon and dragged this car to an autocross, achieved your dad’s dream by lunch. Why this rally?”

I could have easily avoided all the time and cost of repairing the car. Within the first six months, the car ran. Not well and certainly not for long, but I could have hauled it out to a coffee and car event, paid fifty bucks, plunked on a helmet and taken it through an autocross track in a parking lot. But even when I found an event, showed up early on a Sunday morning, the gesture felt hollow, insincere. Like I was harming his memory by not caring more. By not putting in more effort.

“I wanted to do something he would have loved. Not just check a box.”

“So, you and your dad were close?”

I flinched at the question, surprised by it. “I guess. We weren’t best friends, but I loved him.”

I spoke to him every week. After an hour-long phone call with my mom, he’d come on the line, ask how I was doing, tell me he missed me. But he never visited. He never asked about my work or my life. My mom connected our relationship more than anything, and only after his death did I regret that. I wished I had learned more about the man who raised me.

“What about you? Are you close with your parents?” I asked.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer, but it deflected the attention off me. I didn’t want to delve into my relationship with my dad. I didn’t want to break down in tears on a car rally with a stranger.

“Absolutely.”

The breezy answer took me off guard. I didn’t know Trent, but somehow in the brief time we’d been around each other, I’d built a story around him, using snippets of conversation to build a history, a life. And in that process, I’d guessed that Trent was neglected, either of time or attention. But apparently, that wasn’t the case at all.

“Both of them?”

“I call every Sunday after they’re home from church.”

“You go to church?” I arched an eyebrow.

He laughed. “Only on Christmas and Easter.”

My brain struggled to reformulate the backstory I’d created, taking away the dingy apartment and placing him in a fancy gated community with absent but loving parents.

“But my brother is a preacher,” he continued.

“You have a brother?”

“Two, and three sisters.”

I barked out a laugh, shocked. “And you’re the baby of the family?”

“Oldest, actually, and clearly the most handsome.” His green eyes lit up. “Why? Is that surprising?”

“I figured you were an only child. And if not that, the baby of the family.”

He shook his head. “Wow. Not even close. What else did you think?”

I winced as he shifted in his seat to face me, eyes drawing down my face, clocking the blush on my cheek, no doubt. “I don’t want to say it now.”

“Now I definitely want to hear it.”

“I don’t know, that maybe you didn’t grow up with a close family and that’s why you party so much.”

He cocked his head, working his jaw. “Yeah, I guess that would make sense. But nope. My dad is in medical sales, and my mom is a teacher. Mom drinks socially, and dad enjoys a beer while watching football, but my problems are my own.”

“And what do they think about those problems?”

“I try not to bring it up. Thankfully, they follow college football, and the Norwalk rumor mill stays pretty local.” His face paled. “They probably have an inkling, though. Mom asked me to spend the summer at home.”

“And you turned her down?”

He peered out the window with a shrug. “I didn’t go with Frankie, either, my best friend. I don’t know. Maybe I’m sick of having everyone else help me out of the problems I created. Maybe, this once, I wanted to figure it out for myself.”

I had to give it to Trent. That surprised me. “And you’re solving your problems by going on a five-day road trip with someone you hate?”

“You’re the one who hates me. I don’t hate you, Kitten. I just like getting under your skin. You make it too easy.”

“First of all, I’m not your Kitten,” I huffed, ignoring the playful glint in his eyes. “Second, it’s going to be a long trip if you keep teasing me.”

“I’ll do my best to not annoy you.” He settled into his seat, flipping the page of the guidebook. “Too much, anyway.”