Hot Laps (22 page)

“And Cole has a drug problem? Since when?”

Anna looked a little nervous. “I didn’t say he did … I’m just getting the impression
that he does.”

“Why?”

“Maybe because he snorted a line before we had sex last night?”

I sighed not wanting to concern myself with Cole. I had my own problems. “Can we just
get drunk so I have an excuse for being such a mess?”

“Like you have to ask …”

You realize what your life has become when you’re drinking jungle juice at noon on
a Saturday curled up in a ball-sack bean bag with your best friend because you had
the best sex of your life and cried afterwards.

That was me. An epic failure of epic proportions sitting in a ball-sack beanbag drinking
jungle juice.

Methanol – A fuel used in sprint cars. It’s a liquid that’s light, volatile, colorless,
flammable and smells sweeter than ethanol.

“Do you want to watch re-runs of Sex in the City?”

“No.” For some inexplicable reason, I was moody. Like girl moody.

“Well, why the fuck not?” Rosa threw a pillow across the living room at me.

I groaned and curled into the cushions putting one over my head.

“What’s your problem today?” Rosa reached over and rubbed my back. “You’re acting
like Arie when she gets her period, all moody and shit.”

“I had sex with Hayden this morning.”

In fact, at that very moment, that was all I could think about.

“I thought you had sex with her the night of the party?”

“No. I didn’t. We were drunk.”

“Noble of you,” Rosa nudged me playfully.

“Thanks.” Cracking a smile, I removed the pillow from my head and sat up next to her.
“I thought so, too.”

“Let’s order Chinese.”

“Okay.” And then my gaze caught Cole in our backyard lying on the patio, flat on his
back wearing nothing but boxer shorts, sleeping.

“Do you think he’s gonna be okay?” Rosa asked, holding the phone to her ear and pointing
to Cole.

“I don’t know.” I turned my palms up shrugging. I didn’t have the energy to deal with
his shit today.

I took in a deep breath, as if I was trying to muster up every last ounce of manly
strength to act normal today. I knew eventually I would need to talk about his cocaine
problem. Shit was getting out of hand.

But not today.

Today, I was confused. I was overwhelmed. Yeah, that’s a good word for it. I was overwhelmed
by Hayden. I even called my mom after she left this morning to see what I should do.

Mama laughed at me. Laughed.

From the moment I met Hayden, there was something very honest about her that I enjoyed.
She didn’t deal with bullshit and she didn’t give you bullshit.

I’ve always been a guy who sees everything for what it was in any situation.

Right now, I didn’t see this situation.

Honestly, I think I scared her a little. I was trying to be a good guy. Give her something
she’d never had.

I’m sure guys say it, but honestly, it was by far some of the best sex I had ever
had in my life.

It might have been because I’d been dying to have sex with her all week and couldn’t.

I wasn’t about to have sex with her when she was drunk. Usually I had no problems
working. None. Even if the night before I was with three girls at once. Which has
happened. But Hayden, she was fucking with my head a lot.

Her reactions in the shower threw me and had me worried she thought I thought she
was some kind of slut. I despised that word. Hated it.

When I was in high school, some thought I was some sort of player since I had a few
regular girls but never any committed relationships. But if you actually asked those
girls I was with, they wouldn’t say that. I treated them all with the respect they
deserved.

I lost my virginity in Knoxville when I was fourteen to a girl Willie hooked me up
with. It may seem young but I was
very
eager to experience the whole sex thing after hearing my cousins and brother talk
about how enjoyable it was.

Jenny, the girl I was with, was sixteen and experienced. I was not. But she was patient
and taught me a lot about women in general.

I never told my parents about Jenny as I only saw her if we were in Knoxville but
any time I was there, she was the first person I called.

When I got into high school, that’s when the girls congregated to me. I never had
to tell them who my dad was, or use my family name, and I never would have anyway.

If a girl was into me simply because my dad was Jameson Riley, then she wasn’t worth
it. She wasn’t in it for me and, in turn, that wasn’t a good deal for me.

I’m sure all of them knew who I was but I didn’t need the name to get their attention.
I like to think I knew what girls wanted since I was so close with my sister growing
up. It also helped that anytime my aunts were together I was usually around as well.
I liked hanging out with the women in our family; they provided just as much entertainment
as the men.

All of the women in my family also would have kicked my ass if I disrespected the
girls I was with. They weren’t my property or even a possession to me. They were women,
and deserved to be treated as the beautiful mesmerizing creatures they were.

Surprisingly, I learned the most about how a woman should be treated from my dad.
He held my mom up on a pedestal and looked at her as if she was his very reason for
breathing. If you knew either one of them, you understood the love they had and that
they were each other’s center of the universe. When the world wasn’t looking, they
had something closely resembling a fairytale.

I may not have been tied to just one girl but I did give them what they deserved and
wanted. I was always honest up front and some didn’t like that. I also never touched
them until they understood what it was that we shared, this was something I learned
from Ryder. And I also never talked about what I did with these girls, even with my
cousins, it was always kept private because that was disrespectful to the girl I was
with. If she talked about it, that was her deal but no one would get it out of me.
No one.

I hadn’t told anyone what was going on with me and Hayden. Rosa knew a little now
but other than that, I kept it to myself.

Not that we talked about my sex life or anything, but still, if I was into a girl
I talked about it with her on occasion.

Right now, I didn’t feel like talking. It was that overwhelmed side again because
for the first time I was having some mixed feelings about a girl. A guy like me, one
who lived for the moment, wasn’t used to something like this.

Hayden was different from most girls I’d been with. She was feisty like me, carefree
and didn’t have bullshit in her life. She didn’t ask me every five minutes if she
looked good, or if I thought about her that day.

Nothing.

I could see myself hanging out with Hayden just to hang out, which I did all week.
It was as if I was hanging out with the boys.

She’s prettier for sure.

As you could tell, I had a lot on my mind that night until my Grandma come over and
had dinner with me and Rosa. We ordered Chinese food and then sat around the kitchen
island eating.

Cole came inside from the patio, sweating, and looking like shit and asked if he could
borrow my truck. Not wanting Grandma to see him like this, I pulled him away into
the foyer where I could ask him what his fucking problem was.

“Let me borrow your truck,” he demanded, standing in front of me, barefoot and only
wearing a pair of shorts and sunglasses at eight o’clock at night.

“No. You’re high. You’re not taking my truck man.” I stepped back and leaned against
the wall with my arms crossed over my chest, annoyed he was doing this shit.

Cole’s jittery demeanor confirmed he really was high.

“Come on man, I just need it for like an hour. Just an hour,” he pleaded, never looking
directly at me, his head down. “Then I’ll come right back.”

“No.” unfolding my arms, I leaned forward and knocked his sunglasses away grabbing
his face in my palms. “What are you doing?”

There was literally no blue left in his eyes, only the black of his dilated pupils.
“You’re dad finds out you’re doing that shit and he’s gonna kick your ass.”

We exchanged a look and he backed away from me holding his palms up as if to say he
didn’t care. And then he left.

Growling, I shook my fists at the door he slammed in my face. “Stupid fuck!”

I couldn’t understand how he got wrapped up in that shit in the first place.

Occasionally we smoked weed but cocaine, no, no fucking way.

Cole was different when it came to this kind of shit. He constantly thought he had
to live up to the expectation he should have been more like Lane…his parents never
acted as if they felt that way.

Whatever was going on with him was who he was hanging out with when he wasn’t with
me. I had a feeling it was Nathan’s older brother… the one who taught him a great
deal about filming, which Cole was great at. If he wasn’t careful, I had a feeling
he was going to fuck it all up.

He worked for my dad and he never tolerated this kind of thing. He was vehemently
against drugs and, for the most part, actually had mandatory drug testing at both
his shops.

Not sure how Cole was getting around that.

Sunday morning I was in my room with Cole, who seemed normal today, and Noah deciding
on how we were going to fix the pool before Dad got home. It looked disgusting. I
was tempted to hire someone to clean it.

We’d gotten most of the house clean but it was a little hard to fix the carpet in
the living room since we had to replace all of it. And then there was the matter of
putting away all my mom’s clothes again. Still hadn’t done that either.

Outside there was the issue of the pool and the mud caked on the side of the house.

Fuck, we had a mess.

I blamed Hayden for this. All week I was with her getting drunk and thinking with
my dick.

Now look at me.

My phone started ringing on my nightstand. Jumping slightly, the sound scared us since
it was quiet in my room after Noah went downstairs.

“What?” I answered, knowing it was Rosa, who was downstairs.

“Your Dad is coming up there.”

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Cole, who was slouched against the wall smoking
a cigarette I told him to put out five times now, looked up at me in full on panic.

“Came home early,” Rosa said. “Engine blew in Calistoga last night and he’s not happy.”

“Uh, tell him I’m not home,” I snapped.

Rosa snapped right back at me. “Fuck you. You tell him you’re not here. I’m not telling
him that.”

She was so inconsiderate.

“Rosa, it wouldn’t make any sense if I told him that. Then he’d know I was here.”

After a moment of silence, I did what any other kid would do. I begged her.

“Oh, come on, Rosa! Can’t you just please tell him I’m not here? You saw the house.
He’s gonna kill me, or kick me out. You wouldn’t want that, would you? Who would snuggle
with you and watch movies?”

She sighed, I was wearing her down slowly but surely.

I paused in my groveling, waiting, when she said nothing.

Unbelievable.

“Where is he?”

“In the living room staring at the piece of carpet missing. He looks pissed,” she
laughed. “I can see the veins popping out of his head from here.”

“Thanks for helping,” I said sarcastically. “Knock something over to divert him.”

Just then, Cole stood and walked over to my bedroom window.

“And where the fuck do you think you’re going, asshole? Get back here,” I started
jabbing my finger at the floor. “Sit the fuck down. It was your idea to have that
band play and shoot mud balls out of that bead seater. It was also your idea for the
fucking jelly. And what about the carpet? Did you actually think he wouldn’t notice
a piece missing?”

“It’s better than the alternative, Casten,” he said sourly walking back to his place
on the floor. “That shit was still smoking in the morning. We’re lucky the fire department
didn’t show up.”