Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (20 page)

The guy doesn’t have a
chance.

“You ready to get behind
the wheel and do this?” I ask.

“I’ll probably be a lot
more ready if you stop asking me that,” Kate retorts. A moment later, she gasps
and says, “I am so sorry for snapping at you like that.”

I put an arm around her
shoulders, saying, “You sound pretty ready to me.”

The first cars start
their burnouts, startling Kate and I out of our moment.

Without a word, we both
walk to our respective doors and get in the Chevelle.

“Okay,” I tell her, “do
you see the guy you’re racing?”

“Yeah,” she says. “He’s
the one looking at both of us, holding up his hands and mouthing the words,
‘Come on, let’s go!’ right?”

“That’s the one,” I tell
her. “If he’s like everyone else I’ve seen behind the wheel of that car, he’s
going to waste at least a second trying to see if he can get his car to do a
wheelie off the line, so you’ve already got the advantage.”

“People can actually do
that?”

“You can, but I’m telling
you, it’s a waste of time in a drag race,” I answer. “I’m here to help, but the
actual race is going to be over pretty quickly, so if you have any last-minute
questions, now’s the time.”

“Yeah,” she says. “After
I win, how would you like to celebrate?” As punctuation, she fires up the
Chevelle, and I’m not sorry to admit I’ve got goosebumps.

The first cars take off
roaring down the street and now Kate’s pulling up next to her opponent on the
starting line.

“They don’t waste any
time, do they?” she asks as a few people come out and start laying down
traction compound.

“Hey!” a voice I can
barely hear shouts and Kate and I look over to the car next to us. “Good luck
getting off the line with a passenger! Also, I’d like my money in smaller bills
if you’ve got ‘em. It’ll be a lot easier making it rain on the finish line if
I’ve got more paper.”

I’m about to throw the
guy’s own smack talk back in his face, but Kate just starts laughing.

“Yeah,” she says, turning
to me, her eyes wild, “I’m ready.”

Down boy, now’s not the
time.

When the road’s treated,
Kate and I wait for them to make a puddle around the back tires. As soon as
they’re out of the way, Kate’s foot is on the gas and her foot’s off the clutch
and she keeps her revs up as the back tires start spinning in place.

I’m about to tell her to
ease off the throttle a little bit, but she does it on her own. The tires catch
and Kate lays rubber for at least fifty feet.

I guess she didn’t need
my help, after all.

As we’re backing up
toward the starting line, I’m telling Kate, “You know, it looks like you’ve got
this down pretty well. If you want, I can hop out and save you about two
hundred pounds.”

She shakes her head as we
come to a stop behind the start line.

“I wouldn’t be behind the
wheel if I still had any questions,” she says. “I wanted you next to me for my
first race because I wanted you next to me for my first race.”

I’m about to respond when
the guy next to us starts his burnout. Apparently, he wanted an audience.

The only thing is that he
handles the burnout at least as well as Kate did. To be honest, just seeing the
guy’s car, I was expecting him to stall it. Maybe I’m reading too much into a
burnout, but this guy doesn’t seem like he’s just another rookie.

I’ve never actually met
someone driving that particular car who knew what they were doing. This might
not go so well.

The guy in the Charger
comes back to the line and Kate’s revving.

“This is it,” she says,
putting the car in gear. “I can do this,” she repeats, “I can do this.”

I keep quiet. She’s
psyching herself up and the last thing she needs is me interrupting that.

After a few seconds, a
twenty-something chick comes out carrying her cell phone and I have no choice
but to speak.

“This is going to be a
different kind of start than what we talked about,” I tell Kate.

“What?” she shouts. “Why
the hell are you telling me that now?”

“It’s okay,” I tell her.
“Instead of dropping her hands, she’s going to turn on her phone’s flashlight
and that’s your go signal. As soon as you see the light in her hand, go.”

“Okay,” Kate says. “Okay,
I’ve got this. I can do this.”

I always hate starts like
this because it’s never quite clear if the starter’s looking for the flashlight
app or whether they’re just checking social media. It’s happened before.

Without any warning,
though, the light comes on and we’re off the line. Kate got the better start,
but the Charger’s keeping it within a car length.

Kate gets through her
first gear shift perfectly and we pull ahead a little.

There’s a crowd at each
side of the finish line. We’re already halfway through the race.

“Come on, you hunk of
shit, come on!” Kate shouts as she loses a few mph on her next gear change.
“Nitrous?” she’s yelling at me. “Do I hit the nitrous?”

She’s never used it, and
it’s not the sort of thing you want to get used to on the fly, so I tell her,
“No. Just keep on it, you’ve almost got this.”

She makes her final gear
change about half a block from the finish, and we’re pulling away from the
Charger as we cross the finish line.

“Woo!” Kate’s screaming,
and I’m laughing with glee as she eases off the gas.

By the time we get to the
finish line to settle up with the Charger, I can see the lights of the flatbed
coming down the cross street.

“I won, right?” Kate’s
asking me as she shuts off the car after we’ve pulled off to the side of the
road, out of the way of the next batch of cars.

“You won,” I tell her and
she lets out another cheer. “Not only that,” I tell her, “but did you ever see
the first
Fast and the Furiou
s
movie?”

“Yeah,” she says.

“You just beat Dom’s
car,” I tell her.

“I kick ass?” she asks,
though she doesn’t wait for an answer. “I kick ass!”

We kiss, and I’m laughing
as we get out of the car. “Racing loosens your vocabulary quite a bit, doesn’t it?”
I ask Kate.

“Whatever, man,” she
says. “I just won my first race. I really don’t care.”

The guy with the Charger
walks up to us, money in hand, saying, “You know, I didn’t think that was going
to happen with that guy weighing you down, but whatever you’re doing, keep
doing it. I haven’t lost a race like that in years.”

So the guy didn’t turn
out to be a noob at all. Icing, meet cake.

He hands over the money
and even manages a respectful nod before he gets back in his car and drives off
into the night.

We have to wait for the
next two cars to get past, but once they’re out of the way, Kate tosses me the
keys and I get behind the wheel of the Chevelle. I get it off the track as
quickly as possible, but I take my time getting it up onto the flatbed.

“That was so beautiful,”
I tell her. “You were amazing.”

“Did you think I was
going to win?” she asks. “Be honest.”

“I was confident,” I tell
her. “Things can happen, but you’re a quick study and you’ve got balls like a
freaking white whale.”

“I’m going to make a
guess and take that as a compliment,” Kate giggles.

Once the car’s safely on
the back of the flatbed, Kate and I are quick to get out. Mick tosses us the
car cover while he gets the two tire-wide ramps secured onto the truck. We’re
on the road less than a minute later.

Kate and I are holding
hands and Mick’s going off about how people are going to be talking about that
debut for a while and everything’s going spectacularly well as we cautiously
make our way back toward the shop on the other side of town.

“I know you were nervous
about riding shotgun with me, but I just wanted to thank you for doing that,”
Kate says.

“Win or lose, I knew I
wanted to be there,” I tell her. “I just didn’t know if my added weight would
affect the race.”

“What made you finally decide?”
she asks, squeezing my hand.

“Actually, I swung by the
strip club Desi works and she helped me put things into perspective,” I start,
but I don’t continue.

Oh no.

Mick elbows me fast and
hard in the ribs.

Oh my God. What did I
just do?

“Desi? While I was down
here, trying to figure out how I’m supposed to talk to these people, you were
hanging out with your ex-girlfriend?”

“Dude,” Mick says.
“That’s just a rookie mistake. You hate to see it.”

Chapter
Nineteen

How to Make Friends and Influence
Strippers

Kate

I’ve been trying to act
like I’m all right with Eli hanging out with his stripper ex-girlfriend, but
it’s not working. Every time I say something about it, he’s so quick to assure
me that they’re just friends; that whatever feelings they may have had for each
other are all in the past.

It sounds like a
rationalization.

I’ve really tried to just
trust him, but I’ve been ignoring his calls and his texts. He’s stopped by a
couple of times, but I’ve just been telling him I’m not feeling too well.

We can’t keep doing this.
Either we’re going to find a way to make this work or we’re not. Going back and
forth would just be a slow, inevitable death to the relationship.

I’ve tried more times
than I can remember to avoid doing what I’m about to do, but I’ve got to know.

The phone’s ringing.

“Hey, how are you
feeling?” Eli answers. “I was just getting some chicken soup together to bring
over to you.”

“Where does she work?” I
ask.

“What?” he asks. “Who?”

“Who else?”

“I don’t know if Desi
would be cool with me telling people where she works, but I can give her your
number and have her call you or something,” he says.

“Yeah, that’s not going
to do it,” I tell him. “If you don’t tell me, I’m sure Mick will.”

“Kate,” he says, “I know
what this must look like from the outside, but there’s really-”

“If I had trouble
believing nothing was going on with the two of you the first forty times you
told me that, what makes you think forty-one’s going to make any difference?” I
interrupt. “You can’t tell me you don’t understand.”

He sighs. “She works at
Club Slick,” he says. “I don’t know if she’s working or not, but it’s the only
place I know to find her. We haven’t seen each other outside of-”

“Club Slick,” I repeat as
I write the words on my hand. “Thanks.”

I hang up the phone.

Sure, I feel a lot like
the overbearing girlfriend right now, but if I don’t talk to her, I may as well
end the relationship right now.

Either he’s telling the
truth or he isn’t. I’d much rather have this turn out to be a huge mistake on
my half, than just go on like everything’s fine while he’s making it with some
stripper.

The only problem is that
I have no idea what she looks like. I just hope she’s there.

I get to the club, and I
try to ignore the men standing outside smoking as they ogle me as I pass.

Once inside the club, I
pay the cover and take a look around. There’s a stage with silent,
scantily-clad women dancing on it, there’s a bar and there are a lot of guys
trying to live down to the saying, “Men are pigs.” It’s pretty much what I
expected.

I walk over to the bar,
and I ask the bartender if, “Desi’s working tonight.”

He scrunches his face and
cocks his head. “Desi?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “It’s
short for Desiree. Is she on tonight?”

“I’m sorry,” he says,
“nobody here by that name.”

Yeah, it’s over. I get
Eli’s hesitation in telling me where she works, but I can’t live with him lying
about it.

Eli’s cheating on me and
I had to find out from the bartender at a strip club.

Nice.

I’m turning around,
getting ready to leave, only I walk into a pair of outstretched arms, and a
woman who’s wearing next to nothing is cooing in my ear, “Kate! I’ve heard so
much about you,” the woman says. “It’s so great to finally meet you!”

I squint as if that’s
going to make some kind of difference. “Desi?”

She puts her index finger
to her bottom lip, saying, “Around here, it’s Judy. Some of the regulars can
get a little weird if they find out your real name.”

Okay, that actually makes
sense.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re
here, let me buy you a drink,” she says, putting her hand on my shoulder. I
shrug the hand off.

“I need to talk to you
about Eli,” I tell her.

“What do you like?” Desi
asks me over the deafening music. “Are you into beer, liquor, wine…”

“I’m into talking to you
about Eli,” I tell her, this time making sure to lean in close enough and speak
loudly enough she can’t pretend she didn’t hear me.

“Okay,” she says and
pulls up a stool. “What do you want to know?”

It’s only just occurring
to me that she’s under no obligation to tell me the truth here. How am I
supposed to believe anything she says?

“Kate?” Desi asks.
“What’s on your mind?”

“Are you sleeping
together?”

She laughs. “Well, you
just come right out with it, don’t you?” she asks. “No, Eli and I don’t have
that kind of relationship. We were an item for a while a few years back, but I
hadn’t even seen him until his friend Mick brought him in here a little while
ago.”

“Why should I believe
you?”

She shrugs. “There’s
nothing I can say that’ll convince you.” The fact that it’s a statement and not
a question throws me for a second.

“Probably not,” I tell
her. “I’d hope, though, that
one
of
you would have the decency to just be upfront with me about it.”

“Can I tell you
something?”

“Would anything I say
stop you?”

“Probably not, because
this is something you really need to hear,” she tells me.

“Then I guess you can,” I
tell her.

Desi gets the bartender’s
attention and orders some water before continuing.

“When I first spotted
Eli, I didn’t know how to feel,” she says. “It had been so long… I missed him.
I guess I didn’t realize just how much until he was right there. I don’t know
how much he’s told you about our past relationship, but for a while there, I
thought Eli was going to be the one.”

My upper lip twitches on
one side, but I don’t interrupt.

“I don’t know, when I
came down and started talking to him, I thought maybe this was our big chance
to get back together. There was just one problem,” she says.

“What’s that?” I seethe.

“He wouldn’t shut up
about
you
,” she says. “Honestly, I
don’t think I’ve ever heard him go off so much about any topic other than
racing.”

“And what, is that
supposed to make me feel better?”

“It should,” she says.
“It’s the truth, after all. I don’t even think he was aware, but that night
when he came in and you had your first race coming up-”

“How do you know what I
look like?” I ask.

She blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“You spotted me after I’d
only been in here for a minute or two,” I tell her.

 
“He showed me your picture. Actually, he
showed me a lot of pictures of you. To be frank, it was a little off-putting
that he went on with it so long,” she explains. “Why? How did you think I
knew?”

“Well, I haven’t seen any
pictures of you,” I answer.

“Nah,” she says with a
wave of her hand. “He’s not interested in me the way he’s interested in you. It
really is ancient history to him.”

“Not to you, though,” I
observe.

“No,” she says, “not to
me. Please don’t misunderstand me,” she continues. “I have no interest in
making things harder for the two of you, but Eli was kind of the guy for a long
time. That can be a hard thing to let go.”

“So I’m just supposed to
trust that you’re never going to act on these feelings?” I ask. “I’m supposed
to trust that you haven’t already?”

“Mind if we talk about
this where we’ve got a bit more privacy?” she asks, leaning in close. “I’ll
cover the cost of the champagne room. I just can’t sit and chat with friends on
the job.”

“Oh, you were so close,”
I tell her.

“What?” she asks, pulling
away, blinking. She blinks a lot.

“Is that where you take
Eli when the two of you want to ‘talk?’” I ask. “It sounds like he’s been in
here more than a couple of times.”

“No,” she says. “As long
as it looks like I’m flirting, there’s not a problem as that’s a pretty big
part of my job.”

“You’re doing a great job
of fixing one problem by causing a bigger one,” I tell her. “Yeah, I’ll go back
to the champagne room with you as long as you’re paying and you don’t have a
legion of stripper friends in the back ready to tear me to shreds.”

Desi furrows her brow,
but a second later, she’s laughing.

“Wow,” she says. “I’ve
really got an uphill battle here, don’t I?”

“I think that’s a fair
assessment,” I tell her.

Desi glances around and
then reaches into her bikini top, pulling a fifty from beneath the fabric. She
folds the bill, slips it between two of her fingers and gives it to me like
we’re shaking hands.

“All right, baby,” she
says loudly, “let’s go!”

Desi takes my hand and
leads me into a back room that looks remarkably like Dante’s second circle of
hell. She guides us through a set of black curtains into a small, semi-private
space with a recliner and an end table.

“We can talk in here,”
she says, “but we’ll have to keep it a little quiet. If they think I’m not
defiling myself in here for your entertainment, it could go bad for me.”

“That’d be a real shame,”
I mutter.

“Listen,” she says, “I
know that you’re angry, and I know right now that anger is directed at me, but
there really is nothing going on between Eli and me.”

“If that’s the case, you
wouldn’t mind if I asked you to stop seeing him,” I retort.

Desi sighs. “If that’s
what it’s going to take for you to start believing us, then I guess I’d have no
choice,” she says.

“You sound pretty
disappointed about that,” I point out.

She shakes her head,
saying, “Eli and I were very close once. I was hoping we could be again. It’s
not worth it if all our friendship is going to do is hurt people.”

“Why are you pretending
to go along with everything I say?” I ask. “Is that your plan to get me out of
here?”

“I’m not pretending
anything,” she says. “Actually, I think I’ve given you a lot more than polite
honesty. I think I’ve been a pretty good sport up until now.”

“And now’s when that’s
going to change?” I ask.

“Look, if you don’t trust
Eli, why are you even with him? You came down here for answers, and I’ve told
you everything you wanted to know. My answers may not have been what you wanted
to hear, but I haven’t been evasive, I haven’t tried to sugarcoat anything. I
can understand why the idea of us spending any time with each other at all
could make you a bit uncomfortable, but even if I were to never see each other
again, who’s to say he won’t make friends with another woman?”

“I’d settle for someone
he never slept with,” I fire back.

“I could sit here and lie
to you and say that never happened with him and I, but we’re both going to have
to settle for the truth, instead,” she says.

“Let’s do that,” I tell
her.

“The truth is that Eli
and I were together for a long time and we were very close. It’s also the truth
that he is not even remotely interested in me anymore as anything but a friend.
I’d offer to just stop seeing him, but I don’t think that’s really going to
change anything, is it?”

“Probably not,” I tell
her.

“Okay then,” she says,
“then let me give you a piece of advice.”

“I can’t wait,” I yawn.

“Don’t waste your life
being jealous of what you have,” she says.

I furrow my brow. “What
does that even mean?” I ask.

“You’re acting like
you’re on the verge of losing him, but what you’re not allowing yourself to see
is that he’s more committed to you right now than you even know,” she says.
“You’re acting like I’ve somehow stolen that from you, but I couldn’t do that
if I wanted to. Eli’s not mine,” she says. “For what it’s worth, if you want me
to stop talking to him, I will. I’d much rather be a little miserable myself
than be the reason he is. Until you accept that you’re worthy of the kind of
love that he feels for you, it’s never going to seem real. As long as you
continue to believe that this person who seriously will
not
shut up about how much he cares about you is only out for his
own sick gratification, you’ll never experience the joy that comes from being
on the receiving end of that kind of affection.”

“What did you just say?”

Desi shrugs. “Which
part?” she asks. “Where did I lose you?”

“Love,” I tell her.

“Yeah,” she says, “I hate
to be the one to tell you, but he’s been trying to figure out the best way to
tell you for a while now.”