Page 143 of Trading Paint
“That’s not going to happen.” I watched as Sway strode away with Emma and Alley back to the motor coach.
“She’s something.”
“Yeah?”
“She’s all fast-talking and brusque, wouldn’t want to mess with her.”
“You have no idea. You should have seen what the little shit did to me last night.”
Kyle and I headed for the drivers meeting after that and met dad there. Usually the only ones allowed in the meeting were the driver, crew chief and owner and if you were late, you started at the tail end of the field.
On the way there, I hoped that I placed well in points next year. For one, I wanted to, being the single-minded guy I was and two, it’s a long ass walk anywhere you went. The team haulers were lined up by the previous year’s points, being a new team—guess where are hauler was parked?
Yep, last.
I listened in the drivers meeting but lost interest. NASCAR ran their meetings more formally than your average dirt track but they were still boring to me.
Everything changed each year in NASCAR. Rules change, drivers change, sponsors change, the schedule changes...I changed. I was no longer the kid I was when I began racing. I was now a Winston Cup driver with a multimillion-dollar contract backing me.
You know back when I raced USAC and Outlaws and I thought I had stress just trying to become Jameson Riley. That’s laughable now. I had no fucking clue what responsibility was then. I’m not sure I did now but I had constant reminders of how I could easily fuck things up. I still didn’t want to be known as Jimi Riley’s son and with him now being the car owner, I still got that from time to time but it was better. In NASCAR, I was making the name.
I thought about the times racing quarter midgets, telling myself that I’d be happy if I was racing full sized midgets or mini sprints. Once I was in those, I wanted full-sized sprint cars and so on.
Now I was at the top of stock car racing, what did I want? I wanted to win. I wanted to win that Rookie of the Year and I wanted to win the championship. No driver had ever won the championship in their rookie season, I wanted to.
On the way back to the hauler after the drivers meeting, I ran into Darrin.
Apparently, I bumped him in practice and he felt the need to express his distaste for this. It went something along the lines of, “Hit me again and I show you how that wall tastes,”
I never did respond to him as fans began to surround us. I learned to pick my battles with him and it wasn’t worth it right then.
I’d gotten a lot of advice from other drivers on racing in the cup series but they failed to mention what happened when you got out of the car. Suddenly reporters, fans and in my case, other drivers I’d pissed off at some point during the race were in my face.
I couldn’t offer them much, even in interviews I never knew what to say but when other veteran drivers would approach me and ask why I came down on them or took their line...I didn’t know what to say to them. I never did it on purpose but I was an aggressive driver, out there, I didn’t think about what happened when I got in the pits until Jimi pulled me aside a few days after the Budweiser Shootout, “Jameson, be careful.” He advised. “You don’t want to piss off the veterans or any driver for that matter. You never know when that guy just may be your boss or teammate.”
That made sense to me, it did, but I also didn’t want to be the driver that was pushed around. Finding a middle ground was hard but I took to guys like Bobby and Tate and watched them closely on how they dealt with it. Bobby was reserved and shied away from the media at all costs but Tate was in their face telling them what he thought about this or that.
Clearly, I was going to need to do some more observing.
During the duel 125’s, I got bumped by Doug Dunham, a veteran driver on the series and ended cutting a tire. I ended up getting my spot back but it still pissed me off that he did that, it’s not like he didn’t know I was there.
I had never been afraid to tell someone exactly what I thought of them but I wasn’t exactly in the place to be telling a veteran driver that he had no right to bump me in the corner. Ordinarily, I had no problem with this but with Dunham, he was a veteran driver in the sport and had a hell of a lot more clout than I did, so I bit my tongue and simply gave him a head nod after the race. I think he knew I wasn’t happy about it.
When I reached the hauler prior to the team meeting Kyle was laughing at me once again as Sway strode past me still wearing that damn dress.
Looking away, I was starting to get irritated with all his laughing at my expense and really, I was having ahardtime, I didn’t need him laughing at me.
“We’ve made a collective decision: You need to tell that girl how you feel.”
“Well let’s say hypothetically, maybe, let’s say probably that I feel that way...it doesn’t change anything.”
“You never know.” I didn’t want to be talking about this with Kyle but over last year, he had become a good friend of mine.
If I couldn’t talk about this with him who could I?
“What will it change? I don’t have time for a relationship.” I sighed. “Do you know when the last day was that I had time for myself?”
“But you had time for pit lizards.”
