Page 182 of Trading Paint
“Good?”
“Yes—good. I don’t want you kissing guys.”
For the love of god! What the fuck? Do I say something else?
“I don’t want to be kissingotherguys.” She offered. And don’t think I didn’t catch the “other” part. I held onto the word as though it was a gravitational pull.
Sway’s alarm sounding changed our conversation to her final she was taking today. Soon, we ended the phone call with a plan to talk later today after I got some sleep.
The problem was,I couldn’t.
Part of me was focused on Sway saying other guys, the other part, the obsessively selfish side, wanted to kill Blake. Any guy who flouted a women’s rejection, deserved to be knocked around. Though I wanted to do it myself, I knew I couldn’t. I planned to be in Grand Rapids for the Outlaw race there on Tuesday before flying out to Charlotte on Wednesday.
One rash decision later, I was calling Spencer.
“This better be an emergency?” he said groggily. He couldn’t have had much sleep yet, my alarm clock beside the bed flashed 3:45am.
“It is...well not really...no it is an emergency.”
Trying to figure out how it was really an emergency, I thought for a second.
“I’m waiting.” He pressed impatiently.
“A guy named Blake McCoy is giving Sway trouble at school.”
“Blake McCoy?”
“Yeah,”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah—no problem,”
And that was that. I knew by “taking care of it” he’d have his police officer friend, Josh Keller, scare him a little.
It took me a good few hours to calm down from the kissing incident but eventually I did and was able to get a couple hours of sleep before I headed to the race shop.
Sunday and Monday were spent preparing both the sprint cars for Grand Rapids. Every track has a different set of rules so we had to make a few changes to the cars, check all the bolt-on parts, and safety equipment before Tommy came by to check set-ups.
I noticed the lower control arm was broken on Justin’s sprint car so I replaced those along with the torsion bars.
“You know, you should have told me,” were my first words to him.
Tommy backed away toward the door. This might have had something to do with the fact that I was holding a wrench in one hand.
“Uh...told you about what?” his eyes shifted around me.
He knew damn well what I was referring to.
“Blake.” I clarified, my inquiring scowl probed for answers.
“Oh, that.” He let out the breath he’d been holding. “Well—I was going to but she asked me not to.”
“And you listened to her?”
“Like I told her, you scare me. Like hell I was going to tell you another guy had his hands all over her.”
