Page 73 of Trading Paint
“Jameson, you...I need you to stop.”
I moved my mouth from his gasping for air only to have his lips travel to my neck, kissing and sucking along my collarbone. Running on instinct, I wiggled against him because this felt so goddamn good I couldn’t stop myself, his hips twitched forward and the sensation caused us both to gasp, that brought him back to reality.
His face was pure mortification as he stumbled backward against a set of tires. “Shit...I am so sorry Sway. Fuck!” he cursed himself. “I can’t believe I did that...Jesus Christ what the fuck is wrong with me?” he punched the side of the hauler before storming out, cursing at himself.
Well then.
I slumped against the side of the hauler, confused.
I knew Jameson well enough to know that he was just horny. Being on a road trip with all of us didn’t provide much time to bleed his pressure valve as Jimi would call it. I knew he’d slept with someone a few weeks back but other than that, the poor boy was in a constant state of arousal. I couldn’t blame him. He was eighteen. It had nothing to do with me. I was just there and I was safe. He didn’t have to worry about me wanting more or expecting anything from just kissing. There was only one problem with that situation. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. For so long I was all right with that but now, I didn’t know. I had begun to analyze everything.
Eventually when I heard the cars lining up for the feature event I made my way outside. Jameson’s car was lined up but he wasn’t. It was just Tommy and Spencer standing beside it.
“Where’s Jameson?” I asked looking around.
“Who knows,” Spencer grumbled kicking the rear tire and then gestured with a head nod to the pits. “Asshole told us to line his car up and then took off the other direction.”
Tommy looked perplexed. “We thought he was with you.”
“I was with him earlier but...he left...I haven’t seen him in probably thirty minutes.”
Right when we were starting to get nervous because the rest of the Outlaws were making their way onto the track, Jameson came running up zipping his driver’s suit as he slowed to a jog. Without looking my direction, he hoisted himself inside his car. I watched him lock in the steering wheel before sliding his gloves over his bloody knuckles. Before putting his helmet on his eyes met mine, he mouthed “sorry” and then winked.
I gave him a smile and winked back before mouthing good luck.
I had no idea where he disappeared to but I assumed he did some speed bleeding with either some pit lizard or himself. I hoped it was himself but doubted it. This just made me sick to my stomach to even think about and frankly, ready to vomit so I pushed those thoughts aside and focused on making fun of Tommy, always a good time.
“Looks like fire crotch got a little too much sun today.” I slapped the back of his red neck.
“That’s it!” he shouted chasing me toward the pit bleachers. “And you wonder why I shot you with a staple gun!”
Being distracted by Tommy was good because when Jameson won the race, I saw the girl I assumed he fucked somewhere in the pits sitting on his lap...He removed her but I knew, a girl always knows. I was observant enough to know that he was hanging on to his sanity by a thread and I wasn’t helping.
I didn’t believe in regretting anything in life but I was wise enough to master avoidance and denial, two of my best traits I thought.
12.Take a Look – Jameson
Take a Look – A driver following closely behind another car may dart momentarily to the inside at the entry to a corner, pretending to attempt a pass in order to disrupt the concentration of the driver in the front and hopefully cause a small mistake, setting up a subsequent passing attempt.
It seemed in our rush to make it to a different track each night that this had us making silly mistakes here and there and then there were the mistakes we had no control over but were forced to fix.
There’s no worse feeling, as a driver or crew, than spending fifty hours a week preparing a car for the next weekend to have it break and have to start all over again the next week, praying it doesn’t break again.
And when it does, it’s crushing for everyone involved.
After the Triple Crown Nationals, still wanting seat time, we had the bright idea that I was going to run the Wild West Showdown, which was a six-night international driver challenge at six different tracks.
By the fourth night in Chico, I was beat and so was my engine. It blew up half way through the feature race that night.
Now usually we would have time to change the engine prior to the next race but with the Showdown, they had racing in Chico on Wednesday night and then Skagit on Thursday, that’s a thirteen-hour drive. So ordinarily, we would have time to stop and change out engines in the sprint car we were running that night but as luck would have it, we had to haul ass to Skagit to make it there in time for the race. It was around two in the morning when we left Chico after sleeping three hours alongside the highway. This left one option. We changed out the engine on the back of the trailer, going down I-5 at 70 mph. Not something I would ever do again with Spencer driving.
Tommy, and our other buddy, Scott Pricket (Scooter), who we had met during the season and me were hanging off the side of the open trailer changing out engines while Emma and Sway handed us tools we needed through the back window of my truck.
We weren’t using my hauler this week but an eighteen-foot open trailer and it wasn’t safe to be hanging off the side of it.
“Hand me the 9/16 wrench.” I told Scooter reaching my hand over the roll bars and holding on with the other to the torsion bars. He didn’t answer so Ipeekedmy head up making sure he hadn’t fallen off the side. “Where’s the wrench?”
“Uh...” he looked around beside him. “I think it’s in Woodburn. Do you still want it? We could turn around.” He suggested with a smirk.
