Page 10 of Shade
Though I try all the time, I can’t be mean to Willa, and a smile cracks my lips. I nudge her arm, winking. “I’m kidding.” I don’t think I’m kidding. “Sorry I was late.”
Willa’s been my personal assistant and our PR rep for as long as I’ve been racing, so fifteen years. She’s like a pretend aunt to us all and keeps us in line. Or a big sister who doesn’t let us get away with shit.
Let’s face it, we fucking need it. Uncle Ricky can only do so much to control us and honestly, he’s just as bad. He’s a forty-year-old bachelor on the verge of a midlife crisis if that tells you anything.
“Where were you?” Tiller asks, stretching his long legs out in an attempt to get comfortable. It’s useless. He’s never comfortable. Anywhere. “Fucking around with her again?”
I glance at him, dark brown eyes finding mine and I shrug. I don’t need to answer him. He knows.
A flight attendant walks by and catches Tiller’s eye. She stops, her hand on the seat next to his and smiles tenderly at him. “Can I get you anything, sir?”
This could get ugly.
He doesn’t acknowledge her with his eyes and grunts out, “Vodka,” his focus remaining on the window as he flips the blind closed.
She nods but doesn’t leave and tucks her long stick-straight blonde hair behind her ear. I think she’s waiting for a please, but she’ll be waiting a long fucking time for it.
When she doesn’t move, Tiller’s eyes drift to hers. “Why are you still standing here?”
See what I mean? Not. Friendly.
If you didn’t know Tiller and you just met him, you wouldn’t talk to him. I guarantee it. Or at least I wouldn’t suggest talking to him because he’d probably pop you in the fucking mouth for even looking at him.
Tiller is a scary person. His mind is a terrifying place, but he also excites even the dullest. He’s also the most honest person I’ve ever met. He’ll never tell you a lie in hopes to make you feel better.
His dismissal steers her the other direction, toward the beverage cart. He certainly has a way with the ladies, doesn’t he?
Tiller rolls his eyes and shakes his head, picking up the in-flight menu and positioning his body to a slouched position. “People are fuckin’ weird.”
Adjusting his hoodie so it’s pulled down over his face and collapsing his Mohawk, Tiller groans and tosses the menu on the seat beside him that’s empty.
We usually book two seats for him that way no one sits next to him. Last time a man sat next to him on a flight to Vegas, Tiller threatened to cut the guy’s throat when he wouldn’t stop talking to him.
“I hate flying,” he barks out, mostly to me since I asked him to come with me. “I don’t know why you bastards make me do it.”
It’s true. Tiller has a phobia for flying and most of the time we have to get him drunk to get him on a plane. He doesn’t need to be going to Seattle this time, but he is for me. While he doesn’t like flying, I don’t like going without one of my brothers with me.
On the other side of me, Willa reaches over me and hands Tiller two pills. “Here, take these and stop complaining.”
The pills are probably a sedative. And for good reason. He once hallucinated on a plane to Spain and got kicked off for convincing a good amount of the passengers he was Superman. Now we drug him to keep him calm.
“Drug the crazy guy,” he mumbles, taking the pills back dry. “Where’s that fuckin’ vodka I ordered? Am I going to have to get it myself?”
Tiller truly is the craziest motherfucker out there. Both he and Roan race motocross with me. Right now we’re all competing with the Red Bull X-Fighters and Nitro Circus, but out of all of us, Tiller is the biggest daredevil. I’ve seen him do things on a motorcycle that shouldn’t be done, but he does them and lives to tell about it.
I can’t say Roan and I are any better. We all seem to have a death wish on a motorcycle, so they tell us. People see us and think, those dudes are insane. Mentally deranged motherfuckers who act foolishly.
It’s not like that for us. Sure, we know what we do for a living is insane. We’re not dumb. But people judge us without taking the opportunity to know anything about us or why we like doing tricks on a dirt bike.
Here’s a fun fact for you. Believe it or not, every trick I’ve ever done I’ve analyzed more than anything you’ve probably done in your entire life. I say that with complete confidence and I don’t know anything about you. I think about it intently before I decide I’m going to hurl myself through the air on a bike and let go of it midair in hopes I’ll be able to find it again, and land the bike without killing myself.
I analyze every aspect. What’s the risk? What will I get out of it? What are the chances I’m not going to make it? If I don’t make it, what are the chances I’ll walk away?
After I’ve thought about all that, I make my decision to do the trick.
Life or death, that’s not a metaphor for guys like us. It’s a situation we put ourselves in constantly, and we do it because we want to. That’s thecrazypart about it. And when I do, it’s unlike anything I can accurately describe. It’s, I don’t know, euphoric in a sense.
When I’m soaring through the air, time seems irrelevant. A jump that could take two seconds feels like thirty to me and everything around me is magnified. In those moments, I’m free from everything else around me, and that’swhyI do it.
