Happy Hour (Racing on the Edge) (62 page)

Aiden shrugged reaching for his belt. Jameson turned around and looked at me to see if I was looking.

I just giggled again, amused that he would actually think I would want to see Aiden’s camshaft. He looked away and started the car so Aiden could roll down the window.

“Leave the windows cracked.” I suggested fanning my nose. It really did smell
that
bad.

Aiden threw his pants out the window and quickly rolled it back up but left it cracked for much needed ventilation.

“We should just leave. It’s like four in the morning now and none of us have gotten any sleep.” Emma whined.

“We can’t just leave all that out there, it’s littering.”

I wanted to go home as well, but leaving out tents, numerous beer bottles, and food out in a national forest was not a good idea.

“Sway’s right,” Aiden said. “they could arrest you for something like that.”

I looked over at Jameson, who’d remained quiet during this. He was gazing at his pet cougar, who was staring at him with oddity.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he mumbled, refusing to look at me. “I want to go home.”

“Then get out, clean up the mess we made and we can leave.” Emma suggested kicking the back of his seat jolting him forward.

“You get out and clean it up.” Jameson said quietly. “You don’t have a cougar giving you ogle eyes.”

We all started laughing,
except
Jameson.

Hours passed and it became more entertaining to me that this was actually happening.

Here it was five in the morning—we’d been in that damn car most of the night with a cougar right outside Jameson’s window and Aiden, who smelled like god knows what.

Another two hours later, there we remained.

“It’s like it has some kind of obsession with Jameson.” Aiden said at one point. “It just stares at him. It’s weird.”

The cougar hadn’t moved. She just sat there, perched outside Jameson’s window, eyeing him.

Jameson, well he was beyond annoyed with the whole situation. Not only was there a cougar sitting outside his door but he had to pee,
badly
.

Emma being his annoying sister she was; took every opportunity she could to make this worse for him by talking about water, waterfalls, running water
...
anything with the notion of water, or the trickling of water.

I could tell he was moments away from whipping it out and pissing on her.

Emma sighed contently propping her bare feet on the back of Jameson’s seat, bouncing her legs, and shaking his seat. “Hah, I got the last beer.” She announced cracking it open. “Sucks for you guys,”

I wasn’t sure if she was she trying to bounce the pee out of him or just annoy him to the point of insanity.

“Emma,” I shook my head giving her a sidelong gaze of you’re-not-really-that-stupid-are-you?

“What?” She honestly tried to act as if she was doing nothing wrong, continuing to bounce her legs.

Jameson snapped.

He ripped the beer bottle from her hands, unzipped his pants and peed in the bottle. When he finished, he offered the beer to her with a grin. “Drink up.”

“That’s disgusting.” Emma chided. “I didn’t need to hear you pee.”

“I don’t fucking care. You’re lucky I didn’t piss on you.” Jameson laughed. “You would have fainted at the size of my d—”

Slapping my hand over his mouth, I said. “Jameson, just
stop
,”

Another hour later, nothing changed.

The cougar had licked the window at one point, taunting Jameson creating quite the uproar within, aside from Jameson.

Jameson quickly put an end to our amusement when he held up the beer/pee bottle and threatened to pour it on us if we didn’t shut up.

I had a feeling between the race, the stabbing, the red dragon, and
now
the cougar
...
Jameson just wanted to go home, as in Mooresville, far away from Washington all together.

None of us were really paying any mind to one another. Jameson was playing with his iPod, I was picking off old nail polish, and I had no idea what Emma and Aiden were doing.

“Hey,” Jameson looked around with a sudden zest to his voice. “Where’d the cougar go?”

We all glanced around the clearing only to find she was gone.

“Finally,” Jameson groaned opening his door but quickly closed it when we realized
what
replaced the cougar. “Oh Jesus.”

A black bear. Yes, a fucking black bear.

“OH MY GOD!” Emma shrieked in horror crawling on Aiden’s lap. “Drive away Jameson, drive!”

“We can’t leave, Emma.” He told her calmly. “Just be quiet. If we’re quiet, it’ll go away.”

“Not likely,” Aiden chuckled. “He found your Twinkies dude.”

We both looked towards our tent to find it rummaging through our food and more importantly, Jameson’s Twinkie stash.

“Oh damn it,” he groaned in disappointment resting his head against the steering wheel. “I’ve been craving those for like a year.”

The next two hours were spent with the bear eating all our food, Emma screaming any time it got close to the car, the bear sitting on the hood of the car, and then leaving when it smelled Aiden’s pants outside the car.

Good times.

Although remaining in the car, fearing any more animals, we eventually got out.

Emma and I packed up what remained once the animal kingdom left, without the help of Jameson and Aiden because they were doing “Man Things” so they said. This consisted of shooting beer bottles with the shotgun they brought, and lighting the rest of the fireworks, while it rained on us.

Too bad that shotgun was in the tent last night. It would have come in handy for the cougar, or the bear, or Emma if Jameson had his way.

Finally, we were all piled back inside the stench infested Subaru and were ready to get the hell out of this cougar-bear-skunk forest.

“Let’s get out of here.” I was wet, my ass had splinters, and I was cold. I wasn’t fond of any of those things and particularly not together. “I’m done with these animals and this rain.”

Jameson let out a sarcastic laugh and attempted to start the car. The engine just clicked. “Uh, the battery’s dead.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I panicked. “What do you mean;
it’s dead
?”

“What do I mean?” he laughed. “I mean the battery’s dead as in the
battery’s
dead!”

“My god,” Emma whined from the back seat. “Why is it dead?”

We’ve all had enough, that’s for sure. At this point, I don’t know if I will ever go camping again.

“How can I explain this differently?” Jameson let out a frustrated sigh leaning his head against the steering wheel. “The battery is dead and a car needs a battery to start.”

I sighed frustrated. “How did this happen?”

Visions of being stranded up here flooded my brain. I imagined being one of those tree-hugging-hippies and never shaving my legs or arm pits again. Though never shaving again was alluring, living in the woods was not after last night.

“Clearly, something was left on and drained the battery.” His gaze shifted towards Emma.

“I didn’t think having one light on would drain the battery.”

Jameson and Aiden messed with the battery for a good hour but no luck. It wasn’t starting without jumper cables and something to “jump” it with. Two things we did not have with us.

We ended up calling a tow truck but had to walk down to the main road to help them back here, we were in the middle of fucking deliverance.

“Jesus Christ, Aiden you stink!” Jameson grumbled downwind from him.

He had to put the skunk jeans back on because the bear ripped apart our other clothes as though he was a gerbil or something. Emma was very—very upset about that
...
something about destroying a two hundred pair of jeans.

Insanity if you ask me—Emma
and
the jeans.

“Don’t you think I know I stink, asshole,” Aiden walked a good thirty feet in front of us down the gravel road. “It’s on my skin. I can’t get it off.”

“I’ll get it off when we get back to Sway’s.” Emma assured him. “Tomato soup should work. I’ll wash you clean.”

At that point, I knew she was just trying to provoke Jameson and Emma knew damn well how to do it with twenty-one years of practice.

“Shut up!” Jameson kicked rocks towards them. “I don’t need to hear that shit.”

It was at that point when I’d met my max with those two. They never stopped arguing all night and frankly, I was sick of it.

“Both of you shut up.” I gave my own childish kick of the rocks. “I’m not going to deal with any of your bullshit today, understand? We are going to behave like normal human beings!”

They didn’t behave like normal human beings though. There was no way we could. We were in fact four people, who’d been forced to sleep in a car, inches from one another because of a cougar, a bear, and Aiden’s skunk. Normal was not an option.

Emma started in again and I was about to pummel her tiny ass when Jameson’s phone rang. I didn’t know you could even get reception up here. That knowledge would have been good to have last night.

Jameson looked down at the screen, his eyebrows furrowed together. “That’s strange.” The phone twisted with his fingertips, he seemed to contemplate answering it.

“What?” we all asked eagerly, praying it was the towing company.

“It’s Tate.” Jameson told. “Hello
...
yeah
...
” There was a long pause and then Jameson started shaking his head with a smirk. “No
...
I’m sorry but I can’t say I didn’t warn you this would happen
...
yeah, my senior year
...
I walked in on her and my brother’s best friend.”

What?

Looking towards Emma for answers, she just shrugged and jumped on Aiden’s back.

Another few minutes later, Jameson started talking again. “I appreciate the warning but I can handle myself
...
okay, see you on Wednesday.” He hung up the phone and looked over to me, nodding with that smirk again.

“That was Tate.” He held up his phone. “He walked in on Darrin and Chelsea. Looks like the whores back to her ways.”

We all began walking towards the road again when Jameson continued talking. “He tried to warn me that he overheard Darrin talking to Frank that he’s looking for revenge.” He shook his head.

“Jameson,” Reaching out to his shoulder, I stopped walking. “I think you should listen to them. Darrin is out of his mind.”

“Sway, I can handle it.” He assured me with that defiant stare I knew so well. “It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before. I’ve been racing since I was four
...
I’ve
been
threatened before.”