Motocross Me (19 page)

A moment later his lips twist into a smirk and form a full smile, which he then directs toward me. His lips part and I feel every single microsecond linger in the thick air between us until he finally answers. “You are correct.”

I let out the breath I’ve been holding. “So that’s why you and Ash aren’t friends?” Again, he nods. “That doesn’t seem like a good reason.”

“Oh?” He challenges me with narrowed eyes. I shrink into my seat. Standing up to Ryan is even harder than trying to flirt with him.

“I just think you should be united together for your brother, not against each other.”

“It’s not that easy, Hana.”

He moves his hand from the steering wheel and slides it over to my knee. Goosebumps trickle from the warmth of his hand and spread down my leg. I focus on a lock of his hair pointed directly at his eyebrow, as his face is too gorgeous to look at in the setting sunlight. I can’t risk swooning over him in a serious moment like this, but part of me knows I already am.

“You’re a sweet girl. You wouldn’t understand.” I want to object but a squeeze on my kneecap is all it takes to keep me quiet. “Life just doesn’t work that way. We will never be united.” He makes air quotes with his left hand when he says the word united, while his right hand still burns through the flesh and bone of my leg.

“Both of you can ride for him.” My voice is a weak thread. Now I’m just talking for the sake of talking. Nothing I say will make him change his mind.

“He didn’t deserve my brother’s bike. I did.” Ryan’s voice is razor sharp. He releases my leg and puts both hands on the steering wheel. I watch the place his hand had been, then glance up to him to find his eyes back on the road, hard and no longer sympathetic.

“But he loved him too.” I’m talking more to myself than to Ryan.

“He tried to steal my brother’s legacy from me. That’s unforgiveable.” 

The ice is mostly melted between Ryan and I by the time we arrive at the lake. After a brief intermission of rap music, he has opened up again, and we talkeof lighter, less threatening topics. We don’t go near the subject of motocross again.

I had only been to one lake in Dallas. It was heavily wooded and full of vegetation and the only people who visited were bird watchers hoping to catch a glimpse of a rare grasshopper sparrow.

This lake is nothing like that. For one, it is several times smaller than the great lake I had seen as a child. I can see across the entire thing as we drive down a dirt road that runs parallel to the sand. This lake is in the middle of a dry, flat patch of Texas with little to no greenery. The entire perimeter is lined with a sand bank that resembles a beach.

More than a dozen trucks are parked along the shore, many of them comparable to Ryan’s mammoth of a vehicle with large mud tires and expensive accessories. Two guys about our age chased each other on jet skis, and a few people swim. Ryan pulls in next to a red truck and that’s when I notice the two beautiful girls in string bikinis laying on the sand trying to catch the last rays of sunlight.

My stomach knots up and threatens to take any bit of self-esteem I have, chain it up in shackles and bury it into the depths of my soul. How am I supposed to fit in with girls like this? I glance down at my lap where my hands rest awkward and child-like. My pink nail polish is chipping off and my outfit is, as Felicia would say, “So
last
season.”

The girls look back to see who has arrived and one of them flashes a gorgeous smile and waves at Ryan. I am no match for these girls. Why did Ryan bring me here? Is he using me for something? I have no marketable skills or connections with anything. I don’t have the reputation of being easy. He can’t possibly be using me. He responds to the girl with a quick head nod. I feel slightly better knowing he treated her with the same nonchalance he often gives me. But only slightly better.

Then I think of Ryan’s arrogant head nod and wonder if I am being used to get back at another girl for breaking his heart. This was a stupid idea; I should not have come here with him.

The engine is still running but Ryan hasn’t said a word since we parked. He’s looking at me, and not in the condescending way he usually does, but intently, and purposefully. My eyes meet his. Moments like these always seem to span light-years instead of seconds when I’m with Ryan. Had he been watching me the entire time I was looking at my hands trying to discover what motive he could possibly have for using me?

“I know you have a thing for him, or whatever,” Ryan says as his arm stretches across the back of the seat. His fingertips circle on my shoulder and as if by magic, I can no longer remember my name. He continues, “But I have a thing for you. And that’s why I invited you here tonight, so we could spend time together.”

“You have a thing for me?” I repeat, wanting to hear the words in the air again.

My hand slides across my chest. My heart beats, but not with the force and passion I feel it should be at such a momentous declaration. Ryan is right here, right now, telling me exactly what I had wanted to hear from him all summer. It is the same thing I wanted to hear from Ash. But for some reason my heart isn’t overjoyed or giddy or filled with butterflies knowing I finally heard it from Ryan.

I have just enough time to blink and when I open my eyes, his face is now an inch away from mine. I flinch and his lips break into a grin. The blue eyes that are now staring into mine are like a still pool of water – blank and emotionless.

I’m not much of an eye-gazer, but Ryan’s empty eyes startle me. Ash’s eyes are always swimming with emotion; in fact, everyone I knew had
something
in their eyes. Why are Ryan’s so…dead?

The arm around my shoulder squeezes me even closer to his body while the other hand sweeps a stray hair behind my ear. I take shallow breaths. He has no idea what happens to me when we are this close.

“For one night,” he begins, speaking in a raspy whisper, “Can you just forget about him and give me a chance?”

My head starts to nod in its automatic response to anything Ryan asked me, when suddenly my mind regained control and I pull out of his grasp. Is he seriously saying these things to me? I guess I’m supposed to swoon at his Jedi-mind tricks and say,
“Oh sure, I’d love to forget all about Ash who’s done nothing but be nice to me, and give you a chance when you kissed me and then forgot about me, thus crushing my soul into a thousand tiny pieces!”

And while I’m thinking about it, now is as good a time as ever to ask him the question that runs through my mind every single day.

“Why did you kiss me that day and then stop talking to me?”

He shifts in his seat and runs a hand through his hair, stopping at the base of his neck. I know there is no reasonable excuse for what he did. If he’s trying to think of a lie, maybe he will humor me and think of an exceptional one.

“Well,” he says, staring me straight in the eyes. Maybe he won’t tell me a lie after all. I feel a smirk creep across my face as I await his apology.

“You didn’t exactly talk to me either.”

Unable to control my shock, I let my jaw fall open. “Are you serious? You’re the guy…you’re supposed to call
me
.”

He laughs. “How do you know I wasn’t gonna call? Maybe I had every intention of calling you but then I found out you were spending time with Carter.”

“Is it really so hard to say his name?” I grumble under my breath. Now that I know the reason for their feud, it seems childish to avoid his name as if he were the dark lord Voldemort. He shakes his head, smiling to himself, as if remembering a hilarious joke. “I decided if you wanted the lesser man –
Ash –
well, you could have him.”

“Oh I see.” I put on a more confident face than what I feel inside. “But now all of that has changed because you have a ‘thing’ for me?”

“Exactly.” That cocky smile is back on his gorgeous face.

A loud thud brings me out of his hypnosis. I catapult back against my door as a fist continues to beat on the driver’s side. Ryan lowers the window. A blue-and-white WTSU baseball cap hovers outside. I had forgotten how tall Ryan’s truck was and am grateful no one could see us sitting in here with his arm around my shoulder.

“Ya’ll naked in there or something?” the voice under the cap asks and Ryan leans his head out the window and shakes hands with the intruder.

Knowing our serious conversation is over and probably won’t be revived, I open my door and hop to the ground. Ryan follows and soon I’m introduced to every bikini babe and muscled jock within a ten-truck radius.

We sit on a fallen tree trunk around a pile of wood that hasn’t yet been set on fire. Dusk sets in and the full moon casts enough light on the lake to make a fire unnecessary. I doubt anyone wanted to add warmth to this already hot summer evening.

Not one girl here has a smile as warm as Shelby’s and it doesn’t take me long to realize none of the girls want anything to do with me. They are all interested in chatting with Ryan, mostly about motocross, while every single guy wants to know more about me. When Ryan lets it slip that I was a home-schooled kid, I become even more of a novelty.

A shorter-than-average guy with more muscles than Ryan approaches me. He drags an ice chest behind him, places it in front of us and uses it as a chair. There’s a beer in his hand although he doesn’t look old enough to drink. He wipes his hand on his jeans and then extends it to me.

“I don’t believe we’ve met, I’m Kevin.” His hand is calloused and rough. Ryan and Ash’s hands are the same way, so I take him for a motocross racer too. I only remember one Kevin on the sign-in sheet and realized this was him. He already knows my name.

Ryan shifts next to me and I look over to see him making room on our log for two girls with wide eyes and big smiles who are evidently eager to talk to him. Ryan may not have been my boyfriend, but I don’t like where this is going.

Kevin is still talking to me, so I feign interest for an agonizing five minutes while he explains to me in detail how Mixon is the most amazing motocross track on earth. I nod with a fixed smile on my face as I try to ignore the overuse of giggles by the man-stealers behind me.

The next hour blurs past my subconscious. I am sucked into a dozen conversations, none of them dealing with anything I care about, all while Ryan chats to people he knows and I don’t. Occasionally he tosses me a bone by flashing me a quick smile. Ryan is definitely the man to be friends with, as everyone from other campfires take the time to stop by and say hello to him. He’s constantly offered good luck in the races and one guy old enough to be in college even said he’s got a hundred dollars on Ryan beating Ash.

I sink my chin into my hand and draw hearts into the sand with a stick. It seems as though Ryan is friends with everyone here but not best friends with any of them. Maybe he is happy with a large array of acquaintances who worship the dirt his tires race on, but I would take my one Shelby over several of these girls any day.

Out of boredom, I check my cell phone and have one voice mail. Shelby’s voice gushes about how Jake asked her out to dinner yet again. So Shelby is on a date tonight too, (if I want to call this awkward gathering a date), but I bet hers is like a teenage romance movie. Jacob probably brought her flowers and held open the Mustang’s door for her. I guess Ryan did open the truck door for me, but that’s because he thought I couldn’t reach the handle.

There is no reason I had to concede and let tonight go down in worst date history. Ryan is sitting right next to me after all. Even though he’s deep in conversation about which local mechanic does better suspension work on his bike, I can still turn this into a real date.

I lean to the right and let my head rest on Ryan’s shoulder. The scent of his cologne fills my personal space and puts a huge, cheesy grin on my face. Ryan takes my cue and his left arm slides around my back and his thumb settles into my pocket. I look up to see him wink at me before returning to his boring conversation with the guy who insisted Josh was a better mechanic than John.

The butterflies in my stomach multiply tenfold and fill my entire body as I slouch against Ryan’s hard chest and listen to the talk around me. The cute girls who aren’t hiding their rude stares in my direction don’t seem like much of a threat with Ryan’s arm around me.

Much like any good thing involving Ryan, my cuddle is over a moment after it starts. I had been enjoying the façade of being Ryan’s girlfriend when a guy I recognized as a rider in the pro class yelled from a few trucks down, “Hey Raging Ryan, come check this out!”

Ryan’s hand disappears from my pocket and he sprints across the sand leaving me all alone in a crowd of people.  I swipe over the sand hearts with my flip-flop and start again. This time I stab the stick into the sand and make a collection of dots, each one deeper than the one before it.

So much for having a date. My date isn’t even in the same league as Shelby’s. I take out my cell phone so I won’t look like an awkward loser with nothing to do and send her a text message.

I got roped into going to the lake…Borrrring. Hope you’re having a good night!

“Hello.”

A lawn chair sinks into the sand next to me and a tanned hand reaches out to shake mine, “I’m Seth.”

 I pocket my phone and shake his hand, glancing up at him through the spaces in my bangs. He is blond, like Ryan, and the faded black tank top he wears display his muscles even better than Ryan’s expensive polo. Physically, he is almost a clone of Ryan but his smile is more sincere. I toss on my polite smile, add a touch of charming and say hello, hoping Ryan is watching from wherever he is.

“Are you excited about the Nationals?”

“Oh of course I’m excited,” I reply with little to no enthusiasm. I no longer want to talk about the motocross track or motocross racing or motocross in general. Ryan appears from behind his truck, eating a hamburger. He heads to the bonfire. I ignore him as he sits on the log and try not to notice the distance that is now between us on the fallen tree.

Seth continues, “I bet your dad’s got you working a lot, huh?” I don’t recognize him as a racer, yet even he knows I’m Jim’s daughter.