"What are you two getting all worked up for? We brought enough hot dogs for everyone."
Tamara turned and saw Johnny standing there with her kids. Petey was halfway through his hot dog, his mouth stuffed to capacity, and her daughter Hunter was clutching a hubcap in front of her Ryder Jefferson T-shirt.
"Hey, guys!" Tamara tried to hug her kids, which was only mildly tolerated by both of them, and turned to Johnny. "We were just having a girl moment."
"Glad I missed it." Johnny was what Tamara had always assumed her husband would grow into-an attractive older man with salt-and-pepper hair and a wicked smile. "But I did pick this up for you. They were calling your name over the speaker to come to the lost and found." He held up her overnight bag. "Can't imagine where you left this but someone was nice enough to turn it in."
That someone had to be Geoffrey, and Tamara wasn't sure how nice it was to dump her bag at the racetrack lost and found, but she wasn't going to question it. At least she had her bag back with her clothes and a good moisturizer. "Oh, thanks!" She set her plate down on the table and unzipped the bag. It was too much to hope for but maybe her purse was in it.
It was. She yanked out the hot pink clutch and gave a sigh of relief. Cell phone, credit card, driver's license, all intact.
"Is that the purse you lost?" Beth asked.
"Yes, thank goodness."
"I wonder who turned it in?"
"I guess Geoffrey did."
"Why wouldn't he just bring it to you?" Beth asked. "What a wimp."
Exactly.
"Hey, Mom, did you see what I got?" Hunter asked, pushing in front of her grandfather for center stage.
"It looks like a hubcap. Very cool! Where did you get that?" Tamara tried to inject the proper enthusiasm into her voice, knowing Hunter was excited with her souvenir. Her daughter, an undeniable tomboy, was rolling her Heelie sneakers back and forth and grinning for all she was worth, her ponytail bouncing under her Ty McCordle ball cap.
Hunter was devoted to both her favorite drivers, Pete's best friends.
"Uncle Ty gave it to me. He said it's nice and dirty because it came off his car yesterday."
"Wonderful." A closer glance showed it was filthy, and the grime had transferred to Hunter's fingers and her T-shirt. "You can put it in a place of honor with your tire collection." Hunter's room looked like a track garage, with worn-out tires, engine parts, and peeled-off plastic windshields, track dirt and bugs still intact. There wasn't a doll in sight in the girl's bedroom, except for the Barbie that Tamara had found wearing a racing jacket, and Hunter's bedding was a black checkered flag.
Saying her daughter was a racing enthusiast was an understatement, and while Tamara wanted to encourage her interest, and appreciated that Hunter's godfather Ty was involved in her life, she wished their relationship involved less race refuse. Her seven-year-old daughter's room smelled like rubber.
"Can we sit in the grandstands?" Hunter asked. "Do we have tickets?"
"I'm not sure where we're sitting, baby." Pete's parents had made the arrangements, and all Tamara wanted to do frankly was to just sit down and stare into space and reflect on the fact that she had engaged in enthusiastic sex with a driver. Eek. She was still having a little trouble processing that fact, even if she was barely an hour out from having his tongue in a certain place on her body that very few man had been allowed access to.
"We're in the suite this time, baby girl, but we can walk around a bit if you want," Johnny said. "We'll go after we watch the race, alright? You going to join us, Petey?"
Her son shook his head, licking ketchup off his finger. "No, I'll stay here."
Petey didn't have quite the affinity for racing that his sister did. Tamara never got the impression that he didn't like it, but he wasn't a die-hard fan. Most of the time he was happier poking around in the dirt or the woods than he was at the track. She often wondered how her husband would have felt about that, but usually reminded herself it was irrelevant.
"Alright, driver's intro is about to start. Let's watch the TVs, then we'll head to the suite for the white flag." Johnny pointed to the TVs mounted all around the room. "Slowest qualifier going across the stage now."
Tamara would never admit it out loud, but she always found the introductions boring to watch and horrible to participate in. The drivers came out, smiled, waved, sometimes with their wives or girlfriends, other times solo. When Pete had wanted her to walk with him, all those cameras had made her uncomfortable and self-conscious about her crooked smile, not to mention how wide her hips might look. The whole process just didn't interest her as much as the pastry she'd abandoned on her plate. Tamara reached for it.
"There's Elliot Monroe's youngest boy," Johnny said.
Pastry forgotten. Tamara whipped her head around and craned to see the TV. It was a giant flat-screen but clearly not good enough. Elec was the size of a Twinkie from where she was standing and she wanted a much better view than that. Without being obvious, that is.
"Oh, really?" she said, oh-so-casually. "I didn't know he drove."
"Yep. His first season in the cup series. Doing alright for a rookie, and for a Monroe."
Since Johnny was staring at the screen, Tamara figured it gave her permission to do the same. She couldn't really see Elec's face all that clearly, but he was definitely smiling.
Grinning, actually. The commentators were even remarking on it.
"Look at that smile on rookie Elec Monroe's face. We don't usually see him looking so happy pre-race. Wonder what has him so up this afternoon?"
Tamara felt her cheeks burn.
"Must be confidence in his car, Rick."
Exactly. Tell him, Rick. It had nothing to do with a pre-race blow job. Tamara tried to breathe normally and not think about Elec naked, which should be easy given he was covered from neck to toe, but somehow all she could think about was peeling off that uniform piece by piece.
"He's ready to show folks what he can do."
"More like show off," Johnny muttered.
Elec was clearly in a good mood. He was talking to the driver next to him, and bouncing on the balls of his feet, like he was ready to climb into his car and go. Then he turned to Ryder, on the other side of him, and they exchanged words that didn't look quite as friendly.
What were they talking about? Hopefully wind conditions, not Ryder's midmorning surprise of finding Elec in his bed with Tamara.
"He's a show-off?" Tamara asked Johnny, having a hard time picturing that, but curious to hear anything she could about Elec.
Her father-in-law made a noncommittal sound. "He's a quiet one, actually. But he thinks he knows what he's doing."
Didn't they all? And didn't the fact that they were driving at that level prove they did?
"He acts entitled. Just like a Monroe."
So Johnny's attitude was more about his father than Elec himself. "What happened between you and Elliot, by the way?"
But her father-in-law wasn't going there. He just shook his head. "Nothing you need to concern yourself with."
Well, that was a maddeningly vague answer.
He turned to her kids and smiled. "Come on, short stuff. Let's go to the suite."
"Who's short stuff?" Hunter demanded.
"You," he told her. He pointed to Petey, then her. "Short stuff one and two."
"No, I'm one," Hunter said.
Petey didn't look like he cared one way or the other. Her son didn't have that same competitive drive that Pete and Johnny had, and which clearly Hunter had inherited.
Tamara laughed and told them, "You're both number one. Now be good for Grammy and Papa, I'll be there in a few minutes."
"Where are you going?" Hunter asked.
"To brush my teeth. I have something stuck in my tooth." Actually, she just needed to brush them because she hadn't been able to that morning, but she wasn't about to share with her child the logistics of her night of debauchery.
Her daughter made a face like she considered that seriously disgusting. "Yuck. Okay, see you later, Mom."
The minute they left the room, Tamara dug through her purse and found her cell phone. She had six text messages from Suzanne, each growing in worry and desperation when Tamara didn't respond. They were all variations of "Where the hell are you??"
Ducking into the hallway and glancing left and right to make sure her family was gone, she dialed Suzanne.
"Where the hell are you?" Suzanne asked by way of greeting.
"I'm at the track."
"Why didn't you tell me you were leaving? What happened with Geoffrey? Why didn't you answer your cell phone? I've been worried sick about you!"