Junkie(6)

Maybe if I wasn’t drunk out of my mind, I would have noticed him going still. Maybe I would have thought about what I was doing.

But I was drunk. I didn’t notice. I didn’t think.

But I did talk.

My dumb liquored-up tongue wasn’t done saying shit I would later pretend to forget.

“I won’t tell,” I whispered into the dark.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t pull away.

I fell asleep with the feel of him against me. I fell asleep hard and heavy.

When I woke up the next morning, he wasn’t there. The room was empty, but the pillow beside me still bore the indent of his head.

And I remembered.

Even drunk out of my mind and sick enough to puke up everything inside me, I hadn’t been able to wipe it from my memory.

Turns out I hadn’t barfed up everything.

There was still something left inside me.

Feelings.

Moments that were still so fresh and new they couldn’t yet be considered memories.

Instead, they’d become secrets. A night I was “too drunk” to remember.

We could go back to being super bros.

Best friends.

It was better that way.





Several months later…

Drew

Some people say I was born with motor oil in my veins.

That the call of an open road and a car with a full tank of gas was the reason I lived and breathed.

I fucking loved cars. I loved the way the engine revved when I first turned the key, the scent of newly polished leather, and the feel of the steering wheel beneath my hands.

Most of all, I loved speed.

I loved flying across the asphalt at a pace that could put me in jail… or worse. I loved the thrill of straddling a fine line between life and death—that one slight error could quite literally land me in a coffin.

Morbid?

Might be if I had a death wish. I didn’t plan on dying, not anytime soon. But that wouldn’t stop me from living like I might. There was something so incredibly freeing about breaking all the rules when I was out on the road.

Something about letting loose that held me together.

Even though the rush of adrenaline was my drug, I was still a man.

I was still human.

When cut, it wasn’t thick, black oil that leaked from my veins. It was blood. The same red everyone else had.

Still, I let everyone think I was a little less human than they were. I fed into the perception that perhaps there was something else inside me that gave me an edge.

I’d do what I could to get to the finish line.

It was this attitude precisely that was earning me a name in the car world here in Maryland. It was my no-holds-barred, drive until my tires were bald and I was white knuckled on the steering wheel that got tongues wagging.

And in cars, talk was half the battle.

The other half?

The way a man drove.

Hell, the kind of driver you were was more important than the actual thing you drove. Because when it came right down to it…

It wasn’t the size of the engine in the car.

It was the size of the engine in the man.

My engine?

It was so big it was limited edition.

I kept that quiet, too. If someone wanted to know who I was, they could get in the passenger seat and I’d show them. I didn’t need to talk smack; I just needed to drive.

The Chesapeake Speedway was the biggest raceway on this side of Maryland. Over on the other side of the state, toward the bigger cities where the Knights (our state football team) was based was a larger racetrack where some big events had gone down over the years. But that track was on a more professional level. At least in terms of competition.

I couldn’t just drive in there off the street and race. To get there, I would need sponsors. I would need a better car and a bigger name.

Basically, in the world of racing, money talks and so does who you know.

Even though I’d been driving since I was five, I was basically starting at the bottom. Growing up in North Carolina, driving was just a hobby. It was just something my parents let me do because if they didn’t, they would find me in the garage, trying to sweeten up the lawn mower to make it faster. Or strapping on a helmet and riding a homemade go-cart down the hill in the backyard.

Go-cart = an old Big Wheel I took the handles off and glued an old spare steering wheel to the top.

My mom about had a heart attack that day.

I still don’t know what all the fuss was about. I’d worn a helmet.

Anyway, it was indulge in my need for speed in a controlled manner or keep allowing me to make homemade “death machines” (Mom’s words, not mine). Even though everything in my life revolved around the track, it was still always expected I would grow out of it.

Driving would never be some kind of career choice.

My career path had been decided long before I even picked up a set of keys. My father wanted a son to follow in his footsteps, a son he could groom into whatever he wanted him to be. When I came out first, my fate was sealed.