8. Audrey
AUDREY
PLAYLIST: NOT AFRAID – EMINEM
Ispeed the car I got from the impound lot over the highway, in ways that car was never made for. It’s an older Mercedes; one without a headrest. Someone must’ve smoked an entire pack per day in the car, but I don’t care.
The steering wheel is vibrating like shit from the speed, and just for the fun of it, I let go of it. The car pulls heavily to the right, and I let it.
I press the throttle as much as it’s possible.
It was the one moment back there in the impound, where I knew I was done with everything.
I am not made to run those companies.
I am not even strong enough to shut the fuck up.
I hold up a lie for all these years, and now that I am all alone, really, truly alone—
My phone vibrates.
Luke.
I ignore the phone and throw it on the passenger seat.
It rings again.
“Shut up!” I shout at it.
But it just doesn’t stop vibrating.
I grab it.
“What?” I curse into the speaker.
“Where are you?” his voice is stressed out.
“Somewhere in fucking New York,” I say.
“What are you doing?”
“What’s the matter?” I ask annoyed. I don’t want to speak to anyone right now.
“Tell me what’s up.”
“Fuck off,” I tell him and hang up.
Luke, whom I met on my first day in L.A.
in his garage. I was standing in front of it, admiring the cars and what he was doing.
He was the one who taught me everything about working on cars.
And yet, all of that is so far away now.
I am stuck in this shit show I tried to escape and whatever I do, there is no place far away on this earth where I can go to escape it.
Because the shit is tied to my life like dog shit to a shoe.
My phone vibrates again.
And again.
“Luke, for fucks sake, get the hint,” I bark at him.
“You’ll listen to me, hun,” he says. “Whatever you are doing, you’ll stop that fucking car, get to the next airport and fly back here.”
“What happened?” I ask, suddenly horrified. “Anything with Throttel?”
“What happened?” he asks incredulously. “Tommy just got a call from Cass. Who happened to be very worried that you are running on insanity right now.”
My entire body freezes. She called fucking Tommy.
“Yeah, well, maybe I am,” I say coldly.
“It’s the city,” he says. “You need to get back here.”
“And then what? I go back playing Lady Anne and The Bounty Killer? Let myself be pushed around by that pussy hunter who—?” I break off. “Everyone there telling me what to do and those fucking paps following me everywhere?”
“Babe, you’re spiraling.”
“Yeah, because my fucking sister died and my father is fucking rapist and I am fucking mess who is now the one responsible for millions of people!” I shout, tears streaming down my face.
“And what about the Flat Top swing? Throttle? The Palisades race? Annie? The promise you made to Hailey? The mornings on the sign?” he says, listing everything that ever meant something to me.
I can’t even say a thing over the tears flooding my eyes.
“Come home,” he says. “We’ll figure things out.”
Home.
What home?
The ‘home’ built on a version of me I never was?
The ‘home’ I found myself in because I had nowhere else to go?
The ‘home’ with only a cat and friends that know bits and pieces of me because we drank some years together and did some risky stuff?
That’s no home.
It’s a shit show of a life holding together by WD40 and duct tape.
I roll down the window, and without another word, I throw the phone out onto the highway.
Cold air with the scent of exhaust streams into the car and dries the tears on my cheeks.
I take the bottle of cheap whisky from the passenger seat and take a big gulp.
It burns my throat, as it should.
Another.
And another.
Until half the bottle is empty.
My brain feels slightly fuzzy.
Exactly what I need.
I close my eyes.
It’s the perfect moment to just let go. To let go of the steering wheel, life, control, and everything else.
I lean back.
Fuck this world.
I’m so fucking done with it as I wait for peace to come.
Suddenly there is a roaring motor sound to my left.
That’s it.
Just crash into me—
But it doesn’t happen.
A soft bump.
And then the car slows down.
No.
I rip open my eyes.
The black Hellcat in front of me.
Cass.
She fucking came to stop me.
After accusing me of everything. Beating me and provoking me and holding a fucking gun to my chest and now she’s fucking saving me?
I jump out of the car, not even caring we’re in the middle of a highway.
“What is your fucking problem?” I roar at her as she gets out. “You call me a piece of shit for walking out on my sister, and now you come to fucking save me?”
I push her back by the shoulders against the car.
“You’re not going to walk out like this,” she says, much calmer than she should be.
“You don’t get to fucking decide that!” I scream at her.
“Everyone tells me what to fucking do and not to do! But I decide what I fucking do! Not you, not a fucking manager or a fucking producer or a fucking father! I decide what I do with my life. So fucking fuck off!” I shout at the top of my lungs, crying and hitting her full in the face.
I glance to my right.
A car comes.
Honks.
I take a step back.
I am reckless enough right now to do whatever it takes.
I am too far gone in my mind.
She grasps me and pulls me towards her.
“Stop fucking saving me!” I scream at her, trying to free myself, but she is fucking strong. “Just go back to fucking hating me!”
“Oh, I do hate you,” she says as she grabs me by the hair and pushes me around to the passenger side of the car. “But I will not let anyone kill themselves on my watch.”
She pushes me inside the Hellcat, fixes me with the seatbelt.
“A fucking day ago you wanted to shoot me; why don’t you fucking do that?”
She looks at me.
She is close to my face right now.
“Did it ever occur to you,” she says, using my own words against me, “That you are not the only person with issues?” she says, leans back, and throws the door shut without another word. She walks to the Mercedes, turns on the hazard light, and returns to the Hellcat to drive off.
I stare outside the entire ride; wherever we are driving, I don’t give a fuck. I just sit there with my legs pulled up, like a grounded teenager who is throwing a silent tantrum.
We don’t exchange a word, and then we’re back at the impound lot.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask as she rolls through the gate and drives all the way back to the Mustang.
“We don’t give up,” she says and throws the Mustang’s key in my lap. “We race. That’s how we deal. How we survive. How we die.”
I scoff.
“You tell me you aren’t a driver?” she asks. “Because I think you are, you’re just too fucking afraid to acknowledge it because we roaches don’t fit into your perfect image of a life.”
I scoff as derogatorily as it can get.
“You know nothing about me,” I say as coldly as I can.
“I know enough,” she says. “I know you’re reckless enough to kill yourself.
I know you have nothing to lose because you take the shot for someone you don’t even know.
I know you are lost enough to drive away everything good in your life,” she says in a tone so raw it touches me, causing my stomach to clench heavily.
“I know you drive like hell, because you were made for it. You have it in your blood, just like she had. You can hear a fucking camshaft; do you even know how rare that is? You know honor. You know the scene. You have gasoline pumping in your veins. You just live in a world that’s so fucked you can’t see the sky in all the shit you’re stuck in. ”
I stare at her because somehow, between all the disgust she holds for me, there was some deranged compliment in what she just told me.
She is impressed by my skill.
She also knows more about me than she should, and there is only one reason why. One reason that has nothing to do with me, but everything with her
“Sounds like you know,” I say silently.
Her eyes flash at me, and then go back to cold aversion.
“Get in the car,” she says dismissively and nods to the Mustang.
I snort in derision before I get out and slam the door shut behind me. She lets down the window and leans in on the middle console.
“Addy,” she says. I turn and bend down, leaning with my arm onto the roof and look inside. “I know, because it’s ride or die. Quarter Mile, follow my lead.”