11. Cass
CASS
PLAYLIST: IN THIS SHIRT – THE IRREPRESSIBLES
“Walking away won’t get you anywhere,” I say as she lets go of me. “Telling you as a professional walk-awayer.”
She stares at me; I stare back, not breaking the gaze. I have no idea what I am doing here, and maybe she is right, but somehow, I can’t stop myself.
“There is something you need to see,” I say and tilt my head to the cars.
She hesitates for one moment, but then nods.
I get to my Hellcat, and she follows my lead in the Eleanor. We drive into the tunnel leading to Manhattan, slipping out of the cars and the separators between the two lines, zigzagging.
I take the lead to Weehawken, to the tower where it all started and ended.
I park the car at the end of the hotel parking lot at the end of the street; no one here cares at this time of the night.
I get out.
The hair on my arms stands up solely from being here again, from all the memories this place holds. And now I am back here, with the Eleanor it all started with.
The gurgling Eleanor falls silent, and Addy gets out.
Not Elise.
Addy.
I am a total idiot for taking her here, but I tilt my head anyway, telling her to walk with me.
It’s just a couple of steps from the parking lot onto the walking path surrounding it until we’re at the railing overlooking the Hudson River and the illuminated city.
I lean onto the railing, staring into the distance. Everything feels so heavy here.
“This is where I first met her,” I say. “We took over the area; she just turned sixteen. I taught her how to make donuts on this very lot.”
I swallow hard. I haven’t talked about anything regarding Elise since she—since—
“When your father restricted her, I came here every night, waiting, hoping, but that bodyguard she had kept her from stepping over any line.”
My jaw clenches so hard I can hear a buzz in my ears.
“Then she died. And I went off the rails,” I say, rubbing my eyes and pushing myself off the railing.
I turn and look where my Hellcat is waiting.
“I took the Porsche, and sped it right through this railing here into the water.”
I don’t look at Addy. I don’t want to see the shocked face or probably more tears.
“I needed to destroy everything. Had to stop feeling. Stop existing. So I sank down with it. Didn’t fight. Didn’t want to be here. Some idiot saved me. The car was pulled out. And since then, all I ever feel is nothing. So I race. Like hell. Because it’s the only time I don’t feel empty.”
I close my eyes and lean backward against the railing. I don’t know why I am doing this. Telling a random stranger my deepest wound. But somehow, she doesn’t feel like a stranger. Since that night in the garage, she feels like someone I knew for a lifetime.
“You don’t feel empty because there is a chance that it finally ends,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say, looking at her for the first time.
She leans next to me onto the railing, her arm almost touching mine.
We just stand there, looking at both cars throwing long shadows from the parking lot’s lights.
“We used to sit up there on the tower,” I say. “Whenever the world was too much, promising each other if the day comes, we’d just jump together. She broke the promise. And since then I’m falling and falling, no ground in sight.”
“When I got the news about what happened, I felt nothing. A paparazzi asked me if my father fucked me too while I was walking to my car. I thought he tried to catch me off guard, construct a story, because that’s what they do.
I don’t consume anything online, because it’s too much about me in there.
I thought he was joking. So I walked to my car, got into it, and kept going on with my day.
That night, my manager freaked out with the news hitting.
I felt nothing. Got in my car, drove to the Hollywood sign, climbed onto it with a bottle of tequila and hoped I’d just drop dead,” she says, staring up at the spot on the tower.
I don’t know what to say. I am not a master of big words, and everything I could say wouldn’t be enough.
“You’re standing on ground right now,” she says after a while, pushes herself off the railing, and walks away towards the parking lot and our cars. “Can’t fall deeper than this.”
She opens the door of the Eleanor and leans onto it with the hint of a smile on her face.
“Wanna see some backlights?” she asks.
It is such a beautiful image, with her face half in the dark, half illuminated from the floodlight, the Eleanor in all her beauty. I frame the image in my mind before I say, “I think you need to get humbled this time.”
“Yeah, not happening,” she says and laughs.
A laugh that isn’t the elitist I-come-from-money-laugh. But the laugh of a woman who knows the pain of losing everything. The one knowing not to allow joy, because if there is joy, there will be pain when it’s taken away.
“We’ll see to that,” I say. “Winner is who’s back at the garage first.”
“Deal,” she says and slips into the Eleanor.
I look at her for just one moment before I get into my girl.
We drive up to the line separating the parking lot.
“Ready?” I say through the open window.
“Always,” she says like a different person. The person who knows she can drive. The person who doesn’t drown in pain. The person who trades the shit show of life for those rare moments of freedom.
We race through the night.
Squeeze through tight spots.
Overturn each other.
It’s like a dance we practiced for years.
And just before we turn into Reed Street, the moment I know she’d pull her trick, I use the NOS to get in front of her and cause her to brake. She can’t get past me because there are cars parked left and right at this point, a calculated risk I took.
I get back to full speed, winning this race by drifting into the driveway leading to our garage.
“That was fucking foul play!” she shouts at me as she gets out of the Eleanor.
“Not at all,” I say, grinning as she rounds on me.
“Braking someone out is the lowest low!”
“Nah,” I say. “It’s knowing your opponent.”
“Fuck you,” she says and spits on the ground. And right this moment, I know who she is. Emotional. Rough. Used to shit. Grown up in a world that’s nothing like her. The black sheep, not because she is acting out, but because she was meant for this.
“Someone can’t lose, huh?” I ask her.
“I can, if it was fairly played.”
I chuckle.
“Get your ass inside; we’re having a beer,” I say. She eyes me.
“You sure?”
“Sure,” I say with the hint of a smile on my face.
We get into the house, and when I open the door, everyone stares at us.
“You two sorted it out?” asks my brother. “Or do we get to see a cage fight?”
“Shut your mouth, or I’ll sort you out, jackass,” I tell him angrily. Everyone laughs.
“Welcome to the family,” says Nikki, coming down the stairs from above, beaming at Addy. “Ignore the idiots.”
Addy looks from her at me, slightly irritated.
“It’s what we call the people allowed in here,” I say. “We’re the family. Inner circle of the sorts.”
Her eyes harden; one of her eyebrows twitches slightly.
“You brought me in here?” she asks in an incredulous whisper.
“Yeah,” I say. “You bathed in shit long enough.”
She opens her mouth. Closes it again. And then her eyes get watery.
“Don’t you dare cry again,” I say and push her to the kitchen where my brother hands her a beer.
“Jackson,” he says, holding out his hand.
Addy looks at me and leans slightly in.
“Can I take it or is there a chance I catch the jackass virus?” she says darkly and cracks into a grin.
I, and everyone else, including my brother, laugh. Hard. Probably my first real laughter for a long time.
She takes the beer from him and the hand.
“No offense,” she says innocently. “Only heard the worst.”
“I’m used to the abuse,” he says, jokingly.
I introduce her to the rest of the family.
“Be careful around those two,” I say, pointing at Illy and Joy. “They’re menaces with a kink for being watched.”
“Nothing like a good show,” says Addy, grinning devilishly.
I don’t know what I expected, but probably not that she is so open, jokes around, and is just so…likable.
“Ahmed and Blair,” I say. “Ahmed is Farid's brother, you know, the guard at the lot.”
Addy bumps fists with them both. I watch her converse and interact with them. She’s like a chameleon blending into her surroundings. Different with everyone, meeting them on their level without even knowing the person.
I’m not sure if I have ever seen anyone so emotionally intelligent as her. I’m for sure not.
We have a couple beers. She tells the story of how she got into the scene and her first race. How she crashed a quarter-million-dollar car in her first week, and ended up working for Luke because she wanted to make it up.
The others laugh and hang onto her lips because she is funny, jokes, and laughs with them, like a completely different person.
And it’s only then that I realize how much of a role she plays. There is nothing visible about the woman I know is in there. The one dreading every day and feeling like death itself.
“Addy,” I say after a while. “Come with me, I wanna show you something.”
I walk with her upstairs, get into my bedroom, and slip the window open. I climb outside onto the small tiles from the patio, while holding myself to the roof edge.
She sticks her head out.
“You need a hand?” I ask.
“Are you kidding?” she says, slips out of the windows, and follows me like she has done so a million times.
We climb up to the ridge, and sit there.
We sit there for a long time, staring into the night. She has her legs drawn up and her arms around them to keep the feet from slipping on the roof tiles.
“You don’t have to pretend with them,” I say after a while.
“I don’t know how not to,” she says. “It’s all I ever did.”
“Not with me,” I say silently, my gaze finding hers.
“Not with you,” she says and rests her head onto her knees, looking at me with those intense blue eyes, the hint of a smile on her face.