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“Sixteen is old enough not to have that for an excuse.” He shakes his head. “I kept demanding more. More parts for a new engine, more for a new kart. All that costs money, money we didn’t have. I only found out after he died and wasn’t around to hide the late payment notices coming in the mail. The stress killed him.”
“His belief in you was strong enough that the risk was worth it. Look where you are, Jake. He was right.” I go silent. My brother had all that provided for him from the moment he could put his feet on a pedal. His determination is every bit as strong as Jake’s. “I suppose we grew up privileged.”
“You grew up without ever worrying if someone wouldturn off your electricity,” he says.
I don’t respond because his anger is directed at his past, a situation he had no control over, rather than at me. “Boone grew up being compared to our father. Tom Rivers is a legend in NASCAR, holding records that are still waiting to be broken. Boone has gone his whole life hearing that he isn’t as good as his father, feeling desperate to prove he has as much of a right to participate as you or anyone else. He runsRivers Motorsportsbecause of that same need. He’s responsible for the jobs of three hundred people, and he’s afraid he’s not good enough. You and Boone are more alike than you think, Jake.”
“I guess I never thought of it that way.”
I shake my head. “Both of you keep choosing to attack first, and I’m stuck in the middle.”
“No, we’re two people alike enough that it leads to clashes. It’s nothing to do with you at all.”
“Then why did you pick me?”
Jake starts. “Pick you? What in the fucking hell does that mean?”
“You targeted me last season, Jake. We flirted, and you said it was nothing special, and then you came back.”
“That’s not fair,” he says, and I hear the first twinge of anger during the entire fight. “You said we can’t be serious; we were having fun. That was your choice, and I was dumb enough to agree. You put those conditions on us from the beginning. My mistake was thinking you’d change your mind, and I’ve regretted it ever since. You were wrong, and the proof is right here with us having this argument.”
I finally sit. All the confused energy is gone, replaced with misery and a worn-out body. Jake said we were having a big fight, and we probably are. He thinks it will solve all our problems, while my skin feels like someone took a scouring pad to it.
“Don’t you remember what you said in Daytona?” I ask.
He shrugs with confusion. “That was the beginning of the season. I barely even remember the race.”
He crashed six laps in, but I don’t bring that up. “You called us a competition and said you would win it, too, like you always do.”
Jake smiles his familiar cocky smile. “Yeah, that sounds like something I would say.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
I jerk a hand towards him. “Acting like it’s funny.”
Jake takes a deep breath and gets back on his knees before me. We’re in the same position we started in.
“You don’t easily trust, which I didn’t get before.” He puts his hand back on my knee, and I don’t shove it away this time. “The thing is, I know all your secret dreams, the ones you’ve never told anyone. Eventually, you’ll have to trust someone, even if that someone isn’t me.”
“I do trust you.”
“I’m not done,” he starts, and I start blinking again. “You trust me, and I think some part of you still worries I’m using you to advance my career. The thing is, you know my secrets, and that means you can ruin mine. I’m putting my trust in you. Do you know how easy that is for me?”
I only nod because my throat closes up.
“You have reasons to doubt, and I get it, but like I said, you have to trust someone. Eventually. You deserve your perfect future; you deserve all of it, but it can only happen if you trust the person doing it with you. That won’t change, even if you decide to do it all with someone else.
“Do you know what else? After everything we said, I’m stillon my knees with you. I still love you. I’m still in love with you. I still want to marry you.”
Everyone knows about the world’s significant discoveries, like gravity or electricity. My discovery isn’t big like those, but it matters just as much.
I accused Jake of wrecking my boundaries, and that was wrong. He’s been trying to show me he’s different from Joey Fisher and all the others that came before. He’s sticking, no matter what, and I refused to see it.
I refused to believe it.
The blinking fails, and the tears run. Jake catches one, and I wipe the other with my hand. They keep going. “I love you too. I tried to ignore it, but I couldn’t. I’ve been in love with you since last season when we-”
