Instead, I put all my energy into my physiotherapy, hoping to jump back into the Winston Cup Series in March…not knowing then that my racing days were gone and over.

2

“What are you thinking about?” It was Pita. She was staring into the storm.

I blinked, coming back to the present, the cold and the rain and the wind. I considered making up something to tell her, because whenever the accident came up, we fought. Nevertheless, deceiving her seemed like too much effort, and I said, “Florida.”

She didn’t say anything, and I thought that was the end of the conversation, when she added belatedly, “It happened, Jack. You can’t change it. Get over it.”

Get over it?

Thunder rumbled. It sounded distant, as if the storm might be retreating. This illusion was shattered a second later by another blast directly above us.

Still, I barely registered it.

Get over it.

“I’m sorry,” Pita said quietly, knowing she’d struck a nerve. “I didn’t mean that…I’m…I’m just scared…”

The antagonism building inside me evaporated. I reached out my hand, squeezed her knee, and said, “Me too.”

She looked at me. “I didn’t think you got scared.”

I chuffed and released her knee. “Why did you think that?”

“Because I’ve never seen you scared before.”

“I used to get scared before every race.”

“I don’t mean like that. I mean… I don’t know.” She seemed to be reflecting. “Those were fun times.”

“The races?”

She nodded, then laughed to herself.

“What?” I asked.

“Remember when we got locked out of our room in Kansas City?”

I nodded. I’d finished first at the Kansas Speedway that day, and we’d been out all evening celebrating.

She said, “We were staying at that old hotel that didn’t have twenty-four-hour reception. We ended up in the laundry room.”

I smiled. At some point I’d lost the keycard to the room. We searched the hotel for a game room or library or somewhere we could crash until morning. The only place that offered privacy was a launderette with six coin-operated washers and dryers. We ended up fooling around instead of sleeping—which we did a lot back then—and when things heated up Pita told me she wanted to have sex on top of one of the machines. She even made me put money in it so it would vibrate.

She said, “Who the heck does their laundry at one in the morning?” She was referring to the woman who entered the launderette with a basket of clothes just as Pita was climaxing and biting my neck to suppress a cry.

I said, “She had a good look at my bare ass.”

“She probably loved it.”

“Probably scarred her for life.”