STAR (A 44 Chapters Novel) Page 3

  My black pleather pants, black combat boots, and cropped Black Flag T-shirt felt ridiculously out of place as Hans and I walked out onto what used to be the Falcons football field. Instead of perfect green Astroturf and pristine white stripes, the center of the arena had been buried in shit-tons of dirt and littered with derelict cars. Parked around the edges of the track were about a dozen monolithic monster trucks, and in the center of the track was a group of dirt bikes, their drivers suited up and signing autographs.

  Hans looked around the expanse for a second. Then, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Lucifer!”

  A skinny guy in a STAFF T-shirt who was standing in front of a blocked-off entrance on the other side of the arena yelled back, “Woo!” and pointed at us the way a rock star would point to a crowd.

  I looked at Hans in amusement as the little fella jogged over. “Lucifer?”

  Hans smiled. “That’s our drummer. His name is Louis, but he’s batshit crazy, so we call him Lucifer.”

  I thought back to the night before and remembered thinking the drummer was going to give himself an aneurysm with the way he’d been thrashing around. It was like watching Animal from The Muppets play drums. Or Travis Barker from Blink-182 but with fewer tattoos and a shaved head.

  “He’s a crew guy over at The Omni, too, so he gets me into all kinds of shit.”

  “What’s up, LDH?” Louis asked with a grin as he and Hans did that handshake/hug/slap-on-the-back thing that guys do.

  LDH?

  “Lou, this is BB.” Hans gestured toward me. “BB, this is Lucifer.”

  “Sup?” Louis gave me a chin nod, a ghost of a smile on his amused lips.

  I wanted to blurt out, Stop looking at me like that! Nothing happened, I swear! but instead, I muttered some shit about it being nice to meet him and how much I enjoyed their show the night before.

  Louis walked us around the arena and introduced us to the monster-truck drivers and dirt-bike racers. Everybody was super friendly, not that I knew who any of them were. I was told that Grave Digger, the black-and-green-and-purple SUV/hearse-looking thing, was the star of the show, so I asked its driver to sign my arm.

  I would have had him sign my boobs, but alas, I had none.

  The trucks were about fifty times bigger up close than they looked on TV. I pulled the little point-and-shoot camera my parents had given me for my birthday out of my purse and asked Hans to take a picture of me standing inside one of Bigfoot’s wheels. The tire alone had to be ten feet tall. After Hans took the picture, he handed the camera to Louis, whispered something in his ear, and then walked over to help me down. At least, that was what I thought he was doing. Instead, he turned around and sat on the edge of the tire with his back to me.

  Hans glanced at me and patted his shoulders. “Get on.”

  My first instinct was to hesitate, to ask why, but one look into those blue-jean-colored eyes had me climbing aboard, no questions asked.

  Hans held his hands up for me to hold on to while I straddled his neck. I climbed on, careful not to let my dirty boots touch his clothes. When Hans stood up, the head rush was delicious. I clung to his hands for dear life, dizzy from both the altitude and the sight of Hans’s wild black mane between my legs. I felt like I was a mile above the earth, like the atmosphere must surely be thinner, oxygen scarce, but when I glanced behind me, Bigfoot’s tire was still a few inches taller.

  “Smile, fuckers!” Louis shouted.

  I reached up and gripped the edge of the tire above my head just as Hans gripped my spindly thighs with his massive hands. Time froze. I held my fake smile and my breath as I became hyperaware of every aspect of Hans’s touch. How firm. How gentle. How high up on my legs.

  Pretty fucking high.

  But, when the pads of his fingers began massaging slow, tiny circles over the shiny black material separating us, my core clenched, and my mouth fell open in a silent gasp that I was thankful he couldn’t see.

  Louis saw it though, and he took that opportunity to press the shutter button.

  Flash.

  That was it. Hans set me down gently and followed Louis to the next truck, assuming I was right on his heels. I wasn’t though. I stood there, blinking and mourning the feeling of Hans’s hands on me for a solid three to five seconds before I was able to pick my cool back up and carry on.

  Once we met every truck driver, dirt-bike racer, and crew guy on the track, Hans and I said goodbye to Louis and made our way to our seats. They were Club Level, which I soon learned meant where the rich people sit. Evidently, rich people didn’t go to many monster-truck rallies because that section was a ghost town. The rich people restroom didn’t even have a line!

  I ducked inside to pee and primp, and when I came back out, the sight of Hans Oppenheimer leaning against the opposite wall almost knocked the wind out of me. The man was a walking contradiction. He looked almost unapproachable, standing there with his Resting Evil Villain Face, his scary-as-shit tattoos, and his effortless rocker-chic look, but the boyish smile on his lips and the adorable stuffed Grave Digger doll in his hand had me skipping toward him instead of away.

  “Is that for me?” I asked, reaching for the squishy plush monster truck with the chunky little wheels.

  “Oh shit,” Hans said, not giving it over. “Did you want one too?”

  I laughed and snatched it out of his hands, rubbing my cheek on its velvety hood like a cat.

  Hans gestured down the hall with his thumb. “They have Monster Mutt and El Toro Loco too, if you’d rather have one that looks more like an animal.”

  “Nope. Grave Digger’s perfect,” I said, holding up my forearm to show off my autograph. “Thank you.” I was about to rise up onto my tiptoes to give him a kiss when I suddenly remembered that Hans was not my boyfriend. The realization cascaded over me like a bucket of cold water.

  Hans and I had never even kissed.

  Hans belonged to someone else.

  What the fuck is wrong with me?

  It didn’t even make sense. Every cell in my body recognized him, reached for him, yet I hadn’t even known him a full day. Had we been together in a past life? My hippie parents believed in reincarnation. Maybe they were right. Perhaps we had history, this soul and me. My bones recognized his vibration and hummed along. My heart and his already had a secret handshake. But my brain? My brain told me to stop being a desperate attention whore and go find my own goddamn man.

  By the time I shook off my confusion, Hans and I were standing at a swanky-looking restaurant counter in the Club Level lounge. My stomach growled audibly at the smell of roasting garlic and grilling meat. There were tiny versions of famous Atlanta restaurants in every corner. Italian food, barbeque, a steakhouse, a bakery. Hans was salivating over the menu at a place with twelve-dollar hamburgers when the sound of engines revving rattled the stadium.

  “It’s starting!” I squealed.

  Hans handed me one of the passes Louis had given him so that I could run to our seats and watch the beginning of the show. We were in the tenth row, so close that I could smell the exhaust and testosterone. The trucks roared and paraded around the arena, shining, snarling examples of American excess, before splitting up and parking along the two shorter sides of the oval. Next, about two-dozen guys on dirt bikes filed in from all directions, taking to the ramps and soaring through the air. After their introductions, they lined up against the two longer sides of the oval.

  An announcer bellowed things that I couldn’t understand through the loud-speakers, evidently signaling for two dirt-bike racers to take their places at the starting lines on either side of the dirt track.

  Starting lines.

  They’re racing.

  This is a racetrack.

  I hadn’t wanted to take Hans to Harley’s track, yet somehow, the track had found me. I didn’t want to think about the way Harley had looked in the hospital, in handcuffs and a cast, awkwardly tossing me an engagement ring before being hauled away to prison. I didn’
t want to think about the phone call I’d gotten from his brother, Dave, the same day, telling me that my worst enemy, Angel Alvarez, had been living with Harley for over a month. And I damn sure didn’t want to think about Knight admitting to me in a letter that he was the one who’d run us off the road. That he’d blacked out in a fit of rage when Harley took me from him at gunpoint. That he was beyond help and was going back to Iraq for another tour of duty.

  I could feel my heart rate beginning to climb and my hands beginning to shake as I reread the letter in my mind. Even though I’d burned it months ago, I’d committed every angry capital letter to memory. I glanced around the arena, but in the face of every driver, all I could see was Knight sneering at me from behind the wheel of his own jacked-up monster truck, blood smeared across his mouth and a cigarette between his perfect white teeth.

  Stop.

  I snapped my fingers and pictured a big red Stop sign in my mind. It was a tactic my psychology professor had taught me. The irony was that I’d come to him, looking for strategies to help Knight with his post-traumatic stress disorder. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I had a good number of the symptoms as well. Because of Knight. Because of what I’d seen him do to other people. Because of what he’d done to me. Thought-stopping helped me stave off the flashbacks and panic attacks that used to hijack my life whenever I saw something Knight-related. I just had to remember to do it.

  One of the bike riders did a backflip off one of the ramps, stuck the landing, and sailed across the finish line with both arms raised in victory. The crowd went wild but not as wild as my pulse when Hans showed up with two giant beers, two giant cheeseburgers, and garlic fries.

  “How did you get beer?” I squealed, reaching for one of the plastic souvenir cups with grabby hands.

  Hans chuckled. “Dude, I haven’t been carded since I was, like, sixteen.”

  “Thank you.” I smiled, leaning in to give him a peck on the cheek.

  Fuck! Goddamn it, BB! Stop doing that!

  I bent over before my lips could meet his face and picked my purse up off the concrete floor. “How much do I owe you?”

  Nice save, dumbass.

  “Pssh.” Hans swatted my purse way. “Your money’s no good here.” He smirked at me and set a paper-wrapped cheeseburger in my lap.

  My stomach growled, and my mouth watered. I felt guilty for what I was about to do. I knew a cheeseburger, fries, and beer would put me well over my self-imposed thousand-calorie-a-day restriction, but fuck it. I hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours, it smelled amazing, and the last thing I wanted to do was reject Hans’s gift.

  Maybe I’ll just cut back tomorrow, I thought as I inhaled half of the burger in three orgasmic bites. Maybe I’ll do some extra cardio tonight, I told myself as I washed it down with fizzy, ice-cold Budweiser. Maybe I’ll just have one or two fries, I mused as I shoved a fistful of fried, garlicky goodness into my face.

  It’s amazing what being drunk on saturated fat and alcohol can do to shut up your inner voices. My guilt curled up and took a nice long catnap for the rest of the rally.

  Hans and I spent more time on our feet, shouting and cheering and sloshing our beers around and asking each other, “Did you see that shit?!” than we did in our seats.

  The show was phenomenal. Five-ton vehicles careening through the air, landing on top of other cars, rolling over and crashing into one another. But, when Robosaurus came out, breathing fire and chomping junkyard sacrifices in half like some kind of metallic cannibal from hell, Hans and I lost our goddamn minds. And our voices.

  We came stumbling out of the Georgia Dome late in the afternoon, drunk, happy, and rambling on about every kick-ass thing we’d just seen. Well, I was drunk. Hans would probably have to drink a few pitchers to get a buzz, big as he was.

  I sat down on a bench in a shady spot just outside the exit doors and dug a pack of Camel Lights out of my shapeless tiger-print sack of a purse. Hans sat down next to me. Right next to me. Like, so close our thighs were touching. A fiery wave of pleasure radiated outward from that tiny spot, engulfing my entire body in hot, tingly anticipation.

  Lighting two cigarettes, I passed one to Hans. He accepted it with a warm smile and leaned back, casually draping his arm over the top of the bench behind me.

  Oh my God. He put his arm out! That’s like the universal signal for, Come here and let me hold you, right? He totally wants to cuddle! If I lean back, he’ll put his arm around me, and we’ll just have a totally friendly, nonsexual afternoon cuddle between friends.

  I took a deep drag, said, Fuck it, and leaned back on the exhale.

  Hans did not put his arm around me.

  I rested my head on his shoulder.

  Hans did not put his arm around me.

  I panicked and prayed to the universe for a sudden earthquake to split the earth and swallow me whole.

  “Tired?” Hans asked.

  I nodded.

  If by tired you mean, embarrassed as fuck, then yeah, I’m fucking exhausted.

  “Here.” Hans took the plush Grave Digger he’d been carrying for me and set it on the far side of the bench. “You wanna lie down?”

  Oh my God, he’s trying to get me away from him! He’s totally freaked out! I’m totally freaking him out!

  Mortified tears stung my eyes, and a prickly heat spread up my neck and stained my cheeks as I lay down on my back with my head on the little stuffed monster truck. I didn’t know what to do with my legs, so I bent them at the knees and planted my feet flat on the other side of Hans’s thighs, careful not to touch him.

  Even in my distress, I had to admit, it did feel pretty damn good to lie down.

  It felt even better when Hans rested his right forearm on top of my knees.

  What the fuck?

  He rocked my spindly legs from side to side slightly, the smoke from the cigarette in his hand creating a zigzag pattern between us. Gazing down at me with soft eyes shining out of that hard face, Hans asked, “What do you want to do now, Bumblebee?”

  Run away together. Never look back. Fly to Las Vegas. Become Mrs. Oppenheimer.

  “I dunno.” I turned my head and exhaled a stream of smoke away from him. “I don’t have to work or anything. What about you?”

  “My friend’s band is playing tonight at the Tabernacle. It’s just on the other side of the park”—he gestured with his cigarette toward Centennial Olympic Park—“if you wanna go.”

  With you? I’d go watch paint dry.

  I shrugged in a thinly veiled attempt to pretend like I hadn’t already named all of our future children. “Cool. What should we do till then?”

  Lie here? Maybe pull you on top of me? I’m pretty sure fully clothed dry-humping isn’t cheating. What if I’m the only one who comes? Then, it’s totally fine, right? Yes. Let’s do that.

  “We could go to Underground.”

  Or that. That’s totally what I meant. What you said.

  Fifteen minutes, the beginnings of a sunburn, a liter of sweat, and two cigarettes later, Hans and I walked up to an old train depot on the south end of downtown with a huge sign out front announcing that we’d arrived at Underground Atlanta.

  “It doesn’t look very underground to me.”

  Hans chuckled as he led the way around to the side of the building. “You haven’t been here before?” He sounded almost dumbfounded.

  “I think my parents took me as a kid, but I don’t remember it.”

  “Okay, so all of this”—he gestured around at the streets and storefronts and the plaza out front—“was built in the 1920s about two stories above the original roads and train tracks from the 1800s. I think they did it to help with traffic or some shit. All the businesses just moved their shops up two floors, and everybody pretty much forgot about the space below.”

  “That’s fucking crazy,” I said, looking around, trying to picture how it must have looked before.

  “Well, not everybody forgot. Some of the old storefronts underground turn
ed into speakeasies.”

  “Dude. Shut up. How fucking cool would that have been?” I pictured myself with a chin-length bob, the fringe on my little black dress lifting and falling in layers as I did the jitterbug with some tall, dark, handsome character in a pinstripe suit. I looked down at Hans’s pinstripe pants and chain wallet, then up at his evil yet angelic face and smiled. “I always wanted to be a flapper. I mean, look at me.” I gestured down the length of my body with the backs of my hands. “Wavy hair, stick-figure body, way too much eyeliner, problem with authority—I would have been fucking perfect.”

  Hans did look at me, and the heat from his gray-blue gaze made me squirm. He licked his lips subtly before speaking. “Maybe you were.”

  “Maybe I was a flapper? Like, in a past life? Do you really believe in that stuff?” I didn’t mean to sound so judgmental. I was really just surprised. I didn’t think anybody but my parents believed in reincarnation.

  And now me, I guess.

  Hans shrugged as we rounded the corner of the train depot. There was an escalator on the side of the building that descended into the ground. “I dunno. It’s possible, right?”

  Hans and I stepped onto the escalator at the same time. I turned sideways to face him, leaning my ass against the moving handrail. Hans mirrored my stance, facing me. The lights in the tunnel caused the shadows on his face to alternate from left to right as we traveled slowly by.

  “I mean, haven’t you ever had an experience where, I don’t know, like, you knew something you shouldn’t have known? Or you felt like you’d been somewhere that you’d never been before?”

  “Or like you knew someone that you’d never met?” I blurted out.

  Hans locked eyes with me for what felt like a lifetime—or, in our case, possibly two—then gave me a ghost of a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Ever felt something like that?”

  My nose tingled. My hair tingled. My fucking cherry-red toenails tingled as I held Hans’s challenging stare. Whatever I was feeling, he felt it too. And he wanted to hear me say it out loud.

  “Yeah”—I swallowed—“I have.”