Chapter 6: The Rules

Bri's kitchen table had four mismatched chairs and a bowl of stale tortilla chips that nobody touched, and Dani sat at it Monday afternoon with her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee she'd stopped drinking twenty minutes ago.

The kitchen smelled like the candle Bri had been burning all morning, a vanilla thing she'd bought at the farmers market that made the whole apartment smell like a bakery, and the window over the sink was open because the afternoon had turned warm, and through it Dani could hear the sprinklers in Bri's neighbor's yard ticking across the lawn, a slow metronome that matched the pace of the conversation, which was not fast.

"So let me get this straight," Bri said, pacing behind her own chair. "The hot guy from the 7-Eleven is a professional street racer named Rook, and he beat you in some drift competition, and he called you babe in front of everyone, and you told him to fuck off."

"That's the summary, yes."

Jess sat cross-legged on the counter, eating the chips nobody else wanted. "Backing up. You drift. You've been drifting. For how long."

"Since I was sixteen."

"Sixteen." Jess nearly choked on a chip. "You've been sneaking around building race cars for four years and we didn't know?"

"It wasn't sneaking. It was private."

"It was sneaking, Dani." Bri stopped pacing and leaned on the back of her chair. "You told us you were tutoring on Tuesday nights. You told us you were at the library. I have watched you study for the SATs at the actual library, I have seen you highlight actual books, and this whole time you were also secretly a race car driver."

"I still studied. Both things are true."

"Both things being true is the most annoying part," Jess said. "You're supposed to be the boring one. That's your whole personality. Dani reads. Dani studies. Dani knows the difference between affect and effect. Not Dani has a secret double life street racing under a fake name and getting picked up by mafia dirt bike guys."

"He's not mafia," Dani said, though even as she said it she heard how little she actually knew. "He's a rich idiot with a nice car and a bird tattoo."

"You said he found your number. You said he knew you had archery Sunday morning. That's not a rich idiot, that's a guy with resources." Bri sat down across from her, serious now. "Dani, I love you, but that's a red flag the size of Texas."

"I know."

"So what are you going to do."

Dani turned the mug in her hands. Outside Bri's kitchen window, a lawnmower droned somewhere down the block, and the smell of cut grass drifted in through the screen, and for a second the whole conversation felt impossibly normal, two friends at a table talking about a boy, except the boy held a lap record under a fake name and had cost her four hundred dollars in bet money she still had to explain to her actual bank account.

"Nothing," she said. "I'm going to do nothing. I lost the bet. I'm going to eat ramen for a month, I'm going to finish the Nissan, and I'm never going to see him again."

Her phone buzzed on the table. All three of them looked at it.

A text. Unknown number.

*I paid off your bet.*

Dani stared at it. She grabbed the phone.

*i don't want your money*

*too late. talked to Curtis, covered your side bets, told him it was a driver courtesy thing. nobody knows it was me except you.*

*i didn't ask you to*

*i know. i wanted to.*

She set the phone down. Picked it up again. Typed: *why*

The three dots appeared for a long time.

*because i cost you something i didn't know i was costing you, and i don't like owing people, and i owe you.*

*you don't owe me anything*

*i owe you a rematch, at least. clean this time. no surprises.*

Dani looked up. Bri and Jess were both leaning in, reading over her shoulder without pretending not to.

"He paid off your bet," Jess said, delighted. "That's insane. That's the most romantic insane thing I've ever heard."

"It's not romantic, it's controlling," Bri said. "He's trying to buy his way back into her good graces. That's a tactic."

"Or he actually feels bad."

"Or both," Dani said. She typed back: *i don't need a rematch. i need to finish my car and forget this happened.*

*fine. no rematch. but i'm still sorry. and for the record, you drove the best chase run i've had against me in two seasons. the sweeper. nobody holds that line that late.*

Something warm moved through Dani's chest despite herself. She hated that it did.

*don't try to charm me with car talk*

*is it working*

*no*

*liar*

She smiled before she could stop it, and Jess, watching over her shoulder, made a sound like a kettle coming to boil.

"She's smiling," Jess announced to the kitchen. "Bri, she's smiling. Look at her face."

"I see it," Bri said flatly. "I don't like it."

"I'm not smiling," Dani said, smiling.

"You are," Jess said. "Your whole stupid face is doing the thing."

Dani put the phone down and pushed it away from her, like distance would help. It didn't. Her thoughts went to the tattoo, the crowd noise, the trophy he'd been holding when she walked away, the way his voice had cracked, just slightly, on her actual name.

"He's a stranger," she said, mostly to herself. "A stranger who happens to be really fast and really annoying and apparently has enough money to pay off other people's gambling debts without blinking."

"Rich," Bri said again, quieter now, more worried than teasing. "Dani. Where does a twenty-year-old street racer get that kind of cash lying around."

Dani didn't have an answer. What came to mind was the crew in matching black shirts, the closed paddock, the way the kid with the clipboard had guarded the Skyline like it was something worth protecting from more than curious eyes.

"I don't know," she admitted. "But I'm not going to find out. I'm done with him."

She believed it when she said it. Mostly.

Her phone buzzed one more time on the table, face-up, and all three of them looked at it again.

*by the way. i still want you to take it back.*

Dani stared at the screen for a long moment. Then, slowly, despite Bri's groan and Jess's delighted cackle, she picked up the phone and started typing a reply