Page 75 of Dash

A man’s voice comes over the speakers positioned throughout the raceway, and my heart starts to beat harder in my chest and my hands instantly start to get sweaty.

“He’s gonna be okay,” I chant over and over to myself.

Then I hear all the bikes start up, revving their engines. I drop my head in my hands and pray. I pray that win or lose, God keeps them all safe out there.

The second I hear them take off, I start rocking back and forth. As I take deep breath after deep breath, I try to think of anything other than him racing. Watching him go down last time was scary as hell. Seeing him get up and then fall, my heart fell with him. I don’t want to see that happen again. And that was just a practice; this is a race. He is out there to win. He is out there to prove that he deserves to be here.

I stand up quickly and dust my ass off with my shaky hands. He does deserve to be here, and I should be supporting him. I mean, he’s doing all the hard work. All I have to do is stand on the sidelines. I love that man, and he deserves for me to cheer him on.

I straighten my homemade DASH tank top and brush off my white denim shorts one more time before I start to walk on shaky legs.

“How’s he doing?” I ask as I come up next to my father.

“Great! He’s made his way up to third.”

It’s hard to watch motorcycles races because their course is much different from say Nascar. They don’t have an oval track. They have more like a road course track. It has small hills and sharp turns, which makes no sense to me. They’re on motorcycles, they should have a raceway that doesn’t have any turns, but I guess that would defeat the purpose.

I look up at the big billboard-like screen that shows all the racers, and I spot him immediately. It’s hard to miss him. His bike is normally black, but you can’t tell that now. It has stickers all over that say Knight Racing. And he has a number eighty-eight on the front.

I hold my breath as he comes up on a corner. He leans over to the right, and it looks like he is about to fall off the side of the bike when his knees appear to scrape across the track. I start to jump up and down as I bite my nails.

“He is badass!” Jackie squeals beside me. I was sad when Dash told me his parents weren’t going to come to his race. But I’m thankful that Jackie and Blake were able to make it.

I can’t seem to look away as he zooms down the track. “How, how…How fast is he going?” I ask with a stutter. My nerves are still getting the best of me.

My father doesn’t even realize it as he watches the track. “Depends on the turn. Maybe one thirty right now. He can hit one seventy-five in the straightaways.”

“Holy fuck!” I hiss.

He chuckles at my choice of words, and then begins to clap as he calls out Dash’s name. I turn my attention back on the screen above us, and I see he is now in second place and closing in on first. “Oh, my God,” I squeal.

He comes into another corner and cuts it sharp as he leans over to the far right this time, once again his knee dragging the ground. As soon as he makes it through the corner, he pulls the bike to an upright position and passes the first place bike.

My father starts to call out his name, and I start jumping up and down. Jackie wraps her arms around me, and we jump together like two little kids at a birthday party.

“Come on, Dash. You got this!” Blake screams out as he slaps my father on his back.

We all jump up and down, and I grit my teeth so hard that my jaw starts to hurt as we watch him keep first place. We all stop what we’re doing and hold our breath as he speeds to the finish line. Once he crosses over it, all hell breaks loose.

Blake picks Jackie up, and twirls her around in the air. My father starts hugging all the guys who are in his crew. And myself…well, I take off running. I don’t know where I’m going or what I plan on doing, but I run. With a racing heart and a smile so huge on my face that it hurts, I run toward the track as fast as I can.

I watch as he brings his bike to a stop and yanks off his helmet. He turns around and the first thing he sees is me running toward him. He places his helmet down and runs right to meet me.

I squeal loudly as he bends down and picks me up off the ground. I wrap my legs around him and squeeze him with all that I have. “Oh, my God, you…” He cuts my rambling off with his lips on mine.

I open my mouth wide allowing him to kiss me deeply as he holds on to me tightly. I can taste his victory. I can feel his heart pounding, even through his leathers. And I can smell the sweat that is dripping off him.

He pulls away and he laughs. “You did it,” I whisper against his lips.

“We did it.” He smiles. “We fucking did it.”

He loosens his grip, and I place my feet on the ground. By now, people are coming up to us and pulling him away from me. My father being one of them. Jackie pulls me in for a hug, and we start jumping up and down again.

I can’t even imagine how excited Dash feels because I am on cloud nine and I wasn’t even the one who did it. “We need to do an interview,” my father says, slapping him on his back. Dash nods his head as he takes a drink of the water that Blake hands him.

I go to pull my phone out of my back pocket for some photos but realize it’s back in the trailer. “I’ll be right back,” I say as I take off in a mad dash across the track to the trailer.

I run up the ramp breathing heavy and holding my side. “Shit,” I hiss. “I am out of shape,” I say to myself as I look for my phone. I see it over on the floor by his backup bike when I hear the door close shut. I spin around and see Dash coming toward me. “Geez, babe, that scared me,” I say still trying to catch my breath.

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