Between the Wheels

Wheels can take you around, wheels can cut you down; we can go from boom to bust, from dreams to a bowl of dust…

A hand shot out from under a tangle of light blue sheets, decorated white comforter and limbs, a palm slamming down on the snooze button of the iHome that so kindly flashed the time she had set the alarm to go off at the night before. A throaty groan broke the sudden silence of the room as a distinctly green eye gradually emerged from where it had been buried in the white pillowcase to stare down the glaring, red digital numbers: 6:30 am. It was really only a half hour earlier than her normal waking hour…and yet it felt so much worse than that.

Grudgingly, the same hand that had silenced the alarm landed heavily upon the bedside table, shuffled around until fingers enclosed upon the charging iPhone, maneuvered the charger wire away, and then brought the device back while the bed’s sole occupant rolled onto her back and squinted at the screen as it flashed to life. As she was gradually tugged – inch by painful inch – from the lingering tendrils of sleep, she slid the little bar across and unlocked the phone before immediately tapping on the little envelope that pulled up her emails. She sifted through spam…until she arrived at the official-looking email from Ford…and suddenly she was wide awake.

Evelyn Marcella was scheduled to meet and have breakfast with Tanner Foust to discuss their plans for the week and a half of track training she would be going through.

The corners of her lips tugged upward into a wide, although anxious smile and she laughed to herself before returning the phone to her bedside table. She needed to get up and moving if she wanted to make sure she was there with a little time to spare! She sat up and shifted her legs to the edge of the bed, managing to untangle herself from her sheets in the process before she rose to her feet and stretched her arms above her head. The over-sized t-shirt she had worn to bed fell slightly off one shoulder before she padded across her room and to the bathroom where she flipped the light on and quickly turned the knob in her shower to give the water time to heat up.

Evelyn had moved to California only five months ago at the request of a friend from college. She was the co-owner and head baker for a café said friend had decided to open, while also keeping the other woman up-to-date on news and results of various motorsports. Moving to California had meant leaving the proximity her old apartment had given her to her father, which then meant losing the weekly bouts at the drag strip that kept her chatter to a minimum at work. Tanya insisted she had no problems dealing with it so long as Evelyn continued to bake and decorate as well as she normally did. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to check out any of the nearby tracks since they had opened! It was lucky she had just finished training a few other bakers that could hold the fort while she was – hopefully - enjoying the very first contest she had ever won!

After a relatively brief shower, the twenty-nine year old woman wrapped a towel around her torso and brought another to her long, wavy auburn hair to towel it off a bit as she returned to the main part of her room. She had – smartly so, at that – set out the khaki shorts and a red and white, horizontal-striped v-neck t-shirt, already ironed, the night before. Grabbing undergarments from her drawers, she changed quickly and headed back into the bathroom to brush her teeth and apply light makeup. She wasn’t a particularly flashy sort of woman when it came to that kind of thing. Before her mother had died, she had always said that the goal was to enhance the natural features of your face without hinting that you were actually wearing any at all...and that was something Evelyn had taken to heart. Once finished with that, she brushed through her hair, whisked it into a neat ponytail and returned back to her room to slip on a pair of socks and her watch before heading out into the living room of her apartment.

She hummed lightly to herself as she passed into the kitchen…only to have the familiar, fawn and black head press into her waist. She glanced down and smiled brightly. “Well, good morning, sleepyhead,” she cooed, leaning over to tenderly stroke the mastiff’s head and scratch behind his ear. “You can’t come in to work with me today, bud, sorry,” she spoke once more, large brown eyes meeting hers with a submissive sigh. She chuckled to herself and whistled for him to follow as she grabbed his leash off of a hanger on the wall beside the door. She slipped on her sneakers, clipped his leash and, with keys and phone in her pockets, took him for a walk around the surrounding area. It was still early and quiet, the weather perfectly comfortable. To be honest, it was a great morning for a walk, and Roscoe clearly quite enjoyed sniffing about the grass and taking care of business.

They returned, and she released him from the leash and hung it back on the wall before heading into the laundry room where his bowls were. She fed him quickly, forever happy that the two-year old was as cheerfully lazy and well-behaved as the breed stereotype had said, and while he ate, she made sure his water bowl was filled and patted his back on her way out.

Evelyn returned to the living room, picked up and shouldered her black leather purse from the dining room table where she had left it the night before and headed for the door with phone in hand. Her fingers flew across the screen as she composed the text to Tanya. Hey, I’m headed out. If I don’t text you before you close, will you check on Ross for me? Thanks, much! She sent it and trotted down to the parking lot where the black, 2010 V6 Premium Mustang awaited her. Admittedly, it wasn’t the greatest car for a dog Roscoe’s size, but he still managed to make himself quite comfortable in the back seat when he rode with her. She loved her car as much as she loved Roscoe, quite frankly…it wasn’t all-powerful, but it certainly brought her the entertainment she craved.

…it was no wonder Tanya often questioned her priorities…

Those thoughts behind her, she dropped into the driver’s seat, tossed her purse into the passenger one, pushed the clutch in and started the car. While the car idled comfortably in neutral, her text tone chimed and she withdrew her phone to read Tanya’s response. Yeah, yeah, just try not to pass out. Ur a grown woman for Christ’s sake! Love ya! Evelyn snorted, but didn’t respond. She simply tossed the phone into one of the cup-holders, disengaged the emergency brake and backed out of her parking spot.

Luckily, she had been to the small, mom-and-pop –style restaurant once before and didn’t have any issue finding it again. The lack of traffic was also a bonus, as she was on the road at a nice in-between time of the morning where the early risers were already well on their way and those later weren’t quite out at all. She sang along with some oldie that played through the speakers and pulled into the mostly empty restaurant parking lot. She found a space farther from the entrance and backed into it before killing the engine. She glanced down at the watch on her right wrist: 9:45 – fifteen minutes early.

She exhaled a steadying breath and smiled to herself. She just had to stay calm about the whole thing. Once more the mantra she had been using for the past week scrolled through her head: they’re just people.

Shaking her head, she grabbed hold of her purse once more and exited the car, closing and locking the door before slipping her keys into her purse. She strolled across the parking lot and took a seat on the bench off to the side of the main entrance as the email had instructed. She crossed one leg over the other and made herself comfortable.

Nothing to do but wait.

*~*

He’d never had much of a reputation for being early…or even on time, for that matter, but running ten minutes late for an official ‘meet and greet’ was not going to win him any favors from the bigwigs who’d arranged this little get-together. Tanner swore under his breath as he pulled into the parking lot, annoyed by the early hour and the traffic he’d had to deal with on the way to the restaurant. If he’d had a choice it would have been lunch – actually, if he’d had a choice he wouldn’t be part of this trained pony routine at all, but it was part of his job with Ford and he took his responsibilities very seriously. They’d been good to him over the years, and he knew he owed a lot of his success thus far to his affiliation with them. It certainly wouldn’t be a good idea to point out that he didn’t like these contests or having to sit in the passenger seat and pretend he wasn’t sick to his stomach while some hack spun 360s around a parking lot.

Once parked, he climbed out of the truck and scanned the entrance to the restaurant for the woman he was supposed to be meeting here. Evelyn, they’d told him her name was, and Tanner crossed his fingers that she wasn’t as old as the name sounded – his mom had a friend named Evelyn, and she was sixty-two. It didn’t bode well for the week if his driver was a member of the geriatric club; though he’d met a few grandmas over the years who could drive circles around most of the people on the road today, he wasn’t hopeful that this would be the case. No, with his luck, she’d be nearsighted and terrified of speed, with a nervous problem and a heart condition, he thought grimly.

It wasn’t that he was a pessimist; at least not about most things, anyway. But he’d done enough of these things to have learned that it was almost always the least qualified person who got to sit in the driver’s seat, while those people with real potential were left behind by the simple luck of the draw. Sometimes he wished they’d let him choose the winners like they were allowed to in Octane Academy, but that would be too much to ask for – determining who got to put his life in jeopardy this week had to be done fairly by a computer.

He hated computers.

Tanner noticed the two people coming out of the restaurant, an older couple with gray hair, pastel polo shirts and plaid golf shorts. He felt his mood sour even more when they turned toward him, but then they got into the tan Mercedes parked a few spaces down from his truck. One bullet dodged...

Then his gaze settled on the younger woman sitting on the bench, her expression clearly one of nervous anticipation, and he sighed in relief. He studied her for a moment as he walked toward her, pleased with the overall first impression. She was dressed in casual clothes, nothing too fancy for what they would be doing but not at all grubby or unkempt. They would be having pictures taken over the next few days as part of the promotion for Ford, so it was definitely a mark in her favor that she had taken the time to dress nicely and look good.

It didn’t escape his attention, either, that she was attractive, though the professional in him pushed the thought to the back of his mind, deeming it irrelevant to what they were here for. Contrary to popular belief (and all the gossip in the circles he tended to travel in) he was perfectly capable of spending time with a female without flirting, seducing or otherwise getting involved with her on an intimate level. While he acknowledged that women seemed to like him – a fact that still baffled him on a regular basis – he also knew when it was ok to play and when it was time to work. Business was business, and this was a paycheck, nothing more, nothing less.

As he approached she stood up and walked the few steps to meet him, her smile bright and friendly.
“You must be Evelyn,” he said, extending his hand to shake hers. She had a firm grip and looked him straight in the eye, both good signs, and he felt his mood improving as he realized this probably wasn’t going to be as painful as he’d initially expected.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said then, feeling the need to make some excuse for keeping her waiting. “I hope you weren’t sitting here too long.”

Evelyn could have kicked herself for the immediate, mental scream that ripped through her head when he spoke, but she had plenty of experience keeping a calm exterior no matter what was happening under the surface. She was rather certain he wouldn’t appreciate an overly-dramatic, swooning fan in front of a restaurant. And all things considered, she probably wouldn’t, either.

She shook her head. “Nah, not at all,” she replied with a little shrug, her smile not falling. Even had she minded the wait, she wouldn’t have said so. “It’s nice to meet you. And please, go ahead and call me Evie or Eve…or whatever you’re comfortable with, to be honest. I’ve gotten just about any variation you can think of.” She laughed a tad sheepishly and released his hand before slipping her own comfortably into her pocket.

She was keeping herself much calmer than she might have originally given herself credit for, but she tried not to dwell on the accomplishment. She didn’t want to jinx it and end the day – or even morning – by making a less-than-impressive fool of herself. “So, uh, shall we go in?” she suggested, gesturing behind her to the restaurant door with a tilt of her head.