I chuckle and roll over on my back, staring up at the ceiling in this hotel room. “I miss you,” I say.
“I miss you, too. And you’ve only been gone a few hours, so that’s really saying something.”
“How was your exam?” I ask.
“It was okay. I think I probably got an A on it.”
“Of course you did. You’re a fucking badass.”
She laughs and it makes me smile. “So, are you at your hotel?”
“Yep,” I say. “Tomorrow at five in the morning, we start practice and then the race is Sunday. Then Monday morning I’ll be coming home and you better be prepared for a massive hug.”
“I’ll need more than a hug,” she says in this flirtatious way that makes my stomach flutter. “You’ll have been away from me for three days, and that’s just not okay.”
“I’ll make it up to you, baby girl.”
“Good,” she says.
Not five minutes after we’ve hung up, I nearly piss myself when someone bangs on my door louder than necessary.
“Dude!” Zach Pena says. “Open up, I know you’re in there!”
I head to the door and let my fellow teammates inside. Knowing our team manager Marcus, he probably booked us all hotel rooms right next to each other.
Zach is a tanned, dark haired playboy from Tennessee. Somehow all the girls think his twangy accent is sexy, yet I’ve been mocked for my Texas accent a time or two, luckily not by Keanna. He’s got one of those dumbass fidget spinners in his hand and he bumps fists with me as a hello then heads straight to my mini fridge, spinning that thing the whole time.
“Jett, man, what’s up?” Clay says, entering behind Zach.
“I should be asking you that, dude. Did you somehow gettallersince I saw you last month?”
He laughs and runs a hand over his newly bald head. “Nah, man. I hope not.”
Clay Summers is the guy I worry about the most on the track. He’s slick and quick and trains harder than I’ve ever trained in my life. He’s had shaggy blond hair as long as I’ve known him, but he just shaved the whole thing off. His new baldness mixed with the tats on his arms make him look a little terrifying.
Honestly, at nearly seven feet tall, he kind of is.
Clay has a rep of being an asshole, both on and off the track. Team Loco took him on a few months before they signed me, and the main thing I’ve noticed about Clay is that his head is always in the game. I take time off of motocross to be with my girlfriend and my family, but Clay doesn’t. He’s lived in his own studio apartment in Laguna Beach since he was sixteen, and the only thing he dedicates time to is his dirt bike.
The other rookie on Team Loco is Aiden Strauss, who’s still standing in the hallway with my hotel room door open. He’s on his phone but he nods at me in a hello. He looks serious, like whatever he’s talking about is a big deal. But then again, Aiden is always serious.
His older brother is Mikey Strauss, of former motocross fame. That is until he got thrown in jail for possession of cocaine and performance enhancing drugs, and lost his professional motocross career along with it.
Like me, Aiden has grown up in the world of motocross, but he’s got his brother’s reputation to overcome, so he’s constantly fighting the media reports that compare him to Mikey. I like him though, he’s a good guy.
The guys shoot the shit in my room for a bit, and then we head out to get dinner. I grab a cheeseburger with extra bacon and fries because it’s my last good meal of the weekend. Tomorrow, I’ll be on protein shakes and lean meat with veggies to help me stay fit, energized, and ready to race.
Tomorrow, the training begins. The practice and bike prep. Then on Sunday, we’ll load up in the Team Loco motorcade and head out to the track to start off this season’s first race.
I’m not so much nervous, as I am ready to get this thing started. This first race is my first chance to secure the rookie position for the supercross season.
That’s just step one to the rest of my life. And I really hope I’ll make Keanna proud along the way.
