Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (3 page)

“Yeah, man,” I say, doing
my best to slather on the sarcasm. “I bet she goes home nights just thinking
about you and the adorable way you lose your head every time someone comes near
you with a stethoscope.”

“Say what you want, man,”
he says, nodding. “That girl wants me.”

“What if I say that she’s
not into you?” I ask. “What if I say she’s into me?”

“You?” he laughs. “Come
on, Rans. I like you, but you’re not exactly a woman’s wet dream.”

“
Do
you mind?” the bitter nurse on the other side of the curtain
barks.

“Okay, care to make it
interesting?” I ask Mick in a softer voice.

“What’re you thinking?”

“I’m thinking the cost of
your hospital bill,” I tell him. “After a week and all the trouble that you’ve
put these people through, that’s going to be some pretty good money.”

He narrows his eyes at
me. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch,” I tell him.
“You make your move, I’ll make mine. First one with a phone number wins.” I
turn my head toward the curtain and say, “No matter who wins, she never hears
about this and we’ll cut both of you in for ten percent each. Sound good?”

“Easiest money I’ll ever
make,” Mr. Rafferty says.

I’m expecting the nurse
to put up more of a fight, but she responds, “I’ve seen his bill, honey. I
never heard a thing.”

I turn back to Mick. Now
that the pressure is sufficiently on, I’m counting the money in my head. It’s
not the noblest thing, but betting is what pays the bills. Racing is just the
fun part.

“So you’re saying if I
can get her phone number, you’re going to pay my hospital bill?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I tell him.
“We’re definitely into five figures by now. If you’re going to need to take
some time off racing to recover, I mean, how are you going to pay that bill?”

“But if you get her phone
number first, I’m going to have to pay twice as much,” he finishes. “I know
what you’re gonna do, though. You’re going to walk out of this room, tell her
some crap about being worried about me, and ask if she can give you a call to
let you know that I’m all right. No deal.”

“No, no,” I shake my
head. “No tricks. Make your move, I’ll make mine. If she doesn’t give either of
us her phone number, then Mr. Rafferty and Nurse…”

I wait a second.

“Pratchett,” the nurse
answers.

“Really?” I ask. “Your
name is Nurse Pratchett?”

“Is something funny?”
Nurse Pratchett growls.

I turn back to Mick. “If
neither of us gets the number, they can tell her about the bet. It’s a win,
win.”

“Yeah,” he says, “except
the guy that loses.”

I make sure he sees me
looking up at the clock and I get out of my chair. “Well man, it’s been great
talking to you, but it looks like visiting hours are over, so I’m gonna-”

“You really think she’s
going to give you her number, don’t you?” he asks.

“I have no idea,” I tell
him. “I’m just betting that she’s not going to give it to you, and I’m looking
forward to seeing the aftermath.”

Kate said she was off in
a few minutes. If I can get out of this room before she has time to get to her
car, I’m sure I can catch up with her.

“Well, man,” I say. “May
the best man win, etcetera, etcetera. I’ve got to go see about dumping a new
carburetor in the Galaxie. I’ll talk to you later, man.”

“Wait,” he says, and I
stop, already halfway out the door.

I turn around. “Yeah?” I
ask, really wanting to meet up with Kate tonight. Otherwise, I’m going to have
to camp out here with the wounded animal or else I may never see her in time to
win the bet.

“Could you do me a favor
and just tell Maye that I might be out a few more days, but I’ll be back at
work just as soon as my lawyer gets me out of here?”

“Oh, right,” I chuckle.
“She wanted me to tell you that if you’re not there by tomorrow morning, she’s
outsourcing your job to Freedonia.”

He starts laughing. “Tell
Maye to keep her Marx Brothers routine to herself. I’ll be out of here when I
get out of here.”

“Knew she made it up,
huh?”

“Nope,” he says. “It’s
from a Marx Brothers bit. If you’re going to catch her, Romeo, you should
probably get a move on.”

This is why I have so
much fun messing with Mick. He’ll draw you in with conversation, say some
things that are probably below what you’d hope his IQ would allow, and then,
out of nowhere, he flicks you off his shoulder.

I walk out of Mick’s room
and head toward the elevators. She could already be gone, but it’s worth a
shot.

I press the button to
call the elevator. The blue digital display above shows 1. I’m on the third
floor.

By the time the elevator
gets up here, I could be at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey,” a soft voice
comes.

It’s Kate.

“I thought you already
left,” I tell her.

“Nope,” she says. “Just
on my way down to clock out now.”

“Ah,” I answer.

I’m freezing.

Why the hell am I freezing?

“So,” she says, “your
friend tells me you’re into racing.”

“Yeah,” I answer. “I
guess you could say that.”

She leans toward me and
whispers, “He says you two run an illegal racing club.”

Mick is a friend, but
Mick is an idiot.

“He likes to talk big. I do
race, and I do usually meet up with a lot of the same people, but I don’t own
anything except my car, and as far as illegal—who’s to say? I don’t pay
attention to politics.”

“Legal, illegal is just
politics, huh?”

“No,” I answer. “What?”

What is my problem?

“Well,” she says, a
moment before the ding of the elevator, “are you going down?”

Without an actual word, I
follow her onto the elevator.

The doors close.

We’re standing next to
each other, both facing the front.

The elevator’s slow, but
the hospital’s only three stories high. If I’m going to stop acting like an
idiot and make any kind of headway here, I’m going to have to move fast.

While I’m telling myself
all of this, trying to really get that motivation going, Kate is reaching into
her purse and pulling out a card. She hands it to me.

“If you’re ever free,”
she says, “you should take me for a ride sometime.”

Words would be an
excellent thing to use right now. I’m not even sure it would matter so much
which words they were, just saying something would be an improvement.

She must notice that I’ve
stopped blinking because her face is going red and she’s covering her mouth as
she points and laughs at me.

Mick put her up to this.
No wonder he was willing to go along with that bet. Sure, I strong-armed him
into it, but that was just part of his plan. Mick may seem like an idiot—and he
is, but...

Okay, I really don’t know
how to finish that sentence.

“I’m sorry,” Kate says
through her wheezing laughter. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Well, don’t take pity on
me,” I tell her.

“I meant I’d like to go
for a ride in your big race car,” she says, tears forming in the corners of her
eyes as her laughter overfills the space inside the elevator.

“Oh,” I say, cracking a
smile, myself. “Oh, okay, so you’re not just playing some practical joke on me,
you just misspoke.”

She furrows her brow, but
her shoulders are still moving up and down.

The elevator doors open
again and Kate walks out, turning her head on the way, saying, “Seriously, give
me a call sometime.”

I smile and look down at
the card. It has her first name—that’s encouraging. It’s impossible to know
whether or not anything else on the card is accurate, but it is a good start.

This is definitely enough
to win the bet with Mick, even if she did just try to give me the brush. I
guess Mick didn’t have anything to do with it after all.

Sure, it may seem
heartless winning a bet against some guy in the hospital, especially after he
was so pompous about his chances. What makes it funny is that I never intended
to hold him to the debt.

I just wanted there to be
a scenario where he’d be completely aware that Kate’s not interested in him.
Now that she’s given me her card and she’s already agreed to check in on Mick
more often than she already has been, thus forcing the two to be in the same
room, rubbing his face in the fact that she never actually liked him, it’s fair
to say I’ve hit the jackpot.

Hey, the world’s a cold
place.

Even better, I get to
take a beautiful woman “for a ride.” Maybe she’s not quite as timid as I
thought she was.

Chapter
Three

Dinner and a Set of Earplugs

Kate

“Could you pass the
peas?” I ask.

It’s the third time I’ve
asked in the last five minutes.

“So then,” Mom says, “we
get in there, and it’s like a bomb went off, okay? His spleen didn’t just
rupture; it exploded.”

“Do we have to do this
every time we sit down to dinner together?” I ask.

My dad looks at me. He
opens his mouth like he’s going to respond, but turns back toward my mother,
asking, “Were you able to remove the remnants?”

I get it. My parents are
both doctors. This is just something I’m going to have to live with, but it
would be wonderful if, just once, the three of us could sit at a dinner table
and not talk about who had a more disgusting day at work.

“It took a while,” Mom
says. “Surgery like that, you don’t want to miss anything.”

“Oh, I know,” Dad says in
his never-ending attempt to convince Mom he’s just as much a doctor as she is.
“You don’t want to leave anything floating around in there.” He’s not very good
at it.

“Oh, and then, I was
getting washed up after Mrs. Johnstone’s appendectomy, and I couldn’t find my
wedding ring,” Mom says.

“Uh-oh,” Dad responds.

There’s a false alarm
story like this every time we eat together. My only solace is that between all
of our schedules, we really only eat dinner together once, sometimes twice a
month.

What I want to do is get
my own place.

Mom and Dad aren’t that
bad, I guess. They treat me like I’m still a teenager, which is frustrating,
but I don’t think their hearts are in the wrong place.

The problem is that I
like going to college. Maybe I’d want to switch minors if it wouldn’t mean I’d
lose my free parental financial aid, but even going through the motions to be a
boring doctor like Mom and Dad is reason enough to play by the rules.

I could always go into
research. I’ve never been huge on looking at, talking about, thinking of, or
otherwise interacting with or acknowledging the inside functions of a person’s
body, but if I don’t actually have to be in the room for it, I bet it wouldn’t
be that big of a problem.

“So, I’m wheeling Mrs.
Johnstone in to get an X-ray of her abdomen to see if I can spot the ring in
there—she’s still out, by the way-” Mom continues.

Dad’s cracking up. “Did
anyone see you?”

“I told Dr. Bloomberg
that Mrs. Johnstone had-” Mom bursts into laughter.

I guess the worst part of
my plan to move out is that I don’t have anything beyond, “I want to move out
of here.” With school and work that doesn’t pay me, it’s not like I can just go
check out apartments in my free time. Even if I had free time, to get an
apartment, a person needs an income.

I don’t think an
allowance counts.

Mom’s still trying to
collect herself enough to tell Dad what she said to Dr. Bloomberg when the
phone rings. I’m out of my seat as soon as I hear the sound.

It’s been a while since I
saw Eli. I would have thought he would have called by now.

This would be a lot
easier if I had my own cell phone, but again, no paying job and no time to
find, much less work at, a paying job means I get to live without some of the
nicer things.

Luckily, my parents
couldn’t care less about the phone right now.

“Hello?” I say,
answering.

“Hi, is this Kate?” a
man’s voice asks.

I’m not quite sure if
it’s Eli’s. I think it is, but it’s not like we’ve spent a lot of time
together, either. Of course, the only people that ever call me are Mom and Dad.
Paz
would
call if she wasn’t afraid
of my mom picking up the line. Paz may be a malcontent, but she doesn’t cross
my mother.

“Yeah, who’s this?” I
ask.

“It’s Rans-” he stammers.
“It’s Eli.”

Can I really date someone
who goes by the name Ransom? I guess I’m not really dating anyone else.

“Hi, Eli,” I say.

Whew. That was tough.

“Hey,” he says. “You told
me to give you a call if I had some free time to take you for a ride in my
car.”

It’s a statement, so I’m
not sure if he’s got something else coming or if he’s waiting for me to answer.

“Yeah?” I eventually
respond.

“Well, I don’t know if
you’ve got anything going on or not, but I was thinking maybe we could do that
tonight.”

He’s talking a little
faster than before. Could it be possible he’s just as nervous right now as I
am? Maybe it’s one of those spider things: they’re more afraid of you than you
are of them.

I’m probably just reading
too much into it.

“I can’t take the
Chevelle out right now, but I did just get my Galaxie fixed,” he says.

I love car talk. It’s
never made any sense to me at all, but guys just sound so confident when
they’re going on about them.

“Okay,” I say. “When did
you have in mind?”

“I was thinking maybe an
hour or so? If you’re up for it, there’s something I think you might like to
see, but it is kind of time-sensitive,” he says.

“What is it?”

“Have you ever watched
the sun set from the top of a hill overlooking the undeveloped parts of the
valley?”

“Spectacular, is it?” I
ask. We’re going to have to work on Eli’s romantic talk. It seems to me that he
missed an opportunity for a more enticing description.

“A few people go up
there,” he says. “It’s pretty cool. I was thinking maybe we could pick up some
dessert on the way. Sound good?”

He’s no Cyrano de
Bergerac, but at least it sounds like he’s trying.

“All right,” I tell him.
“Did you want to do dessert first or just go straight for the sunset?”

Oh, Kate. Oh, silly,
stupid Kate.

I cover the phone. This
is so not my game.

“What I meant, was did
you want to go watch the sunset first or did you want to do dessert first?” I
correct, but he’s quiet for a few more seconds before responding.

“If you want, we could
pick up something on the way and eat when we get there,” he says.

“That sounds good, but
would you mind if I meet you somewhere? There’s kind of a family thing going on
at the house right now, and my parents can get a little uptight when they’re
not expecting someone to drop by the house.”

“That’s fine,” he says.

We agree to meet at Soeur
Torsadée. I’ve never been there, but Eli insists that he’s paying, so I go
along with it.

I’ve never actually
gotten takeout from a nice French restaurant. I didn’t know nice French
restaurants even did takeout.

When I get back to the
dining room, I avoid my parents’ eyes as I interrupt the hilarity of Mom
finding her ring in her locker, “Where it always is.”

“Hey, I’ve got to run to
the library for a little bit,” I tell them. “There’s some research I need to do
for a paper.”

To them, as long as it’s
about school, I pretty much have carte blanche. I get changed into something
befitting the evening, a slinky red dress, and I’m on my way.

When I get to the
restaurant, though, I’m more than a bit confused.

Given the name of the
place, I was expecting something provincial, classy, possibly understated,
maybe over the top. What I’m seeing instead are servers dressed up in the
height of ’80s fashion down to the men’s blouses and universal big hair while
Twisted Sister blares over the sound system.

It’s not so bad, but this
is one of those times when a cell phone would be convenient.

A woman wearing torn
jeans and a faux-leather jacket comes up to me, asking, “Just one tonight,
girl?”

“I’m actually waiting for
someone,” I tell her. “We were going to do takeout.”

“Rad,” the woman says and
walks back behind the long counter.

Luckily, I’m not waiting
too long.

“Hey there,” Eli says.
He’s not in ’80s getup like the restaurant’s employees, but he’s dressed down a
lot farther than I am. I guess the chic dress was a bad bet.

“Hey,” I respond. “What
is
this place?”

“Really?” he asks
perplexingly. “I would have thought you’d be pretty familiar with the place by
now.”

I narrow my eyes a
little, peering at him. “Why would you think that?” I ask.

Nobody knows the depth of
my love of ’80s hair metal. Nobody will ever know.

“I have a bit of a
confession to make,” he says.

Here it comes. The guy’s
probably a stalker who keeps a pet bunny in his house as a pet—only it’s not a
pet bunny, it’s a raccoon, and it definitely hasn’t had its shots. I bet he’s
named the raccoon Gerald, and for some reason, he’s going to expect me to know
why he would name a bunny that’s actually a raccoon Gerald, and if I can’t
guess the answer, he’s going to let the raccoon loose, it’s going to attack me,
and I’m going to die of rabies.

“I was visiting with Mick
in the hospital a few days ago and your friend was the nurse covering Mick’s
room,” he says. “If it helps at all, I didn’t ask her to give me dirt on you;
she mentioned you were a vegetarian. I thought you might like something to
snack on while we’re at Grog Hill.”

I’m not sure which meaty
dessert I might have been duped into eating, but it’s a nice gesture.

“We’re Not Gonna Take It”
comes over the stereo and loud cheers erupt. Eli looks toward the center of the
restaurant, and I’m just trying to hide my goosebumps. We should probably go
sooner than later.

I’m not really all that
hungry, but I do order some baklava, mostly because I’m surprised they have it.
Eli gets some vegan chocolate truffles and we’re on our way.

“Ready to go?” he asks.

I briefly consider taking
my own car, that way I can always leave early if it’s looking like things
aren’t going too well. I like that. At the same time, I
did
want to see what it was like to ride passenger with a real life
street racer behind the wheel, and I
did
kind of tell Eli as much.

“Just don’t get me
arrested. That’s bad first date etiquette.” My voice is wavering a bit.

“I’ll keep that in mind,”
he says. “Shall we?”

I nod and we walk out of
the restaurant to the parking lot behind.

“So, which one’s yours?”
I ask, looking over the dozen or so cars parked in the back.

I’m no expert, but I can
usually tell which cars are supposed to be fast. There’s a little red sports
car, though it looks a bit small for Eli. There’s a new Corvette—I know those
ones—but it’s got a flowery necklace hanging from the mirror.

“That one,” he says,
pointing toward the far end of the lot.

“Which one?” He can’t be
pointing at the old, rusted-out aircraft carrier with four wheels like it
appears he is. “Oh, that black one with the sunroof?” I ask. “What is that, a
Honda something?”

“No, it’s the Galaxie
right at the end of the lot.”

“Oh,” I say, painting on
a smile. “That should be…fun.”

“I know it doesn’t look
like much,” he says. “Okay, it’s not much, really, but what it lacks in visual
appeal, reliability, functionality, safety, comfort, fuel economy, and decent
steering, it more than makes up for it with the experience of the ride.”

“Yeah,” I say. For no
reason I’m aware of, I add, “Totally.”

“You’re kind of wishing
it had been a French restaurant and that the car was a Ferrari aren’t you?”

The statement is a bit
surprising for its self-deprecation, but as we start walking, I see that smile
only growing.

“Would that have been so
hard?” I ask.

He chuckles. “You’d be
surprised at how many incredible things look unappealing before you get to know
it,” he says.

“I sense a metaphor,” I
tell him.

“What? Oh, you think I’m
talking about myself? No, I’m incredibly appealing before, during, and after
you get to know me. I was talking about the car. It’s got spunk.”

And there’s the cockiness
I’ve come to know and wonder if I could handle on a long-term basis.

For now, my dwindling
sense of spontaneity keeps me moving forward.

Inside, the car’s got
that same smell that all cars over thirty years old have. It’s the scent of a
mustier time. The vinyl seats are cracked, but “Ransom” here was nice enough to
set down a towel. My legs still get pinched, but at least I’m not
as
worried about blood being drawn just
by sitting.

When I get home, I’m
going to write the words, “Never go out with anyone you meet in the hospital,”
a few hundred times.

He turns the ignition
without the use of a key, and I’m starting to wonder if I’ve just become an
accessory to grand theft auto. As soon as the engine fires up—and it takes a
minute—I start to understand what he was trying to tell me.