I glanced up in the mirror and then did a quick double take.
My hair was blond. Like white blond. My eyebrows looked darker, my tan, tanner. And my eyes. Wow. Were those mine? They were huge. And so blue.
What I looked like was totally not myself, and that was all that really mattered.
But I did have to admit it was better than the black. Way better.
I thought of Dylan and my body ached in response. A sharp lightning bolt of feeling—of lust—zapped me, and I wondered what he would think of my hair.
If he would like it.
I tried to shake off the thought, because I knew I wasn’t supposed to be thinking that way about him.
But the thought stayed.
Dylan.
Always Dylan.
“Like Miley fucking Cyrus,” Bebe said when I came back into the main room. Tiffany was passed out on the couch, her hands tucked under her face.
“How old is she?” I asked.
“Twenty-three,” Bebe answered, picking up everyone’s glasses and putting them in the sink. The buckets were stacked up in a pile by the door. There were a lot of buckets.
She was a year younger than me. With three kids.
“I gotta go,” I said. I needed Dylan. I needed his voice. I needed those things he asked me to do. I needed all of it—suddenly worse than ever before. “That was fun.”
“That,” Bebe said with a smile, “was epic. Good luck tomorrow.”
“Ha!” I said and stumbled home.
Inside the trailer it was cool and dark, and I locked the door behind me and slipped right into bed without brushing my teeth.
It took me a few tries to get the bedside table open, but soon I had the fully charged phone in my hand. I texted Dylan.
DYLAN
If Dylan was going to be a god, he was going to be a god among these men. NASCAR officials, team owners, sponsors, drivers, and crew chiefs. Wearing tuxes and drinking scotch, making million-dollar deals over cigars.
None of them looked him in the eye. Not one. Or looked at his face. When these people talked to him, they talked to his nose. Or the black tie around his neck.
The drivers couldn’t even look at him, as if he were bad luck.
There but for the grace of God and all that shit…
There is no grace of God, he wanted to tell those drivers. Put your faith in the machine and the crew and the feeling in your gut when you’re on that track.
Dylan knew he made them nervous and he could enjoy throwing around that kind of vibe.
But now this shit was just getting old. Which was why Blake usually did these things by himself. But Blake had insisted Dylan come this time, and that was a rare enough request that Dylan felt obligated to play along. They’re scars, people. Just scars.
“How is that transmission of yours coming?” Jimmy Morrow asked, his hair so white and thick it was like a cat had taken a nap on his head. Jimmy Morrow wanted Dylan’s transmission. Every man here wanted it. Jimmy was willing to pay him a lot of money but Dylan wasn’t sure he could work with a man who had hair like that. For a second, just a flash, he thought of what his brother would have said about that man’s hair and nearly smiled.
“It’s coming along,” he said.
“I heard you’re getting more horsepower than any other engine builder.”
“It’s a game-changer, gentlemen. I won’t lie.”
Dylan could feel their excitement; they were like circling sharks.
“My offer still stands,” Jimmy said. “I told that partner of yours and I’ll tell you the same thing. I’ll buy 989 Engines. I’ll give you enough money that you can buy yourself another couple of mountains. You can still run the whole operation, build the engines you want, how you want. Think about it, son. Offers like this don’t come around every day,” Jimmy Morrow said to Dylan’s chin, smiling at the other men as though he had Dylan eating out of the palm of his hand.