Page 22 of Homecoming

We walked through the garage, moving this way and that, to avoid colliding with mechanics who were carrying stuff and rushing to the car.

One of them asked as he walked past us, “Aren’t you supposed to be monitoring all this, Williams?”

“Not today, I’m not,” Ian replied casually, giving me a wink over his shoulder.

He led me into a big room painted white. In fact, everything was white except two brown leather couches and a big black gadget with circles that was propped against one wall.

I walked to it, pointed my finger. “What’s this?”

“A sensor wall,” he replied, strolling to where I was standing, his hands on his hips. “It tracks the speed of my reactions. When the light shines, I have to tap it. The faster I do the better.”

“So, how fast are your reactions?”

“You tell me.” He bent down and flipped a switch which made the thing light up. Faster than I could blink one circle would rise up, then go dark, while another would light.

Ian moved me gently to the side, took a stance with one leg slightly in front of the other, and bent a little. I got caught up in watching the muscles on his back flex underneath his shirt, the tide of heat rising in me with each ripple of his back. I was so focused on that, that at first, I didn’t see what he was doing. I just heard a slight beeping noise whenever a muscle would flex.

“Are you watching?” he asked slightly out of breath.

That was when I looked over and saw his hands tapping the wall with lightning speed.

It was almost unbelievable.

After a minute or two, a long beep was heard and everything went dark. Ian bent over and flipped a switch again, then turned to me.

“So how did I do?”

I looked him over, and there wasn’t a single drop of sweat on his skin. I was sure that if I tried I would be left kneeling on the floor, holding my stomach in pain, and sweating like a pig while trying to get some air.

“Fast enough,” I laughed, trying to downplay the fact that after the demonstration I just witnessed, I was positive he was a superhero of some kind.

He didn’t laugh, nor did he tease me about my obvious lying. Instead, his face got serious, something about his look troubled me but I couldn’t figure out what it was before it was gone. “There’s no such thing as fast enough in Formula One.”

I let the troubling look go and went to sit on the couch. “So how do you go from a sixteen-year-old who liked to hang around the local karting track, to all of this?” I flicked my hand to the wall, indicating the complex.

Hearing my question, he faltered on his way to me, and his eyes flashed with something that was, once again, too fast for me to decipher, before he walked the rest of the way over and sat next to me.

He took my hand in his. The simple touch of his skin against mine vibrated through me. At this rate, I was sure I was going to end up with a cardiac condition.

I watched him as he played with my fingers, insecurity starting to swirl in me. “Ian?”

“It’s a long story,” he sighed, finally looking up. His eyes were guarded, something I didn’t like. It was obvious he was hiding something from me, but I didn’t know what, And I knew, with his refusal to answer a simple question, that this was not the time to probe further.

“Instead, tell me what’ve you been up to?”

So I did.

I told him all about how my parents worked hard, and scraped every penny they had, until two years after he left, they were able to put a downpayment on a small, ranch style house, and move us out of the trailer park.

How I went through high school without a single friend. Sure, I had people I talked to or hung out with in the hallways, but girls seemed not to like me very much, no matter what I did.

“That’s because you were always the most beautiful girl wherever you went,” he said after I told him how lonely I was and couldn’t figure out what to do about it. I didn’t comment on it, just gave him a small smile.

Inside, I was glowing from hearing his words.

I didn’t tell him how much I missed him, how I desperately waited on the steps for him to show up, sit with me and hold my hand. Much like he did now.

I told him how, after I graduated college, I moved to New York on a whim, much to my parents' desperation, which quickly turned into admiration since I did well there. Better than well, I did fucking awesome.