The waitress came by with our drinks while we searched the menus, and by the time she came back, I still hadn’t figured out what I wanted to eat. Everything listed on the glossy pages ran together, and nothing looked good.
“Darren?” Quentin’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I looked up at him. “Get it together. What do you want to eat?”
I looked up and saw the waitress standing beside me, looking at me with expectation, her pencil poised above the pad in her hand. I had no idea how long she had been there, but the rest of the table was staring at me. Fortunately, it was far from the first time I’d eaten at that restaurant, so I had a good idea of what they served. I said the first thing that came to mind and handed over my menu.
“What’s with you tonight?” Vince asked. “You look like the poster child for a whiny country song.”
They kept prodding at me for a while, but eventually I was sullen enough they left me alone. I didn’t even feel guilty about it. It was okay for me to not want to joke around every so often. The more they pushed me, the less likely I was to want to talk to them. Before the food even got there, I was starting to wish I hadn’t come, either. Usually I enjoyed the get-togethers before and after races, but I just wasn’t feeling it that night.
Which was why I was less than pleased when Merry got up and came to the end of the table to sit at one of the empty seats beside me. Everybody else seemed to have essentially forgotten about me, but she plopped right down and looked at me like she thought she was going to be the one who would break through my resistance. But before I got a chance to tell her I wanted to be left alone, she waved her glass of seltzer at me like a white flag.
“Not here to bother you. I get wanting space. Trust me, I’ve been there. But, we’re family. So, I’m just going to sit here, and you brood and if anybody comes to try to mess with you, I’ll tell them you’re keeping the cranky pregnant lady company.”
She grinned at me, and I managed to make a sound somewhere between a huff and a short laugh. We sat that way for another few minutes before the food came, then dove into our dinners. She was halfway through the heaping plate of pasta in front of her when she leaned to the side to press her shoulder to mine but didn’t look at me.
“If you did happen to not want to brood, we could talk. It doesn’t have to be about anything or anyone in particular,” she said.
I stayed quiet for a few seconds longer, then nodded.
“How is the hype for the tailgate event before the race tomorrow?” I asked.
In her role as the social media consultant for the company, Merry had made a tremendous difference in the visibility of the company. We were already popular before she came along, but after she did her magic, our fan base grew, and the money and opportunities were rolling in. She was amazing. I was pretty sure everything she was doing, including planning the parties she organized before each race, went far above and beyond the duties of most people in that type of position. But it was all her idea, and she did it very well.
“Pretty intense,” she admitted. “People started talking about it after the last race, and I’ve been getting a lot of messages about buying tickets.”
“Did Quentin start selling tickets to the parties?” I asked, surprised at the revelation.
“No,” Merry said, shaking her head with a bemused smile. “But it’s gotten so popular people just figured they had to buy tickets to go. They think it’s some kind of VIP experience.”
“Is that something you and Quentin are thinking about doing?” I asked, grateful for the conversation that finally managed to distract me at least enough to keep me talking.
“I don’t want to do that. The whole point of having the tailgate parties was to give the fans something fun to do that enhanced the races but didn’t cost a ton of money. It was just supposed to be fun and get people together and talking about the team. There’s already a ton of merchandise and food and everything for them to buy. I don’t want to get greedy and start charging for tickets. It should stay something accessible to everybody,” she said.
“I agree,” I told her.
“Speaking of merchandise, those shirts I was telling you about came in today,” she said.
“Really? How do they look?” I asked.
“Fantastic,” she told me, reaching into her pocket to pull out her phone. “Look.”
She showed me a picture of the shirts she’d designed. The front featured a graphic of me riding my bike, and the back had my name across the shoulders along with a list of the season’s races.
“That looks great,” I told her.
“Here’s Greg’s,” she said, swiping to the next picture, which showed a similar shirt designed for the other rider on the team.
“Did you show him?”
“Yep. He’s excited about it. Well, as excited as Greg gets.” She put her phone away. “So, you’re still up for signing a few of them before the race?”
“Sure. If anybody wants me to.”
She laughed. “They’ll want you to. Trust me.”
The rest of the night wasn’t too bad. I was glad Merry came to sit with me, and I enjoyed my chat with her. I’d liked her from the very beginning. When she first started working at the complex, she and Quentin didn’t get along very well. There
