Chapter 33 - I've got a bad feeling 'bout this
Torrie didn't smoke Letty because it had to be fair. She was giving him a chance to pick Letty. Letty almost won the race. It was almost a tie for sure. There for neither girl was a 'better' racer. They were the same in that respect. Dom had to chose which one he wanted to be with based on the girls themselves not who made the better racer. Not that it was any sort of contest, and besides Dom had come to realize was they could both be on the team. And he only wanted Torrie as his girl but he wanted Letty on his team and in his life. Everything was clear. But he wasn't going to call Torrie on the race. It was better if the girls thought they were evenly matched. Might save a few headaches down the road.
Letty was driving around aimlessly. Why hadn't Torrie brought it to the race? She hadn't tried to win. Letty could tell. Her car had about 40 grand more under the hood and should have been able to walk away with that race. Then it hit Letty too. She was saying she wanted Dom to chose based on what he felt. She headed back to the trailer. She had never come clean about not wanting Dom to Torrie. They had kind of made up but she had never come right out and told her that she didn't want Dom and that there was nothing to worry about any more. But Letty was still mad that Torrie hadn't done her best. When she got back to the trailer Dom was out front. Letty hopped out of her car and walked over to him in a huff.
"Dom, she threw the race!"
"No she didn't, she won. How could she have thrown the race?"
"She won by nothing, it took the judges like 3 minutes to decide who won. Her car could have blown mine out of the water. I think even Jesse could have beaten me in her car."
"Want to know something else Let?"
"What?"
"She wants you to have 10 grand of the money. Said since it was almost too close to call you should get something out of it."
"She said that?"
"Yep."
"She's for real isn't she Dom? I mean it's not an act with her is it?"
"Yep. She's nice, there's no act to it."
"I wanted you to know, and I'll let her know too, that I was over you before we got here. There was some lingering resentment so that's why I wanted to go with her and even wanted to beat her, but I was over you. I knew I didn't want you back before I ever raced her. We don't fit anymore. I outgrew you and I hope you outgrew me too."
Letty was serious, he could tell. This was good. He told her he was glad and he had learned a lot about life and girls from Letty. He was going to give his relationship with Torrie his best effort. Dom and Letty hugged each other. Torrie happened to look out the window of the trailer at that exact moment. She snuck out of the trailer and over to her car. She thought what she saw was more then it was and she was running. She thought he was picking Letty over her because she fit in better.
She walked up to her car and there were a dozen roses on the hood. She walked up to it and looked them over. The card said 'I am so proud of you. You race like a pro. Love always.' No signature or anything. She was puzzled. They weren't from Dom, when would he have gone? She needed Vince. She needed her brother. She had to ask him about the flowers and about what to do about Dom. She didn't see his car anywhere. That tore it she was out of here.
She hopped in her car and fired it up. She slammed it in first and revved it up to 5000 rpm then popped the clutch. She knew better but she was angry and confused. The car spun on the sandy asphalt and then the wide grippy tires found hold and she squealed out of there like a banshee. Dom and Letty heard the squeal and ran around the trailer to see what was up and saw the dark blue car flying away like a jet. They looked at each other like oh shit and ran for Dom's car.
Torrie couldn't believe he acted like he was over Letty and that she was the one he wanted then he was making out with Letty in front of the trailer. She had no idea were she was going but she was going there fast where ever it was. She wanted to know where the flowers came from and she had to talk to Vince about what she had seen. She turned out of the racewars lot and headed back toward LA.
Dom and Letty were about to take off after her when Vince and Leon ran up to the car. Vince wanted to know what was wrong with Torrie. Dom gave him the short version of what had happened. Vince told Dom he better let him go after her cause she was liable to do stupid stuff to get away from Dom right now. Dom swore then agreed with Vince. Vince took off. He knew where she was headed. She would run to the store.
He hit the freeway and spotted her in traffic right away. He pulled up behind her and honked. She signalled and took the next off ramp. She pulled into a parking lot and got out of her car. She leaned against the door and watched Vince walk up to her.
"You got any tread left on them tires girl? I heard how you peeled out of wars."
"The tires are fine V. I on the other hand may be on the verge of a nervous breakdown." She laughed mirthlessly.
"Can't be as bad as all that girl. What's wrong?"
Torrie started to tell him, a single tear slipping down her cheek. Vince hugged her and told her she had, in normal Torrie fashion, leaped without looking and miss-read the whole situation. He told her they knew that Torrie hadn't tried as hard as she could have to win, and that she had wanted it to look like she and Letty were evenly matched. Torrie had the good grace to look embarrassed about that. Vince told her what she saw was Letty and Dom agreeing that they made better friends at this point and that Letty knew Torrie was a nice girl.
"I guess I look like a total moron now then don't I V? If what you're telling me is the truth."
"Well, it is the truth and no you don't look like a total moron, just a little bit of a moron."
"Gee thanks."
"No problem." Vince have her a hug and kissed the top of her head.
Torrie showed him the flowers and asked him what he thought about them. He had no idea. He knew none of the team had been off the wars grounds since they got there, other then Jesse and Leon who went for more beer. They agreed it was not likely that it had been either Leon or Jesse that left the flowers. Torrie decided that it would have to remain a mystery and that they should head back. Vince agreed they should go back before Dom figured they ran away together.
"I don't really wanna go back V. Lets take off. You and I. We could go to Mexico and race there."
"Little girl, you don't mean that. There is a crappy race scene in Mexico anyway. It'll be aight if we go back Torrie."
"But I don't wanna." She stamped her foot.
"Get in your car Torrie. We need to go back. Dom'll even apologise to you for causing the misunderstanding I bet."
"Don't count on it." She said, but she climbed into the Nissan and fired it up. They drove back to racewars and climbed out of their cars. Vince walked up to her and she leaned back on the car and looked up at him. He told her it was going to be ok and she didn't have to worry. She bit her bottom lip and looked at him like she didn't believe a word of what he said but she nodded ok anyway. He told her to take her flowers and see what Dom made of them. She leaned in the open window and grabbed them. Then they headed into the trailer together.
Dom rushed up to them and grabbed Torrie. He shook her by the tops of the arms and started in on her right away. Vince shook his head behind her like no, stop it and Dom noticed. He told her it was just that he was worried when she took off like that because he was afraid she would have an accident.
She just nodded, she knew it had been foolish, but it seemed like that was her middle name. Then she asked him about the flowers. He had no idea were they came from. He looked angry that some unknown person left his girl flowers. Torrie didn't know who would be proud of her for racing other then Dom or Vince. They were the only two people who really cared about how she raced. Oh why hadn't that occurred to her?
Could have been Brad or her aunt and uncle. She called their house and got Brad on the phone. He told her it wasn't any of them, they hadn't gone to racewars because they didn't know where it was. She spent some time talking to her cousin about how she had done and he told her while they were proud they did not leave her the flowers. It was a mystery for sure.
She was walking toward the tent that housed the cafeteria when Letty caught up with her and asked her where she was going. She told her to get something to eat. Letty asked if she could tag along and Torrie told her sure, though still slightly wary of the other girl's motives. They went and got burgers and fries and sat down. They talked over everything and realized that they had acted very poorly to each other up till this point and they came to the realization they were going to get along fine now.
They headed back to the trailer talking to find the guys talking about how tomorrow was going to work. Tomorrow basically people got challenged to races and the either accepted or not, depending on how much the buy in was and who they were going to race. Dom had been challenged so many times he would be racing from the morning to dusk. Leon and Vince had been challenged a couple times and so had Torrie and Letty. They all accepted and had their times planned. Torrie laughed at Vince, and told him she would challenge him if she didn't already know she could kick his ass. He growled at her and threw her over his shoulder and then spun around really fast for a minute then set her down. She wobbled on her feet for a second and punched Vince in the shoulder.
Letty asked Dom what was up with them, why Torrie and Vince were so close. Dom ran down the story of how he had treated Torrie kind of badly by times but Vince had always been there for her and all about how they had restored his charger for him. He told her that they had just seemed to click as friends from the get go and now Torrie looked at Vince as her older and often annoying brother, even though at first Vince had a thing for her. But Dom ended up with her and the poor Coyote was still stuck on Mia. Dom shook his head over that. Brian was part of the team and wasn't going anywhere. Letty nodded.
They went out and partied again that night, that what race wars was, lots of driving and lots of partying. Dom cautioned everyone to watch how much they drank since they could not afford to be hung over for their races the next day.
They woke up the next day and got ready. Then they all prepped their cars and sat under the tent for a while till the first race was scheduled. Vince was up first, he was racing some guy who had seen Torrie beat him and figured if a girl could beat him then anyone could.
Vince and the kid lined it up and the official got their attention. He dropped his arms and they were off. Vince smoked the guy solid. Torrie wondered what he had done to his car to make it so fast. The whole team was congratulating Vince. Then Leon and Brian had to go race. They both won. Of course it was damn hard to beat Leon in his skyline. He had gotten 3 offers from guys who wanted to buy his car already this weekend but Torrie figured he was gonna marry that car since he couldn't keep a girl longer then 2 days. He was sure in love with his car, all joking aside. He might love it more then Torrie loved Nero.
Then both Torrie and Letty raced and won. Where was the competition here? Did no one have a fast car other then their team? Brian raced again and lost. Ok so some people could bring it. Torrie and Leon raced for bragging rights and Leon won. He was gloating over her and she told him it wasn't fair to compare a car with 1000 horsepower to her car, even though her car rocked. Leon laughed and told her to keep telling herself that.
The team did well overall, no one had seen Dominic, but at the finish line of his many races. He had yet to lose. The garage would be crazy busy for the next age, everyone would want to have a car like Dom's. They would likely not see anything but Mazda RX-7's for the foreseeable future.
It was getting late, everyone else was done racing but for poor Dom, and Torrie had one more race but it was after Dom's last race. Torrie had brought him lunch and a water to eat in his car, because he didn't have time to stop racing long enough to go eat. Torrie was sitting in his car with him at the race line waiting for the other driver to show so they could get this last race over with and then she could go do her's and then she and Dom were going to race, they wanted to just to see what would happen.
Dom was telling her how tired he was and how cramped his shoulders were, and Torrie was promising him she would help him out with that just as soon as they got to a bedroom. The other racer pulled his car up beside them on the line. It was a red Honda 2000. The windows were all tinted out so they had no idea who it was. Torrie climbed out of the car and wished Dom luck. She went to stand with the team off to the side. Then the window of the other car rolled down and they could see it was Ricky Tran, Johnny Tran's little brother. He had never forgiven the Toretto's for killing his older brother, and the fact that his brother and cousin tried to kill Jesse didn't matter to him.
The team looked at each other. They knew this could not be good. Torrie had a real bad feeling about this. Just from the look on the other young man's face. She went up to the open passenger window and leaned in.
"Call it off Dom, I don't have a good feeling about this. He's not here to have you hand his ass to him."
"It's fine, I'll be so far ahead of him that anything he has planned won't happen."
Torrie just shook her head. Dom had never outgrown that sense that teenagers have that they are immortal. He still felt that way when it came to racing. You would think he would have known better then anyone. Torrie knew there was no sense trying to convince him not to race so she went around and checked over his seat belts. She felt that strongly about it.
"You watch that bastard like a hawk, you got it? Come back to me in one piece, I don't care if you win or not as long as you come back in one piece."
"I'll be fine Torrie, go wait with Vince." She walked over to Vince and smiled at Dom while he was looking at her then frowned up at Vince.
"What is it Torrie?"
"I just have a bad feeling about this V."
Torrie didn't smoke Letty because it had to be fair. She was giving him a chance to pick Letty. Letty almost won the race. It was almost a tie for sure. There for neither girl was a 'better' racer. They were the same in that respect. Dom had to chose which one he wanted to be with based on the girls themselves not who made the better racer. Not that it was any sort of contest, and besides Dom had come to realize was they could both be on the team. And he only wanted Torrie as his girl but he wanted Letty on his team and in his life. Everything was clear. But he wasn't going to call Torrie on the race. It was better if the girls thought they were evenly matched. Might save a few headaches down the road.
Letty was driving around aimlessly. Why hadn't Torrie brought it to the race? She hadn't tried to win. Letty could tell. Her car had about 40 grand more under the hood and should have been able to walk away with that race. Then it hit Letty too. She was saying she wanted Dom to chose based on what he felt. She headed back to the trailer. She had never come clean about not wanting Dom to Torrie. They had kind of made up but she had never come right out and told her that she didn't want Dom and that there was nothing to worry about any more. But Letty was still mad that Torrie hadn't done her best. When she got back to the trailer Dom was out front. Letty hopped out of her car and walked over to him in a huff.
"Dom, she threw the race!"
"No she didn't, she won. How could she have thrown the race?"
"She won by nothing, it took the judges like 3 minutes to decide who won. Her car could have blown mine out of the water. I think even Jesse could have beaten me in her car."
"Want to know something else Let?"
"What?"
"She wants you to have 10 grand of the money. Said since it was almost too close to call you should get something out of it."
"She said that?"
"Yep."
"She's for real isn't she Dom? I mean it's not an act with her is it?"
"Yep. She's nice, there's no act to it."
"I wanted you to know, and I'll let her know too, that I was over you before we got here. There was some lingering resentment so that's why I wanted to go with her and even wanted to beat her, but I was over you. I knew I didn't want you back before I ever raced her. We don't fit anymore. I outgrew you and I hope you outgrew me too."
Letty was serious, he could tell. This was good. He told her he was glad and he had learned a lot about life and girls from Letty. He was going to give his relationship with Torrie his best effort. Dom and Letty hugged each other. Torrie happened to look out the window of the trailer at that exact moment. She snuck out of the trailer and over to her car. She thought what she saw was more then it was and she was running. She thought he was picking Letty over her because she fit in better.
She walked up to her car and there were a dozen roses on the hood. She walked up to it and looked them over. The card said 'I am so proud of you. You race like a pro. Love always.' No signature or anything. She was puzzled. They weren't from Dom, when would he have gone? She needed Vince. She needed her brother. She had to ask him about the flowers and about what to do about Dom. She didn't see his car anywhere. That tore it she was out of here.
She hopped in her car and fired it up. She slammed it in first and revved it up to 5000 rpm then popped the clutch. She knew better but she was angry and confused. The car spun on the sandy asphalt and then the wide grippy tires found hold and she squealed out of there like a banshee. Dom and Letty heard the squeal and ran around the trailer to see what was up and saw the dark blue car flying away like a jet. They looked at each other like oh shit and ran for Dom's car.
Torrie couldn't believe he acted like he was over Letty and that she was the one he wanted then he was making out with Letty in front of the trailer. She had no idea were she was going but she was going there fast where ever it was. She wanted to know where the flowers came from and she had to talk to Vince about what she had seen. She turned out of the racewars lot and headed back toward LA.
Dom and Letty were about to take off after her when Vince and Leon ran up to the car. Vince wanted to know what was wrong with Torrie. Dom gave him the short version of what had happened. Vince told Dom he better let him go after her cause she was liable to do stupid stuff to get away from Dom right now. Dom swore then agreed with Vince. Vince took off. He knew where she was headed. She would run to the store.
He hit the freeway and spotted her in traffic right away. He pulled up behind her and honked. She signalled and took the next off ramp. She pulled into a parking lot and got out of her car. She leaned against the door and watched Vince walk up to her.
"You got any tread left on them tires girl? I heard how you peeled out of wars."
"The tires are fine V. I on the other hand may be on the verge of a nervous breakdown." She laughed mirthlessly.
"Can't be as bad as all that girl. What's wrong?"
Torrie started to tell him, a single tear slipping down her cheek. Vince hugged her and told her she had, in normal Torrie fashion, leaped without looking and miss-read the whole situation. He told her they knew that Torrie hadn't tried as hard as she could have to win, and that she had wanted it to look like she and Letty were evenly matched. Torrie had the good grace to look embarrassed about that. Vince told her what she saw was Letty and Dom agreeing that they made better friends at this point and that Letty knew Torrie was a nice girl.
"I guess I look like a total moron now then don't I V? If what you're telling me is the truth."
"Well, it is the truth and no you don't look like a total moron, just a little bit of a moron."
"Gee thanks."
"No problem." Vince have her a hug and kissed the top of her head.
Torrie showed him the flowers and asked him what he thought about them. He had no idea. He knew none of the team had been off the wars grounds since they got there, other then Jesse and Leon who went for more beer. They agreed it was not likely that it had been either Leon or Jesse that left the flowers. Torrie decided that it would have to remain a mystery and that they should head back. Vince agreed they should go back before Dom figured they ran away together.
"I don't really wanna go back V. Lets take off. You and I. We could go to Mexico and race there."
"Little girl, you don't mean that. There is a crappy race scene in Mexico anyway. It'll be aight if we go back Torrie."
"But I don't wanna." She stamped her foot.
"Get in your car Torrie. We need to go back. Dom'll even apologise to you for causing the misunderstanding I bet."
"Don't count on it." She said, but she climbed into the Nissan and fired it up. They drove back to racewars and climbed out of their cars. Vince walked up to her and she leaned back on the car and looked up at him. He told her it was going to be ok and she didn't have to worry. She bit her bottom lip and looked at him like she didn't believe a word of what he said but she nodded ok anyway. He told her to take her flowers and see what Dom made of them. She leaned in the open window and grabbed them. Then they headed into the trailer together.
Dom rushed up to them and grabbed Torrie. He shook her by the tops of the arms and started in on her right away. Vince shook his head behind her like no, stop it and Dom noticed. He told her it was just that he was worried when she took off like that because he was afraid she would have an accident.
She just nodded, she knew it had been foolish, but it seemed like that was her middle name. Then she asked him about the flowers. He had no idea were they came from. He looked angry that some unknown person left his girl flowers. Torrie didn't know who would be proud of her for racing other then Dom or Vince. They were the only two people who really cared about how she raced. Oh why hadn't that occurred to her?
Could have been Brad or her aunt and uncle. She called their house and got Brad on the phone. He told her it wasn't any of them, they hadn't gone to racewars because they didn't know where it was. She spent some time talking to her cousin about how she had done and he told her while they were proud they did not leave her the flowers. It was a mystery for sure.
She was walking toward the tent that housed the cafeteria when Letty caught up with her and asked her where she was going. She told her to get something to eat. Letty asked if she could tag along and Torrie told her sure, though still slightly wary of the other girl's motives. They went and got burgers and fries and sat down. They talked over everything and realized that they had acted very poorly to each other up till this point and they came to the realization they were going to get along fine now.
They headed back to the trailer talking to find the guys talking about how tomorrow was going to work. Tomorrow basically people got challenged to races and the either accepted or not, depending on how much the buy in was and who they were going to race. Dom had been challenged so many times he would be racing from the morning to dusk. Leon and Vince had been challenged a couple times and so had Torrie and Letty. They all accepted and had their times planned. Torrie laughed at Vince, and told him she would challenge him if she didn't already know she could kick his ass. He growled at her and threw her over his shoulder and then spun around really fast for a minute then set her down. She wobbled on her feet for a second and punched Vince in the shoulder.
Letty asked Dom what was up with them, why Torrie and Vince were so close. Dom ran down the story of how he had treated Torrie kind of badly by times but Vince had always been there for her and all about how they had restored his charger for him. He told her that they had just seemed to click as friends from the get go and now Torrie looked at Vince as her older and often annoying brother, even though at first Vince had a thing for her. But Dom ended up with her and the poor Coyote was still stuck on Mia. Dom shook his head over that. Brian was part of the team and wasn't going anywhere. Letty nodded.
They went out and partied again that night, that what race wars was, lots of driving and lots of partying. Dom cautioned everyone to watch how much they drank since they could not afford to be hung over for their races the next day.
They woke up the next day and got ready. Then they all prepped their cars and sat under the tent for a while till the first race was scheduled. Vince was up first, he was racing some guy who had seen Torrie beat him and figured if a girl could beat him then anyone could.
Vince and the kid lined it up and the official got their attention. He dropped his arms and they were off. Vince smoked the guy solid. Torrie wondered what he had done to his car to make it so fast. The whole team was congratulating Vince. Then Leon and Brian had to go race. They both won. Of course it was damn hard to beat Leon in his skyline. He had gotten 3 offers from guys who wanted to buy his car already this weekend but Torrie figured he was gonna marry that car since he couldn't keep a girl longer then 2 days. He was sure in love with his car, all joking aside. He might love it more then Torrie loved Nero.
Then both Torrie and Letty raced and won. Where was the competition here? Did no one have a fast car other then their team? Brian raced again and lost. Ok so some people could bring it. Torrie and Leon raced for bragging rights and Leon won. He was gloating over her and she told him it wasn't fair to compare a car with 1000 horsepower to her car, even though her car rocked. Leon laughed and told her to keep telling herself that.
The team did well overall, no one had seen Dominic, but at the finish line of his many races. He had yet to lose. The garage would be crazy busy for the next age, everyone would want to have a car like Dom's. They would likely not see anything but Mazda RX-7's for the foreseeable future.
It was getting late, everyone else was done racing but for poor Dom, and Torrie had one more race but it was after Dom's last race. Torrie had brought him lunch and a water to eat in his car, because he didn't have time to stop racing long enough to go eat. Torrie was sitting in his car with him at the race line waiting for the other driver to show so they could get this last race over with and then she could go do her's and then she and Dom were going to race, they wanted to just to see what would happen.
Dom was telling her how tired he was and how cramped his shoulders were, and Torrie was promising him she would help him out with that just as soon as they got to a bedroom. The other racer pulled his car up beside them on the line. It was a red Honda 2000. The windows were all tinted out so they had no idea who it was. Torrie climbed out of the car and wished Dom luck. She went to stand with the team off to the side. Then the window of the other car rolled down and they could see it was Ricky Tran, Johnny Tran's little brother. He had never forgiven the Toretto's for killing his older brother, and the fact that his brother and cousin tried to kill Jesse didn't matter to him.
The team looked at each other. They knew this could not be good. Torrie had a real bad feeling about this. Just from the look on the other young man's face. She went up to the open passenger window and leaned in.
"Call it off Dom, I don't have a good feeling about this. He's not here to have you hand his ass to him."
"It's fine, I'll be so far ahead of him that anything he has planned won't happen."
Torrie just shook her head. Dom had never outgrown that sense that teenagers have that they are immortal. He still felt that way when it came to racing. You would think he would have known better then anyone. Torrie knew there was no sense trying to convince him not to race so she went around and checked over his seat belts. She felt that strongly about it.
"You watch that bastard like a hawk, you got it? Come back to me in one piece, I don't care if you win or not as long as you come back in one piece."
"I'll be fine Torrie, go wait with Vince." She walked over to Vince and smiled at Dom while he was looking at her then frowned up at Vince.
"What is it Torrie?"
"I just have a bad feeling about this V."