OH MY GOD IT'S AN UPDATE!

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I can feel someone's eyes on me. Actually, I can feel a lot of people's eyes on me. That's what happens when you are up on a stool in the middle of a restaurant, dirty-dancing with a Hooter's girl. But I could feel one pair of eyes burning a hole in my back. I have no idea whose eyes they are, but I find myself dancing just a bit dirtier than I normally would (a hard feat, since I dance pretty damn dirty). As the song ends, I jump off the stool and hug Claudia (the Hooter's girl) then turn and walk back to my table to see Len looking at his menu.

'So it obviously wasn't him… then who was it?' I think, sitting on the stool and picking up my own menu.

"You're crazy." stated Jaz, my mom's assistant and a good friend of mine. Her son, who's 11, 12 in a few months, just grinned at me. I've been babysitting him since he was four. His favorite T-shirt is the one he got on his first-ever trip to Hooter's that says "My Babysitter is a Future Hooter's Girl". And he may be right, since a girl just quit due to college, so they're looking for someone to work part-time. I'm going to apply. With my rack, I have an advantage over most others that may apply. In school I may have gotten straight A's, but my most prized possession (attached to my person)is my straight D's. What, so I like to flaunt what I got, is there something wrong with that?

"Well, I gotta learn the songs if I'm going to apply for that part-time spot," I tell Jaz in my own defense.

"So you're finally going to be a Hooter's Girl?" Richard asks excitedly.

Everyone laughs as I tell him, "Ya, if I get the job I will be."

As the girls and cooks bring out my cake, I take it upon myself to start the birthday song. The whole restaurant sang with me.

:Hooter's has a birthday song!

(Hooter's has a birthday song)

It's not too short, it's not too long!

(it's not too short it's not too long)

Good news is we sing for free!

(good news is we sing for free)

Bad news is we're a bit off-key!

(bad news is we're a bit off-key)

Sound off!

(happy)

Sound off!

(birthday)

Break it down!

(happy birthday, to you!)

At the end I quickly blew out my candles and everyone cheered.

. 3:00 that afternoon .

We got home about an hour ago and I'm already done checking Cam over. My makeup is a work in progress, since it takes forever to get enough eyeliner build-up and enough layers of mascara to be what I consider 'acceptable'. I look around my room for something to do. Spying my laptop, I grab it and boot it up while I walk out to the windowsill, where I get the best wireless connection.

Logging on, I go to favorites, where I've saved a government webpage that allows me to change my name online. This website is a very convenient, since I don't have to go to the office and fill out a bunch of paperwork, just print out a form then go into the DMV to get my license changed. Within two months all my businesses, cars, bills, and any other thing you can think of will be under Desiree Torretto instead of Jade Henning. I changed the garage's name back in November from 'Jameson Automotive' to 'DT Automotive'- after going to the prison and asking Papi if he was ok with that, of course.

I can't wait until February. Papi gets out of prison. Then he'll go home and find out that Jess and Leon took the Jetta instead of their own cars, then he'll go down to LA and kick their asses. Actually, he'll probably go kick their asses anyway for just abandoning me like they did. Granted, I doubt Jesse really had a choice in the matter. I wouldn't be surprised if Leon (who is 2 years older than Jesse, who is 2 ½ years older than me) drug him off in the middle of the night to escape his guilty conscience. I don't see why Leon would feel guilty about sleeping with me though. Even if I was only 12, it was fully consensual; Hell, if anything I pressured him into it.

Oh well, I long ago gave up trying to figure out why they left. OK. Well, I'm done with changing my name, since the DMV is closed until the 27th. Now what to do? OOOOOh, I could go bug Lenny!

11:00 that night, at the party, outside Seattle, WA +

" Hide me!" Lenny whispers urgently while trying to make himself smaller to fit behind my back.

Chuckling, I say, "I warned you that the chasers were worse than the groupies and the gold-diggers."

"But you didn't mention that they were worse than the groupies and gold-diggers combined, times ten," He stated.

Around here, we don't use foul words like whore or skank to describe girls. Those were saved for the would-be cars. On the racing scene, they are racer-chasers, 'chasers' for short; on the music scene they're band 'groupies'; and on the marketing scene they are gold-diggers, normally just 'diggers'.

Patting Len on the head, I say, "Aaah, poor baby. Do you need me to make the chasers go away?" in my best baby-voice. He nods 'yes'. In a normal voice I tell him, "You probably won't like it, but it's the only way they'll leave you alone."

"As long as no one comes out of it thinking I'm gay, I don't care," Len states.

Smirking, I turn to face him and push him so his back is against my car. He looks shocked as I push myself flush up against him, putting my arms around his neck. Somewhere, deep down inside, I'm totally freakin' out, but I don't let that show. He's about to say something, but I cut him off. "If you want them to leave you alone, you'll have to play along," I murmur into his ear while standing on my tip-toes.

The girl inside that still has her hair up is shouting at me to stop, that Lenny would never go along with this, that it's a stupid idea, but I ignore her and start kissing up Len's neck. I'm pleasantly surprised to feel his hands on my hips. As I get to a spot just between his jawbone and ear I can feel a shiver go down his spine. Yay. I found his 'g' spot.

"Oh, get a room!" I hear Ricky say from behind me.

Smiling, I turn around and go onto flat-feet again. "'Bout damn time you got here, boy! Now we can start racin'!" It's true, Ricky was who I was waiting for.

Maybe you'd like a bit of insight. Ricky is Ricky Tran, and absolutely nothing like either of his cousins, Johnny and Lance. They came up here begging forgiveness and not only did Rick say 'no' but he said 'hell no!' and kicked their butts to the police station to be put in lockup for the attempted murder of Jesse Jameson (A/N: if anyone gets that name, I'll give them a cookie). While I'm the Queen, Ricky is the King; but I'm the supreme ruler, and he's ok with that.

For the rest of the night, I raced (and won, obviously), I got gifts from the adoring public ( please note the sarcasm), and played 'couple' with Lenny, who was happy to get away from the chasers.

$$ April, 2003$$

The last four months have gone by at warp speed. After we started playing 'couple' at my birthday, it's kind of like, Len and I just forgot to stop because it seemed so natural. After about a month of holding hands and kissing and damn near having sex- but not quite, because Len wants to wait 'till he knows it's going to be a serious relationship- we started going out on an official level, as in we discussed it and found out that we're both really good at acting, since we've liked each other since we laid eyes on each other and never figured it out until then. I ended up signing the contract, and I now spend quite a bit of time in the studio, both at home and at the Sony studio in Seattle.

We also recently started filming the video for 'Supermodel'. I never realized it took so many hours of filming to get a four-minute video. Naturally, my hair is down. I've been wearing my hair down a lot as of late, and I've found a happy medium between 'up' and 'down' personalities.

Papi has been out of jail for about two months. He's back living in his old house three doors down from Mom's house (how I met him, Jess and Le in the first place) and helping me run the garage two blocks over.

At the moment, Papi's actually running the place by himself, since Len and I are on our way to California for a month. The whole band is going for two weeks to get some footage for the video, but Len and I are staying for another two for various reasons. 1) a vacation, 2) for me to visit family, and 3) because my bio-parents both left something in their wills for me and I need to see their lawyers to find out exactly what.

"Best Western by the mall, right?" I ask Ted, the director, over the radio.

"Ya, but we shouldn't be there for five hours yet, why you askin'?" came the reply.

"Five hours? Try five minutes, I'm not even a mile away," I said, surprised they were that far behind.

"Well, baby, not everyone is as much of a speed demon as you, but I'm already in LA myself," said Len's voice. I love his voice. But, then again, I love everything about Len.

"When did you guys get so far ahead?" Erick asked. "I'm only three cars ahead of the van." The van has all the equipment in it.

"We got that far ahead every time you guys had to stop to pee and eat, since you couldn't all do it at the same place, but everyone had to stop whenever one person needed something," I say, glad that I'd get some time alone with Len before everyone else got here. "Well, I'm at the hotel, so I'll probably be gone by the time you slow old farts get here." I say as I pull into a parking spot in the garage across from the hotel. I was lucky and managed to get one on the ground level.

"OK, just show the reservation I gave you to the receptionist and you shouldn't have the problem," came Ted's voice sounding as if it took me pointing it out for him to realize that just about everyone had wasted a lot of time on the trip down.

"I'll be there in about twenty minutes," said Len.

"And we'll be there in about six hours," said Erick.

"Copy that. Over and out," I say, turning my radio off.

I grab my hiking backpack and two sports bags and cross the street after making sure I had my reservation and Cam is all locked up. I'm halfway through unpacking when I hear the door open. I look over to see Len walk into the room we're sharing and smile. He shuts the door, drops his two large bags at the foot of the bed and comes over to me, proceeding to kiss me like we haven't seen each other in a year, when, in all actuality, it's only been six hours.

A half hour later, we were both done unpacking and I was fishing a piece of paper with a few addresses written on it out of my back pocket, saying the only two words that would get Lenny out of the hotel room. "You Hungry?"