Chapter 6 – No Where Else to Run
"Well I might be able to convince Ed to let me go out to dinner." Wow, she couldn't believe he asked her out. She couldn't remember the last time she got asked out. Most guys thought she was some sort of ice princess because she'd kept to herself since Doug screwed her over and Danny died. She'd really been too hurt to want anything to do with any more men.
"Good, let's go."
They headed to the track. Vince drove there like they'd discussed, and showed her what the car could really do. She had never seen it move like Vince could make it move. He could really drive. Nyssa figured if she could learn to drive the way he could she might just be able to get on the NIRA circuit.
They got to the track and he got her to get in the drivers seat. They took things slow because she wasn't kidding when she said she could hardly drive. She really had no idea how to shift a standard or even when she needed to. She'd learned to drive in an automatic and had never had a reason to learn a stick shift.
"So, is the NOS all hooked up in this baby or what?" Vince asked, anticipating using NOS in an R34 Skyline.
"The tanks and the hookups are there, but they're both empty. The thought of having NOS in the car scared the hell out of me so I just never got them filled again after Danny emptied them to store the car," Nyssa admitted. Vince made a mental note to have them filled up so he could give the car a real run. They finished up their first lesson and headed for her house.
"Um, Vince?"
"Wha?" Vince glanced over at Nyssa from where he was driving the car. Nyssa hadn't wanted to drive it in the streets because she didn't feel she was comfortable enough with the car after only one lesson.
"I'm gonna need you to pretend this is your car. Ed thinks I'm currently car-less and I'd like to keep it that way."
"I got no problem with people thinkin this is my car," Vince told her honestly.
"Thank god Ed doesn't know anything about cars. Otherwise he would have questioned my selling this car for 3000 dollars."
"Yeah, anyone who knows anything about cars is gonna know this one is worth way more then that." They pulled up to her house. There were boxes stacked in the front yard by the door.
Nyssa let herself into the house and shouted, "Hey Ed, what's up with all the boxes?" She figured she was safe since it was still pretty early in the day. She didn't figure Ed would have had chance to get loaded. She figured he might have a few beer in him, but not enough to make him really irritable. He never replied to her query and she started toward the kitchen which was at the rear of the house.
Her step dad came out of the living room, taking her by surprise and slapped her. "I know you weren't at your cousin's last night so where were you?" He didn't give her time to answer, he just continued on with his diatribe. "I called the school and you didn't show up till after lunch. You little slut, you were with some guy last night weren't you?" He grabbed her and pushed her against the hall wall. Hard. "Since you're giving it out I think I'll just have some too." He moved closer to her, crowding her space and then tried to kiss her.
Vince was worried about Nyssa. She'd been in her house a while for someone who was only supposed to be telling her step father she was going out to dinner and when she expected to be home. They could be talking about her plans, he supposed, but he just got a feeling that what was going on in the house wasn't that friendly or benign. He decided just to make himself feel better he'd go and check on her. He headed up to the door of the house. When no one answered his knock he pushed the door open. He found Nyssa in the hall struggling with a man who he figured must be Ed.
"Get off her asshole, what're you doing?" Vince bellowed as he threw the other man down the hall. He turned back to look at Nyssa, who had a small cut on the corner of her mouth from the slap. Ed picked himself up off the floor and came at Vince, who just stood up to his full 6'2 and stared down at him. Ed backed off, fearful of the dangerous look in the younger man's eyes. With a scornful look at Ed, Vince put his arm around Nyssa's shoulders and walked her out of the house. Nyssa stopped in the yard and opened one of the boxes. She found it was full of her things.
"That bastard. He's kicking me out of the house I guess. This is all my stuff." She gestured at the boxes, so mad she didn't know what to do. She felt herself start to tear up. She had no where to go, and she was still reeling from what Ed would have done to her if Vince had not intervened. She wanted to have a hissy fit on the lawn. That or break down in tears and sob like a baby.
"Well it's not like I'd let you live here now anyway. Not after what he tried to do to you. Let's load your stuff up in the car and then go back to my place." Vince couldn't stand men who beat on women ever since his dad use to hit his mom. It brought out every protective instinct he had.
They packed up the car full of her stuff. Her step father had been quite thorough packing and there were quite a lot of boxes to load in the car. It took them 20 minutes to load it all into the trunk and back seat of her Skyline.
Ed came out of the house as they were finished and about to get in the car to leave.
"I hope that thug is worth not having a home over you little slut!" Ed yelled after Nyssa.
"I'm a slut?" Nyssa looked up incredulously at Ed's accusation. "You're the one who just tried to force your step daughter to kiss you, you creep. Jesus, you married my mother you sick fuck." She said that all loud enough to be sure the neighbors heard. "I guess you did a great job of raising me huh? Now I am a slut who runs with thugs. I guess if my kid was a slut who hung around with thugs I wouldn't scream about the fact from the front porch. What did my mom ever see in you? Did you have money at the time she met you? Because lets face it, you can't be much in bed. I mean a slut like me use to sleeping with guys like him," she made a thumb gesture at Vince, "wouldn't get much from a night in bed with you other then a terminal case of boredom."
Vince was cracking up. He couldn't remember the last thing he had found as funny as Nyssa taking down her loser step dad a few pegs. Man, this chick had a sharp tongue and a quick mind for insults. Her step dad was turning red. Then he started to run for the car, toward them. Nyssa thanked god after years of drinking and doing not much Ed couldn't run fast.
"Oh shit, get in the car Vince. Let's go!"
Vince fired the car up and they took off just before Ed would have had Nyssa by the throat in the front seat. Vince looked over at the girl, "You ok Nyssa?"
"I'll be fine. But my garage isn't going to be much of a house. Not that living with Ed was much of a home to begin with." Nyssa sighed.
"You'll stay with us till you think of something." Vince made the offer without thinking, and then couldn't take it back. He didn't really want to, but he was concerned about how Dom would take his inviting a stranger to live in their house without running it by anyone else on the team.
"I can't impose like that. I can stay in my garage. I'll just make a few slight changes and it'll be fine. That or I'll go live with Manda like I should have in the first place. Makes me wish Manda's mom didn't hate me though."
"You can stay with us for now, and maybe get a job and save up some money to move into your own place. I'm offering. So it's fine. Don't argue." He said when he saw her mouth start to open. So she didn't. "What's the history there? Why are you stuck with Ed? Shouldn't you live with a blood relative?"
"Well, my dad is in jail. My real dad that is. His brother is married to a woman who hates me and my mom ran off because of Ed."
"Why is your dad in jail?" Vince gave Nyssa another sidelong glance. Nyssa looked back. Talking about why her dad was in jail was not something she liked to go into. Her whole family past was a subject she was more comfortable leaving untouched. But Vince had just offered to let her live with him when she had no where else to go and no idea what she was going to do. She figured the least she could do was answer his questions.
"He ran deliveries for some people. He didn't ask what was in what he delivered but I think he knew that for what they were paying him it wasn't your average type of mail. He's quite the driver, my dad. My brother got it from him I guess. But despite that he was caught on his last job out and because he wouldn't co-operate and take their plea bargain he got 7 years for possession of stolen goods. Then when my mom found out that my dad didn't work for FedEx like she said he'd been telling her all along and she flipped out. She took me and Danny to the other side of L.A. and didn't tell Dad where she was taking us. She forbid us from contacting him, and told us to consider him dead." Nyssa glanced over at Vince to see how he was taking her story. She thought he looked a little shocked, but since he didn't say anything she continued. It was like she'd been storing it all inside for so long that once she decided it was ok to let it all out she couldn't stop. She knew instinctively Vince would keep her secrets.
"I think my mom was full of it because she had to know that Dad wasn't making the kind of money he was bringing home working for FedEx. He bought Danny a car on his 16th and he bought me a car for mine too. We had this great house with a pool and beach front with someone to help mom with the cooking and cleaning. I mean, she had to know that the other FedEx driver's wives did not have a housekeeper. But that was the reason she gave us for why she left him, and she was married to Ed a few days after her divorce from my Dad was finalized. It was sick how fast she 'got over' my Dad and moved on to Ed. I just think she couldn't take people knowing her husband was in prison."
"But how was it that you had to stay with Ed when your mom left?" Vince questioned, thinking that she would have been sent to stay with a real relative and not left with someone who was nothing to her.
"Well, my mom took off. Ed, as you saw, is a real jerk. He tends to get drunk then hit things. If mom was the closest thing, she was what he hit. I guess she wanted to get out of all her responsibility because she didn't even tell Danny and I she was going she just left one day and never came back. She never called, she never wrote, she just disappeared. I've still never heard from her. But when Danny finished his..." Nyssa stopped herself just short of saying police academy, "schooling and got a job we moved out. But then when he was killed and I was still underage they couldn't find anyone but Ed to take me in. Manda's mom said she would only if no one else would, but Ed, figuring he'd get something from the state for his 'good deed' jumped at the chance to take me back."
"No one cared he had a history of hitting your mom and you?"
"No one knew. It wasn't something we went around talking about."
"For god's sake why? Why didn't you tell your uncle?"
"I didn't want to worry him. His wife runs the house, he spends most of his time at work. If they could have found my mom they could have had her put me up for adoption and I could have gone and lived in a state orphanage. It's anyone's guess if that would have been better anyway. Besides, I have a dad. He's super and he only did what he did because he wanted Danny and me to have all the advantages he never did. But since he was in jail at the time mom ran off he couldn't help me."
"Why are you still with Ed now that you're over 18?"
"I had to wait till I was done of school and had a job. I couldn't move out without money."
Having listened to Nyssa's whole story Vince was left with a strange feeling. Nyssa didn't have any self pity for what had happened to her, but her tendency to undervalue herself left him with a bad taste in his mouth.
"Why do you take what he did to you so easily? I'd have been mad at him, at my mom for leaving, at my biological dad for getting caught."
"Complaining about it won't bring my brother back, it won't get Dad out of jail earlier, won't make my mom responsible, and it won't make Ed into less of a jerk. I can either try to make the best of it or I can complain about poor me all the time. I heard someone say once, 'you can laugh or you can cry. I'd rather laugh'. That's sort of how I look at this."
"I still think I'd have kicked a few faces in over it," Vince replied and chuckled.
"Don't think I haven't wanted to just because I never have." Nyssa laughed back. She, despite the unpleasant circumstances around it, had finally escaped from Ed. It was both terrifying to have no real home and liberating to never have to answer to Ed again all at once.
They pulled up to Vince's house and got out of the car. Dom came out from the backyard at the sound of the strange car pulling up to his house. He could identify all the cars on his team blindfolded just by the sound of the engine and the exhaust profile. Vince was the only one who wasn't already home and the car Dom heard had definitely not been Vince's car.
"Where did you get that Vince?" Dom didn't want someone who might some day race him to have a Skyline. He knew his RX-7 was damn near impossible to beat but if anything was going to give him a run for his money it would be a good driver in a Skyline. The R34 Skylines came standard with 6 speed trannies, all wheel drive, and close to 400 horsepower at 6000 rpm. They didn't redline till 8000 rpm, and could easily be modded to hit 1000 horsepower and still be a street legal daily driver. They had to come from Japan as they were not sold in the USA. There was no equivalent. The only American car that came close was a Dodge Viper or a C5 Corvette. But as soon as you hit a turn the Skyline had you because of the all wheel drive and the better chassis design. He would have to guess that this Skyline at those moddes and was running at around 1000 horsepower. Dom didn't want it racing around him that was for sure, but then again they said that it wasn't the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the Dog didn't they?
"It's hers." Vince said with a head gesture at Nyssa, answering Dom's question.
"Then why you driving it?"
"Cause she wasn't feeling like driving and who am I to turn down the chance to drive a sweet ride like this?"
"I guess." Dom looked worried there might be more too it then Vince was letting on. "It a racer?"
"Yep, her brother raced NIRA with it anyway."
"Yeah? What's his name?" Dom struggled to remember the girl's name from their introductions that morning. "Nyssa?" He guessed. She answered so he figured he had gotten it right.
"It was Danny. He's dead now, he left me the car. Vince is going to help me..." Nyssa caught a look from Vince and censored herself, "with the car. It needs a little work." She caught a feeling from Vince he didn't want Dom to know he was teaching her to drive. Dom seemed satisfied with the answer.
"Cool, come eat guys, Mia made chicken."
"Well we was going to go out Dom." Vince almost whined at his friend. Nyssa gave him a small smile for his childish tone. Dom looked at Vince, the look asking 'why would you go out when you could stay here with us?'
"This's fine Vince; we can go out tomorrow if you want to eat with your friends," Nyssa said. She thought it would be cool to see them all interact, having briefly met some of Vince's team the last evening.
"Ok, good chance for you to meet everyone." Vince loved weekend barbeques in the backyard. All that great food and cold Corona. He figured after his offer to Nyssa he would have lots of time to take her places.
The three of them headed out back together. Some song about evil ways was playing from inside the house and there were clear lights strung up around the house's kitchen window. Leon, who Nyssa remembered was the guy with the Skyline and a younger man were playing basketball. They rounded the corner further and there was Blondie, or wait, Brian, Nyssa corrected herself. Vince turned to look at her. She could see the anger on his face.
"Maybe we will go out tonight," He told her and started to drag her back down the driveway toward her car.
Dom yelled at them, "Get over here Vince, and introduce your new girlfriend around."
