Playing Games

Charlie

We hadn’t been inside the bar for more than fifteen minutes when it started to feel way more crowded. As it turned out, some people from the race had followed us to the bar and filed in after us, and nearly all of them were drawn to Benji. Women glanced at him from the bar, where they tossed their hair over their shoulders and batted their eyelashes in his direction, resembling cartoon characters more than the sexy street racing mavens they were trying to project.

He was oblivious to their subtle and not-so-subtle advances.

Men were also vying for his attention, but in a different way. They wanted to pass by our group, pat him on the back, and tell him how well he had driven. They wanted to ask him questions, mostly about the Hellcat, and hear all the details of the race.

It wasn’t as eventful as one would have thought.

Benji had never lost the lead over the course of the race. He had maintained his position in first place from the second he left the line.

After a good forty-f