For a guy who talked a lot, Robert sure seemed to be silent. His hands were buried in his pocket and he looked like he had seen a ghost.

Perhaps, that was the effect that Ashley had on the other racer guys.

"How's your training going, Stone?" She asked casually. "I hope they are training you hard."

I gulped audibly. According to what I had heard, Ashley was one of the best woman drivers that were out there, and she didn't hesitate to flaunt it out.

To say I was nervous was an understatement. I was more than petrified. With the look that she was giving me – like she was inspecting an insect – I wanted nothing more than to run to my Dad and say I couldn't do it anymore.

"I, uh..." I stammered like an idiot. "It's good."

I had never felt so inferior to anyone my entire life. With only one formal race as an experience, I didn't know how to react to those questions. I didn't know if she intimidated me or if I was just looking up to her – like my role model.

Ashley's smirk only got wider, her white patch on her cheek dipping into a dimple. "Make sure that Robert teaches you all kinds of tricks, honey." She flipped her hair for more effect. "You might need it."

I looked at Robert for some kind of support, but he only gritted his teeth and looked away. As if he had a lot to say to her, buy was holding himself back.

"Tell Ed I said hi." She said and stepped away from me. I released a breath that I didn't know I was holding.

We stood still, staring at the void, wondering what in the hell just happened. My whole demeanor towards the exhibition was taking a complete one-eighty-degree turn and I didn't know what to say.

"That was harsh." I muttered, once I had recovered. Apparently, Robert was taking more time than me. But, taking it that they knew each other, I didn't know what made him look like he swallowed a fish. "No wonder she wants revenge."

I heard Robert sigh. "She's not that bad."

"You only say that because you know her." I said. Then as if the realization hit me, my eyes bulged out of my sockets and turned to face him. "Don't tell me she was your ex-lover!"

At this, Robert's uneasy tension shifted, and he only laughed at it. "No, she was not." He snorted. "Though I wish she was. Isn't she hot?"

I rolled my eyes at him.

We spent the rest of the evening like nothing happened. We went to the Starbucks to have some cold coffee. All of them scattered away as soon as we had reached home except for Robert, of course. James and Lily wanted to celebrate getting back together err... privately while Nick had got a call from his mother asking him to run her errands.

"Want to come in?" I asked Robert who stood like he was deciding what to do. His smile was contagious, like I had read his mind.

"Hey kids." Dad said, once he heard the door lock behind. He was in his wheel chair with an old match of baseball running in the background while he was immersed in today's newspaper. "Had a good day?"

"Yeah," I said, tucking my hair behind my ear. "We went to a car exhibition."

"Really?" Dad asked, his eyes popping out, face full of enthusiasm. I wondered if he actually wanted to come along with us, after all, he was a racer and that fact was a little too hard to settle down. "Did you see the decorations? The flowers and all that? It was not wilted, was it?"

"Did you by any chance make the decorations there?" Robert asked, just like Dad wanted us to. "They stood even with all the heavy pour last night."

Dad just beamed with pride evident on his face. "Yeah, Paul did exactly like how I had asked to get the decorations done." He said, his smile infectious. It had been so many days since I had seen him smile like that. "That was the reason why I was late last night, after the lunch with Paul. I went straight to Dan's like old times."

"Oh, Dad." I went towards him to give him a hug. "That was really so cool!"

For the first time in my life I was seeing my Dad as a person who was not talking about races or about baseball, he was talking about flowers and that meant something. I was actually proud of how he was taking the situation in a positive note.

"Hey, you can walk properly now?" Dad asked as he saw me walk like my usual self when I went to give him a hug. "No pain and such?"

"No," I said with a smile.

"She even came running to hit me on that field." Robert said, getting a small hit from me while Dad just laughed at him. "She seriously looked like a deer trying to learn its first steps."

"So funny." I said.

"Did you have dinner, Bert?" Dad asked a while later, as he and Rob sat at the hall watching the rerun of baseball. When he said no, he asked Robert to stay over and have dinner with us, just like old times, he added. "Scarlet cooks well too. Since she has healed her leg, she might work some magic out in the kitchen."

"Dad, we all know Robert cooks too." I said with a smile on my face. "Why don't we hire him and let him cook for us everyday?"

Dad thought about it for a second and then burst into laughter. "We could do that."

I went into the kitchen to get things ready for dinner. Robert came over to the kitchen to see what I was doing a little while later. I was with a few carrots, slicing them up to mix them along with cucumbers to make a salad. Robert sat on the counter to the side, facing me.

"What are you feeding me, babe?" He asked giving me a small smile.

"What do you want, honey?" I played along, as I put all the cut vegetables in a bowl and mixed them up with pepper and salt.

"You have no idea." He murmured.

"What?" I laughed.

"Nothing." He said, rubbing his neck. I didn't let it bother me as I knew he was nervous about something. "Anyway, you want any help?"

"I'm so glad you asked." I smirked. I gave him the spatula that I was using for stewing. "Can you please complete it?"

Robert shook his head and laughed. "You are something else, Scarlet Stone."

I smirked at him and got my assignment books down to the hall. With my missed classes, I sure did have a lot to catch up. I sat on the floor, spreading my works on the floor as I wrote essays and completed my records. With Dad on the television and Robert at the cooking, it seemed as if I was transported to the old times.

"Dinner's ready!" Robert called.

"Coming." Dad called back.

The dinner went by with laughs and jokes, mostly about me as I was the common bridge for the two of them. I didn't mind though and I chuckled along with them. Somewhere in the background, I felt like we were actually trying to escape the reality with mere jokes - forgetting mum was one of them.

Out of all the days, I was missing her more today. If she was here with us, then all the shit that was happening, wouldn't be there. It was as if the good part of my life was taken away only to leave behind a bloody trail of memories, which sucked the remaining lives of us.

I cleaned the kitchen and like always, there was nothing much to clean. Robert was a tidy cook. Dad retired quickly, telling that he didn't have a good night's sleep at Dan's. I gave tablets to Dad before I sat next to Robert.

We sat in silence as we heard the ticking of the clock. Robert took my hand in his as I sighed audibly.

"What happened Scarlet?" He asked. His voice was low, as if he knew there was some melancholy in my actions. "Something's bothering you?"

The fact that he had noticed of all people was heart warming. He had always known these kinds of stuff about me and sometimes, it made me wonder if he was a black magician himself. But tonight, I didn't have any energy left for sass and sarcasm.

I pulled him next to me and he obliged. I lay my head on his shoulders, closing my eyes. I took a deep breath and tried to find some comfort in his warm embrace.

"Just for a little while." I mumbled.

"Take your time, baby." He kissed my head, making me snuggle closer to him.

The baseball game was still on and was filling in the deadly silence in the hall. For once, I was glad that the game was running. Suddenly, I heard a small pitter-patter and I turned towards Robert.

"I think it's raining." I said.

His smile only widened. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

I snorted and pushed him away. "Shut up. Shouldn't you be getting home?"

"Well, with your pain all gone, your car is all yours." He made a sad face. "I'll be giving it's custody to you now. As a result of which I don't have any vehicle to take me back home."

"Oh, you poor thing." I said and went back to rest my head against his shoulders. He only laughed at that, but didn't make any comments on it.

That was when I realized what he was talking about. The car was mine now and it would be staying with me, under my roof.

Dad always kept his outside the house and not in the garage, as he complained that he wasted time in getting the car out of it every morning. As a result of that, his car was all rusted due to the weather of course, and always remained in that condition throughout the weather.

Now that I had one of my own, I knew I was not following the same steps that my Dad took. It was my first car and I was sure that I would make me proud in that department. I wanted to keep the car in the garage, far away from the occasional thunderstorms that had become so often now. Like a mother craving for her baby, I wanted to cherish and protect it.

But then came another problem. If I had the car here, then I would be missing out on the chauffeur services that Robert was giving me without any complaints. Moreover, I was not good with the traffic outside of tracks. It was shameful though. I had the license, yet, I was not so confident in driving on the usual roads.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" Robert whispered, stopping me midway.

"I think we need to go to the garage." I said. It had been years since I had been there. As Dad didn't use it regularly, it was more like a storage room than a garage for us. With the current situations, I wanted to get it cleaned before my car entered it.

"If you think, I'm going to clean it up for you, then you are misguided." Robert put his hands up in mock surrender. "I'm not in."

I snorted. "Come on, Romeo. We got work to do."

Though Robert was complaining, he was more than happy to help me. The entry to the garage was like entering a ghost's town. If I were alone, I was sure I wouldn't have made an attempt to break into that space. I took Robert's hand in mine just for comfort, but when he squeezed my hand, I knew he knew.

I flicked the lights on. The entrance was located just below the stairway and it's door was jammed from not using it too often. Robert had to slam hard on it to get it open. Just as I had imagined it, it was all dusty with cobwebs too thick to see through the other side.

I knew I was entering a zone that would take me back in time. A time that I had tried to bury it in the depth of my mind. I knew this was all a mistake. With Robert, I was not sure if I should be sharing it with him. It was too personal to even let Dad in with me. 

I took a deep breath and smiled at Rob, who was watching me like I was an alien. The wooden racks were all termite eaten, some of the engine oils that Dad had preciously kept hidden were fallen on the floor, the oils had dried and I wondered how it had not caught fire all this long. There were bottles of all kind lying everywhere, few empty and few full. Tools that could be used to construct a whole damn car was right there stuck on the wall with cobwebs covering it in various designs.

"Wow." Robert said. Unlike me, he was mesmerized by the scene that was unfolding in front of him. "I think I'm falling in love with your home."

I sighed. I didn't know about the house being my home anymore. It had seen a lot of bad days than good ones.

"Let's get to work." I said, looking around. I wanted distraction now and I was sure the fatigue which followed the cleaning would be good enough. "You take that side and I'll take this."

"You are so demanding for asking help, you know?" Robert muttered, but did the work all the same.

I got the brooms and dusted the vacuum first, earning an eye roll from Rob at my handy work. I then used the vacuum to get the dust off. When the vacuum tube filled up when only twenty percent of the cleaning was done, I asked Robert to get the waste dumped on the roadside dustbin for me.

"It looks like it's going to rain, Scarlet." Robert said when he had come back, getting the vacuum clean. "I should get home soon."

"Then we should be cleaning here much faster." I smiled sweetly. He threw a dirty towel at me and used the vacuum.

"I just have no clue to why I agree to things like this." I heard him mutter as he got himself stuck by yet another cobwebs. I snorted and turned around.

I walked towards the wall which held a few photos and I instantly regretted it. A layer of dust masked the faces, but I knew exactly who it was. Rob followed closely behind me and peeked above my shoulders. I took the photos off the wall and held it by my hands and blew on it in an effort to get the dust away. When they didn't obey, I ran my fingers on the faces and looked at the jet black, wavy hair with black eyes staring back at me.

Mom.

Like a switch, my good mood was changed to the sour one. Mom was still an off topic for me and it was difficult to talk about her even after all these years. I had been to different set of school therapies and talking sessions to make myself better. But they were of no help. Hearing others talk about their loved ones was more than enough to get me spinning into my own set of miseries.

Dad then asked me to stop going to those sessions if it was making me uncomfortable. That was the time when he had changed my school and got this place. Having lost his wife, he had got some sense to not lose his only daughter. But the worst part was that it took years for him to get over and to look after my sorrows.

Thinking that it was better for me to not bring her retentiveness back, Dad had dumped all the memories we had of mom into the garage. I knew he didn't go to the garage, not because it wasted time, but because he was always remained of her.

I had heard their stories of how they met and fell in love so many times that, I knew they were special. As a six year old, there were times when I was trying to be brave for Dad. Seeing him drunk almost every night and swearing at God for leaving him behind rather than her, was more than enough for me to handle.

But as years passed, Dad was hanging out with me more often than before and things seemed to be on the brighter side after that. But the only difference was that the house fell silent. Though we were at home only one call away from each other, we never talked about how we felt after mom.

The pain never left. It only got buried deeper and deeper, that there exited nothing but a small tinge of distant memory until it was awakened from its rigorous sleep.

"Is that your mother?" Robert's voice was low.

His voice was the only remainder that I was here, in the garage with him. Though I didn't give out much details and held silence, looking at the dark eyes in the photograph that were staring back at me, I knew he had made it out.

I didn't turn to look at him, but I could sense that he had come behind me. He put his arm around me to hold the picture in place as he put his chin on my right shoulder, in an attempt to look more closely.

"She's beautiful, just like you." He murmured. "Now I know where you got your looks from."

The fact that he used present tense in talking about my late mother was something that brought smile to my lips. He let go of the picture and took a step, pressing his body to mine, to study another picture that was on the wall.

He picked the one that was near to his side and put his hands around me, cocooning me in the process, as he cleaned the dust off the frame to see the image it held beneath it. It was one of the pictures that we had taken when I was a small baby. The picture was at a local park with mom sitting on the swing with me in her arms as Dad pushed the swing for us. They seemed really happy.

"I miss her." I murmured. Though I had know for a very short duration of my time to tell that I miss her, I knew I wanted her by my side. At least my home wouldn't have been what it is now. "I just wish she was here with me."

Robert only hummed and pressed a small kiss on my temple before he reached for another one. It was one of the photos that I didn't want to see.

It was one of the reasons why I was a little hesitant to go to the tracks in the first place. It was the sole explanation why Dad had second thoughts about me sitting behind the wheel driving it competitively out in the open.

Robert's hold on me loosened and I wondered, if he read it all, given his expertise skills in details and patterns. For once, I didn't want to be judged for what my parents had gone through. For once, I didn't want pity or sorry for being what I am today. For once I wanted to be accepted just the way I am.

"She was a racer?" Robert's voice was low and filled with surprise.

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A/N: What did you think of Ashley and Robert's behavior? Did you expect Scarlet's mother to be a racer too? Let me know. Your feedback helps!