"You never really took us out for party." Lily said as we wrapped our classes for the day.

"The party we had was not enough for you?" Nick asked, putting his arms around my shoulder.

We finished the classes early for the day. Thankfully, my English classes were cut today since the teacher had got the flu. And since Nick and Lily were already free, we slowly walked down the cafeteria thinking ways to kill time.

Ever since I had accepted the offer from VS, they were persistent in getting my photos for their magazine and commercials. Though I had requested them to not expose me, at least for a little while, they had reluctantly agreed making me sign another contract before I changed my mind.

The same tracks where I learnt  my driving now looked scary. They had given me the wings to fly and I wondered if I was making justice to it.

Suddenly, I missed Robert. He had been avoiding me for the past so many days that I lost count. He didn't answer my calls or return my texts after that night. It was as if he had vanished completely. This time, I didn't know why I was being punished. I did my daily conditioning and jogs scared that I might lose the next big race while I was hung up on my coach's absence.

"You seem silent." Lily said when I didn't answer the questions that was thrown my way.

"Sorry, I blacked out." I said, running my hands over my free hair. "What were you saying again?"

We walked outside the cafeteria to the parking lot. If everything seemed to go smooth with no ideas to spend the afternoon, I was more than happy to head home.

"Nick was suggesting to go go-karting." Lily said, shrugging her shoulders squarely. "You know a few people there, right?"

"We should go and have fun while we can." Nick said with a genuine smile. "I mean, if you were to lose a game tomorrow, they might kick your ass at go-karting too, who knows?"

I laughed, hitting Nick with my bag. Lily snorted along with me.

"What do you say?" Lily asked hopefully. "If you are tired or you are tied up, we can go some other time. No pressure."

I had completed all my assignments till next week putting myself way ahead of the class, not wanting to be guilty about the races. Except for the sleep that I desperately needed, I was up to date with most of the things. And going go-karting meant, I would meet Gary there, who might hopefully give me an insight on why Robert was dodging me.

"Sure." I shrugged. "But I need a lot of caffeine for that."

Lily laughed, while Nick pouted cutely. "If that is your secret in winning the races, I want double of it to make you lose."

We reached the grounds after another hour of driving. Since I had told them I would head to the tracks directly, Nick and Lily drove in another car while I drove mine.

"Last time, we came with Robert, right?" Lily volunteered to get the topic high in the air. Nick was more than eager to catch it and call it his own.

"He was so cool, you know?" Nick said dreamily. "He had arranged everything – the food, the games and even the go-karting. He organized it all and asked us to relax and enjoy the day."

"But James is more responsible than him." Lily rolled her eyes.

"I agree." I said for the first time ever since his topic came up. I felt like I had been defending him for a long time now, nodding my head when someone said nice about him and jumping right up when there was a wrong word thrown in the mix. "He's not all the God you make him seem to be." I said to Nick.

"What happened?" Nick leaned towards me, concerned. His eyebrows furrowed as he tried to decipher me. "Did you guys fight?"

"They fight every day." Lily rolled her eyes yet again, but came closer to know what had happened.

"What did I say?" I raised my hands in surrender, taken aback by the sudden questionnaire that was getting launched on me.

Both of them looked at me as if I had just come out from the mental asylum, pitying me and giving me a knowing nod all along. I scrunched my eyebrows together trying to read what they had in mind.

"Did he make fun of you or something?" Nick asked carefully, keeping his half eaten burger aside. "I'll teach that idiot a lesson if that's true."

Awe.

"Weren't you saying that he was the best till now?" Lily asked, crossing her hands sure that she had caught him red handed. She gave a slow victory smirk, giving him ample time to formulate his answers. "You are changing the people you are vouching for."

"Because she is my girl first." Nick said out loud and I gasped at it, trying very hard not to cry. How badly hadn't I wished for those words from Nick a few months back? Now, it only made me shrink in desolation.

Lily smiled at his honest answer satisfied, while I tried my best not to bawl in the café on a Friday afternoon. The confession was simple, yet it pulled all the right chords of my heart and it began to ache. 

I had liked Nick for all the right reasons and in some perfect parallel world I was with him, living my life screaming a happily ever after every other second. But in reality, the fate had different options for me in which I didn't have much choice.

But Nick was right. I had seen people like Robert on the tracks since a very long time, yet this guy had managed to get closer to me, breaking all the walls that I had built to keep them away. He listened and knew all the right words to make me feel safe and secure with him, only to let go when I had gotten comfortable.

All the guys in the tracks wanted one of the three things – girls, drinks and a good win; it didn't matter if it was by hook or by crook. But with Robert, though he went behind the girls it was only temporary and drinks? He never touched them. Wins were the only thing that was getting him going. Perhaps that was what had drawn me closer to him.

But now, I didn't know what to believe anymore.

"Look, you are making her cry." Lily said, holding my extended hand on the table. I smiled at her, swallowing the large lump in my throat. "What he means is that, no matter what happens, we are always there with you."

"Thank you." I said, my voice barely a decibel above whisper. "You guys mean the world to me."

"So, you want to talk about it?" Nick asked, supporting his face on his palm as his elbow rested on the table. His eyes twinkled and I knew he was trying to lighten the situation. His eyes spoke volumes than he actually did. "You can share anything with me, you know?"

"And just like that you can take more information about the guy?" I teased, finding my voice back.

They said love was too hard to find, but if one looked closer, it is always found with what we have always had.

"Robert is a good guy, but sometimes he's just a pain in the ass." I clarified. "He only needs to know that. When I meet him next, he'll not know what hit him that hard. You should say that to him, Nick, when you call him tonight."

"How do you know I call him every night?" Nick asked taken aback.

"You call him every night?" Lily asked, her eyebrows raised, mouth hung open.

I laughed while Nick joined me. "It is so easy to get her, right?" Nick asked as I nodded my head.

"I can't believe I'm friends with you. I don't know who are teaming up against whom anymore." Lily muttered, getting us all another fist of laughter.

We finished our burger and fries and we made it to the back door which led us to the go-kart grounds. I spotted Gary sitting cross legged on the muddy floor inspecting a tyre of the kart. Instead of going to him to interrogate him, we took the tickets and played the karts.

When we had completed that round, Gary had come to the base, already recognizing me. He waved his hand in the air, as I took the helmet off of me.

"Hey, Scarlet!" He gave me a bro hug, curling my palm in his as he patted my back as most racers did. I leaned into his embrace, feeling a little nearer to certain someone whom I had been missing all this while. "I didn't know you missed me so much that you came to see me here." He smiled, pulling back. "I'm glad you did though."

"I came first!" Lily shouted, coming to a halt. "You cheated in between!"

"Yeah, sure." Nick said, rolling his eyes, but the grin in his face was hard to miss. "Suck it up, loser."

"Don't you dare call me a loser!" Lily pouted as her vehicle engine was shut off. "You know what, I'm going to race you and get your ass kicked. Are you up for it?"

"You are going to pay and want to get behind me again? Sure." Nick shrugged.

"I'm ready too." I chirped. Though I was sure I could beat them again, it was fun to see them bickering.

"You!" Lily pointed her finger at me in accusation. "You are not playing! Those wins are not enough for you?" I lifted my hands up in surrender, trying not to let my grin show. "Get those crazy tickets. I'm winning this."

I took the bills from her, silently telling Gary to fill new rounds only for the two of them. Gary chuckled, earning another deathly stare from Lily as he bought the tickets. When they were set, they zoomed past racing each other.

"It's addicting, isn't it?" Gary said looking at the two dash off one after another.

I had found a spot under the big tree next to the ticket counter, dangling my legs as I watched my friends race. "Yeah." I smiled back. I scooted over to make space for him. "How's your new kart coming up?"

"How did you know I was making one?" He asked, mocking anger. "That lad can't keep his mouth shut around you, is it?"

I laughed in spite of the hate I was slowly building towards the said guy. "You mentioned it during our party."

He nodded in understanding. "I'm planning to make an economical one, you know, with solar energy." He put his hand in front of him, curling his hands to imitate a car. "If the panels come this way, then we can directly route it to the batteries behind."

"That's nice." I said, not able to understand what he was saying.

"So, that means even when you drive for long hours the battery gets continuously charged through the sun." He motioned his hands in upward direction. "And you can always swap batteries during your night races."

"That seems so cool." I said, really impressed with his works. "Is it done?"

"It's all done on the paper, honey." Gary said, smiling at the grounds. Lily and Nick were still racing with Lily behind Nick. "We have to put it in action."

"Cool, I can't wait for it." I said, meaning it.

"Anyway, what is up with you these days?" He asked, shrugging his shoulders. "That old lady, okay now?"

"Yeah," I said, recalling the conversations I had with her. She was still disturbed, and I didn't know if she could go back to normal again. "Thanks for helping out that night. I didn't know who else to call."

"Not a problem." Gary said. "You seemed to have everything under control when I reached, especially with Robert driving you guys to the hospital."

I furrowed my eyes together in confusion. "Why do you say that?"

I thought it was natural for anyone who was in these fields to be accustomed to the hospital trips. But with Robert he had always remained conservative when it came to them and I had always wondered why.

"Well, for starters Robert hates hospitals." Gary said. "Ever since I met him. When he got into racing, he used to get all kinds of scrapes, but no matter how big the injury may be, he never once entered the hospital."

"Even for the scar he got on his face?" I asked. It looked like a pretty big cut and if he didn't go see a doctor for that, I couldn't imagine the pain he must have endured for it. "The one that cuts from his forehead to his eye?"

"No, that was already there when I had met him." Gary said shaking his head. "He was a troubled boy back then. He has only found some sense since a few years."

"How did you meet him?" I asked, eager for the information.

Robert had always seemed like a mystery to me. Though he spoke like he knew the world, I knew there was a little more than what he let on. With his constant flirts and smooth talks, he sure had pulled all of them under his charm, but it took a little more than that for me. I had already started to dig deeper and the only fear that held me back was if I could endure the information I was getting.

"He was in a fight when I met him." Gary recalled with a smile on his face. "He was strong for his age, you know. He was probably fifteen by then and I had never seen a boy give a punch like him before."

Robert clearly wasn't the guy he was today. In all the days I had known him, he had never one raised his hand on anyone. He had sharpened his tongue over time and knew to use it well.

"The other group were a little famous back then, racers." Gary shrugged. "They wanted to raise a complaint against him. I don't know what took me that day, but I sheltered him. I probably saw myself in him, I don't know."

"Wasn't it tough then?" I asked. "I mean, with a kid with that background?"

"Yeah," Gary ran his fingers across his hair. "My wife threw tantrums at him the first time she saw him. But you know the boy, he charmed her off in a week." He laughed. "She died last year. We had no kids and he became ours when he had come home that night."

I was confused. So, a boy of fifteen comes across Gary and never returns back home? Was he an orphan or were his parents drunken teenagers who had abandoned him when he was thirteen like Rob had said?

"The police arrested him?" I asked. "For the fights?"

"Oh, no. They didn't." Gary said laughing and I wondered if there was any inner joke that I wasn't aware of. "They bet for a race to fight him off. He participated and won. That was how he got into racing."

"But I remember he told me he was scared of accidents." I wondered out loud.

"He told you that?" Gary asked, his brows knit together. "He never talks about his past. Anyway, he overcame it within two days and the third day, he had beaten them all. He was noticed then and the racing world took him in."

"And his parents never came in search of him?" My questions grew two fold on knowing the guy in a different perspective.

"Not that I know of." Gary said, scratching his head. "He said he was an orphan and often isolated himself when we asked about it. It was like a win-win for us, we wanted a kid and he wanted someone to watch him."

"But he didn't want his parents?" I asked confused.

"No, he was capable of himself. He stayed with us for around two years and then he was gone just like he had come to us." Gary said. "But he kept in touch, came home once in a while, took care of my wife when I wasn't around."

"He wasn't rogue?"

"Oh, he was." Gary laughed. "You can't get rid of that in him so easily, but he had become more silent and more mature once he had left us. I could tell that much."

Questions spiraled inside my head and I knew I was missing something, I looked away thinking what kind of parents did he have to abandon him at such a young age and never talk about him. Did he ever try to find where they were? How could anyone be so cruel?

"Do you know how he got out of his real home?" I asked.

My curiosity knew no bounds. I wanted to know and I was ready to take in as much information as possible collecting it from all sources. It was like collecting the fossils and I was starting to get scared of what the whole bone collection might resemble to.

"He only talked about it once, honey." Gary said, scratching his head, trying to remember. "Something about an accident I guess, I'm not sure."

"Oh." I was glad that Gary was a talker. I opened my mouth for another question, but Gary bet me to it.

"Why all the sudden curiosity, Scarlet?" Gary asked and I realized that it was my turn to answer his questions.

It was the same question that was haunting me too. Being with racers, I had never cared about their past and in this field each one of them had their own baggage to claim. I respected that and left it within their own personal space.

But with Robert, it had changed. I wanted to know more, to know more about him, his likes and dislikes, his childhood photos, anything... 

Robert and I had grown close, maybe that was what was pushing me to sail unknown waters to get even closer to him. I wanted to break all those walls and never let them raise, at least with me.

"I... we just spend a lot of time together... and I wondered, I didn't know much about him." I said, and I knew it was the truth, if put simply.

Gary gave me a knowing smile, as if he had dealt with many girls who had come to him, asking about Robert for every five minutes. "He's a good kid. I can give you that." He said. "He's a little reserved, but he seems to be himself with you and that's the only reason I told you all that, honey."

I nodded my head in understanding. If someone had come to me asking things about Nick or Lily, I would have shut them out completely, protecting the privacy of my friends.

"Well, thank you for trusting me." I said awkwardly. I tucked my hair behind my ears and looked at the grounds where the two of my friends were still racing.

Only one question revolved around my head like a vulture. What was Robert hiding from?

---

I drove back to the tracks alone as we had initially decided. I had switched off the radio finding comfort in the peace that the empty car had to offer. Though I would have preferred to stay back at home, I wanted to come to the tracks. I knew I was earlier than my usual time and I hoped I could catch a glimpse of Robert.

I didn't know why I was so hung up on seeing him, but I knew I wanted to have a clear air between us. He had left after that night, ignoring my calls and texts. Eventually I stopped reaching out to him, but the questions had remained.

Why had he eloped like the way he did? Had he suddenly realized that I was not such a good company to keep and was avoiding me?

I knew I was missing out something and like puzzle pieces I had received information in bits. I didn't know what to believe anymore. He was a rare commodity and the more he buried himself, the deeper he made me dig.

I thought about what Gary said and I wondered if the Robert that Gary knew was underneath those cool attitude and flirty demeanor. I remembered each and every thing that was off with Robert and yet, I had gone along with him.

Suddenly, the memories resurfaced and I was taken aback with pure shock.

"Um... okay then, I'll leave?" Robert asked awkwardly. It was the first time he had spoken the entire evening that we had spent together at the hospital when my Dad had over-dozed.

"Well, for starters Robert hates hospitals. He said he was an orphan and often isolated himself when we asked about it."

"Well dear, that's how they usually start."

"How the hell did you get into the accident?" Robert asked disregarding my words. "Tell me exactly what happened when this dent was formed?"

"That's when she started this coffee shop and it became a huge hit." Monica continued. "Everything went well, until my brother was taken away from us."

"I know you are scared though you are trying to put up a strong façade in front of me." Robert sighed. "I'm making you drive just after you had your fall because you won't fear it again in future."

"I'm just... it's nothing." Mira said. "I get nauseated when I see blood."

"You know, I've always liked these beaches." Robert said, looking at the ocean stretched ahead of us. "When I was new to this place, I just came here to wonder what would happen of me."

Robert's grasp tightened around my hand when he heard the thunder. "I..." He stared, his voice shivering. "I just want to know that I'm not alone when this happens."

"Are you sure will you be okay? Do you need a ride home?" Monica asked. I turned my head to see what she was looking at. To my disbelief, there was Robert leaning against his car, looking at his phone.

"Baby, it's all okay now." Robert cooed. "I'm there with you now. You are not alone."

"Is that him? The one with the hood and dark goggles?" He had worn his signature dress, what I call the pick-me-up dress, since he usually wore the same thing when he came to the shop.

"Eyes on the road Scarlet!" Mira scolded, clinging tighter to anything she could hold. "My son used to say the same thing, and look what happened to him? God, you kids these days are not responsible at all."

"I had a son once."

"He was a rebel at that age." Monica sniffed.

"He was in a fight when I met him." Gary recalled.

"When he was thirteen, he was having a fight with me. Two hours later, he was found in a crash." Mira started to sob. "I... it was so difficult. His face... I couldn't tell if it was him. It was... smashed."

"Something about accident I guess, I'm not sure."

"She says she saw someone outside the cafe looking like Ratan."

"You... you..." she started. And before she could say what she had in mind, she fell down unconscious.

"But, shouldn't we be staying over?" Robert asked, a little more worried than usual. "Can she handle on her own."

"She... she just remained me of my mother." He said, his breathing tickling me. "It... it just took me by... surprise."

"He looks... looks so familiar... For a second, I thought... it was Ratan. But then... my boy was... so beautiful... Brown eyes and... dark hair."

I reached the tracks, still dazed with everything that I had recollected. I got down the car and moved towards the garage mechanically, to see if he was still there. My breathing was ragged as if I had run a thousand marathon.

There he was sitting on the floor, rotating a few components. When he saw me reach him, his face broke into a smile, but as he noticed my facial expression, he looked confused.

"At last, I found you Robert Hastings."

---

A/N: How early had you guys found this out? What did you think of Robert's past? Did I leave enough clues for you to follow?