One For The Road

Bonus: Team

"I'm sure I don't have to tell you both why you're here," Andre Moretti, the owner of my fourteen car, said to Tyler and me from the other side of his desk.

I scooted my chair away from Tyler. Gross.

"Look, it was an accident. We were both going for the win, and the next thing I know, we're both in the wall," Tyler said.

I rolled my eyes. "That's real easy for you to say when you were the guy in second and have more than one win on the season."

And it certainly wasn't like he had a history of wrecking me when I was in first and he was in second. That hadn't happened before ever.

"If she didn't have a win yet, I would be much more upset about this. You can't wreck your teammate, Bailey. A first and second finish is a great day for Team Moretti, and I didn't get that because you're too impatient. You had three laps to go. It's just stupid," Moretti said.

I nodded. "So stupid."

"And don't start running your mouth, Moore."

I shut up. At least on Team Moretti, I had someone willing to treat his drivers equally.

The most recent trophy in my collection was from Pocono (which was one of the fastest tracks that didn't treat me like shit), and as great as it was to outdo my performance at the All-Star Race and snag the title of the first woman to win a Cup Series race, it wasn't enough. I had my eyes on many more trophies in the future, and not all of them were shiny.

"What do you want from me? It was my fault. I promise I won't do it again," Tyler said.

That wasn't true most likely, but I was willing to accept his shit apology. I had better places to be than Moretti's office.

Moretti shook his head. "You promised that you wouldn't do it ever. I only have space for one complete moron on my team, not two."

"As long as I'm the moron that stays, I don't care. Can we wrap this up? I have a different meeting I need to be in," I said.

"Is this for MGR?"

I nodded. "And it's super important. We're so close to signing Samantha Townsend, and I wanted to meet her before we inked her to anything."

And that little angel was the latest trophy needed to add to my collection.

"I thought your only responsibility was putting your name on the team," Tyler said.

"I mean, yeah, we have managers and investors and crews doing most of the work, but I'd like to get to know the driver that's gonna be on Moore-Gallagher Racing. I'm sure if Moretti really got to know you, he never would've signed your dumb ass." I looked over to Moretti.

He neither confirmed nor denied it. "I guess you can go. This meeting was more about Bailey's behavior on Saturday night than yours."

I smiled. "Thank you."

With a win at NASCAR's highest level and championships from everywhere else, I wasn't exactly a stranger to forging my own path wherever I went. Hell, I even spent time driving robots and IndyCar. But one place I hadn't yet been was owning a team, even if it was with Griffin. Someone had to be the Gallagher in Moore-Gallagher Racing.

When I was eighteen years old without a clue of how I was supposed to go on after the deaths of my parents, the Automobile Racing Club of America, conveniently abbreviated to ARCA was the series of stock car racing that kept me distracted and on a path forward. And I wasn't the only person whose career was born there. Griffin took the same path, as did Tyler Bailey.