Perfect Storm

Chapter 27

"You missed a spot." Ryan said to me with a smirk.

I looked at the pink area of the wall of Charlotte Motor Speedway that I had just finished painting with my eyebrows raised in surprise. "Where?"

"Right...here." He swiped his own paintbrush across my nose and laughed. "Now you match your shirt and hat."

"Oh you're so gonna pay for that." I said, grabbing my own paintbrush and holding it inches from his smiling face, ready to go to war.

"Nope." He grabbed my wrist and pried the paintbrush from my fingers. "You don't want to make a mess and ruin all your hard work. Besides, pink is your color, not mine."

"Fine. I'll get you back later when you least expect it." I stuck my tongue out at him causing him to chuckle.

"Can you believe it's almost done? So many people showed up today, and you are the reason." He said, pushing my pink cap up and kissing my forehead.

I looked around me with a satisfied smile, and was truly astonished that the job was almost done. A lot of people had shown up, and a large majority were people from Trackhouse and Penske.

The last couple of weeks had been a complete whirlwind. That day when I had my epiphany, things had happened so fast. I sat down and wrote a very lengthy post on Instagram telling the world my story. The words just flowed out of me. I'm sure it came as a huge surprise to so many, but it answered a lot of questions about why I had disappeared for a year. Only my close friends and Ryan's family knew. I had never even told my boss.

The outpouring of support was overwhelming to say the least. I had thousands of comments telling me how brave I was. Ryan expressed over and over how proud he was of me. Ross called me a warrior. Not long after I made my post, I got a call from Kaitlyn Vincie. She wanted to know if I would be willing to do an interview that would air on Racehub and during the prerace for the Roval. I gladly agreed. Kaitlyn was a friend and one of the reporters I trusted.

Last week, Ryan had lured me to Penske under the pretense of having lunch together. In reality, he had wanted to show me his Roval car before the paint schemes were publicly released. I cried when I saw my name where his name usually sits, on the door rail right over the pink window net. The drivers were honoring cancer heroes, and as he explained to me. I was his cancer hero.

Just when I thought I couldn't get any more emotional, Trackhouse revealed their paint schemes. Ross had my name on his car as well, and Daniel's car bore my mothers name. Ross said he knew Ryan was running my name on his car, but Trackhouse said this was personal to them because I was part of their family.

We planned several activities for the upcoming weeks, beginning at Talladega next week. Amongst them was having a mobile clinic outside of the track offering free mammograms for the entire month of October. The Ryan Blaney Family Foundation got in on it, urging all of their followers to join the cause. Fans began pledging so much money for every lap Ryan led in the race. Roger Penske said that however much was raised, he would match it. Not to be outdone, Trackhouse owners Justin Marks and Pitbull made the same pledge for Ross and Daniel, challenging their fans and followers, only they said they would each double it. I laughed over their one upmanship, because these guys will compete over anything, and this time, it would all be going towards a good cause. All of this convinced several other teams to make the same challenge. This was blowing up in the best possible way.

The NASCAR community is truly the best. Once you become one of them, you are forever a member of their family. We somehow got Ford and Chevy involved as well. Ford was donating a pink Mustang and Chevy a pink Camaro for raffle, with all of the proceeds benefiting breast cancer research.