And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

Thankfully, the stinging sensation in Nick’s mouth faded after a couple minutes. He wasn’t sure if that was an effect of Dream Alley or not, but he was grateful nonetheless.

“I’m sorry about that little punishment game,” Kim apologized. She was still smiling even while being contrite, and Nick didn’t hold the incident against her. After all, she was just trying to have a good time and play around a little.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said, waving aside her concerns. “The picnic was a blast!”

They finished packing up, and he was curious what the next step would be. Nick had only had a couple of experiences of full-day dates in Dream Alley. There was the one he’d gone on with Dawn, and the one he’d gone on with Rose. Dawn’s date had been quite creative, with her jumping to various points in their history together, rewriting things so that it was as if they’d always been dating. Comparatively, Rose’s date had been much more down-to-earth, with no jumps in time, giving him a full experience of what a day in Paris would be like.

He wondered if Kim’s idea for a date would be more like one or the other, or if she would do something new entirely.

Kim must have picked up on the fact that Nick was staring at her, because she started playing with the fringes of her hair a bit, blushing sheepishly and giving him furtive smiles.

“Don’t look at me like that!” She said shyly. “I’m getting embarrassed!” She crossed her arms over her chest.

Even with her protests, though, her rosy face was reflecting a lot of happiness. It was clear that she did like the attention he was giving her, at least a little bit.

Nick was stuck. Did he oblige her request, or keep looking at her anyway, knowing that she liked it? Things like this were always tricky to work out.

He decided to go with the safer option.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “You’re just so cute when you’re dressed up casually, I couldn’t help myself, that’s all.”

…Of course, the safer option still came with its fair share of risk.

Kim’s face lit up like a Christmas Tree, and her eyes widened. A crooked smile, certainly not one of her practiced grins, crept its way up her lips, confirming handily that in spite of her embarrassment, she was quite pleased with his compliment.

“Today… today is supposed to be about relaxing,” she said hotly, shaking her head. “Come on, let’s go! We’ve got a tight schedule ahead of us!”

Just as Nick was taking a moment to contemplate the irony of having a “tight schedule” for their day of “relaxation” he felt the world start to shift around him.

Ah, Option A, then. This should be interesting.

Whatever Kim had planned for their date together, it looked like it would be the kind of date where they jumped around doing whatever she set her mind to. Which could be fun in its own way.

This is her day off, after all. I wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted to do all sorts of things that she never had the chance to try.

When they reappeared together standing in a vacated race track, his suspicions were confirmed.

“Whoa, where’s this place?” Nick asked, looking around.

“Daytona International Speedway,” Kim informed him, strutting forward with a proud look on her face and her hands on her hips. She was dressed in new clothes now, a thick racing outfit that padded her body. It still did a nice job of highlighting her figure though, and Nick found himself quite impressed by it.

“Is this where we talk about your part-time job working as a NASCAR driver again?” Nick asked, smiling.

“No, of course not, I was a member of the pit crew team,” she said with a laugh. Then she gasped. “…Come on! That was a joke! I wasn’t serious! Even when I’m joking!?”

“Huh? Kim, what’s up?” Nick asked. He’d been concerned for a while about her random outbursts and sudden flustered looks that had peppered this morning, but he hadn’t said anything about it because she seemed like she wanted to keep it private.

But whatever was going on, it only appeared to being getting worse.

“It’s… my punishment transformation,” Kim finally informed him. “…Don’t ask me about it, though! I’m handling it by myself. I don’t want you to get worried, it might end up spoiling our date together, okay, Nick?”

Nick saw the look of determination in her eyes. He didn’t know what else he could really say, given the fact that Kim wasn’t one who backed down easily. One of her cutest traits was her stubbornness, especially when she set her mind to something.

“Are you sure it’s okay?” He asked seriously.

She nodded. “I’m not in any danger,” she promised him. “And it’s not that intrusive. It just gets a little annoying sometimes. But you don’t need to worry about it.”

Nick was still going to be concerned. But if Kim said she could handle it, he saw no reason to doubt her. She was an adult who could handle her own decisions.

“Alright then,” he nodded. “If you say so.”

Kim brightened, her body relaxing as though Nick had just lifted a great burden off of her shoulders with that. Smiling gratefully at him, she nodded, and then stretched her arms over her head.

“Now, back to what you were saying before, no, my family may have been poor, but we weren’t NASCAR poor,” she assured him. “I’m yellow trash, not white trash.”

Nick’s jaw dropped.

Kim winced. “Yeah… that felt wrong even when I was saying it. No but seriously. I think I told you guys, right? I was a flag girl a few times. But not a driver myself. So let’s get back to it! Sorry for the bad joke, eh?”

As bad as her jokes could be, though, neither one of them were gonna let a few off-color remarks spoil a date that had been going pretty well so far.

“The reason I wanted to bring you here, was because I thought it would be a good way to cut back and just go a little wild,” Kim explained. “You’ve been having a pretty rough couple of days, huh? First with Ella, then Sylvia? And after that beach party…”

Nick didn’t want to talk about the last few days. He would much prefer just spending one on one time with Kim, enjoying their day together. So the most he could give her was a nod.

“We both need a day to relax,” Kim said. “And you know what I’ve always wanted to do?”

She gestured to the speedway beside them. The whole track was empty, like a ghost town. And yet, there were two cars lined up beside one another on the starting line, as if a race was about to begin for a crowd of none.

Nick had to do a double-take when he saw what the cars were, because they weren’t your average Formula 1 racing cars.

“Are… are those…”

“The red one’s a Ferrari,” Kim said, skipping over to the shiny red sports car. “And the one in black is a Lamborghini.”

Two fancy cars that Nick never would have been able to afford in a million years, no matter how many books he wrote. Let alone Kim.

“I’ve always wanted to drive one, just once,” Kim admitted. She blushed, feeling like a kid saying she always wanted to meet Santa. “But even if I somehow had the opportunity to drive one in real life, I have no idea if I’d actually have the guts to do it, you know?”

Nick nodded. He totally understood where she was coming from. “Yeah, I get that,” he agreed. “It’s such an expensive car, I’d be totally freaking out the whole time. Like, what if I bumped it against something and it got a scratch!? How much money would I have just lost?! Let alone a car wreck!”

Wait, hadn’t they come here to relax? He was feeling more stressed out with every second he was looking at these fancy cars.

Kim had a mischievous glimmer in her eyes.

“But that’s just it!” She chirped. “We’re in Dream Alley, so we can do whatever we want, right?” And with a wave of a hand, a shiny baseball bat popped into her grasp.

Nick had about two seconds to process what was going on before she swung like a champion-league batter and smashed the windshield of the Lamborghini to smithereens.

“WOOOO!” Kim howled, taking the bat to the Ferrari next. “Come on, Nick! Grab a bat! This is so freaking awesome!”

Nick glanced to his side, and saw a rack of baseball bats like in a dugout awkwardly standing right next to him on the side of the track.

He turned back to Kim, who was going wild on the two cars, her cheek flushed and a smile brighter than any he’d ever seen on her face.

It stirred something up in him, and a part of him couldn’t resist. If she was really having that much fun, maybe he should get in on this, too! So he picked up a bat and walked over to the other car, and started hitting it with everything he had.

The moment wood connected with metal in a sizzling crunch, Nick felt a surge of electricity shoot up through his body. He… he’d actually done it. He’d smashed a massive dent in a car worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. A car he’d never be able to afford, and he’d just seriously damaged it.

And… so what?

It was a dream, after all. These cars weren’t real. He wouldn’t have to pay restitution to anyone. He could do whatever the hell he wanted with the damn thing!

“Come on, Nick! Is that all you got?”

Nick looked up to see Kim staring at him excitedly. She was standing next to a mangled pile of scrap metal, totaled beyond repair. Her eyes were electric, urging him on, telling him to go even further with it.

“Whatever the hell you want, right?” She reminded him.

He smiled, hearing his own words thrown back in his face. Then he turned back to the car, and struck it again.

Every hit made him feel lighter than air. It was like all the issues and problems he’d been dealing with for the last few days evaporated in a puff of smoke. He didn’t have to think about Sylvia trying to seduce him, or Ella’s issues, or the possibility that Gina might be pregnant. All those concerns were for when he came back to the island.

Right now, he was in a fantasy, and he could do whatever he wanted.

So he let loose with everything he had.

Nick and Kim collapsed on the smoldering asphalt, staring up at the sky. Their bats rolled away, forgotten, as they caught their breath. They’d worked out all their aggression and energy on those testaments to opulence, and burned off the calories from that picnic.

“It’s been a while since I’ve had that much fun!” Kim chortled with glee. “That was better than I ever could have imagined!”

She hopped to her feet, and stretched. “But we’re not done yet!”

“Oh? Want to go burn down some mansion next?” Nick was only half-joking. While he wasn’t sure if he should be endorsing further property damage or if doing so would send the two of them down a risky path, he could empathize with Kim’s urge to destroy.

That had been a better emotional release than he ever could have imagined.

But Kim was done with mindless acts of destruction.

“Actually, I wanted to do something else, while we’re here,” she said, snapping her fingers. And just like that, the two mangled piles of scrap metal were cars once again.

“Oh?” Nick picked himself up off the ground and looked curiously over at her. “…Wait, you weren’t seriously thinking about…”

“You’ve got a license, right?” Kim tossed a set of car keys to him as she walked over to the Ferrari. “It’ll be fun! Let’s race!”

“I-I’ve never driven one of these cars before, though!” Nick pointed out. Smashing them had been fun, but only from the outside.

Smashing the car with him inside it was feeling like a very real possibility, and one he wasn’t so keen to experience.

Kim looked at him with a pleading expression.

“Come on, Nick, it’s just a dream,” she said. “You won’t get hurt! And since it’s just a dream, you can just imagine it handles like some other car you’ve driven before, right?”

Nick remembered when he and Rose stole the Mona Lisa. Kim raised a valid point.

“I guess you’re right,” he acknowledged, walking over to the Lamborghini. It looked a lot fancier now that he was about to drive it, compared to when he’d bashed it to smithereens.

Kim laughed. “Well, I hope I’m right, anyway.”

Before Nick could respond to that, she hopped behind the wheel of the Ferrari and zoomed down the track, leaving him in the dust.

Well… Nick couldn’t let that stand, could he?

Nick had always viewed himself as a cautious driver. The kind of guy who stuck hard to the speed limit and followed the rules of the road. Not only was he cautious, but it had been some time since he’d actually driven anywhere. And even back on earth, he didn’t drive very much, given that living the life of a shut-in meant he had few places to go.

So he was pretty hesitant at first when he put his foot on the gas.

That caution lasted for all of ten seconds.

As the fancy sports car picked up speed, Nick found he was going faster than he ever had before. It was just so easy! Knowing it was a dream, and knowing nothing bad could actually happen to him, he could be as reckless as he wanted. He raced across the track, handling the curves like he was playing a game of Mario Kart. After all, what was the worst thing that could happen?

Kim in the Ferrari was a red blur beside him. Since neither one of them had actually driven this fast before (she was a pretty cautious driver herself) they didn’t know if they were actually getting the feeling of what handling cars like these entailed.

But Kim had confidence that Dream Alley would provide an authentic recreation of the sensations, even if she had never experienced it before for herself. That seemed like the kind of thing Dakota would want to do, after all.

…With that being said, Dakota couldn’t actually make them good drivers. And what was happening now was about as crazy as you could get.

When a sharp turn came, Nick’s first instinct was to slow down. But fuck it, why bother? It’s not like he’d actually get hurt.

So he took Kim’s advice, a reflection of his own advice to her, and lived like he had no cares in the world. The rush that shook through his body as he accelerated to top speed caused him to shout in giddy delight, and he felt himself becoming one with the car. Like he was part of the machine, and the machine was part of him. Like HE was the one going faster than the speed of light itself- hyperbole, of course, but worthwhile hyperbole.

He couldn’t stop smiling. And he kept right on smiling, until Kim took a turn ahead of him a little too fast to handle.

Nick watched in horror as her car careened off the road, slamming into the side of the wall at top speed. It smashed into pieces in an instant and immediately burst into flames.

He couldn’t slam on the brakes fast enough. Now normally, at the speed he was going, the Lamborghini would have kept screeching for half the race track before it finally came to a stop. But Dream Alley responded to his wishes, and stopped the car immediately.

In hindsight, that should have been a sign, but he was far too panicked to be thinking clearly after what he just saw.

“KIM!” He shouted, stumbling out of the car, looking at the smoldering wreckage before his eyes in horror.

“Oh dang. Must have been one of those asian woman drivers, huh?” Kim said, suddenly standing next to him. She elbowed him in the side.

“Ah! Hey!” Nick whirled around, relieved to see she was okay. “…Don’t DO that! You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

“Hey, come on, remember? We can do anything we want here, and we won’t get hurt!” She beamed at him. Then she looked contrite. “…But I’m sorry for scaring you. I wasn’t really thinking about it, I just always wanted the experience of driving full **** into a wall in a fancy car, you know? Scratching an itch like that?”

Nick began to wonder if maybe Kim was a little more reckless than he’d thought. Not even Gina would be up for doing something that crazy!

Then again, she only did it because she knew for absolute certainty that it wouldn’t actually get her hurt, he acknowledged. Maybe I’m making a bigger deal about this than I actually need to.

Kim wasn’t going to be totally reckless and crazy. He knew her, and she was actually very responsible and diligent!

But someone like that needed to kick back and unwind every once in a while.

“Well… don’t worry, I’m not upset,” he assured her. She sighed in relief. “I totally get the feeling. Next time, though, a little heads up, would you? I seriously thought… okay, well maybe I should have remembered. But it was the heat of the moment, you know? I didn’t expect you to actually want to, like, experience a car crash.”

“Well, I mean, I didn’t,” Kim clarified. “I teleported myself out of the car before it made contact. That would have been a little too wild, even for me. But you’re right. Next time I do something crazy, I’ll give you a warning! Sound good?”

Nick would prefer no more craziness in general, actually.

“Keep in mind, we’re trying to relax,” he pointed out. “If you stress me out… will I really be relaxing then, Kim?”

She scrunched up her face in consideration. “…You raise a valid point,” she acknowledged, nodding. “Fair enough. In that case, yeah, you’re right. No more craziness. But don’t worry, I’ve got the perfect idea for something nice, easy, and relaxing we can do!”

Normally that would have been great for Nick. But he felt a little guilty for trying to control Kim’s actions during their fun date together, even if it was for his own sake. Thankfully, she seemed happy to do it.

He just hoped everything would go well, and what she had planned next wouldn’t be as crazy as what they’d just gone through.