Chapter 31

I finally did make it onto the playing field for football practice about halfway through it, and Coach was none too happy about that. He looked a little more worried than mad though, probably since I'd missed my morning workout with him as well. I think he thought I wasn't feeling well, but of course it wasn't that. He cared about me though, so he didn't do a whole lot of yelling or anything and when I told him I was gonna be going on a little trip and miss three days the next week, he took it okay. Sorta.

"Three days?" Coach stared at me. "You gotta be kiddin' me, Russet! It ain't preseason no more. It ain't practice no more. We're playin' for keeps now, boy!"

"Yes sir," I nodded, feeling a little guilty.

"This got anything to do with my assistant being gone those exact same three days?" he stared at me and all I could do was shrug. "Yeah, yeah I got my special player and Coach Haven's got hers." He actually chuckled a little, "Or maybe you got yours, eh boy?"

I didn't know what to say to that, but Coach wasn't looking for an answer anyway. If nothing else, Coach knew how to respect a person's privacy. Coach Haven wasn't around, but I didn't expect she would be. She'd had her fun with Little Steve in the locker room and probably figured I could baby-sit myself while she went off someplace with my brother. At least that's what I'd have done if I was her.

"Uh, well..."

"Don't answer that, boy," Coach cut me off. "You just be ready to play come game day or there's gonna be hell to pay. Understand me?" He was being loud for the rest of the boys, I knew, and that was okay. He dropped his voice to a whisper, "I'm gonna have a piece of that ass in the mornin', boy. Don't you be late."

"Yes sir," I whispered back, nodding my helmet.

"Go on, get yer butt out there and show me somethin'!" Coach slapped my ass and sent me onto the field.

I spent most of the next hour running with the ball as our offense practiced against our defense. I hadn't really been in the mood for football, to tell the truth, but once I started practicing it started feeling good. I liked running, bouncing off guys and faking them out. It got me hot and sweaty and breathless, sorta like sex, except better in some ways. The only bad part was that I had to see Brian all the time, since he was the quarterback.

He asked me a whole bunch of times when I was gonna come over to his house again, and when we were gonna go see a movie or something. But I pretty much ignored him, which was a lot easier than it had been the day before since Coach just wanted to see me with the ball. Brian couldn't punish me by passing or anything.

"Hey, what's up with you anyway?" Brian grabbed my elbow as we were walking off the field after practice was done.

"Nothin'," I shrugged him off. "I just don't wanna come over to your house no more."

"What?" Brian sounded like he didn't believe me. "Why?"

"I'll talk to you later, okay?" I wasn't feeling like dealing with Brian right then, but it didn't seem like he was gonna just drop it either. That was another thing I didn't like about him all that much ... He just didn't know when to shut-up.

"What's wrong with right now?" Brian was still trying to slow me down, tugging at my jersey.

"Leave her alone, dude," Lance bumped his way between us, kinda shoving Brian out of the way. "You okay?" he looked at me.

"Screw you," Brian frowned. "This is between me and her."

"No, she's between us," Matt us said cause he was there too, on the other side of me so I really was between them. I laughed and walked with my two best friends, leaving Brian behind us and probably frowning unhappily, but I didn't bother to look and see.

"Yeah," I smiled at Lance. "I'm okay now."

Matt and Lance were waiting for me after I got a quick shower and changed. They were standing outside the locker room and probably figuring I'd be riding home with them. They were being kind of protective of me, now that we were all made up and everything, and that was pretty nice. I'd missed having my friends close by.

"What was Coach yellin' about anyway?" Matt asked me as we walked down the hall towards the field exit.

"He wasn't yelling," I laughed.

"Sounded like he was," Lance said. "But it's hard to tell sometimes."

"Nah, he was just givin' me a hard time cause I'm gonna be gone next week," and then I had to explain that that I was going to Oregon with Steve and Miss Haven. "Cause they're getting' married," I grinned, knowing that would probably freak them out a little.

"What?" We were just about outside and Matt stopped, staring at me, "Steve and ... Nurse Heaven? They're getting married?"

"He don't know about us does he?" Lance asked and then dropped his voice to a whisper. "What we did the other day?"

"I don't know," I shrugged. "Maybe."

"Oh shit," Matt looked a little unhappy, so did Lance, mostly because Steve was pretty big and they were just 14 years old.

They'd also been half of a gang-bang we'd pulled on her just a few days before, Lance, Matt and John all losing their virginity inside Lisa's hot pussy. But that was before Steve had even met the woman, so he couldn't really be mad, I didn't think, but why take the chance?

I laughed at them and pushed open the doors, "Don't worry; Miss Haven didn't know it was you guys anyway."

"You sure, dude? Cause like ... We fucked your brother's wife!" Lance was forgetting to whisper and I reached up and slapped the back of his neck. "Ow!"

"Shut-up!" Matt frowned, like he was any better at holding secrets than Lance was. But this was one they knew they had to keep.

"You guys just don't say anything to anybody and it'll be cool," I told them, just like I had about a zillion times already.

"Steve finds out and he's gonna kill us," Matt was saying, shaking his head, and I didn't know if he was right or not, but I didn't want to find out either.

Everybody parked their bikes by the bleachers, which was close to the parking lot and right where Little Steve's dad was probably gonna pick us up anyway. I'd sorta expected Steve to be outside the locker room waiting for me when I'd come out, but he wasn't. Probably he wouldn't want to go near that place again though, just in case Nurse Haven happened to see him. I think she really had scared him a little more than he'd needed, although he'd liked it too.

"Come on faggot, suck my dick..." I heard Brian's voice before I saw him, and some other boys' too, giggling at something. "Its right here, you know you want it!"

Matt, Lance and I all sort of looked at each other, cause that wasn't the sort of thing we usually heard around school, even after football practice when guys were all wound up and liked to say stupid stuff anyway. This was different and as we walked around the bleachers we could see three boys standing around someone else.

It was Brian and two of his football buddies, Tommy Wirtengale and Shaun Fitzgerald. I'd known Tommy and Shaun my whole life mostly, and I didn't like either one of them a whole lot. Tommy was stupid in a cruel way and Shaun would do anything if it meant he could hang out with anyone he thought was cool. He'd decided Brian was cool, I guess, and that made him stupid too, in my opinion. And a bully since he was hanging out with Brian and Tommy now.

"Just give it a kiss, queer boy!" Tommy was saying. He was tall and skinny, with a big nose and an even bigger Adam's apple that bobbed up and down when he talked. I thought it made him look like a pelican sorta. He had short brown hair and brown eyes, and wasn't really ugly or handsome, just annoying.

"He's gonna cry!" Shaun was laughing. He was all Irish all over, like you couldn't guess from his name, right? Red hair and freckles and light skinned so that he always got sunburned every summer and his face was still peeling a little even then, halfway into autumn. He was big too, not as tall as Brian, but real stocky and he was the center on the football team.

"What's goin' on?" Matt asked, not really friendly at all.

"Nothin', just some fag wants to suck some dick," Tommy grinned at us, but that was because he was too dumb to realize we weren't laughing.

"We're just havin' some fun," Brian glanced at us, mostly at me, and he scowled cause he knew I was gonna be a little pissed.

"Leave me alone!" and that was Little Steve's voice and as big Shaun moved a little we got a clear view of him sorta kneeling on the grass in the middle of those three much bigger boys, looking red faced and mad and even a little beat up, but I don't think anyone had hit him or anything. He just had that vulnerable look with his jacket half off and his shirt pulled out of his pants, and his hair all mussed up.

"Get away from him!" I was instantly pissed, like way more than just a little. Matt and Lance weren't too happy either, since Little Steve had been hanging out with us, at least during lunch, and he'd sorta made friends with my friends. Enough so he was gonna go to the sleepover on Friday night at John's house.

We weren't very far away, but I about sprinted the dozen feet or so I needed to and since Shaun was the closest one to us, he was the one I kicked in the balls. But I'd have kicked any one of them, or all of them if I could have, even Brian whom I really detested right then cause I could see he really did have his dick out.

"Ugh!" Shaun grabbed at his nuts and then sort of dropped to the ground slowly, to his knees first and then his side, sorta curling up with his hands between his thighs and making choked coughing sounds. It was one of those things you just had to watch, whether you wanted to or not, and I don't think any of the boys wanted to. I mean, it was even hurting me, cause I was a boy anyway even though I didn't have any balls, and I felt a little queasy in my stomach after I'd realized what I'd done. But I didn't feel bad about it either. Shaun deserved it, in fact they all did, and I hoped they'd want to fight cause I was seriously gonna fight dirty.

I'd learned fighting from my brothers mostly, but my Daddy always gave the best advice. He said a fair fight was any fight you won, and how you got there didn't really matter. So the point being, when you know you're gonna fight make sure you get the first shot in, and make sure it's a good one too. If it's good enough you might not have to fight at all, and that made things a whole lot easier on everybody. Shaun wasn't gonna be fighting, that was for certain. I'd kicked him about as hard as I'd ever kicked anything in my life, and that was pretty hard.

"We're just foolin' around..." Tommy was staring at Shaun, like we all were, and backing away. He was gonna run since he was basically a coward anyway.

"Jealous?" Brian looked up at me, still holding his cock and shaking it a little. "You want some of this too?"

Brian wasn't gonna run though, but his nose was still sorta big from when I'd punched him before, so he probably didn't wanna fight. One good punch in the face would be really bad for him. But he wasn't the kind of guy to back down either, at least not with his tail between his legs. He'd wanna get some licks in, even if it was just talk, cause his ego was too big for his brain.

"Shut-up, Brian," I said, feeling so much like a boy right then I thought I had a boner. There was something exciting about getting in a fight. I don't know what or why, but there was and it was more than just adrenaline. It was sexual too. I kinda liked fighting.

"Or what?" he laughed at me. "You're gonna give me another blow job?"

I took a step closer cause that was about all the talking I wanted to do. My heart was pounding and my hands were clenched into tight little fists. I was gonna pound him into next week, I was thinking, and I didn't care what happened after that. I didn't care if Coach got pissed at me or if the principal suspended me, or even if my dad took me to the woodshed. I just wanted to kick Brian's ass.

"I'm okay," Steve was getting up, kinda brushing himself off. "They didn't hurt me or nothing."

"We should kick his ass," Matt was saying and Lance was agreeing, the three of us staring at Brian as he put his dick away. It was gonna happen too. Matt and Lance hated Brian and right then I did too. Any second somebody was gonna throw a punch, I could feel it, and I was just gonna wait and take the first clear shot I had at Brian's head. That was my whole plan, just wait until he was busy with Matt or Lance and then hit him in the head as hard and as many times as I could. It seemed like a good plan to me.

"Hey, Steve? Ann?" Even the best laid plans can get spoiled though and Little Steve's dad had pulled into the parking lot unnoticed by us until we heard him calling out. Then I noticed the sweet growl of that Cuda and I relaxed, just a little, cause it was like there was some rule that said we couldn't fight with an adult around.

"Yeah, Dad!" Steve was grabbing my sleeve. "Forget about it, it's cool. He didn't hurt me, come on..."

"You're so fucked up, Brian," I told him, sort of loudly, but I didn't care if Steve's dad heard us or not. He probably couldn't anyway. "I can't believe I ever liked you."

"Yeah yeah, run away with your fag boyfriend, bitch," Brian said, staring after me, and that was a mistake. Probably two or three mistakes all combined into one big one, cause right then Matt broke the rules and nailed Brian right above his left eye, knocking the bigger boy down flat on his ass. He never even saw it coming.

I never really did get a chance to explain to Matt and Lance why I was getting into the car with Steve and his dad, but that was okay. I'd see them soon enough. It was cool seeing Brian laid out for the second time in a week and Little Steve grinned over his shoulder at Matt as we walked over to his dad, who was wondering what the heck was going on.

"What the hell was that all about?" he asked Little Steve even before Mr. Sawyer was saying hello to me.

"Oh, just some jerk," Steve shrugged. "You know."

Steve's dad didn't look too sure if he knew or not, but he dropped it and smiled at me. "Hi Ann, ready to take a spin?"

He was a nice looking guy, vaguely feminine, I thought, the same way his son was, but it wasn't unmanly or anything. Just sort of ... Pretty, I guess. He had angular features and a straight nose with high cheekbones. Maybe he had some Native American in him or something. It was an interesting face and I liked it. I liked his eyes, which were brown, but soft like caramel.

Mr. Sawyer was giving me a serious look too, like he had the other night, and I could feel myself blushing a little. Inside I was still hot and excited from that little fight with Brian and his friends. I just smiled and nodded and figured that whatever he was thinking it would be okay. I mean, at least Little Steve was there and once we got to their house then everything would be cool. But the way he was looking at me, mmmm ... I knew what he was thinking and as hot as I was right then, I sorta liked it.

I was thinking about Little Steve at first though, wondering if he was really okay. I thought maybe it was my fault that Brian and those other guys had ganged up on him. The boy was hanging out with me at school, so that sorta made him a suspect anyway since I'd spent my whole life telling people I was a boy. That wouldn't really mean much to Brian though, since he'd liked me just fine himself. But maybe Brian was a little pissed because I was hanging out with Steve, who was just a 7th grader instead of with him. Brian didn't like any of my friends and Steve probably looked like easy pickings. Or maybe Steve was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, cause a bully like Brian and his idiot friends probably didn't need much of a reason to pick on somebody anyway.

It confused me and I tried to push it out of my head. All that worrying wasn't gonna do me any good, or Stevie for that matter, and he seemed to be okay. Probably he'd taken a lot of crap at his old school about going out with that Monica girl. At least that's what he'd seemed to suggest when we'd talked before. So he was probably tougher than he looked and maybe it was good that we couldn't really talk about it. It might have embarrassed him a little, since Brian had pulled his dick out and maybe even wanted to really make Steve suck on it. But I didn't think Brian was gonna let any guy touch his dick, so probably he'd just done it to put a good scare into Little Steve.

Anyway, thinking about it, even for a minute or two, was enough to keep the fires burnin' inside me. I hoped Matt had knocked the guy out and if Brian even looked at Steve funny again, I was gonna finish what he'd started. I mighta been surprised at how quick love can turn to hate, but I wasn't even trying to remember how I used to feel. I felt like I had a real enemy now and bad as it sounds, that felt kinda sweet.

That Cuda was sweet too. Really sweet and I was sitting in the passenger seat while Steve was sitting in the back. Steve's dad was really showing off too and he seemed like an okay driver. Not as good as Mark maybe, who was a serious driver, really quick and smooth, but Mr. Sawyer did okay. He got rubber out of all four gears and as he raced through them it was non-stop acceleration. I felt like someone was punching me in the chest, shoving me back hard into the firm leather seat. It was awesome and another good rush to add to everything else I was feeling inside. Cars are the coolest things in the world and that one sounded like it wanted to fuck me hard!

"I got that turbocharger fixed, just like you said it was. Bad seal," Mr. Sawyer was saying once he'd figured he'd shown off enough. We were just cruising now, on our way to his house.

"Yeah, I could tell," I giggled a little and shrugged. "Not too much else can go bad on a charger anyway. You ever get it clocked? Quarter mile or anything?"

"Nope," Mr. Sawyer glanced at me. "I'd like to though, probably break fifteen, you think?"

I nodded, "Bust 14 easy with a good driver."

Anything under 14 seconds was pretty quick for a stock production car. I figured my brother could probably get it under 13 and a quarter. The quickest muscle car ever to come off a production line, barely, was the '66 Cobra when it did a quarter mile in 12.20 seconds, but Jesus was driving that day. Sherry's Challenger had clocked 10.98 officially but that car was about as stock as the space shuttle, so it didn't count. Busting eleven flat was crazy fast though and it had made most of the muscle rags. The fastest street cars were super-quick though, clocking in the seven's, if you can imagine such a thing, but that's all they were built for and it took a lot of prep for a record run. Like I said before, that Challenger was pretty notorious because it really was an everyday ride and it was funny that it belonged to a high school girl who had no idea what it was really worth.

"Hey, what're you trying to say?" Mr. Sawyer grinned at me and put his right hand on my thigh, squeezing me playfully.

"Me?" I laughed and looked down at his hand, but I didn't say anything about it. "Nothin' ... You're a good driver, right?"

"Who's the best driver in your family?" Mr. Sawyer kept rubbing my leg, just a little. "Your dad?"

"My dad?" I giggled at that. "Nah, he's just fair. He wasn't ever much for racing, just building. My brother Mark's serious though, he'll run his girlfriend's Challenger against anything he can find for slips."

"His girlfriend's car?" Mr. Sawyer gave me a look in the dim light. The sun had gone down a half hour before. Girlfriends weren't generally noted for having hot cars.

"Yeah, '71 Challenger," I nodded seriously, looking back at him. "Clocked just under eleven down at Hastings." I'd helped build Sherry's Challenger, just a little, and we were all pretty proud of it. "You should come down there sometime."

Hastings was a little town whose only claim to fame was having a real drag strip. They had races almost year round, pro's on weekends, and amateurs a couple days every week. Gambling was illegal, but there's an old saying that what happens in the pits stays in the pits, and generally if you were going down you'd better bring a lot of cash, or the registration, because the real drivers didn't run for free.

"Jesus ... Under 11 seconds?" Mr. Sawyer probably wouldn't have believed a lot of people, but he knew I wasn't lying. "A Challenger? With a 440 or the 318 6-pac in it?"

"Nah. It ain't stock," I laughed. "If a cop ever took a serious look under the hood it would probably get impounded. Mark put a full blown 386 in it."

"A what?" he narrowed his eyes. "Never heard of a 386, where'd that come from?"

"The secret place," I grinned at him. "You'd have to ask Mark, but he probably won't tell you."

"You're teasin' me," he grinned and then looked a little doubtful about that. "Right?"

"Nope." I looked at the man seriously and then I laughed. "Well ... Just a little bit. You never heard of Prima Donna?"

"Prima Donna..." Mr. Sawyer looked at me then. "That's the Challenger you're talking about?"

"Yeah," I giggled and he looked back to the road. "Which one did you think I meant?"

"Shit," he grinned. "I thought that car was in ... I dunno, someplace else."

"Nah," I was feeling pretty silly for some reason. "Mark's girlfriend drives it to school everyday."

"You're shittin' me!"

"No, I swear!" I laughed.

"I'd like to see it sometime," Mr. Sawyer was smiling and sliding his hand inside my thigh, just a little. "So Mark's the driver, huh?"

"Steve too, but Mark's more serious about it." I licked my lips, wondering if I shouldn't try and do something about Steve's dad and his busy hand, but it wasn't bothering me that much. "He took an Enzo once," I giggled. "Some billionaire Microsoft guy from Seattle who couldn't drive. Daddy made Mark give it back though."

"I thought that was just a story," Mr. Sawyer laughed.

"You heard about that?" I laughed too, but I shouldn't have been surprised. Cool stories always made their way around the hotrod circuit.

"Yeah, but I always figured it was bullshit," He nodded. "Uh, pardon my French."

"That's okay, we speak a lot of French at the garage," I was smiling a lot and it was fun talking to the man about cars. He wasn't really sharp maybe, but he was an enthusiast and I always liked those people. I met a lot of guys like Mr. Sawyer at car shows and stuff and it was refreshing.

But I was starting to wonder a little too. Little Steve was just sitting in the backseat, not saying anything at all really, not even leaning forward between to seats to listen like I probably would have expected. It was almost like he wasn't even there, so I kept glancing back at him every now and then, and he'd see me and smile, but that was it. I hoped it wasn't cause of Brian, and I really thought it was probably just cause he didn't care anything about cars, which I found hard to understand, but I guessed it was possible.

"So, your dad was saying you guys have a big build coming up," Mr. Sawyer didn't seem to remember Little Steve was there at all. "Something for the HRA down in California?"

"Do we?" I shrugged. "I always find out at the last minute. Daddy and Scott pretty much run the business, the rest of us just do what we're told."

"Huh," the man's hand was really working inside my thigh and in truth I didn't mind it so much. "That's gotta be a lot of fun though, building cars like that."

"I like it," I agreed, looking down at his hand and then into his face for just a second.

"Do you?" he asked a little softer and I shivered because I knew he was talking about something else.

"Sometimes," I licked my lips. "Sometimes it's kinda ... Confusing though."

"Yeah," Mr. Sawyer cleared his throat and maybe he thought I was telling him to stop or something. He pulled his hand away slowly, reluctantly too, and I sorta missed it. But not for long, when we got to the Sawyers' house it was more of the same, kinda.

"Steve, go in the house and see how dinner's coming," Mr. Sawyer told his son. "I'm gonna show Ann around the garage a little," he smiled at me and all I could really do was smile back.

The house was nice enough, sort of that typical up and down boxy of house that people built a lot of back in the 1970's. No real character to it, except it worked for living in. I'm not much of one for architecture though. A house was a house and like everyone else in my family, I was of the opinion that it was a person's garage that told you the most about him.

Mr. Sawyer had a big garage, big enough for three cars anyway, with three big doors. Other than that it was a boring rectangle, painted sort of pastel green, near as I could tell by the outside lights that were on.

"Here we go..." Mr. Sawyer had led me around to the side where the side door was and he opened it with a key. "Old habit," he explained. "I spent too much time in big cities."

"Oh, okay," I agreed, but didn't think I knew anybody who locked anything up, really. But we did lock our garages too, just because we usually had somebody else's car parked inside. One or two of them sometimes and they were really expensive cars. Otherwise, if it was just our stuff, we didn't think too much about it.

The man let me walk in first, putting his hand on my shoulder and guiding me a little in the pitch blackness. It was strange and I hoped I wouldn't bang my shin on anything, cause that always seemed to hurt a lot. I heard the door close before Mr. Sawyer turned on the light, and that seemed weird too. For a second there I was wondering if he wasn't gonna turn on the light and 30 people would jump up yelling surprise. But it wasn't my birthday or anything, so that didn't seem too likely.

"Uh, Mr. Sawyer? I said, just standing there and he wasn't even touching my shoulder anymore. It felt sorta lonely.

"Hold on Ann. I just wanna surprise you..." The lights suddenly flickered on, or just one light I guess, off to my right near what would be the back wall of the garage. I blinked and looked at Mr. Sawyer who was standing there, next to a large work bench built flush against the wall. He was only about ten feet away and smiling like he was expecting me to say something, and then I saw something really weird.

On the wall behind him there were pictures of ... Me! Like every picture in every magazine I'd ever been in. Even the old Street Rodder mag that had me when I was like five years old, holding my Daddy's hand while he was pointing at something for an interview he'd done. But mostly there was me when I was older, like 11 and 12 and 13 mostly, when I'd been in a lot of magazines. There was me with the 'Vette, Prodigy, and Mr. Sawyer must have bought two copies, cause he had pictures cut out of both sides of some of the pages, front and back.

There were pictures of me from Street Muscle, wearing my t-shirt that said "Too Tight" and holding the Best of Show award we'd gotten for a '38 Hudson. Me again, all of ten years old and holding a welding torch and smiling with sunglasses on for Low Rider magazine. Me and Steve and an old Caddy we'd pimped out. There were even the pictures that Japanese guy had taken for Hachiban magazine in Japan! Hachiban means 'Number 8' and what that had to do with cars, I had no idea, but he'd been nice and had taken a lot of pictures of me when I was just 12 years old. I was posing with an old Datsun that hadn't looked anything like a Datsun when we were through with it.

It was like a shrine, or something, easily 60 or 70 pictures of me. Just me, cut out from magazines, and I didn't know what to think about that at all. I hadn't realized there were that many pictures of me and for certain I didn't have that many in my own scrap book, and maybe I wasn't really good at keeping it either. But still ... This guy was a stranger!

"I've been watching you for a long time, Ann," Mr. Sawyer was saying. "Ever since you were little." He held out his hand, wiggling his fingers and inviting me closer, but I wasn't really sure I wanted to get closer. It was sort of spooky. "I, uh ... I like this one the best..." He turned around a little and pointed at a picture of me that was sorta recent, taken during the Seattle Car Show about 4 months before and used in the special issue of Seattle Car Enthusiast magazine.

I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, sitting on the hood of a Shelby GT that belonged to a friend of my dad's. One of those candid sort of photo's that journalists take at car shows as they walk around. I'd never even seen it before and it took me a minute before I figured out where and when that was. I wondered if the reason Steve's dad liked it so much was cause it was so recent, or because my 14 year old nipples were plain as day through my tight white muscle-t shirt. It made me blush a little when I realized about ten thousand people had seen that picture. Not to mention the other ten thousand who'd been walking around the convention center that day.

"You're so beautiful, Ann..." Mr. Sawyer was licking his lips and his breathing seemed a little ragged.

That probably would have been a good time to make my excuses, don't you think? Maybe said goodbye, or at least gone into the house and had a little chat about the weather with Steve's mom or something. Being alone in the garage, which was still pretty dim except for that bright glowing area just around us ... Being alone in there with Mr. Sawyer and his strange fascination with me just didn't make a whole lot of sense.