Ishould know.
I don’t know what to say to him, but it doesn’t matter anyway, because his breathing levels out and soft snores fill the back of the taxi as we slip through the Miami streets. It’s 5am, but there’s a surprising amount of traffic.
It’s forty minutes back to the hotel and he sleeps through almost every second of it. While I’m grateful for the silence, inside I am absolutely fuming.
It makes total sense now, the way he idolises Tyler Heath. My dad. The great Tyler Heath. Oh yes, he was truly great.
A great drunk.
A fantastic cheat.
And even better liar.
He used to hit the motor racing party circuit harder even than he hit the track. Until it all caught up with him and then it didn’t matter how great he was behind the wheel. None of it mattered.
Fuck him. And fuck Harper James.
And yet, I find myself wondering,wholeft him? I don’t even know who he went out with tonight. I don’t spend a lot of time scrolling social media, especially during the season. I find it ruins my concentration and eats away at my ability to focus. One split-second decision on the track could cost me the title. Or my life.
Sliding out my phone from my sweats’ pocket, I pull up Johannes’s Insta stories – it seems like a pretty good place to start. And there he is. The man whose body has been haunting my shower time is sandwiched between Johannes and a half profile of a guy who looks familiar. Long wavy brown hair that, if I wasn’t so tired, I’d probably remember who it belongs to. There’s a series of photos that Harper’s been tagged in. The three of them are chilling at the bar, captured in various poses throughout the evening, gradually getting drunker and wilder.
The final photo shows Johannes with his arms around the man with the chocolate curls. The way they’re looking at each other it’s clear they’re about to kiss, and a few feet off to the side, his face half in shadow, is Harper. The expression in his eyes is hard to read at first, but not if you know him like I now do. I doubt Johannes even knew Harper was in the photo when he uploaded it, but I zoom in so I can get a closer look. There’s pain there for sure, but what hits me deep in the pit of my stomach is the despair.
I scroll forwards and there’s a four-hour gap of nothing, before a blurry image appears. It seems to show a set of abs against a crumpled white sheet, lit artistically from the side, and splayed over the chest is a head of curls that are easily identifiable as belonging to the gorgeous man from the bar. There’s no text to accompany it, just a small red heart in the bottom corner.
It doesn’t take a genius to read between lines: Johannes hooked up with the hot guy from the bar, and Harper drowned his sorrows. Quite why Johannes posted this to his stories I’ll never understand, and I suspect he’ll get an early morning wake-up call from his PR team telling him to take it down, but the damage to Harper has been done.
Is this what Harper meant? Did he feel like Johannes abandoned him tonight for whoever this man is? Surveying Harper’s face I’m trying to figure out if it’s heartbreak etched in his face?
Is that what this has been about all along? Is Harper in love with Johannes? I almost feel pity for him because that kind of unreciprocated love –must be awful. Having to see the person you love go home with someone else –must be gutting.
It makes sense when I look back at the last few weeks. Harper moved so freely when he was dancing with Johannes. His eyes lit up with every touch, and they looked like they fitted so well together.
I sigh and lean back against the headrest. Beside me, Harper shifts and then is peaceful again, his cheek firmly pressed into my neck.
I wish I didn’t feel so much sympathy for him. It would be easier to hate him, but I don’t.
The sun’s starting to rise as I guide him down the corridor to his room, his arm around my neck and mine virtually holding him up around his back. This is going to look so bad if someone sees us right now.
He’s starting to come round, the bright lights of the hotel clearly having an effect, but it’s making it harder for him to coordinate as he rebuffs my every touch.
‘Where’s your keycard?’ I ask, not wanting to risk patting down his pockets. Not when he’s wearing the skinniest jeans I’ve ever seen on such ripped thighs.
He shrugs in a way that would be comical if I weren’t annoyed with him, and I lean him up against the wall while I decide what to do.
There’s nothing for it. I have to pat him down, but my search comes up frustratingly empty. He’s managed to hold on to his wallet and phone – full credit to the bouncer, I suspect – but there’s no sign of his keycard.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
‘You’re a twat,’ I say. ‘I can’t ask reception for another keycard without alerting them to your current state. In any case, I can’t leave you here on your own and I’m not dragging you back down there. Argh! Why are you such an idiot?’
Two days before qualifiers. Two days, and he decides to be this irresponsible. Never mind the impact his own performance will have on the team – now it’s affecting me, too.
‘Your bed it is, then,’ he suggests cheekily, and for a second the wickedest smile I’ve ever seen flashes across his face. It’s so fast that if I hadn’t been looking right at him, I’d have missed it. I almost want to leave him in the corridor to figure it out for himself.
Yet here I am, reliable as ever, leading him like a dog on a leash to my room. This should not be happening. I don’t fancy sleeping on the floor, but we can’t share a bed again. We just can’t. Although it’s nearly 6am, with jetlag and everything, I’m still in desperate need of a few more hours of sleep, but it looks like I don’t have a choice.
A heavy groan escapes Harper’s lips as I plop him onto my bed. His lids flick open and I’m surprised by the bright eyes that meet mine, like his sober, rational mind has finally woken up. If he even bloody has one.
