When I get out of the cockpit, the garage is quieter than normal after a Hendersohm driver finishes second, and I know instantly it’s because of Harper.
He’s sitting in the corner, a team hoodie pulled on over his suit, the strings tightened around his face so he can’t see or be seen. I don’t even know what to say. It’s a devastating sight, and I suspect he’s crying under there. To finish outside the top ten can be soul-destroying, and he doesn’t have the resilience of an experienced driver. Sometimes I forget he’s a rookie still in his first season.
It must only be making him feel worse that we’ll slip into second place in the Constructors’ Championship as part of the fallout from his result. He knows it’s his fault – there’s no two ways about it. This isn’t like football where a mistake could be made by three or four or more players, or compounded by different incidents, to cause the loss overall. The way the points get divided up in the sport makes it obvious.
When he’s sitting there, completely miserable, especially after how quiet he was this morning, I don’t have it in me to be annoyed at him. He has to write off Austria and focus on what comes next – Silverstone. That’s our home turf and we have to smash it. It’s not like I finished first today, even I could have done more to be first rather than second.
I just hope Harper knows how to deal with setbacks and doesn’t end up spiralling, and that Johannes is the kind of friend who doesn’t kick a man when he’s down.
Normally, by this point of the post-race analysis, Harper’s joking about with Ash, finding out specific lap times and going through individual points of the race where the tyres didn’t feel great or looking at footage of key moments.
Ash tries, bless him. He brings up highlights of Harper’s laps, but it’s not working. Harper’s heading for a meltdown, and because this is the first time this has happened, nobody knows how to help him. Is he an angry whirlwind, does he smash and break things, or does he sulk? There’s a kind of collective breath-holding while we wait to find out.
Instead, it just breaks him.
He shuts down completely. It’s like the soul is sucked out of him. It’s utter devastation.
Thankfully, Anders releases him from doing any media and Harper leaves so quickly that it’s almost like he evaporates. Unfortunately, there’re journos already lingering nearby and he has a battle to get to a car while savage questions are being fired at him about his performance. I hope to God that he’s ‘no commenting’ everything, mostly so that he doesn’t say something he’ll regret.
Anders jogs after him, calling out that ‘no media’ doesn’t mean he can just leave, but Harper’s already gone.
I’m left to tackle the media alone and not a single one of them wants to talk about my P2 finish. Everyone wants to know what’s up with Harper James.
‘Was it a technical or engineering issue?’ one of them shouts, microphone stick dangling over a whole other heap of columnist and radio presenters.
‘Not that we’re aware of. There will of course be in-depth post-race analysis of the car, but it didn’t seem to be a mechanical fault.’
‘So we’re looking at driver error for his poor performance today, then?’
That boils my blood a little. Could he have done better? Of course he could, but he didn’t cause any accidents on the track, he didn’t screw up the car, he just had a really, really shitty day.
‘Everyone has bad days. None of us are perfect – we’re not robots. But the season is far from over. That’s the beauty of motor racing. We learn from this race and put it into practice for the next one.’ I drawl out so many answers like this to anyone trying to goad me into bad-mouthing Harper, especially when they bring up the fact that Harper might have cost us a win in the Constructors’ Championship. My tone gets sharper as the questions continue. I don’t know when I became so protective of Harper James, but it’s got nothing to do with Anders’s threats and everything to do with the image of him huddled in the corner looking like his heart was going to break.
I just want to get home now – mainly back to the UK where I will see my family and feel the strength of their love and support, but also back to the motorhome.
Even though I’m not quite sure what I’m heading ‘home’to.
With how distraught he was when he stormed out of the pit, taking his frustration out on all the waiting journalists, and ignoring Anders’s calls for him to stop, I have no clue.
Maybe he’s trashed it, set it on fire, or maybe he’s drowning his sorrows in vodka or blow-jobs with randos. It’s hard to predict with Harper.
It’s quiet as I step in through the door. All the lights are off and as I turn them on one by one, I take note that nothing’s broken, smashed, or on fire.
There’s an eeriness to the silence, though. It’s almost too much. I didn’t hang around that long after the team debrief so I’m surprised he’s managed to come home, shower, and head out in this time, but then again nothing should surprise me about Harper James anymore. He does whatever he damn well wants and screw the consequences – or the collateral damage.
I’m about to take a shower myself, my hand hovering over the button, when the softest noise leaks under the door of the Jack and Jill bathroom. It’s almost inaudible, as though my mind’s playing tricks on me. Until I press my ear up against the door, and there it is again: small sobs. I can almost picture them wracking his body, his chest rising and falling as he struggles to control the sound.
It’s downright heartbreaking. Even more so from a guy who has the toughest shell going.
I can’t stop listening, and I feel like the world’s worst person that I’m just standing here eavesdropping on his pain instead of going in there and checking on him.
But what do I say to the guy who’s got a hard layer of arrogance around him that he wears like armour? Who would likely vigorously reject any attempts to comfort or console him?
A guy I’ve kissed once and not stopped thinking about since?
ChapterSixteen
Harper
