The cameras were switching from one racer to another, getting close-ups of them cheesing for the crowds or slumped in their saddles, despondent. A camera came over to Felix and Asta. Felix leaned over in his gyroscopic saddle and grabbed Asta’s hand. He lifted it, and the stands went nuts.
‘That’s for you,’ he yelled to her. ‘They love you.’
Asta pulled off her own helmet. ‘They loveyou,’ she corrected. ‘I’m just the window dressing.’
Felix dismounted and approached Asta and Carmine. He bowed at the waist, arms above his head, as if he was a devotee before the altar of his goddess. The sound of cheering, which Asta thought had reached its peak, rose higher still.
‘You’re so dumb,’ she shouted over the noise. He turned and was now bowing to Basma, who played the beauty pageant queen, laughing at herself. As she waved, the screens changed. Basma’s face was at the top of the display. She had won the heat by a fraction of a second.
Asta felt a pang of envy as she watched the realization hit Basma’s face and her smile turned to a cry of triumph. It was a petty feeling, and Asta tried to push it away. It was just the semifinals. Basma, Asta, Felix, and the two riders behind them– including Soroko and Marigold, who had recovered from their fall on the mountain and placed fifth– had all qualified for the finals. Still, the disappointment rankled.
Felix was at Asta’s side, gazing up at her. He offered her a hand down, which she took. Her left leg could barely hold her weight, and she leaned on Felix, her arm across his shoulders. Between Carmine and Essie’s bodies, they were mostly hidden from the crowd, as if they had stepped into their own private room.
‘You okay?’ he asked, his eyes searching her face, compelling the truth from her.
‘Not really,’ she admitted. Everything was falling apart– her body, her career, everything she knew about herself. And at the same time, her best friend had been returned to her, and tomorrow they would race the Silverscale Grand Prix. It was too much all at once, filling her heart and emptying it so fast that it left Asta raw.
The sound of the celebrating crowds washed overhead.
Asta laughed ruefully. ‘Guess they don’t love me anymore. Now they love Basma.’
The triumphant music of Basma’s victory lap was playing– soaring and bold, like a hymn to some winged god.
Felix smiled and bent his face close. ‘Well, I’vealwaysloved you,’ he said into her ear. ‘Always.’
She believed him. It was, she saw, what held them together– all the Felixes that Asta had ever known– they had all loved her, in their way. And all the Astas had loved him back. First, as children. Then, as dreamers setting out into the world. Now, as something more– as two people with their feet on the ground and a mountain of pain between them, reaching for each other anyway.
Asta did not let herself think about what she was doing. Dirty from the race, sweaty and greasy, she kissed him. He kissed her back, and despite the roaring of the stands, it was like there was nothing else but the two of them.
All too soon, the world pushed back in. The grooms came for Essie, Torque for Carmine. There were microphones, cameras, masses of jubilant faces. Even as she answered the questions being shouted at her, Asta kept looking to Felix, and every time, she found his eyes already on her. It sent her floating up into the stands.
As the minutes went by and Asta’s reporters finally ran out of questions, she noticed that Felix had begun edging away from the reporters still clumped around him. Following his lead, Asta excused herself from a conversation with Gem and a trainer from one of the co-ops and drifted toward Felix. He smiled at her and gave a surreptitious nod to the riders-only gate behind the far turn. She hesitated only a moment– Carmine was in good hands, she assured herself, and no one needed anything more from her today. She nodded.
They made their escape, weaving through the throngs of fans and press milling about on the track. At the riders’ gate, they showed their badges and disappeared into the tunnel, ditching the last reporters who had tried to tail them.
Outside the raceway, they did their best to hurry away from prying eyes, but the adrenaline of the race had begun to ebb, and they were both limping.
Asta pointed to a Silverscale staff member zipping by in an electric cart. ‘We should hijack one of those. That guy looks kind of scrawny. We could take him, right?’
Felix laughed. ‘Have you seenus? We’re no match for a stiff breeze.’ They struggled on, arguing about their chances.
As soon as the door to Felix’s suite closed, a strange shyness dropped over them both. It had been a long time since they were alone together without the buffer of anger between them.
While Felix drew the curtains, Asta found herself wandering around his quarters– they were exactly like hers, except that the kitchenette was to the left and the bathroom to the right and only one large, neatly made bed stood in the middle of the room. Asta went to the kitchenette. Felix’s rider illusion was pushed back by the coffeemaker, casting little glints of light in the shadow under the cabinet. The illusion showed Essie and Felix clearing a fence, with the landing merging into the jump endlessly. Jump. Jump. Jump. Jump.
‘Those poor little things,’ Asta said, almost to herself, sliding the image of Felix and Essie across the countertop, back to its rightful place. She admired the details that had gone into creating the illusion– the movements were precise, the colors vivid.
Felix came to stand across the counter from her. The black marble felt like a canyon between them. She wanted to leap across it.
Felix looked at the little figures. ‘Poor things? What’s the matter with them?’
‘They never get a break.’
Felix took the illusion by its base and flipped it over. He muttered something and worked his fingers, and the magic dissipated into drifting sparks of light. ‘Better?’
Asta studied his face. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. You didn’t have to turn it off.’
‘Are you kidding? I hate those things.’
