“Who bet against me?” Clarke rolls over where she’s flopped across Thierry’s bed to stretch for the handoff. She probably should’ve just gone back to her own room when she was finally released from team duties a bit ago (after the morning practice session, lunch with fans, a press event, the afternoon session, team dinner, and two hours spent with her trainer, Clarke’s running on fumes), but she didn’t get a chance to catch up with Thierry at all at Mare Imbrium, and the rest of this weekend is even more packed than today.
“Lennox.”
“Redfoot? Your team principal?”
“She never believes me when I tell her you’re only pretending to be well-behaved and sane. Easy money for me.”
Clarke yawns. “The track isn’tthatbad.”
“The track is a nightmare. You on this track is a nightmare. I’m going to ask the FIC if they’ll let the rest of us forfeit and just give you the win so no one else has to race it.”
Clarke shrugs magnanimously. “If that’s what you think is best.”
“Ithink,” Thierry says, sitting down on the other side of the bed, “that there’s something going on with you and Julian. You smiled at each other during pilot roundup.Actualsmiles.”
“Your bar for our interactions is concerningly low.”
“And yet, you’ve struggled to clear it until this weekend, so…”
Clarke reaches over her head for a pillow and chucks it at Thierry. He bats it away and lets it fall onto his still-unpacked suitcase.
With the amount they travel in F0, everyone’s got their own hotel routines. Thierry digs specific things out of his suitcase as he needs them. Clarke unpacks immediately, even if she’s onlygoing to be somewhere for one night. Delphine, according to interviews, brings her own pillow. Several of the older pilots travel and stay in their personal cruisers, not bothering with hotels at all.
Does Julian still sleep in a pair of ratty old sweatpants and long-sleeved T-shirt when he’s in a hotel? He used to. He claimed that the hotel sheets, no matter how soft, didn’t feel right on his skin.
Clarke could ask, she realizes with a swell of happiness. Their message thread isn’t sitting fallow anymore. After they left things on good terms last weekend, Julian sent a picture of Graham falling asleep in a team meeting. In exchange, Clarke shared Kuari’s latest bug acquisition (no legs, lots of wings, entirely horrifying). The back-and-forth’s been steady ever since. Nothing particularly meaningful, nothing serious, but it feels like a lifeline.
“Yeah,” Thierry says, drawing the syllable out and looking at Clarke’s face. “There’s nothing going on with you and Julian at all. I’m just going to go ahead and credit myself with fixing it, since I invited both of you to my birthday, andheyspeaking of, are you sure you don’t want to do anything foryourbirthday?”
“I am doing something for my birthday. I’m racing at Monza.”
Monza is the next course on the schedule, located on Earth. Monza and Monaco, the site that traditionally hosts the last race of the season, are the two F0 tracks with the most legacy in motorsport. F1’s been racing at Monza and Monaco, off and on, for nearly a millennium. F0’s first ever race was at Monaco. The other twenty-two locations in an F0 season may vary, but not Monza and Monaco. They’re the absolutes.
Clarke’s twenty-third birthday falls on the Monza GrandPrix this year. She’s bringing her family out for the weekend. She’d love to have her mom, stepdad, and brother at every race, but they have their own lives and she tries not to ask them to sacrifice more than they already have to support her. For her birthday, though, they insist, and Clarke’s not going to say no. She’s carved some time out of the schedule between team events to spend with them, and there’s a big Elemental-hosted birthday dinner on Saturday night after qualifying. Anders, unfortunately, will also be in attendance.
Monza is also Clarke’s self-imposed deadline for telling Rhynn that they can start poking around to see if other teams would be interested in making Clarke an offer if Elemental doesn’t come to the table. Three races after break, that’s what Clarke said.
She’s trying not to think about it.
Thierry gives Clarke a flat look. “That’s not a birthday celebration, that’s work.”
“It can be both. I’m efficient like that. And I’m doing a day with my family at the beach after.”
“If I have to talk to you any more while you’re in this mood, I’m going to commit atrocities,” Thierry announces. He lunges across the mattress to get to the control panel for the wallscreen and pulls up their entertainment options. “What are we watching?”
Clarke reclaims the tossed pillow and squashes it into a comfortable shape under her chest. “I’m behind on that baking show. The one with the droids, not the swords.”
Thierry tabs toBaking Bots. They watch until the contestant who built this week’s worst-performing droid (its pastry confection is an underproved mess) gets kicked off the show, then Clarke says good night.
Matthew and Yves are in the hall when she makes it to the Elemental section of the hotel. Matthew’s standing in the doorway to his room, arms folded tight across his chest, unhappiness written on every line of his face. Yves looks over at the noise made by Clarke’s arrival, irritation at the interruption on every line of his.
“Sorry,” Clarke says automatically, although if they wanted to have a private conversation, they could be doing it actually inside Matthew’s room with the door shut. Or on a call. “Everything okay?”
It’s a rhetorical question. Matthew’s practice session sucked. He’s as far from being an off-planet racer as it gets, and everyone could see that he wasn’t comfortable on this track.
“It’s under control,” Yves says. Matthew glares at the carpet. “We’ll see you in the morning, Clarke.”
“Sure,” Clarke says, edging around them cautiously to get to her room, farther down the hall. “See you in the morning.”
