Also yours,
Arthur
P.S. My lawyers have been busy reviewing our options with Holmes, but they’ve found a moment to draft what’s perhaps a strongly worded email to Max regarding his IP theft of the name “Black & Graywood.” If you’d like us to send that over, say the word.
He listened to me. I said my truth, and he listened. And my name. Arthur knows how to get Black & Graywood back. Shaking, I find the attachment from his lawyers, needing to see this with my own eyes, and it’s there. My files. My work. My art. And—warmth spreads from where my heart is, drifting out. There’s another folder labeledGraywood, and it isn’t one that I made. It’s… Arthur’s. It’s footage of me that Arthur took. From his phone, in the Netherlands, on the yacht, when I’m filming the water, when I’m not looking. He recorded me. Holding my breath, I click the clip from the karaoke bar, when he’d been singing and I’d been watching, or that’s what I thought. Because he was watching me. He was seeing me. And now I see myself through his eyes and—I’m beautiful.
My heart is confetti. I’m a million pieces of paper in the wind, popped champagne, blue ribbons taped to a tomato. I didn’t need to give Arthur the Panasonic camera. He loved me enough to film me anyway, and show me.
And there’s Max’s folders, too.
The confetti sinks to the street. Only slightly. It just sucks to see his name when I’m not expecting it. His files. His…
Max.
Max, the people person. Max, who always cared more about interviews and audio quality than camera angles and techniques. I click through the documentary files, rapid fire, and moments later I findMonza_PaddockClub_AmbientSound.WAV. With another click, I pull up the auto-captions, and I’m trembling. It’s here. Max set up microphones in the Paddock Club before we’d met with Holmes and Mr. Bianco. And that means—
I’m sorry for what I did that day. I had to. You know how it is when you drive […] you get competitive.
Max recorded Holmes’s confession, and now I own the file.
If I held my phone any tighter, it might snap in half. “Have you listened to any of this yet?” I ask Miriam, breathless. “The audio.”
“Not quite yet. I thought it best to wait until I was certain the audio wasn’t, ah, incriminating.”
It is, I almost blurt out. Then I get her innuendo, then I’m on fire. “Oh! No. No—”
The older woman laughs. “Ms. Graywood, speaking as the director in charge of promoting our sport to our international fan base, may I say something rather selfish?”
“S-sure.”
“Oh, no, this isn’t what you think,” she adds, and my pulse flutters. “I have been in this position for ten years now. That is why I feel obliged to say… if you did, in fact, finish a film documenting a genuine and accidental love story between one of our drivers and yourself, that would be a story that I’m extremely interested in purchasing for any price you name. We have been searching for young, intelligent women from different backgrounds to promote the sport. For too long, the world has only known us as money and champagne—and part of that could be my doing. But in my father’s time, it was about the cars, the people, and showing the mettle of your team. I believe your film would do just that. And”—she leans closer with a wave of black honey perfume—“it could be your first film on our streaming network, but it certainly wouldn’t have to be your last.”
“Oh.” Oh. I’m not in trouble. The figurehead of F1 promotion wants me to make the documentary, too. And if Max’s audio really did get Holmes’s confession… “Thank you. That’s—wow. That’s—”
I don’t finish the thought.
The music leans into a slow dance, the crowd titters with applause, and I see Arthur appear like the pop of a camera flash: nothing, then a flood of light.
He’s walking away from a table, his tuxedo pulled loose at the edges. When he gets to the tall white doorway flanking the front lawn, he yanks open his bow tie and gets to work on his cuff links. He looks anxious. And beautiful.
I can’t move.
For days, I’ve been riding this wave, so focused on my fight with him that I’m not at all ready for him. For these feelings, jumbling up already. For the second argument we need to have.
For needing to tell him I love him.
As he sets down the cuff links, he looks out into the distance, clearly irritated about something that I hope isn’t me, can’t be me—but might be me, since he stops mid-scowl when his eyes land on me.
For a long moment, he only looks.
Then he begins to walk over.
Quickly.
“Ah,” Miriam says. “How fun.”
Arthur’s face is pink when he reaches us, body leaning forward from his own momentum, then settling back on his shiny black shoes. “I watchedRoman Holiday,” he says, his voice torn down theseam. He looks at me, Miriam, me, me, and his chest bounces with the fastest, saddest breath. “Lilah, are you leaving?”
