It’s the roughness in his voice that makes me confess a morsel of my thoughts, how disappointed he sounds in himself for feeling emotions that aren’twinandsmirkandflirt. “Arthur, I think you’re so capable of everything I’ve ever seen you do. It kind of makes me mad how good you are at literally everything. Like, you speak one hundred languages and drive cars that could be spaceships and everybody likes you.”
“Not everybody,” he says, oddly distant, then I hear him rub his hands together, warming the sunblock up. “But thanks. Not trying to dig for compliments or anything.”
“I’d never give you one if I thought you were.”
He chuckles. Gently, he moves my forearm so that he can start applying sunblock there, shoulder to elbow in small, slow, easy sweeps that make my stomach tighten. If he touched me somewhere private, less exposed, I wonder if he’d be as gentle. Or does he not know how to hold back when he’s lost in the heat of someone else?
“Your wrist,” I blurt.
“Healed up.”
“Are you sure?”
I start to move. Arthur presses two fingers to the outside of my arm, stalling me in place. I don’t know how he does that, exactly. “I won a Grand Prix with this wrist. I can handle putting some lotion on you.”
I swallow, guilty anyway. Mostly for those thoughts. Those were… some thoughts. “Okay. Yes. Also, I’m, um, guessing you don’t want me to include what you told me at the clinic in the documentary?” I segue. “Sorry. We just—we should talk about it.”
“We should.” He falls silent momentarily, though he doesn’t stop touching me. “I’ve only told you. I only want to tell you. That’s what I want. But what do you want, Lilah?”
My media ethics classes and conversational flowcharts and carefully planned career crumble to ash. Arthur isn’t asking me to keep this huge part of his life out of my film… yet. It isn’t that I want to serve his trauma on a platter for the world to consume, but this is his story, the reason he is the way he is, and I wouldn’t keep a secret like this for anyone else. Least of all if I thought it could hurt the person I’m keeping it for. He has panic attacks. Then drives a Grand Prix. And if I told him how scared that makes me, would he pull away again, retreating into himself?
Why did he have to tellmethe giant secret? I’m the worst possible choice.
“I want you to talk to me if it gets bad like you described,” I find myself saying. “Or it doesn’t have to be me, of course—anyone. Not because I don’t think you can’t handle it, but because you deserve not to have to bear this on your own. Monza is going to be hard, if they do let you race it, and…”
I’m not going to be there in the garage anymore.
The realization steals away the rest of my words. This past Sunday was the last race before the wedding. The next time Arthur suits up, I won’t be a part of the team anymore. In fact, I’ll be Public Enemy No. 1.
I’d been so sick, I hadn’t even realized it at the time.
Our summer is ending.
Arthur had been smoothing the sunblock up my shoulder, under my sleeve. Now he stops. Completely.
“They’re letting me.”
I twist around on the sand, the emotions crashing over me hushed with a clap. “You’re driving Monza?”
Arthur looks surprised, glancing at my fists against the blanket, and maybe I haven’t expressed how desperately I’ve been rooting for him because he smiles, unsure of himself, then all the way grinning. “Yeah.”
I don’t think as I grab his shoulders andsqueal.“Arthur! Oh my God! How do you feel? Are you excited?” I catch a breath. “Or is it scary? Shit. I don’t know. I would be scared.”
He laughs, watching me pull back. “I’ve—God. I’ve been waiting years for this. The physical therapy. Not knowing… only hoping.” He’s contemplative, my excitement slowly trickling into him. “Everything I’ve done is to race Monza again. Maybe it’s stupid, but I can prove I’m the greatest Bianco driver if I can just finish that race again. Or, you know, the best one right now.”
“The greatest.”
“By your metric, maybe.”
“And mine’s the one that matters.”
His jaw twitches, surprised, and he cautiously says, “Why do you say that?”
“Because I know how hard you’re fighting, and what you’re going through. I know who you’ve had to tolerate in order to achieve your dream.” I look at his hand on the blanket, chalky with sunblock, and imagine being brave enough to take it. “Nobody could be better than you.”
“You really think that?” Arthur says, closing his eyes. I can’t help but think—no, hope—that it’s so he doesn’t see me sayno.
“Yes, I do.”
