“Yeah, maybe.” He’s clearly down to follow whatever white lie I need to soothe his ego, but he doesn’t let it get him down. “Hey, let’s meet now! Faust and I were just about to go grab a bite. With—”
“Holy shit.” A new woman’s in the alcove doorway. Pale, so young, with a mess of brown curls. “You look like you just got mauled by a bear. Faust, what did you do to her?”
Christine Fay makes three. Faust looks from me to his new teammate, taken aback. “She ran into me.”
“Reflexes, dude,” she tuts, with a scowl that almost rivals his. “Cat, you’re coming out with us? Can I buy you lunch? Or dinner. I don’t know what time it is. Or how much that dress cost.”
My eyes dart to Faust, who’s currently staring at my shoulder and my shoulder alone. I wait to see if he’ll meet my eyes and blink out the Morse code fordo not accept this invite, I don’t want to be around you, this is a meal for Formula 1 drivers only.But he doesn’t. So I smile and say, “I was actually supposed to make Faust meet with me about work stuff, but maybe over food is better? And I don’t really know anyone in Australia, so my dinners were going to be a bit solitary.”
“What? No!” Eddie gasps. And with that, he launches into a tirade about how he’s going to introduce me to “everyone,” while Christine’s insisting they let me change, and Faust continues his close examination of the hotel artwork. Ten minutes later, I’m in a new gray dress that might hide stains better, Christine has followed me on Instagram, and Eddie’s linked his arm with mine as we all take the elevator downstairs. “I think we were supposed to run into you today,” he says confidently. “I have a feeling. I can always tell these things.”
“Can you, now?”
“Oh yeah. Totally. You and I were supposed to become friends.”
Faust stands behind the three of us in the elevator, squeezed into one mirrored corner. Silent again.
Getting to know anyone besides Eddie, around Eddie, is impossible. Over dinner—plain chicken with vegetables for the drivers, coffee and french fries for me—he regales us with his life story. It’d be annoying if he wasn’t incredibly endearing and baby-faced.“I should’ve become an influencer, too, but Dad said I had a real knack for karting, and I was too much of a stubborn ass to quit.” He chases a perfectly round pea around his plate. “Also, I bet Christine a hundred dollars that she’d get into F1 first, and she said I wouldn’t get my money if I quit.”
“Quitters are losers.” She smirks at Eddie. “Are you a loser?”
“In many ways, yes.”
The surface of my coffee ripples, and Eddie yelps. I think Christine kicked him under the table. “You’d have left me to the sharks?”
“No!”
“What sharks?” I ask.
“The movie crew,” Eddie says, as Christine hisses, “Bernard.”
Faust snorts. I glance up from my fries. Our eyes meet; he looks away.
Interesting. I dip a fry in my ketchup-mayonnaise concoction. “You weren’t going to drive for Stark-Benzin if he was here?”
“No way. He isn’t cancel-worthy, just desperate.” She laughs. “Faust did me a favor making this his—oh.” She bats her blue eyes in Faust’s direction, clearly remembering she wasn’t supposed to say something.Veryinteresting.
“I vouched for her,” Faust says stiffly. “That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Eddie imitates, pitching his voice down. “Um, we’re on Stark-Benzin with you, our literal childhood idol.”
For once, Christine doesn’t sarcasm Eddie’s point away, and the soft smile she wears as she takes another bite confirms it. Heistheir hero. At eighteen and nineteen, they would’ve been in the baby racing leagues when Faust was dominating Formula 1. And now they’re here, with him onhisteam—like me. Out of nowhere, my heart squeezes, surprisingly painful. I might be over my crush on this man, but I do remember watching him win the World Drivers’Championship the summer before I left for New York. My stuff was packed, and Dad was barely talking to me, but when Faust blew past the checkered line, proverbially cinching the championship inSeptember, it was the first time I’d seen Dad cry since Grandma passed. Then Dad’s friend Billy had put on ABBA—“The Winner Takes It All”—and everyone had laughed because God, what a horribly sad song. But that’s how I knew Dad and I would be okay, eventually, even if I had to leave to take care of them: Someone was out there, winning, baptized in champagne. Standing on the nose of his car, the Portuguese flag hanging from his triumphant fist.
He looks so different now, without that feeling all over him. What happened to that champion?
Christine peels away from our group when we’re back at the hotel, explaining that she has to “go fucking smile for the cameras.” Eddie sees us up to our floor, seeming to remember his original topic at the last minute. “Cat!” He flails his arm out the elevator door to keep it from closing. “We have to work together!” The older woman next to him side-eyes him silently. “Nobody else cares about clothes on this team. I’m dying! I’m alone! Don’t leave me!” She presses theclose doorsbutton; Eddie starts to say something else; his arm darts back in and the doors shut.
I giggle. “Damn.”
Beside me, Faust starts walking toward our rooms. “Whoa, wait.” I catch up with him, which is a bit hard in not-yet-broken-in ballet flats. “Come on, you like him, don’t you? He’s so much fun.”
Faust keeps walking. I look over, tilting my head to catch his expression—though a lot of good that does me. “Seriously? Nothing?”
“As long as he can drive, I like him.”
“You didn’t even stop in that photo booth with us.”
“There wasn’t room.”
