His eyes widen with surprise. Got him again. “You’re a good case study.”
“Of the prototypical athlete-influencer relationship?” I ask, but he gives me a look, playfully defensive.One piece, one question.
The reminder is helpful. Faust doesn’t keep the conversation on himself, like most people I know. I ask him these big questions, and he keeps asking me bigger ones. And I already don’t like how overexposed this game feels. We’re not two people getting to know each other over dinner and chess. As marginally magical as getting to see this side of him is—like he’s chosenmeto open up to, out of everyone else in his life—we aren’t friends. After more roses from Bernard, we’ll probably be less than that.
I play a bit sloppier for the rest of the game. Rushing in, trying too hard. Faust wins another pawn when I’m not paying attention. Spinning the piece between his finger and thumb, he says, “Any tattoos?”
“No,” I answer without thinking.
“No?”
I shake my head but can’t stop looking at him. He just has a face that’s so—open. It’s a window that most might mistake for a curtain. We’re quick to think athletic men are masterminds; 4D chess players because they can drive a complicated car faster than 99.9 percent of the human population. And Faust is smart, maybe freakishly smart. But he’s an open book, too. A very complicated, linguistically dense, brag-to-your-friends-you-read-it open book.
And there’s this tiny speck of hurt behind his brown eyes. Though it’s mixed with something else, too, something bright and electric.
Hope?
“Cat, Cat, Cat.” When he speaks next, darkness colors his voice. An old wound. “You’re still lying to me.”
My stomach flips.
“I’m not. I…”
Then I remember the pool, and my bikini, and Faust leaving in an angry rush. The tattoo of a running red rabbit tucked along my ribs. Is that what made him angry that day? I click through reasonings, pathways that’d explain that moment he left.He really doesn’t like tattoos, saw you had one, and stormed off.No, he literally has one himself.He harbors an irrational hatred of rabbits.Possible, but easily Occam’s razored. Because the simplest answer to why Faust would see something private about me, and get angry that Bernard might’ve had the chance to see it first, and the reason why Faust is mad that I’m lying to him about it now—why he always shows up when I don’t expect him to and invited me out to dinner with him before Bernard could take me out—why he looks so hopeful is that he’s proven, once and for all, that I’m a liar, that I’m not interested in Bernard.
He knows.
Chapter 13QXF7#
I message Bernard on thecab ride to the Antient show.
Sorry, wild day.Yes to Japan. :) Where?
I will be there, come hell or high water. Buying my own plane ticket isn’t out of the question.
Fashion week—to those who don’t devote their lives to this—is something of a magical, fictional place. Think Camelot, or Stars Hollow. But one does not simply walk into fashion week and see the fashion shows; the schedule is a rotating buffet of countries, primarily Paris and New York and Milan and London, and the shows themselves are exclusive. Invite-only, industry preferred. That’s why influencers will get photographed showing off their street style. For many of us, a fashion week is about the streets, the afterparties, satellite events. Nabbing an invite to an Antient fashion show is akin to opening your closet and finding Narnia. Furs and all.
“Nervous?”
I glance at Faust, who’s looking at Christine. She’s in the far back of this shiny black car, knee bouncing. Each bounce seems to make another brown ringlet escape from her swept-back bun. “No,” she answers sullenly.
“You look really good. And cool. And smart,” I reassure her.
“You really do,” Eddie agrees.
“Shut up,” she says. “But thanks.”
Mei’s flight from Australia got delayed due to weather, and since we’re only here until tomorrow morning, she ended up going straight to Japan. A bonkers sentence, if there ever was one, but this is my life now, and I dressed three of the most famous racing drivers in the world and, truthfully? They do look good. Mei had come through with the Americana sponsorships, and I’d kept Christine in a pair of her own pale blue jeans, rigid yet pricelessly worn in. That’d gotten paired with a soft gray cashmere sweater, slightly oversized, and my own Peretti Bone Cuffs for a dash of sparkle. It’s relaxed—nothing too try-hard. The seasoned fashion girls would sniff that out from a mile away, and being here is just as much about remediating her image as it is capitalizing on Faust’s podium finish. I don’t like it, but it’s true.
“You’re just here to have a good time,” I remind her. “You showing up is a win. Don’t even smile if you don’t feel like it. Bitchy is cool, too.”
“Is that her character?” Faust asks, his voice light. Completely calm.
I take a deep breath. “Sure.”
The rest of our dinner had… gone. It’d happened. We’d finished our chess game, he’d won, and I ate my cold french fries. I’d avoided any other probing questions and kept my questions casual. Afterward, we’d parted ways, and I’d popped my rationed sleep aidpill and hoped to miss a visit from the Hat Man. It was the sleep of the medicated, but it was sleep, and I woke up feeling better. Statistically, it would be extremely unlikely for Faust to know who I am and what I’m doing with Bernard. He wouldn’t be so chill. Just look at history. Study how semi-decent men never pick morally gray women over horrible men. Even if Faust has a famously fractured relationship with his former best friend. He talked a big talk in Melbourne, but he would never—
“Cat?”
