“Ah.”
We go silent again. Around us, fans in every color of team T-shirt are chattering, taking pictures, filming videos, eating snacks, just really making me aware that we’re two women who don’t know each other, and I’m dating her ex-fiancé. That reminds me. “Hey, can I send a picture of us to Bernard?”
Imogen’s face goes pale. “Why?”
“I feel like it’d be what I’d do. If I ran into you, and we were friends, and I knew what had happened, you know? Like, hey, look who I bumped into, stop being mean to her. It gets ahead of him hearing it from someone else, I guess.” I roll my lip into my mouth. “But I don’t have to.”
She debates this, thoughts flashing in her bright eyes. “Okay, yeah. Could I post it?”
This is why I don’t hang out with clients. “That might be a bad idea.”
We take the picture anyway—on my phone—and I send it off with a note to Bernard about how Imogen and I used to be fashion week buds, and a lecture to Imogen about never replying to a single text from him again. “Men go through, like, extinction bursts, after they realize they can’t control you anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tries to flirt with you, too. Or lashes out. Really, any bad behavior.”
“No texting, understood.” Imogen bends the tip of her straw back and forth until it’s a tiny right angle. “Do you hate all men?”
I bark out a laugh. Coincidentally, this is the exact moment a roar lifts into the air from far across the racetrack. The cars have hit the proverbial pavement, zooming through the formation lap. Before I know it, the first one is here—and the first one is gray. And the gray one is Faust. His helmet is a deep scarlet today, an artist collab, and I follow the small red dot as he flickers around, here, gone. He takes my breath with him.
“Sorry,” Imogen says meekly. “That was rude.”
“No! No. I—usually, yeah.”
But I’m distracted, and it’s hard to cover up. A massive screen is mounted on the grass near our grandstand, showing the starting line, and my heartbeat quickens at the sight of Faust’s car lined up at the first white line. It’s different watching him here, with the real fans. No one is ordering champagne or whispering about steward-decision gossip they’d heard from friends of friends. With hundreds of people packed in like sardines, the grandstands still go hushed as the race ticks closer and closer, everyone excited. And I’m different since the last race, too. A bit. I can’t pinpoint what it means or put the feeling into words, but it’s like something in me has shifted ever so slightly to the left, unnoticeable unless you’ve lived here, in this house, all your life. Like I have.
“Who do you want to win?” Imogen has leaned her elbows on her knees. Enthralled like I am, despite it all.
I think about the benefits of lying my way out of her question. There are hundreds. And there’s only one benefit to telling the truth; I’ve been superstitious most of my life, and it comes back when my heart races like this.
“Faust.” His name tingles in my mouth. “Always liked him.”
The first light goes red. Imogen laughs. “I did, too.”
Oh. The realization pops like fizzy candy. She knew him—would know him. “Really?”
The second light turns red. Three more left. “He never liked Bernard, but yeah.”
Third. “Even when they were friends?”
“No, but I liked that about him. He doesn’t cover stuff up.”
Fourth.
Fifth.
I think back to what he’d said when we’d played chess.
I want someone who wants to be seen with me. Known as mine. If anyone thought she wasn’t, that’s on them. But I’d want that … partnership. We’d know what we have.
And I can’t give that to him.
I won’t.
Unless—unless I did.
The lights go out, the crowd is loud, the wind tickles the back of my neck. I could, I think as the cars burst off the starting line, Faust and then everyone else. One day, Icouldgive him that relationship. And maybe this is how we start. He’d said he wanted a partnership. Sworn that he wouldn’t mind seeing me flirt with other people. I hadn’t believed it at the time, and wouldn’t believe any other man who said that. But Faust? He’s different. Mentally, physically, clinically unique. I could still do my thing, tricking the worst of the worst who’d think I’d cheat on Faust withthem.That would be on them.
The wind picks up, the sound of cars building on the horizon. Sitting in the grandstands makes the track feel so much bigger, too, and I feel it in my stomach when the cars speed by, the second lap of how many? Fifty, maybe? Faust has held on to his startingposition, and I can’t deny how exciting that is. As if I’m proud, as if he’s something that’s mine.
“He’s crushing it,” Imogen says when they’re gone, temporarily, on the other side of the expansive circuit. And I know the “he” in question isn’t Bernard. “This track seems easy, but it isn’t. Last year, Bernard had his wheels ripped off after he slid into a barrier. It was amess.”
