So much chemistry? What?
‘¿Es él el indicado?’another probes, and they collapse into piercing giggles.
Theone?
Well now I’m in a bad mood.
Jules says something ambiguous about it being early days, and I hustle her away. This shopping trip is about me. We don’t have time for immature fans.
I’m still quiet when we sit down to lunch. It’s a backstreet Mexican restaurant with bright yellow walls and rustic wooden high-tops. I love spots like this – fuss-free, bold flavours, far away from tourists – but over my dead body will I let it show.
I don’t know why this Tom thing’s bugging me so much. It was her plan all along – hell, I helped her do it! But now it’s working, I feel… like the typo on the front page of the menu’s inexcusable.
‘How does Mexican food compare to Colombian food?’ Jules asks.
‘Do you see any Colombian restaurants around?’ It comes out sharper than I meant, and inside I cringe.
She sizes me up with a careful eye. I don’t want her to think I hate my homeland. It’s fire, just not the food. Too beige, too mild, too heavy, and there’s too much freaking soup. Even for breakfast. Some people just don’t want soup!
‘I want an addendum to the contract,’ I say before I talk myself out of it.
If she’s surprised, she doesn’t let it show. Carefully, she lays Google Translate on her phone aside. ‘What do you have in mind?’
‘We can’t keep pretending like Monaco didn’t happen. I’m going to lay it out there: I had a great time.’
She takes a slow breath, holding my gaze. ‘I did too.’
It’s not news – I know when I have a satisfied customer – but hearing her say it makes victory surge through my veins.
‘It doesn’t have to be a one-time thing,’ I explain too fast. ‘We could add an addendum that’s, like, “any personal or intimate relationship that may develop between the Parties shall be separate from the terms of this Agreement”.’
I can’t sleep with other people, for many reasons. More women increases the risk that word will get out – that’ll never happen with Jules. If I sleep with just one woman, I’m proving to myself that I’ve reformed my serial womanising ways. She’s not like the others (for one, she’s not exactly my biggest fan), ergo I don’t behave like my old self around her.
And if I slept with someone disposable after that night, it would make what we had a one-night stand like any other, and it deserves to be more. Not because I have grand romantic notions – fuck that – but because it felt too different. Throwing it in in the same category as drunken fumbling after six rounds of tequila would do us both a disservice.
Jules is impossible to read, tapping her nails against the table without breaking rhythm.
‘We don’t have to put a timeline on that part,obviously,’ I rush to add. ‘In fact, we could take away the timeline altogether. The contract’s suiting us both right now, so why don’t we keep it going after the Canadian Grand Prix? When it doesn’t work for us anymore, we?—’
‘Ok.’
Huh? This is a woman who took five minutes deciding which shopping bag she wanted from Tom Ford.
‘Ok?’ I repeat. ‘Just like that?’
‘I’ll get it made official when I get back to the hotel.’
‘You don’t want to mandate how many times in a race weekend, or that you’ll have me hung, drawn and quartered if I tell anyone?’
A shoulder rises. ‘It’s your addendum.’
I don’t want to say it, but for my own sanity: ‘Where does Thomas Webber factor into this?’
She starts straightening her cutlery with fidgety fingers. ‘I suppose… if Tom and I start being intimate, I’ll end this.’
Seems fair. It’s irrational how much I liked that she said ‘if’ not ‘when’.
‘Deal. Shall we shake on it?’ I ask.
