Page 50 of On The Edge

“Always.” He pauses and looks at me, his smile softening. “I have to get to work. Are you okay?”

I nod. “Go do your thing. Don’t worry about me.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in a while then.”

We stand in awkward silence for a few beats—almost as if it can be inferred by anyone watching that he doesn’t want to kiss me due to lack of privacy, when I know it’s because this is all a farce.

Sure, we keep posting pictures of our first adventures around Amsterdam to keep up pretenses. The endless calls from my family about what in the hell is going on that I’ve had to fend off say it’s working. But deliberate affection for one another other than our one private slip is a line we’ve yet to cross publicly.

“Sounds good,” I say, to which he takes a step back before turning and then jogging the few feet across the path to the garage.

“Well, that was awkward,” Amandine says and laughs. “You can bring a horse to water and all that.”

My smile is tight, not one hundred percent certain what she’s implying so I just leave it be.

“Are you wishing you’d gotten this out of the way yesterday?” Amandine asks as she directs me into the hospitality suite.

“What, the public walk of curiosity?” I ask and chuckle.

“It’s better than the walk of shame.” She grins, unknowing that I felt like I walked that for a whole day after we slept together.

“There’s always that.” I smile and then shrug. “I think staying incognito yesterday was for the best. As it is, I had enough of the crew giving me double takes. The last thing he needed was to get shit from other drivers.”

“You think?”

“The perpetual bachelor bringing his date to the track? Come on.”

She holds her hands up and laughs. “True. True.”

“Besides, Cruz needed to work without distraction, and I could observe up in the box in anonymity without anyone knowing I was here.” I follow her into one of the office spaces in the suite where I had set up my computer and worked some of yesterday during the downtime.

“Well today is going to be even crazier, and now that everyone knows you’re here, expect the cameras to pan in on you and get your reaction to everything.”

“That’s . . . wonderful,” I say with all of the enthusiasm of getting my teeth pulled.

“Cruz Navarro dating a camera-shy woman? Now that’s a first.” Once the words are out, she pauses and hangs her head for a beat. When her eyes meet mine, there’s regret woven in them. “That was a shitty thing to say. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. I’m just not used to—”

“It’s okay,” I say and laugh. “It’s no secret that we both had pasts before this . . . and his was a little more documented or should I say spirited than most.”

“Whew.” She pretends to wipe her hand on her forehead. “Crisis averted.” Another day of Amandine’s humor? I welcome it. She’s a new friend I’ve found in this very strange landscape.

I spend the next few hours taking everything about race day, as everyone calls it, in. The intensity on the faces of the crew. The constant movement of the Gravitas staff around anything and everything Cruz or their other driver, Nico Schilling, need.

I stay in the background and take everything in from a distance, not wanting to disturb Cruz’s usual race day routine. My concentrated effort is to exist in this space, to be present for everyone to see I’m there, but to not be a single thought in Cruz’s head.

It’s a fascinating process, though—the semantics of race day. From catered meals with customized nutrition to carry them through a race and the scorching temperatures inside their cockpits to the reaction drills with tennis balls meant to help sharpen his reaction times on the steering wheel. Steering column? That correct terminology wasn’t covered in my F1 crash course of terms. No doubt I’ll mess other ones up as well.

I make myself part of the race day hustle and bustle and when Cruz retires to his private driver’s room—a place Amandine has informed me is where the driver’s go for either a quick nap, to meditate, or whatever it is they do to find the quiet they need to focus before heading out to the track for the start—I decide to brave the world outside of the Gravitas bubble.

Make yourself seen. Weren’t those Kevin’s reiterated orders via text this morning before we even left the hotel?

At least I can say I’m trying.

On my venture around the grounds, I note that each team has their own cadence of sorts. There is a pomp and circumstance to it all. A choreography to who does what in the garages.

The crews go through checks so practiced they could probably do them in their sleep and yet they do them anyway, anticipating everything that could happen other than routine.

There are so many different people doing their jobs but one thing is certain, the energy is palpable. Like the track has its own electricity to it that keeps getting charged with each and every minute we get closer to the start of the race—or lights out, as I learned from Amandine.