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He starts to take the seat across from me. Since it’s a private jet, the seats are arranged facing forward and backward, around tables. That’s something I always loved about him—that he seems to fit in anywhere with his rakish smile. He never seems awkward or ill at ease, whereas I’m a bundle of anxiety. I must stop lusting after him like this.
“What are you up to?” he asks casually.
“Swamped with work,” I say, covering the table with my laptop, notebooks, pens, and almost the entire contents of my purse. I wave my hand over all my stuff, hoping he doesn’t want to sit with me, because I don’t need the distraction.
He surveys the table with a scowl, probably because he’s an orderly kind of guy. I used to gently tease him about this, back when we were together, about him being a stereotypically orderly German.
“Orderly desk, orderly mind,” he’d say, and glare at my mess. Exactly what he’s doing now.
“Guess I’ll leave you alone,” he mutters. He’s holding a little paper bag filled with my cookies. He insisted on bringing them with us. What a weirdo. As one of the richest athletes in the world, he could’ve stopped at any number of gourmet bakeries in Miami, but he wants those lumps of chocolate chunk cookies.
He turns and takes a seat closer to the cockpit, with his back to me. Thank god. A reprieve from his intense, sexy self. It’s only now that I can exhale. We’re the only two on my family’s private jet because the rest of the team left for Austin already. I haven’t been on this plane in a long time, preferring to fly business class when I was with the game company.
Something about private air travel makes me feel icky. It’s too privileged for my taste, and that once used to be Max’s opinion too. But from the looks of things, he’s gotten quite used to luxury travel.
I turn my attention back to my computer, trying to push Max aside.
It’s not like I’m lying about the amount of work I have. I do have a ton of things to do, mostly emails to various team principals. Others are personal, like to the concierge in my condo building. I plead with her to water my plants and clean out my fridge, and fortunately, she immediately responds and says yes. Mum can’t be trusted with the plants. I also fire off a message to Mum with several bullet points about the house, Papa, and the top three cardiac rehabs in Miami. I’d researched those in the car on our way to the airport.
We take off, and the flight attendant comes to me first.
“Coffee. An entire carafe, please,” I say, pressing my hands together in a pleading gesture. The attendant, a beautiful brunet who doesn’t look a day over twenty-two, gives me a wide grin.
“How about I put a shot or two of espresso in the coffee as well?” She raises an eyebrow.
“You’re a goddess. Thank you.”
She then makes her way to Max, and I peek over my laptop screen and watch their interaction. A pang of shame mixed with jealousy shoots through me. Why I’m torturing myself like this is a mystery.
The attendant’s body language says it all. Her chest is thrust out, her smile is glittering, her fingers flutter to his shoulder. He says something that I can’t quite understand, and the attendant throws her head back, laughing like he told the best joke in the world. I hunch over my laptop and try to concentrate, but I can’t.
When I first met Max he wasn’t a flirt or a womanizer. He was a shy, polite twenty-two-year-old. It had taken a couple of weeks for him to speak in full sentences and not monosyllabic grunts to me. Then, when we became friends, I discovered that he was funny and sweet. After we started having sex, he was ravenous. But so was I.
Seven years in Formula World have turned him into a flirtatious fuckboy, apparently. Maybe all the tabloid stories about him are true. I stopped reading them a few years back, mostly because it was torture to know all the details of his hookups in Brazil with two models or his very public spat in Japan with an actress or the naked photos on a yacht with an Instagram influencer in Italy.
Even if I wanted to be with him now, how could I trust him?
With a sour feeling swirling in my stomach, I stop staring at Max and tap another message to Mumsy, asking for an update on Papa. For good measure, I send a third email with the name of a top nutritionist in Miami, and a PDF of what heart attack patients should eat. Thank god for Wi-Fi on planes.
My inbox is jammed with emails—how the hell did all these reporters get my personal email, anyway—and I spot five from Tanya, all sent in quick succession, and all with the wordurgentin the subject line. Part of me wished she’d flown with us instead of going ahead to Austin. That way she could’ve acted as a buffer between me and Max.
“Oh Christ,” I mutter.
“Everything okay?” Somehow Max has materialized in the aisle near my seat.
I look up, adjusting the glasses on my nose. Probably I’ll have to shift to wearing contacts and sunglasses while at the track.
“Just peachy,” I say.
He slides into the seat across from me, leans back, and spreads his legs. Just like he did when he was at my place, he comes off as very relaxed in my presence, all sprawly and comfy.
Like we’ve been together for years. This makes me act all the more rigid, for some reason.
“I love Austin,” he says. “It’s the whole Wild West feel about it. Last year we all went to this amazing Tex-Mex restaurant. The food was delicious. Maybe we should have dinner there.”
I clear my throat. He continues, describing a dish he had last year before the race. “It was chili, but with steak instead of beans. And spicy. So spicy! Have you ever had it?”
Why is he sitting here, chatting casually about chili con carne? “Maybe once or twice.”
