Chapter Thirty-Three
Asher
For the second time in as many days, I find myself standing in front of Victoria’s door. This time, with a bag of fucking chicken noodle soup, because apparently, I’m enough of a simp to bring her a care package when we had our first date yesterday… and haven’t even discussed what we are yet.
There are a thousand other things I should be doing after my conversation with Ilya this morning.
Mending fences with Elio, reaching out to my manager and agreeing to start looking into sponsorships and investor events, reading the steward’s report that just went out regarding nuances to the updated race safety protocols.
Instead, I’m here like a moron, because I’m worried. I haven’t known her long, but Victoria strikes me as the type that’d show up and stay at work unless she was severely ill. She was fine this morning, so I’m not sure what happened, and I hate the thought of her suffering alone.
After several minutes of fighting a war with myself, I knock on the door.
I’m irritated with myself for being so ridiculous, with her for making me like this, and with the world at large for deciding to present me with the greatest temptation of my life, in the form of an infuriating intern who takes up more space in my thoughts than anything else.
I hear quiet footsteps approaching the door. After a few more beats, it swings open.
The scowl melts off my face when I see Victoria.
She’s wearing an oversized hoodie with leggings underneath.
Her hair is pulled back into a deceptively sexy messy bun, and there are weird fuzzy Grinch socks covering her feet.
What’s not sexy at all are her red-rimmed eyes, as if she’s been crying recently.
What the fuck?
We both stare at each other for a beat in silence. Finally, I lift up the bag. “I brought you soup.” I sound as dumb as I feel. “Since you’re not… feeling well.”
A slight smile plays on her lips. “I see that. Thank you.”
We keep staring at each other. I want to ask what’s wrong—it’s obvious that it wasn’t physical illness that made her go home early today—but I refrain. If she wants to tell me, she’ll tell me.
If she doesn’t, I’ll find out in another way. She looks miserable, and I hate it.
Fuck it. “Are you okay?”
“I will be.” She nods. “I got a tough call and knew I couldn’t be professional for the rest of the day, so I figured it’d be better to wallow for a bit at home than risk fucking up at HQ.”
“Right.” Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask—“What happened?”
Stop fucking pushing!
Her grip on the door tightens until her knuckles turn white. Her next breath is more of a shudder, and her eyes brighten with tears.
Shit. “You don’t have to tell me,” I say. “I just…” I frown. “I don’t like seeing you unhappy.”
She offers a wobbly laugh. “Since when?”
Since I realized that I want to be the reason for your smile instead of your frown. No clue when that bullshit happened, but what’s done is done.
“I figure there’s a higher chance we’ll work out if I pull back on being a dick,” I point out.
“Fair.”
We resume staring at each other. She no longer looks like she’s on the verge of crying, which is a relief.
“That looks like a lot of soup.” She nods at the huge bag. “Do you want to…” she clears her throat. “Come in and share it?”
I raise my eyebrows. “You’re letting me into your apartment now?”
“I’m sure it’s not much compared to yours, but it’s livable.”
I frown. “Is that why you didn’t let me in yesterday? Do you think I’m that much of a snob?”
She doesn’t reply, and I pretend that doesn’t hurt. I haven’t exactly given her a reason to think I’m anything but a stuck-up prick.
I’m getting a taste of the consequences of being a dick, and it sucks exactly as much as I thought it would.
She opens the door wider, and I step inside.
Her apartment’s not terrible, but it is tiny, old, and clearly poorly maintained by the building.
But I can see her decorations and style everywhere, which makes it homey.
The cement floor is mostly covered in a blue carpet, with a matching blue royal sofa against the back wall.
There’s a pretty antique coffee table in front of it, and several large, factory-style windows behind it.
In the corner is a desk. The front of the room is a modest kitchen area, with a four-burner stove, oven, fridge, and breakfast bar.
There’s a circular white dining table not far from it.
“Cute,” I comment. “Where should I set up?”
“The dining table.” She waves to the white table. “I’ll grab bowls and silverware.”
A few minutes later, we’re both digging into a late lunch. I try not to stare at her too hard or for too long, but seeing this usually-composed woman so unwound and so upset is disconcerting. I feel personally responsible for fixing it.
“Thank you,” she says softly, once we’re done. “This was really nice of you.”
“You want to talk about whatever it is that sent you running from work?” Jesus, I just can’t keep it in, can I? “You don’t have to tell me, but it might make you feel better.”
She sighs, staring down at her empty bowl.
“My mom is…” she clears her throat. “She has dementia. It’s progressing rapidly and pushing the late stage.
She was diagnosed when I was about 16, and it was slow in the beginning, so she encouraged me to go off to college.
Besides, my brother had just started his company not far from her, so he’d stay close for a while. I was afraid to leave, but…”
“You had to live your life. And it sounds like your family wanted you to.”
She nods. “Right. After undergrad, they told me to go for my masters, so I did. That’s when her dementia started accelerating rapidly, but I still stayed in school.
Then, I had offers for jobs and internships from all over the country, but I chose F1 because I love it.
I moved home for the months in between graduation and moving here, and it was…
” she trails off. “My mom wasn’t great. She was still lucid, but less than half the time.
I left again to come here… and then on the first race week, I had to rush back because she landed in the ER.
” She tells me about the enthusiastic resident who thought things were much worse than they were, and how her trip cut into the race.
Guilt sweeps over me. I mercilessly taunted her for being late to a race, when she was just trying to take care of her sick mom.
Finally, Victoria explains her call with her brother today, and it’s no wonder she left work early. I don’t have the relationship with my parents that she does with hers, but if I heard about Grandma falling and breaking a hip, I’d be beside myself.
“Anyway, Hunter threatened me into staying here and living my life. And the worst part is I feel relieved. I hated seeing her slowly deteriorating when I was home for a few months, but I feel responsible for her because she’s my mom.”
I reach across the table and cover her hand with my own. Her eyes flash up, startled, but then they fill with warmth.
“I don’t think you’re wrong to feel relieved, or wrong to feel guilty. It’s okay to feel conflicting things. It sounds like your brother does have it covered.”
“Yeah.” She sounds dejected. “It still doesn’t make me feel better. So, here I am, wallowing.” She meets my eyes again. “I’m probably going to wallow for a while before anxiety gets me back to work tonight.” I hear the unspoken question: do you want to stay through my bullshit?
“What do you usually do when you’re sulking?”
She blinks, frowning. “Stare at a wall and contemplate the futility of life.”
“Yeah, fuck that. You like movies?”
“Who doesn’t like stuffing their face with buttery popcorn in a dark theatre where nobody can judge them?”
“Good point. Let’s go catch a movie.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Don’t you have better things to do?”
I have other things to do, but none of them are better. I don’t care if she’s sulking; I’d never forgive myself if I let her suffer alone today. “Nope. You know if anything good is playing nearby?”
“There are reruns of Disney movies at the theatre down the street.”
“Great.” I haven’t watched a Disney movie since I was a kid, and I hated it, but whatever. “Let’s go catch one.”
That’s exactly what we do. Spending time with her feels as natural as breathing.
After wolfing down a massive bucket of popcorn and sitting in the theatre for two hours, watching a bunch of animated figures in an incredibly uncomfortable movie theatre seat, I walk Victoria back home.
She looks better than she did earlier, but I’m still hesitant to leave her.
So, I accept her invitation to join her for a nightcap.
It’s late now—10pm. While I want to stay and take both of our minds off the bullshit of life, I know I shouldn’t. I’m an asshole, but I won’t take advantage of her when she’s had a hard day. So, I leave her with another kiss, and for the second night in a row, force myself to go back home.