Chapter 12
Nothing’s definitive, but Clarke knows how to work with what she’s got.
And for the next three weeks, work is all she does.
She’s at Elemental HQ from sunrise until well after dark, spending endless hours in racing sims and spinning around the test track.
She films a bunch of hype stuff for the second half of the season, some on her own and some with Matthew.
Anders comes by for an afternoon, also for media work, and Clarke manages to stay polite the whole time.
On the Friday before break is over, she gets a message from Thierry in the early evening.
I am one hundred percent sure you forgot, so here is a reminder that my birthday party is tonight and you said you’d be there and I KNOW you’re on-moon, so if you don’t come I will definitely cry and then you’ll be the person who made me cry on my birthday.
Clarke didn’t forget, actually. She’s not great with birthdays (or anything that’s not a racing event) but she knows this about herself and is diligent about putting reminders in her calendar.
She has a present ready. She went through the trouble of getting Elemental to approve her attendance.
And it’s just one city over, less than an hour by aerotrain.
She can celebrate Thierry and still be ready to wake up early tomorrow and keep working.
The plan does not go out the window when she walks into the restaurant and sees Julian sitting across from Thierry.
It doesn’t. Yes, she goes straight to the bar instead of heading to the table, but that’s just—she’s been working hard, and this is the only downtime she’s granting herself. That’s all.
“Having a rough night?” the bartender asks, watching Clarke rush through a second drink. It’s more smoke than liquid, and leaves a pleasant crackling on the roof of Clarke’s mouth.
Thierry just had to pick a restaurant with human bartenders instead of droids, didn’t he? “More like preparing for one. See the guy at the big table behind me? Dark curly hair, green shirt?”
The bartender flicks her eyes over the group. “He’s hot. Your ex?”
Clarke’s been watching for a glint of recognition, but there isn’t one—just appreciation. It (and the alcohol hitting her system fast, whoa) makes her feel safe enough to say, “No. He’s my almost.”
“Ah. I’ve got one of those.” The bartender moves away for a moment to serve another patron, then comes back and settles with her forearms on the counter. “Want to make him jealous?”
Clarke accidentally inhales half her drink. “What?”
“You’re hot, too,” the bartender says, matter-of-fact. “And my shift ends soon.”
It’s tempting. The bartender’s gorgeous, with a mischievous grin that makes Clarke think they could pass a few very enjoyable hours together. Unfortunately, Clarke’d prefer her private life stay private, and the best way to do that is to vet her partners thoroughly and keep the list short.
“I’m flattered,” she tells the bartender. “But I don’t think it’d work. The jealousy, I mean.”
“Oh, it would,” the bartender says. “He’s been looking over here every twenty seconds since you walked in. I bet if I—”
She leans across the bar and stretches a hand toward Clarke’s face.
Clarke’s brain is stuck on Julian keeping tabs on her, so she doesn’t move away, and the bartender smooths her thumb along the edge of Clarke’s bottom lip.
It could, at a different speed and with less eye contact, read as one girl helping another with her smudged makeup.
That is not how it reads. Clarke, even knowing that it’s an act, shivers.
“He’s on his way.” The bartender smirks. “If you change your mind, I’ll be here. Or if you guys decide you want a third.”
She scoots back off the bar and walks to another customer just as a familiar presence slides onto the stool next to Clarke’s.
Julian fills the space beside Clarke like he belongs there, all casual confidence.
“Are you coming to the table at some point, or were you planning on spending Thierry’s birthday flirting with a bartender? ”
“I can multitask,” Clarke says, stupefied enough by the concept of having a threesome with Julian that it takes her a moment to place the note in his voice. He is jealous. It’s satisfying, and she can’t resist teasing him. “She invited you to join in, if that makes you feel better.”
“I don’t share.”
Clarke coughs on her drink again as the mental image changes to just herself, Julian, and the possessive glint in his eye.
When she recovers enough to look at him, he has a little smile on his face, pleased with himself for drawing that reaction out of her.
She smacks him in the arm with the back of her hand, determined to keep this light.
They have to start faking a friendship next week, for goodness’ sake.
“What are you even doing here? Thierry didn’t tell me you were coming. ”
“He’s meddling, and not being subtle about it. But I wanted a chance to talk to you before the season starts up again anyways, and he said I could bring Graham, so here I am.”
At the mention of Julian’s race engineer, Clarke turns to survey the table once more. Sure enough, Graham Grayson is sitting next to Thierry. They’re looking at a holoscreen projected up out of Graham’s prosthetic arm, deep in discussion about something.
Graham was a competitive zero-grav pilot himself before an off-track injury took him permanently out of the seat in his late teenage years.
His right arm was severed. His prosthetic is awesome, but to race in Formula Zero and its lower circuits, your body can’t be more than 6 percent implanted or foreign tech.
You can be up to 49.9 percent tech in Formula Mech, which allows for some really cool (and sometimes unsettling, in Clarke’s opinion) direct interfaces between car and driver, but not in the other FIC circuits.
His racing career ended, but he refashioned himself into an engineer and worked his way up the ranks at Chronicle.
He’s been the voice in Julian’s ear for two years now.
“What are they talking about?”
“I think they’re planning Graham’s wedding.
” Julian sounds amused. He flags down a different bartender and orders refills for both himself and Clarke.
“Which is good. Hailey’s so laid-back and Graham’s so determined everything be perfect that I don’t think they’ve actually made any decisions yet, and they’re supposed to get married in the off-season. ”
“Thierry’s a romantic sap, so that’s probably the best birthday present you could’ve given him,” Clarke says, then steels herself. “You said you wanted to talk?”
Julian turns on his stool. There isn’t much room to work with; he has to plant his outside foot on the back rung of Clarke’s stool. It puts Clarke between his knees, and she’s suddenly hyperaware of all the places they’re almost touching. “What happened at Elemental, earlier during break.”
“The friendship campaign, right,” Clarke sighs. “No one will tell me what we’ll actually be doing, but I’m pretty good at putting on a show for the cameras, so I figure if—”
“I meant the way Yves spoke to you,” Julian interrupts. “And that woman. Naomi. Is that what it’s always like?”
Clarke goes rigid as remembered embarrassment tightens her muscles. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
She stands. There’s nowhere to go behind her since the customer on that side is hanging off the edge of their stool, so she has to step farther into the V of Julian’s thighs to get her feet on the ground.
Before she can climb over his back leg and escape, he stops her with a hand on her hip.
The flush of embarrassment turns into a deeper, richer heat that brands the shape of his palm into her skin.
“Not now, or not ever?”
“What?” Clarke can barely remember what they were talking about, not when he’s touching her. The new arrangement makes her a head taller, and Julian has his chin tilted up. He’s a shade or two darker than normal, a sure sign that he spent most of Chronicle’s shutdown somewhere sunny.
His laugh is low, rich, quiet. Private, just for her. “We’ll put a pin in it, in the interest of having a good night. Thanks.”
Clarke doesn’t know what he’s thanking her for at first, but realizes a second later he was talking to the other bartender, who’s just dropped off their next round. “I can’t drink this.”
“Why not?”
“I have an early morning.” Self-imposed, but he doesn’t need to know that. “And this.”
She lifts her left forearm into view, so close to his face that his eyes cross trying to keep it in focus. He gently pinches her wrist and moves it back a bit. “Your arm?”
“The biometrics chip,” Clarke says, because it apparently isn’t obvious.
She drags her other thumb across the skin a few inches below her inner elbow.
The chip lights up, a dot of blue visible through her skin.
“Another drink right now would put me over the limit. I don’t want to have to talk to Yves tonight. ”
A lot happens on Julian’s face in the next five seconds.
Clarke misses some of it, but she definitely catches confusion and anger.
She starts to retreat, not sure what she’s done to upset him, but he relaxes his expression with the next breath when he sees her discomfort.
“We’re going to have to talk about that later, when you’re sober. ”
“Talk about what? What’s your off-hours limit?”
“I don’t have one.”
Clarke scrunches her face up. “Do they deactivate your chip when you’re not working?”
Thierry appears before Julian can respond, draping himself over Clarke’s shoulders, loose with happiness.
“Guys! It’s time to order dinner. And to help me convince Graham that everyone’s had more than enough vanilla cake to last them a lifetime, so he should stop worrying about what Hailey’s great-aunt likes and choose something interesting. Come on!”
The pretty bartender shoots Clarke a smile as Thierry tugs her toward the table. Clarke feels the afterimage of Julian’s hands on her body long after he lets go.