Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
I probably can’t explain how borderline illegal it is to be a documentarian dating your subject matter. To the general public, no one thinks about the people behind the scenes, the first eyes that see the shots, the hands that stitch the story together. A relationship between a muse and an artist might even sell movie tickets if it got really scandalous. But to me, the idea has always been repulsive on two levels: One, it’s taking advantage of someone’s trust. Subject matters crack open their rib cages and let us stick our grubby little fingers into their life story.
Then there’s the career-decimation aspect of falling for someone you’re supposed to be an arm’s length away from. Documentarians are similar to journalists in that way; we operate on a code of ethics that creates a wall between us and the rest of the world. I’m not supposed to interfere. If the camera is rolling, and we’re documenting how life really is, is it right to slip cash to someone on a street corner asking for help? Make sure the children I’m filming have winter clothes and enough food to last through tomorrow?
Or is it better to share real images of the world, knowing that you’re documenting pain, and that you could change thousands of hearts by sharing reality?
When I debated ethics in college, I always landed on the side of the latter. I told myself that when push came to shove, I would be in control. Detached. An arm’s length away, always.
So it’s beyond weird to be literally standing side by side with Arthur at an airport.
“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” he mutters.
“Talked you into not taking your private jet from England to Monaco? It’s a two-hour flight, Arthur. You won’t combust being pressurized with poor people.”
“Two hours and thirty minutes,” he corrects. “And I don’t think you’re poor.”
I snort into my oat-milk latte. “Lying to someone about their own bank account isn’t flattering.”
He makes another big show of leaning over, scanning the long passport check line in front of us, and settling back next to me. “You should’ve let me buy your radioactive coffee, then.” He frowns. “Since you’re on your last dollars and all that.”
“I think if we’re going for the whole ‘you’re so into me that you’re forgoing flying on your family’s private jet to travel with me, a peasant’ thing, only buying me coffee is vaguely insulting.”
“The whole coffee shop?”
I squint at him. “What would I do with an airport coffee shop?”
“It’s important for WAGs to have hobbies,” he says, already ducking away from an arm smack that isn’t coming.
“Do I want to know what that means?”
“Wives and girlfriends.”
I groan. “So, literally reducing someone to their relationship to a man.”
A corner of his mouth turns up. “A very important man?”
“Try again.”
The corner goes down. “Yes, you’re right and I’m wrong.”
“Very good. Gold star.”
It’s been forty-eight hours since Arthur won first place in England, and the black espresso he’s clinging to says that the post- race debriefs and interviews and closed-door meetings are wearing him down more than his constant camera smile portrays. Earlier in the airport, I had to hold his bag while a crowd of teen boys holding back tears took one hundred selfies with him. Arthur Bianco is back and better than ever, according to every sports publication I’m now subscribed to. Once we get to Monte Carlo, Arthur is booked for back-to-back luxury-watch photo shoots, then a two-hour cardiovascular workout session, then a meeting with his uncle and other Ignition “stakeholders.” Will we get to sleep before we’re sent to Hungary? Questionable.
Though Holmes has preemptively emailed Arthur that, thanks to his win at Silverstone, his contract is now worth a breezy $66 million. Just like the fine print had foretold.
Sadly for us, Arthur’s groundbreaking victory as a reserve driver and comeback kid swallowed up any conversations around our pre-race PDA. Which is why I’d had the brilliant idea to have Arthur fly with me this time. What says subtle romantic interest louder than “willing to squeeze into a tin can with you”? And it’ll give us time to discuss how we’re going to go about doing this, too. I need clear, understandable rules for our “courtship” that we both consent to.
Boundaries, if you will.
I take a video with my phone of Arthur walking to meet the stewardess outside our plane. We’re flying with Ignition crew, and I need to look half documentarian, half secret fling. The worst combo.
“Your bags?” the air stewardess asks us, the last to board.
“Already checked,” Arthur says. “I only have a carry-on. Same with her.”
Cold air coats the inside of my throat as I look down. I had a suitcase earlier. I now… don’t have it. And I can’t remember the last place I saw it. Did I put it down when Arthur was taking selfies? That was miles of airport and a passport check away.
Frozen inside, I grab at my neck, feeling for the locket I wear every day. There’s just enough space in the heart-shaped charm to keep my daily ADHD meds; I restock it each morning for emergencies like this. It’s the only thing I’ve kept from my birth mom.
My pulse drums with relief when I feel the silver chain.
Okay. So I don’t have my clothes, toiletries, or books. That’s fine—I’ll be fine. I nod to Arthur, agreeing that it’s just me and my backpack, refusing to show any sign of panic on my face. As an adult, I’ve learned enough about how my brain works to stow my essentials on my body when I travel. I’m not a little ADHD kid handcuffed to symptoms I can’t name, trying to explain how I could possibly lose my favorite library book between all the houses I lived at.
At least I have my anxiety medication.
Don’t I?
Slowly, I shift my backpack around and search the front zipper. There’s my big orange tube of ADHD pills, some Dramamine, a toothbrush, and… Negative. I’m about to fake feelings for a Formula 1 driver on an airplane, sans Klonopin.
Numb from the face down, I follow Arthur onto the plane. Our first-row chairs are twin overstuffed recliners separated by iced champagne in the armrest, and he takes the window seat, then pats the chair next to him. “Your proletariat seating, mademoiselle.”
I don’t move.
“Lilah?” he says, sarcasm dropping. “I meant you.”
Right. Me. I sit and immediately go for an anti-nausea pill. I have the tiny plastic pack half open with the champagne bottle in hand when Arthur gingerly touches my wrist. “I’m not sure you can take those together,” he murmurs, easing the bottle from my icy grip. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Um.” Then, realizing that is a very not-okay reply, I say, “It wasn’t this bad last time.” I also hadn’t just misplaced my belongings during an international business trip while accompanied by a man who lives from a suitcase, literally.
“I remember.” Arthur’s voice is saturated with concentration. He sounds exactly the same as Grand Prix Arthur, as if my impending nervous breakdown is an upcoming high-speed corner. “What normally helps?”
“Not being on a plane?” I press two fingers into either side of my forehead and start massaging. “Okay, sorry. I don’t know. Usually I can meditate when I’m freaked out, but the vibration is too much and I kind of feel like I’m going to—”
The plane begins to move and my eyes fly shut. This is so embarrassing. Why does Arthur have to be the one to see me like this? He drives race cars for a living. Flying has to be relaxing in comparison.
This must make me look so… Kentucky.
“Shit,” Arthur exhales. “Okay, hey, here.”
There’s a click. He’s pushed the armrest between us up, champagne bottle moved. Then I feel him gently pull me closer to his side and…
He’s holding me.
Arthur is hugging me.
He moves so quickly, my panic attack is shocked out of existence. One second, I’m in my seat, normal, and the next, his arm is circling my shoulders and his fingers are wrapping around my arm, where my T-shirt ends and my skin begins.
“You-you don’t need to do this,” I whisper.
“I know,” he whispers back. “Is it working?”
For someone so large and fast, he’s very calm. And very, very warm. And I lean into him because my breath was turning into lead moments ago, and now… now it’s not. Now I have his sparkling-champagne scent whisking away the stomach-cramping smell of sterile, recycled air. I have the thick weight of his arm to keep me from floating away, his heavy muscles anchoring my body.
Safe.
This feels like I’m protected.
“Yeah.” I bite my cheek. “Thanks.”
“Anything for you.”
Snorting, I peek at his face. Still the same Arthur. Sharp nose, electric eyes, too-big mouth. Looking at him is comforting, mostly because he lifts one brow and gives me that what are you staring at? frown that’s kind of become our thing.
“Someone is definitely going to see this,” I say.
“Your master plan at work.”
I giggle, and the plane-death fear coiled in my abdomen relaxes another centimeter. “Is this typically how you introduce your girlfriends to the team?”
“Oh, so you’re my girlfriend now.” His body rumbles. He’s laughing, and we’re so close I can feel it through his chest. “Can’t say I’ve had enough to know the proper protocol.”
My stomach sinks. It isn’t front-page news that he’s not the relationship type, but I’d sort of been holding on to the idea that his mystery radio woman was… important. Long term. An indication that Arthur has secret romantic depths he hid from the world, and his heartbreaker reputation had been exaggerated by the press. Not because I care about who he dates or how often he does it. More like, on the off chance someone in the documentary industry does hear about me cuddling up to Arthur Bianco, inebriated from his European cologne, they might think I’m special to him.
But this is okay, too. For the best! I’m fake-dating a pro, and I force my train of thought back on track and say, “We’ve been around each other almost every day for a month straight. If you were actually interested in me, I think this is what you’d do. To show people your, um, interest.”
“Ah.”
One of his fingertips slips beneath the hem of my shirtsleeve. Mindlessly, running up and down. His fingers are warm and slightly rough, calloused in places I didn’t expect. Must be from the steering wheel. Right when I realize he’s found a long-healed-over scar, tracing the raised length of it curiously, he starts talking again.
“What else would I do? To show interest?”
Ignoring what’s clearly an attempt to fluster me, I think about the big romantic gestures I’ve seen in movies, then shrink the airport runs and boom-box lifts down to the size of Arthur’s emotional landscape. Public displays of affection like this feel huge for a known playboy, ground-shaking, and I don’t really know where to go from here. “You’d probably try to buy me things. Not a coffee shop.”
“Clothing?”
“No.”
“Jewelry?”
“God, no. It doesn’t have to be something I wear.”
“It would. If you were my girlfriend, Graywood, I would stake my claim on you publicly,” he says quietly. “You’d look good in my number nine.”
The image of me in his racing jacket and not much else splinters through my brain, and where the hell did that come from? “A watch. I would tolerate wearing a watch.”
He rumbles again. “Always so serious.”
“Wanting to be on time isn’t serious.”
“Right. Maybe I’ll get you a nine anyway,” he hums. “It’s my lucky number.”
“Says who?”
“Haven’t you heard that?” His fingertip runs around the top of my scar. “Nine lives. I land on my feet every time.”
This man and his obsession with cats. “You would use your number to brag.”
“I would. So tell me, what’s the story? When we land, and my team asks me what the hell I’m doing, what should I say?”
This is a much easier question to answer. “Don’t say anything.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because we need to act like we don’t want anyone to know what’s going on,” I remind him. “It’s a courtship. Flirting. Nothing more than that. Just because… I don’t want this to implode too early. If we can make it until the race in Monza, on September 1, I can structure my film around this summer.”
Arthur takes a deep breath. “That’s when Max’s contract is up.”
He sounds surprised, which is confusing. Why does his voice go dark whenever the topic of Max comes up? Before I can ponder that for too long, Arthur recovers. “But sure, it’s smart. We stay on the down-low—deny the obvious love affair—until our final attack. Hey, Ignition’s owner, Bob, is getting married the night before Monza. Come as my plus-one.”
“To a wedding?” I’m cringing already. I’ve gone to exactly one fancy wedding before, one of Max’s old friends who went into the Navy, and that was D.C. military fancy. I can’t see myself surviving a night of stilted rich-people small talk, non-vegan appetizers, and assholes in tuxedos, Formula 1 edition. “Don’t you need to sleep? If it’s that Saturday, that’s the same day as Qualifying.”
“I can stay out late on a school night.” He pauses. “ If I’m driving. But look at it this way—coming with me would secure you a trip to Italy. Then you could film the race. Get my dramatic ending either way.”
With that timeline reminder, two months left on the clock, I’m suddenly aware that the plane has gone still, the engine steady. I made it. We’re flying, and I didn’t fall out the window. Now is when I could pull away from Arthur, thank him for being the one person who’s successfully calmed me down through physical touch, and start up a movie. Scroll Letterboxd. Anything else.
But… I run cold. And he is really, ridiculously warm, like a blond furnace, burning through black coffee and lean protein. And since we’re subtly announcing that we’re maybe slightly a thing to the whole team, wouldn’t it be weird if I suddenly didn’t touch him for the remainder of the flight?
I have to stay nuzzled up against him. For the plot.
I wriggle closer, hunkering down, and Arthur shifts so that I can use his biceps like a pillow. “Better?”
“Mm-hmm.”
He strokes the top of my shoulder. Just once. “My girlfriend likes being touched,” he says, more to himself than me. Like he’s studying, hushed, reading out loud from a book he’s trying to memorize.
It makes my face heat anyway. “Sometimes. With warning. It can be too much.”
“Too much?”
Danced myself into a corner with this one. “I get overstimulated. That’s why I get quiet sometimes. It isn’t, like, a superiority complex.” Far too defensive. How do I explain this? “Sometimes I’m—I can be slower at processing things than other people. My brain goes too fast all at once, and I get stuck, thinking everything through.”
Arthur is quiet for a long moment, taking that in. Then he says, “So I have to earn this?”
I laugh. “I wish there were rules to it. But sure. Try and earn it.”
“What else should I know about you?” he asks. “That’s what I would do, by the way. To show my interest.”
“Touch me?”
“Ask you questions.”
Definitely blushing now. “You already know way too much about me,” I deflect.
Real surprise colors Arthur’s voice. “I know what you do for a living and your last relationship.”
What else is there?
The thought slams into the side of me and oh. Oh no.
I did the thing.
You know those people who fall for everything? Billboards advertising the world’s best chocolate pie, ancient Facebook screenshots about nonexistent scams? That was the woman I spent sixteen years with, who made me the cynic I am. My birth mom was the world’s biggest believer in happily ever after, in good things happening for good people, sweet as synthetic chocolate pie.
Problem was, she hunted her happy ending down every day. There was always another amazing boyfriend who couldn’t remember my name. Another wonderful trip to Lexington to bet on horses and play cards and feel like she was the main character, if only for a night. It was a miracle her job at the Bicycle card factory out in Erlanger kept her employed during her “dark spells”—the inevitable aftermath of catching Prince Charming with another woman and gambling away our savings. Then people would notice I was skipping school again to take care of her, and a nice stranger with a fake smile would take me away, and I began despising the beautiful promises she made about our life but never kept. Eventually, anyone would start hating happily ever after. You realize people drive themselves crazy dreaming about the last minutes before the credits roll.
And sometimes, I catch myself doing it, too. Maybe I can trust the professional race-car driver who’s largely my polar opposite and has 100,000 articles written about his failures to commit. Maybe none of these very serious motorsports people will find out that I’m secretly filming my own documentary and effectively undermining their multimillion-dollar marketing plan. Maybe agreeing to move to Texas with my best-friend-slash-boyfriend-slash-business-partner won’t be a mistake. Trust him. He’ll always be around.
But now he isn’t, and I’m sitting next to an objectively interesting and complex person like Arthur, defining half of myself by a man who dumped me, just like my birth mom would’ve. Relationships with men were her favorite narratives, the fables she worshipped: One day you’ll meet your own Prince Charming, and you won’t have to think about yourself anymore.
“I do like to fight,” I blurt out.
“Oh.” Arthur sounds confused. “Right. Okay.”
“Your text. On the plane to England? You were right.” I inhale a tight, painful breath. “Not like our fight in Texas or after that interview but—bantering. Arguing. I don’t know. There’s a line, and I like it before the line. It’s… fun.”
Arthur is taller than he was a second ago. He’s sitting up straighter, paying attention. “Okay.”
“And gardening. I like plants. I won my county’s largest tomato competition two years in a row.”
“Tomatoes.” All three syllables are soft in his mouth. “Got it.”
“And sad movies. And not pop music unless it’s really good. And The X-Files . I’m picky with TV romance, but X-Files is perfect. It took them seven seasons to really kiss, and then Mulder got—”
I stop myself before I ruin it. But then Arthur says, “Abducted, I know.” And I must be diffusing my surprise, since he adds, “I had a thing for Scully.”
“You did?”
His thumb brushes my shoulder. “There’s something about a smart, serious careerwoman who won’t take your bullshit.”
I nod enthusiastically. Well, as best as I can against his shoulder. “Completely agree.”
Arthur does his wind-chime laugh, and I’m embarrassingly pleased. I shift until I can see his face again. “Do you think I’m weird?”
Arthur looks down at me with a half smile. “Not as much as you want me to.”
I consider that for a moment, then decide I like it. I shift again, so I can’t meet his eyes when I say, “Sorry. Max was my first big relationship, and he kind of just… told me what to like.”
“How did that work? You made movies together.” He’s annoyed at Max, not me. I can tell.
“Dating him was like dating the cultural zeitgeist. Max is into whatever’s popular. So I guess Formula 1 is in, and documentaries and politics are out,” I explain, thinking how retrospectively funny it is to meet someone as they’re passing through your life’s passion, a pit stop on their way to other trends. I remember Max’s first proposal about this project, him attempting to explain Formula 1, me utterly dumbfounded. “Maybe that’s why he cheated. He said he knew I’d wanted to tell him to quit making this film.”
Arthur stiffens. “He’s not worth your psychoanalysis.”
“I know. But it’s hard not to.” Saying this feels like a confession, like I did something wrong. Pulled into the black hole once again.
Arthur shifts. The motion pulls me into him. “Do you regret what we’re doing?”
“ No , no. This is—” I lick my lips. “When he first pitched this documentary to me, I’d thought it was a glitch. Like the Max I knew wasn’t thinking straight, and he’d see that you can’t make a documentary for a company, eventually.” This is embarrassing. Admitting I had hope for someone who seems more hopeless with each passing day. Even now, I don’t know what I’d do if Max learned the scale of Ignition’s plan and admitted that I’d been right about in-house documentary being a Hollywood oxymoron. On some gross level, this summer has proven how much he needs me. Needed me. I was his moral compass, a grounded and detached realist who couldn’t be won over as easily as him.
But you don’t use a moral compass if you think you’re going in the right direction.
Arthur surprises me, though, like he always does when we talk; he doesn’t press into my wound. “You’re loyal. You did it because you loved him,” he says, and then, way too fast, “Love him. Sorry.”
Present tense.
Shit.
I’d forgotten that I’d lied. Arthur thinks I’m hung up on Max. Because I literally told him that. Worse, Arthur must think that Max could win me back—and he’s still holding me. Publicly.
For our scheme, I know. To piss off his uncle, yes. This is fake. He’s fake.
But that doesn’t make what he’s doing any less competitive, fundamentally. And I don’t know, maybe kind of… hot?
“You want to make a better movie than him,” Arthur continues. “You’re proving a point.”
“Oh, yeah. Sort of.” That champagne bottle is around here somewhere. I could conk myself over the head with it. “But it was also, um, you. You never offered to throw the race, and I guess I was impressed by you and—and your drive. Metaphorically speaking.”
There’s a good ten seconds where I count Arthur’s breaths. One, two. He doesn’t inhale that deep. But then out of nowhere, he lets out a laugh so bright and perfect, I feel it inside my bloodstream. Pure golden glitter. “I impressed you ?”
The tips of my ears go warm. “I take it back.”
“No, sorry, can’t be done.” He’s talking with the same tripping-over shock of someone who’s walked into their own surprise birthday party. All his friends are here, and there’s cake. “My driving impressed the Lilah Graywood, professional motorsports hater.”
“I meant your initiative!”
“So my race didn’t impress you?”
“It was fine.”
“Fine.”
“Good.” I muffle a laugh. “Respectable.”
“I’m switching seats,” he mutters.
“No, wait.” I wonder if he’s smiling. If it’s sharp or not. “I’m stealing your body heat.”
Arthur grumbles back a “demanding American,” but he doesn’t actually go to move. So that’s how we stay for the rest of the flight. Arthur puts in his headphones, I stay curled into his side, and at one point, with fuzzy scraping electronic music drifting from his ears, I decide that this can’t be the only time I think about who I am without Max. He broke up with me, but it’s been my choice to remain broken. Apologetic. Scared. I’ve kept his voice inside my head like an imaginary friend, judging me, telling me how to act, a constant and cruel inner monologue because that’s what I thought I needed to survive. Max Black’s guidebook to a better Lilah Graywood. And I don’t need it anymore.
I didn’t love Max, but I haven’t let him go, either.
Now I will.
At least, that’s the massive decision I make as the post-race-weekend exhaustion drags me to sleep buried under Arthur’s arm, my thoughts blurring into one long sentence. Wearing someone’s driver number could be nice and electronic music sounds like car engines and I think I’d like to figure out what I like.