Chapter Fourteen Hungary
Chapter Fourteen Hungary
Arthur gets third at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The race is a two-hour anxiety attack that kicks me in the heart and then pulls it out of my chest, fills it with helium and confetti, and releases it into the sky. When Arthur blows past the checkered flag fractions of a second before the rest of the pack, we all burst from our chairs, yelling and knocking into each other, headsets thrown, computers abandoned, a hodgepodge of absolute glee.
Even Holmes. I get a shot of him tearing up as Arthur takes the third-place medal, and sometime between him entering the cooldown room and ascending the podium, Ignition announces publicly that he’ll be driving in Belgium and the Netherlands after the summer break. The team is excited. Arthur is excited. Sarah is ecstatic . “I couldn’t have planned this timing better,” she squeals. “We’re all anyone will be talking about over the break!”
On our second-to-last day in Hungary, Arthur invites me to join him and Cameron and Delaney on a celebratory “lark,” per his text message. The four of us get something called chimney cake from a food truck and eat while rambling down the cobblestone side streets, the black streetlights illuminating gold as the daylight shrinks, my tiniest, most portable camera in hand. Arthur tells the lens about the old Jewish Quarter, where we are now, and how he’d first gotten lost here when he was eighteen. “My phone wasn’t working, I couldn’t find Wi-Fi, so I just walked around for hours until I ran into Cameron—literally.” He laughs. “Then we came here.”
I pocket my camera and survey the dilapidated building in front of us. Plants are growing out of the brown brick wall, and the door inside doesn’t have a handle. “This might’ve been someplace when you were eighteen, but right now it’s falling apart.”
“They’re called ruin bars,” he murmurs into my ear as he ushers me through the doorway, ducking to avoid a string of icicle-shaped lights. “Fitting, don’t you think?”
His breath is warm, and the inside is dark and dusty, and I work on swallowing as he leads me through a cramped lobby, around a corner… and into an enclosed courtyard.
Color coats everything. The walls are 90 percent antique posters, 10 percent dartboards, illuminated by a tangle of orangey lights. Short bedside lamps are shoved in corners, paper lanterns are flung over the skylight rafters next to disco balls. There’s a bar on the other side of the table-littered space, though a majority of the people are filtering toward a doorway behind a row of slender trees. Yes, actual trees.
“Why couldn’t we go to XTasy? They have bottle service.” Delaney pouts. “And did you really have to invite the entire team, King?”
She can’t mean… everyone. Everyone everyone. “I didn’t plan on it,” Arthur says. “Just told Rafael we were coming, and you know how Rafael is.”
“So sweet.” Cameron sighs. “And so chatty.”
We’ve reached the bartender, and Arthur pulls out his wallet, speaking Hungarian as he trades colorful money for a glass of carbonated something. “You up for it, Graywood? Thought this place might be more your speed, but we can head out now if it’s too much.”
I press my lips together to hide my social-anxiety grimace. I should go. If the entire Ignition team is about to show up to celebrate Arthur’s third-place win—including my ex-boyfriend and my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend—then leaving would be the best choice, followed by stone-cold sobriety. Arthur and I haven’t done our dating-not-dating gambit in a bar setting yet, and I’ve literally never gone to a nightclub before. The closest I’ve experienced is a democratic socialist bar on half-price margarita night, and I left before it flipped from after-dinner infighting to dance-floor speed-dating.
But… the summer break is almost here. Two weeks back in Texas, with nothing to film and no reason to see anyone. Two weeks with no Arthur. His excitement. His ruin bars.
Two weeks closer to September.
“Sure.” I take the fizzy drink from him. “You know me. I just love clubs, dancing, debauchery.”
“Do you now?” Arthur’s face glitters with a wind-chime laugh he won’t let out. “Then enjoy your froccs, love.”
“Pardon?”
“Hungarian specialty. Sparkling water and wine.”
I sniff the rim of the glass. “Sensible choice.”
Arthur’s grinning now. “Everything in moderation.”
As I take a sip, I can practically feel the weight of mini-devil Arthur sitting on my shoulder, twirling a pitchfork. This is not the smartest decision. But after I swallow and nod, begrudgingly giving Arthur the not-too-bad hum of drink approval, he looks so proud of himself for negatively influencing me that it’s… marginally endearing.
Anyway, I’ve had a weird few weeks. Months. Year? I deserve one wine spritzer.
“Like it?” Arthur asks, carefully watching my reaction.
“Yeah. It’s nice.”
When I take another drink, Arthur smirks. “There’s a good girl.”
“Gross,” Cameron mumbles, and goes to join Delaney on the other side of the bar, where she’s talking with a more enthusiastic bartender about the merits of Hungarian red blends.
I glare at Arthur as he cracks up. “Sorry, I couldn’t not.”
“You could’ve.”
“Maybe,” he says. “It isn’t like you’re indulging because of me, regardless.”
“Oh?” I say, pretending like I agree.
Our bartender returns with a tall, pale yellow beer for Arthur, and he waves him off with a tip. “Sure. Nobody can make you do something you don’t want to do.”
I like that version of me. She’s better than the real one, who tried everything to make people like her, then gave up. “Thank you. I think.”
“You’re welcome. Anyway, we should be enjoying ourselves tonight.” Arthur takes a sip. “I’ve missed getting to do this with you.”
His words run over me like water, a clear film over my skin. Missed. He’s missed spending time with me? Or he’s missed us bread-crumbing our fake relationship around other people? I take another big sip, and the knots woven into my legs from the million-hour days under my camera start to loosen. A few more sips, and I’ll be able to handle Arthur just fine.
“Has anyone talked to you about us?” I ask.
“No.” Arthur frowns. “Which is strange.”
“It is?”
“I would’ve bet anything on Delaney or Sarah confronting me, but it’s like they’re too distracted by the season.”
Like clockwork, I hear the Delaney warning that’s been on my mind the most: Liking a driver is pointless. You’ll only get hurt when they pick racing over you.
I think about Arthur, too. At night. When I pace. I think about what I do know about this person who’s slid into the most important facets of my life. Like how I know he lies and has secrets and keeps things to himself, since he never acts like a human who’s being crushed beneath the hydraulic press of an iconically destructive career move, so that overwhelming pressure has to go somewhere else. Since I also know that we don’t talk about Leone, or Holmes, or the money, or how any of this affects him.
I steal another bubbly sip of the spritzer. It’s good, fizzy without being too sweet, and slightly irritating—since he knew I’d like this drink. Somehow. That’s the other thing. Arthur pays attention to people. He looks and watches and listens all the time, and still acts detached and irreverent about anything that isn’t F1, like life is one big joke until we drive off this mortal coil. And I can’t puzzle out why. Why does he care about people but act like he doesn’t? Why is he always pretending?
Two weeks. The clock is ticking.
“I’m going to ask you something personal, and I really want you to start being honest with me, and it’s whatever, obviously,” I preface. “But do you usually… not date? Like long-term relationships.”
Arthur’s forehead creases. Only for a second, then he lets out an incredulous chuckle. “You say that like I haven’t been honest.”
I slip onto the barstool behind me and wait for more, silent.
He rolls his eyes and sits down, too. “Fine. Yes. I usually don’t date.”
“Why?”
“Well.” He sucks in one cheek, his regular swagger dimming as he thinks. “It can be difficult as a driver.”
My pulse picks up a notch. “How so?”
“I don’t want to sleep around during the season. And if I’m not sleeping around, then I’m usually not dating.” His eyes skid over to me, alarmed, like he said too much. “What I mean is—it’s hard. Getting to know someone when you’re always traveling and the press is putting labels on you. It’s hard to make it serious. Too much of a distraction, according to Merlin, and I can’t let the noise get in my way.”
There it is. Exactly what Delaney had said; Arthur will put driving first. “That’s an interesting thing to call a relationship,” I say, then go cold. “Sorry. Documentary mode. That was—”
Arthur laughs. “It’s fine. It was noise, though. Women in my life always wanted more, or they wanted less.” His eyes swivel to the skylight. “But they never seemed to want me.”
His confession jolts me. Is this the truth? “Well, you seem universally wantable to me.” My mouth slaps shut. “To a certain type. Not, you know. Everyone.”
Arthur gives me a tired smile. “Strangely, most women don’t want to fall in love with the race-car driver who’s never home. They just want to fuck him.”
I’d been taking another sip of my spritzer; it turns into a firecracker on the way down. “Sorry,” I sputter out, coughing into my elbow as Arthur passes me napkins.
Arthur has sworn around me. But not when it’s been just us, at a bar. Not when his hand has gone to rest on the back of my seat and I know what his fingertips feel like, warm, rough, and curious, how’d he found the scar on my arm like a dog with a scent for personal history. Not when he’s talking about himself fucking. What a word.
He’s right. People are distracting.
“Then the articles about you,” I start, trying to get back to the subject at hand.
“Some were true. Some weren’t.” His jaw shifts. “I wasn’t always a good man. Probably still not. But I’m always a good time, you know? Always a laugh.” He spins his knees my way and drops his voice to a playful whisper. “What’s with the questions, anyway? You haven’t gotten yourself a real crush, have you?”
I drop my napkins. They scatter over the floor. “ No . I—never mind.”
“Graywood.”
“I said never mind.”
There’s a pressure between my shoulder blades. He’s touching my back. “Come on, out with it.”
“I’d really rather not.”
“Then I’m going to assume you’ve realized the error of your ways with Max and have fallen feet first in love with me,” Arthur says. “In which case, we should probably discuss graduating to a fake engagement. Fake wedding, even—”
“I thought you had a girlfriend. A real one,” I admit, my eyes fully shut and my face fully on fire. “Or something. I don’t know.”
I crack open one eye to gauge his reaction. He’s laughing before I can even get him into focus. “You… Me? Who? ” Arthur says, elusive dimples on full display. “And you thought I’d still do this with you if I had a whole girlfriend stowed away somewhere?”
Well, shit. “I guess I wasn’t worried about like, a girlfriend, but maybe a someone? Someone not insignificant.”
“And why would you think that?” Arthur hums, leaning closer to me.
It’s hard to think. He’s so infinitely smug, and I don’t dislike it as much as I used to, when it’d reminded me of sore winners gloating over board games, Monopoly money stacked in their hands.
“I, well, during that first time you were in the car, you asked Cameron if ‘she’ was watching,” I explain. “So. That.”
He’s close enough that I see his pupils go from dimes to quarters, small then big then small again. Then his dimples vanish.
“Oh, that. Right.”
“It’s not really any of my business,” I continue. Shouldn’t have brought this up. Why am I still bringing it up?
“No, it is your business,” he retorts. “We’re a thing, and you don’t like cheaters. I get it.”
“I didn’t think you were—”
“There’s nobody else,” Arthur interrupts. His thumb presses against my back, finding and settling firmly against a notch in my spine. Like he wants to keep me still. “As long as we’re doing this, you have my full attention.”
“For the scheme?”
His cheek flexes. “For the scheme.”
“Then who was she?” I ask.
“She?”
“The person you want to watch you. Who is she?”
Blame the bloodhound in me, starved for scraps. But I still feel like I don’t know Arthur enough, and surprisingly, him implying his year of rest and relaxation was so messy that he now doesn’t date, but wait he doesn’t cheat, doesn’t completely gel. Something isn’t adding up. And if I’m curious about who’s managed to genuinely steal his attention, that’s just a documentarian’s innate nosiness.
And I know it wasn’t me. But… she had to have been someone new to watching his races, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked Cameron. Someone who Cameron could’ve seen in the garage that day. Someone Arthur might not have trusted yet to stick around for the whole thing, someone who didn’t like Formula 1 and had told him that—
“Merlin,” Arthur says. He swallows and leans away, and cold air rushes to fill up the empty space where he was, his hand, the possibility that he could’ve maybe wanted… never mind. Stupid.
I shouldn’t have asked.
“She’d gotten mad at me that day. Thought she was skipping out on it.” He plucks up a bottle cap and spins it, then slaps it down on the bar top. “Gotta keep her happy.”
I wish I was that bottle cap. Of course Arthur hadn’t meant me. He’d said that then, he’s saying it now. Arthur doesn’t want anything from me past the end of the summer. And that’s good. A relationship between us is scandalous enough to wreck a multimillion-dollar racing contract, and a documentary, and a new American circuit, and my professional image. I don’t want him to want me.
Then why do I ask him, “What happens after?”
“After what?”
“Once the team breaks your contract because of me. What happens then?”
I don’t know what I’m expecting. Arthur doesn’t respond right away, a newfound character trait I’m unsure of how to parse. He only looks at me, his jaw tight with all the words he isn’t saying. When he does decide to reply, his voice is soft and slightly hollow. “I’ll go to Italy. What about you?”
My heart thuds like it’s been dropped from the top of a building. “Right, sorry. Italy. I remember that now. I just got confused with all the different countries and—Italy seems like a fun place!” I’m word-vomiting, punched through the gut for nebulous reasons. Bad reasons. Fuck. “Ready to go back and find everyone else?”
For my adult life, I’ve worked to be the best documentarian I can be, asking questions that make people think before they speak. But I don’t like it when Arthur isn’t firing back at me. When he’s calculating how to respond, choosing which version of himself that I get.
After a long moment, his mouth ticks back up and I hate it—when he smiles like that, I get the lies. “Sure. Let’s go.”