Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-One
To everyone’s surprise except mine, Arthur wins the Dutch Grand Prix.
It’s a stroke of luck; Cavalli and Leone had penalties, Static screwed themselves over with pit-stop strategy, and one of the midfield teams, Wusch, dominated second and third place, inadvertently creating a barrier that protected Arthur’s solid lead.
Notifications light up my phone before Arthur can pop the ceremonial podium champagne. King Arthur Back on Top With Dutch Victory—But Will He Drive Italy? is the title of the first blog in the queue. Even without Arthur’s full Monza story being public knowledge, the next race is a big deal. For a global sport where a driver might switch to a different team in a different country depending on wins or controversies, an Italian driver winning in Italy means something major. The fans lose it, storming the track afterward in an impromptu parade.
At least, that’s what Cameron explains as he picks me up from the hotel.
“Where are we going?” I say, watching a long stretch of beach and water zoom outside the open car window. Zandvoort, apparently, is a beach resort town nestled by the North Sea, and the weather is so perfectly toasty that I have to pinch myself.
“The beach. You can breathe again.” Cameron shoots me a delightfully dry look. “That’s a cause worthy of celebration.”
“I don’t think I can drink yet. Alcohol and cold medicine famously don’t get along.”
“We’ll do enough for you.”
I haven’t seen Arthur in person since he left the clinic on Saturday for Qualifying. He’d thought the movie put me to sleep—but it hadn’t. Not for long, at least. I kept waking up, startled that he was still there next to me, warm and real. He’d pat my shoulder and make a joke about being too scared to move and doctor’s orders and then I was out again. When he did eventually slip out of bed, he arranged pillows where he used to be, collected his stuff, and stood by the window. Not staring at me, nothing Edward Cullen creepy. Just… existing in the same space for another moment.
Once we’re parked, Cameron leads me to a sun-bleached wooden gate protecting the private beach. “Safest spot in the city. No photographs allowed.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s a nude beach.”
“It’s a—excuse me?”
“Nude beach,” he repeats, perpetually chill. “We always come here. Oh, are you, like, not cool with seeing that?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know.”
Cameron frowns. “You can totally stay dressed. And I can text everyone? We can find someplace else to go.”
My mind is a broken hamster wheel, no longer squeaking. Cameron is wearing a black shirt over white swim trunks, his pale legs and arms sticking out like gangly vegetable roots, and oh no, I’m imagining him naked, big time, no way out. Blushing, I tip my head down so the wide-brimmed sun hat I bought at a supermarket will cover my red cheeks. Okay. Nude beach. Private beach. No grainy photographs online could be worth it. I can keep my Joy Division shirt and cargo shorts on. Sure, Arthur will be lounging on the sands in various scraps of clothing—or not—and I’ll look like a Hot Topic employee. But so it goes.
“I’m ready,” I tell Cameron, my fingers balling into determined fists.
We find our group down on the clean white sand yards away from the water. Delaney is on a huge striped blanket, and Arthur is standing ankle-deep in the frothy waves. He’s in the short-shorts version of swim trunks, his muscular thighs and sculpted back on full display, sunscreen glinting off every perfect line in his body.
I cross my arms over my very clothed chest.
“Hey, Lilah!” Delaney beams, and my heart thuds with appreciation at the distraction-slash-formal-announcement of my arrival. She’s also dressed in a short pink cover-up, her long legs tipped with tassel-covered sandals, and I could kiss her for not being naked.
“Welcome to the real Zandvoort,” she says as I sit next to her. “Sarah had to deal with schedules, but she’s meeting us later.”
“I’m surprised you could fit nude beach into your schedule.”
She smirks. “Trying to have more ‘fun’ as the kids say.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Arthur isn’t turned toward the water anymore. I ignore it. Him. Whatever. “Did you bring extra sunscreen?”
“Yeah, but ask Cam.” She laughs. “He has the heavy-duty chemicals.”
“In my bag,” Cameron says, never looking up from the thick architecture magazine now on his lap. “Del, you’re going to get sunstroke without SPF 50.”
“Have I ever?”
“There was that one time, in Monaco.”
“I didn’t have sunstroke, I was pissed.”
“Why?”
“You guys forgot I was meeting you on that yacht. I walked ten miles to watch you sail away.”
Cameron taps his chin. “See, I remember texting you that I’d pick you up with the lifeboat.”
“I didn’t feel like drowning.”
“I’m a good sailor!”
“Lifeboats don’t have sails, idiot.”
I laugh as I extract Cameron’s sunblock. It’s a very unsexy, medicinal-looking tube, white plastic with plain black text. I pop the cap just as Arthur says, “Hey, Lilah, you actually came… You too, Cameron.”
“Warm welcome,” Cameron mutters.
I cast Delaney a quick peek as Arthur sits next to me on the blanket, barely fitting on the leftover space. She meets my eye and nods once. It’s a your secret’s safe with me nod. And I actually do trust her. I kind of think we’re friends.
My suspicions are mildly denied, though, when she pops up and dusts the sand from her thighs. “Hey, Cam, come grab drinks with me. Arthur, Lilah, what do you want?”
“Nothing for me,” I say as Arthur says, “I’m good. Trying sobriety for a bit.”
He is? Since when? Delaney’s eyebrows rocket up, confirming that this is a new development, but she opts for her standard chill dismissal as she helps Cameron get up and walk off.
Then it’s just me and Arthur and the sea.
There’s more space on the blanket now. I could move. But Arthur also didn’t have to sit directly next to me, the browned-gold hair dusting his tan leg making goose bumps prickle over mine. He picks up a smooth stone and runs his thumb across it, then sets it down and clears his throat.
“Need help with that?”
The sunblock. I’m still clutching the tube. Fuck my entire life. Momentarily, I consider chucking it into the water, though I’d rather suffer a million years of constant Arthur torture than litter.
“If you don’t mind.”
“Nah.” He nods toward his knees. “Come here.”
Here is the micro-patch of blanket in front of his crossed-knee lap. Crisscross-applesauce-style lap, actually. I think I’m dissociating. I scoot over on my hands and knees—standing would be way too difficult—and then I’m here. In front of Arthur and his exposed legs as he squirts sunblock into one big palm. He gently moves the tips of my hair from my neck, just barely tucking it over my shoulders, and tugs the hem of my T-shirt down in the back to expose what I imagine is glaringly pale skin at the top of my spine.
“Sorry about the…” I pause. I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for. Having short hair, wearing a shirt at a nude beach, needing sunblock instead of sensual body oil glittering with scintillating microplastics.
“You’re okay,” he says. “I’m sorry if I get any on your shirt.”
“Ha. This thing’s basically a rag.”
His fingertips touch the notch at the base of my neck, wait, then smooth the sunblock in one right swipe.
“It’s cool. You always wear cool shirts.” He rubs the cold sunblock into my skin, using tiny methodical circles, heavenly and horrible. “I checked out the Velvet Underground. I think I like it.”
“You look up the bands on my shirts?”
“Yeah.” More circles, his fingers dipping beneath the fabric. “I’m making a playlist.”
I’m grateful I have a reason not to be looking at him. With his reading skills, he’d know instantly that I have a crush on him that’s crushing me. I stare at the waves, the bright blue sky over the water, and swallow down I like you, I like you, I like you.
“I’m sorry about the other stuff, too,” he adds suddenly. “I shouldn’t have unloaded on you like that at the hospital.”
That’s what he’s thinking about? “You don’t need to apologize.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
He runs his thumb over the slope of my neck, where it becomes my shoulder, like he’s studying my anatomy with his fingers. “Men aren’t supposed to do that. Freak out and, I don’t know, talk like that.”
My chest twists with surprise at his quiet harshness. “That’s not true. Men can feel and act however they want. And you have every reason to have baggage because of what happened.” Trauma would be a better descriptor, but that’s a big word to spring on him.
He pulls away briefly, and my heart drops. Then I hear the cap of the sunblock click back open. He’s only getting more.
“I don’t want you to think that I’m not… capable,” he says.
It’s the roughness in his voice that makes me confess a morsel of my thoughts, how disappointed he sounds in himself for feeling emotions that aren’t win and smirk and flirt . “Arthur, I think you’re so capable of everything I’ve ever seen you do. It kind of makes me mad how good you are at literally everything. Like, you speak one hundred languages and drive cars that could be spaceships and everybody likes you.”
“Not everybody,” he says, oddly distant, then I hear him rub his hands together, warming the sunblock up. “But thanks. Not trying to dig for compliments or anything.”
“I’d never give you one if I thought you were.”
He chuckles. Gently, he moves my forearm so that he can start applying sunblock there, shoulder to elbow in small, slow, easy sweeps that make my stomach tighten. If he touched me somewhere private, less exposed, I wonder if he’d be as gentle. Or does he not know how to hold back when he’s lost in the heat of someone else?
“Your wrist,” I blurt.
“Healed up.”
“Are you sure?”
I start to move. Arthur presses two fingers to the outside of my arm, stalling me in place. I don’t know how he does that, exactly. “I won a Grand Prix with this wrist. I can handle putting some lotion on you.”
I swallow, guilty anyway. Mostly for those thoughts. Those were… some thoughts. “Okay. Yes. Also, I’m, um, guessing you don’t want me to include what you told me at the clinic in the documentary?” I segue. “Sorry. We just—we should talk about it.”
“We should.” He falls silent momentarily, though he doesn’t stop touching me. “I’ve only told you. I only want to tell you. That’s what I want. But what do you want, Lilah?”
My media ethics classes and conversational flowcharts and carefully planned career crumble to ash. Arthur isn’t asking me to keep this huge part of his life out of my film… yet. It isn’t that I want to serve his trauma on a platter for the world to consume, but this is his story, the reason he is the way he is, and I wouldn’t keep a secret like this for anyone else. Least of all if I thought it could hurt the person I’m keeping it for. He has panic attacks. Then drives a Grand Prix. And if I told him how scared that makes me, would he pull away again, retreating into himself?
Why did he have to tell me the giant secret? I’m the worst possible choice.
“I want you to talk to me if it gets bad like you described,” I find myself saying. “Or it doesn’t have to be me, of course—anyone. Not because I don’t think you can’t handle it, but because you deserve not to have to bear this on your own. Monza is going to be hard, if they do let you race it, and…”
I’m not going to be there in the garage anymore.
The realization steals away the rest of my words. This past Sunday was the last race before the wedding. The next time Arthur suits up, I won’t be a part of the team anymore. In fact, I’ll be Public Enemy No. 1.
I’d been so sick, I hadn’t even realized it at the time.
Our summer is ending.
Arthur had been smoothing the sunblock up my shoulder, under my sleeve. Now he stops. Completely.
“They’re letting me.”
I twist around on the sand, the emotions crashing over me hushed with a clap. “You’re driving Monza?”
Arthur looks surprised, glancing at my fists against the blanket, and maybe I haven’t expressed how desperately I’ve been rooting for him because he smiles, unsure of himself, then all the way grinning. “Yeah.”
I don’t think as I grab his shoulders and squeal. “Arthur! Oh my God! How do you feel? Are you excited?” I catch a breath. “Or is it scary? Shit. I don’t know. I would be scared.”
He laughs, watching me pull back. “I’ve—God. I’ve been waiting years for this. The physical therapy. Not knowing… only hoping.” He’s contemplative, my excitement slowly trickling into him. “Everything I’ve done is to race Monza again. Maybe it’s stupid, but I can prove I’m the greatest Bianco driver if I can just finish that race again. Or, you know, the best one right now.”
“The greatest.”
“By your metric, maybe.”
“And mine’s the one that matters.”
His jaw twitches, surprised, and he cautiously says, “Why do you say that?”
“Because I know how hard you’re fighting, and what you’re going through. I know who you’ve had to tolerate in order to achieve your dream.” I look at his hand on the blanket, chalky with sunblock, and imagine being brave enough to take it. “Nobody could be better than you.”
“You really think that?” Arthur says, closing his eyes. I can’t help but think—no, hope—that it’s so he doesn’t see me say no .
“Yes, I do.”
“You’ll watch me?”
“Well, yeah.”
“The Italian Grand Prix.”
“Yes, okay? I like this ridiculous sport now. It’s fun.”
I sound like I’m ten years old. Nevertheless, Arthur’s eyes pop open, and I’m struck by hazel, hazel gold, hazel brown, excitement, wonder. Like I’m the one making his dream come true.
He must sense my impending blush, since he stands, holding out his hand. “Come on.”
I’m already getting up when I ask, “To?”
“There’s a beach bar close by.” His fingers slide down my palm to help me up, straight down the center. “ Killer karaoke.”
We traverse to the non-nude side of the beach, where Sarah appears with a purse full of clothing. This includes dresses for Delaney and me—a great compliment. “I thought you might’ve gotten carried away by the Dutch nudism,” she says after I’ve traded my sand-covered shirt and shorts for the soft orange dress. It’s short , tight, and the middle of the bodice isn’t even there, leaving me with a bow-tie noodle of fabric attached to a skirt. No bra would work here, and one look in the bathroom mirror has me Jim-from- The-Office -ing Sarah.
“I look stupid.”
“You look hot.”
“I’ve never looked hot in orange .”
“You’re a babe,” she says, and swats my arm in a way that feels lovingly reprimanding. “It’s vintage! From the 1960s. And it has pockets, for the practical woman.”
I look at myself again. A brunette woman looks back at me, her hair tucked behind her ears, a beaming blonde next to her. A friend. I hug my arms around my chest, overwhelmed by a swell of unnamable emotion; sisterhood, or adulthood, or getting what I’ve always wanted and seeing it framed in a sandy public bathroom next to a karaoke bar in the Netherlands.
“Sorry. I’m not used to the dress-up, girl-friend thing,” I admit, skin tingling. “Let me start over. I love the dress.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Sarah lets out a relieved laugh. “Good. And about the friend thing, I can’t say I love how we met, but I love having met you.” She starts to repack her bag, then stops. “Have you thought about not leaving us?”
Us. I love that word tonight. “You know I have to. I’ve got a film to finish.”
With a stiff nod, she says, “Nobody ever would’ve… let me do something like what we’re doing, with Arthur’s contract, before you came here. And I never would’ve been brave enough to help him on my own.”
“It definitely wasn’t bravery.” I laugh. “And I think you would’ve.”
“Thanks.” She drags in a breath, then rolls off one of her friendship bracelets, handing it to me. Incredibly, the pony beads spell out I CAN DO IT WITH A brOKEN HEART. “For looking out for me.”
I put it on, smiling, and we go back outside. The sky is dark, and there are lights strung across the beach, leading toward the ramshackle bar. Music spills out the open door, weaving together the open-air patio and the people and the packed dance floor and—I blink, then cover my mouth.
Arthur’s at the front of the bar, because of course he is, and he’s got a microphone in one big hand and a glass bottle of Coke in the other. Sarah also brought the guys jeans, and I have to wonder why I got a Velma dress and Arthur got denim, until he spots me and grins, mouthing something.
What? I mouth back.
My color , I think he says.
My face turns as bright as the dress.
Then he holds up his bottle like he’s toasting me, the glass sparkling when it catches the light. “All right, ladies and gentlemen, sorry for the wait. Without any further ado, please enjoy the best rendition of ‘The Whole of the Moon’ you’ve ever heard.”
I yell. Everyone yells. You can’t announce that song in the Netherlands and expect any less. And as I watch Arthur, laughing and singing and holding his phone up to record me , Cameron appearing during the pivotal bridge to turn it into a duet, Delaney pretending to play a trumpet, Sarah banging her hands on the table, it hits me that I did get one more chance at falling in love with something before I was almost gone.
And I did it right this time around.