Chapter 9 Center Control #2
A man comes strolling out the entrance to the pool. It isn’t Bernard.
Every muscle in my stomach squeezes tightly as I register Faust’s long, angular silhouette, the sunlight only catching on his black Aviator sunglasses when he reaches the edge of the water.
Though he isn’t looking at the pool. I can’t exactly tell where his eyes are but—judging by the severe frown he has on, coupled with the quilted Bode button-down thrown over his bare shoulders—I think I’m the target caught in his crosshairs.
Something scrapes against my lower back and I inhale in surprise, my head whipping to look behind me. Oh. Just the pool wall I’ve backed myself into.
Ironic.
The sound of flip-flops on concrete thwap to my left.
“An Aperol Spritz for the lady,” Bernard says happily, plopping down on the edge of the pool with his own beer.
Then he follows my mistake of a glance over to Faust. “Ah, merde,” he mumbles.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you here with him around. How did he even get in here?”
“Who, Faust?” Nice. Casual. “It’s fine. I’m starting to get used to his…”
“General hatred of mankind?”
“Yeah, that.” I laugh a bit too genuinely.
Bernard smiles, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “He’s been like that since we were kids. A real rain cloud of a person.”
I rest my shoulder against the wall, purposefully angling away from Faust and his sunglasses and his frown. “You’ve known him that long?”
“That’s how it works in F1. You know everyone forever,” Bernard whispers back.
“But me and him used to be best friends. Well, besides me and my brother. I think he was always jealous of that—that my brother’s in the sport, too.
I’ve always had my family around, and Faust’s always been alone.
That’s why we had our falling-out, I bet. ”
Against my better judgment, my eyes stray to Faust again, a feeling close to melancholy unspooling beneath my rib cage.
Always alone. All the way across the sparkling blue water, he’s seated beneath a breezy cabana, a paperback opened and perched on his thigh.
My eyes skip there, too—his skin, his black swim trunks, as if he’d actually come to swim and not just sit there and pretend to read.
And… he is by himself.
I look away, trying to push away the faint heat below my skin. The sun is getting to me. I’m not made for hot climates.
“You’re better off without him,” I tell Bernard. “He is exactly the kind of person I can’t stand.”
“And what kind is that?”
“Critical.” I stir my spritz with a vengeance. “Always picking and judging and… staring. And he always thinks he knows best, doesn’t he? Ignoring what you say, watching for you to make a mistake?”
“Jesus.” Bernard laughs nervously. “What did he do to you?”
“Nothing. I just—get annoyed by people like that.” Rich people, I add silently.
Wealthy, miserable, and taking it out on the world.
Bernard does that with a smile. But Faust’s a walking red flag, too, even if his unhappiness doesn’t currently result in any stranded brides.
Misery, in my experience, masks anger. And that anger among men in this stratosphere is pure entitlement: they think they deserve more, better, always, pretending to care about the poor or the political until it’s inconvenient for them, if they bother to pretend at all.
And driving in Formula 1 doesn’t make these kajillionaires any less likely to furiously finger-snap someone’s life into pieces.
If anything, competing in the luxury-sponsorship Thunderdome would aggravate a person’s worst, most narcissistic traits.
And it isn’t like Formula 1 helped my family when we needed it. Sports don’t love you back.
“But whatever. I’m doing my best to ignore him,” I say, running a hand through my hair to hide how my fingers are shaking. “It’s, like, sorry it’s literally impossible for you to smile and we’re all having fun, right?”
My segue works. Bernard nods. “Exactly. You know him so well already. Sorry about that.”
“Don’t apologize.” I let my roaming fingers brush against Bernard’s damp arm. He’s warm, flushed pink from the sun. “But thank you.”
“For?”
“Making it up to me.”
There’s that look again: enamored bewilderment. “Pleasure’s all mine. When were you going to tell me, by the way?”
My heart skips a beat, lips stuck together. “About…?”
Bernard nods at my watery spritz. The stirring did not help it. “That you don’t like Aperol.”
Thank you, Loki and Hermes and every other trickster god. “Never?”
“Let me go get you something else, and then you can tell me about what you do. Though I think I’m the most un-fashionable Frenchman you’ll ever meet.”
I smile as Bernard leaves, watching him walk by Faust without as much as glancing at the dark-haired man.
Perfect. They actually hate each other. On the extremely slim chance that Faust does know that I’m here to decimate Bernard’s heart and, for some godforsaken reason, tries to convince Bernard not to date me—Bernard won’t believe him.
I’m Mr. Wickham to Faust’s Mr. Darcy. This is good for me. Or, well, I thought it was good, but…
As Bernard disappears inside, Faust slowly turns back to look my way.
His blackout lenses glint silently in the sunshine, his full frown fixed in place.
He’s giving me that intense, disorienting look again, the same one from when he’d had his hand on my chin.
From when we’d met—the second time. I’m disoriented under the weight of it.
His attention makes me feel scrambled and slightly erratic, like the loud and incoherent mumbling between radio stations, when you’re lost in the middle of nowhere.
I think that’s what I dislike most about him and his staring. It knocks me off-balance.
And he doesn’t look angry, per se. Not that I was trying to make him angry when I touched Bernard. Or jealous. Or anything. But I can feel Faust’s eyes on me, even through the sunglasses, all the way over there. I can feel his judgment.
Hear his pretentious voice in my head:
What are you doing with him?
Crossing my arms, I stare back his way, hoping my face fully communicates the leave me alone I’m too dignified to yell across a pool.
And it might, since he leans forward, one hand slipping the paperback off his leg. Then he slides his sunglasses up his forehead, his dark hair pushing back to reveal his eyes. Brown. Critical. And focused directly on me.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.
Not when his impossibly intense face yells back, No.
Fine. Two can play this game. With an irritated push, I haul myself out of the pool to sit on the concrete lip.
I’m not going to stay in the water like a sitting duck, bobbing around for his amusement.
I flick my wet hair behind my shoulder, subtly double-check the knot keeping my bikini top secure behind my neck, and then go to push my sunglasses up my face.
Because I can judge him, too. All silent and panopticon-like, out in the open. Why not?
Only, when I finally look back to Faust’s chair, he isn’t there. He’s walking to the door, book in hand, his back to me, taking long, hard, angry steps. Like he saw something that infuriated him, when a moment ago he’d been an impassive wall.
Why? What did he see?
And why do I care so much, if I know there’s nothing he can do to stop me?
My fingers curl around the edge of the pool at the telltale thwaps that signal Bernard’s return. “Oh good, you scared him off.”
“I’d love to take the compliment, but it wasn’t me.” I take the new drink from him, still distracted. “Could’ve been the sun?”
Bernard takes a swig from his beer. “Same difference.”