Chapter 26 Philidor Position
MONACO
Today’s the day.
I stare out at the crowd from the balcony of the Paddock Club, anxiety simmering just beneath my skin.
Well, one of the clubs—in Monte Carlo, the Paddock Club is more of a branded experience.
This year, there are seven hospitality locations, including three “bring your own yacht” trackside options that start at four thousand euros per person.
Yes, really. Tens of thousands of euros, minimum, to park your boat beside the street circuit and watch five seconds of cars driving by on loop.
My eyes drift to the high-rise apartments stretching up toward the perfect blue sky.
People hang over their balconies, drinking, laughing, barely visible from my vantage point by the garages.
The irony isn’t lost on me that here, I don’t have the best spots in the house.
Monte Carlo’s the ultimate promise of capitalism, complete with a casino catering exclusively to tourists.
There’s always another balcony, a better yacht, a prettier person living a better, happier life.
Look at where you can go if you just try a little bit harder, kid.
“Hey, have you seen Faust?”
“Hm?”
“Faust, you know.” Mei snaps her fingers around. “Big, broody, on pole—missing.”
My face warms. “He isn’t missing.”
She gives me a deadpan look. “Then where is he? He’s supposed to be here for that photoshoot.”
“Oh, sorry.” I pull out my Stark-Benzin calendar app.
Qualifying was earlier, though I’d tried to tune it out.
I’m Action Cat. Heartbreaker Cat. No time to worry about F1 results when I’m dining with Bernard tonight.
Those results had included Faust getting his second pole position of the season, sure. But I don’t care. I can’t, so I don’t.
“I bet he’s sleeping,” I tell Mei. “Or eating. One or the other.”
“Well, he can’t.”
I know what she’s about to ask me, a lowly stylist, to do. “Mei, it’s Monaco, he’s—”
“Can you just go by his apartment and check?”
All the heat in my body drains away. Since the Miami-watch incident, I’ve been so good at keeping my don’t-have-soul-bearing-sex-with-that-man promise to myself. “Is that appropriate?”
Mei peeks over the rim of her glasses. “No. Please go.”
She gives me his home address, and I realize that it’ll look more suspicious if I refuse her, so I’m off.
On foot, since Formula 1 has literally absorbed the streets here into its racetrack.
Monte Carlo is a hilly town in my humble Illinois-native opinion, exceedingly European.
The architecture is either pastel pink buildings or sleek, bite-sized skyscrapers, but skyscrapers from the ’90s, before architects went off the rails.
The whole place feels like the ’90s, a bubble lost in time that no one wants to pop.
A dream.
And you wouldn’t know from the outside that a Formula 1 driver is renting an apartment in this plain beige building, though that’s the promise of Monte Carlo, too.
They might be anywhere. I meet with the first-floor security, showing them my work badge and Mei’s emails and then, after they call Mei herself and her boss and her boss’s boss—I’m waved toward Faust’s private elevator.
That’s a nice reminder, I think on the way up. Faust can own his own elevator. I am not going to kiss him as soon as I see him. I’m not going to miss seeing Bernard tonight.
I guess—if he’s here, I can say goodbye.
The elevator opens into a dark entryway that really doesn’t look that different from the standard luxury Manhattan building. It’s laughably small for the cost, with plain white walls and mail stacked on a slim table, unopened. Men are men everywhere.
“Hey?” I call into the dark.
No answer.
Blinking at the blue-shadowed hall, I run the tip of my tongue along the inside of my teeth and debate the pros and cons of walking into a seemingly empty apartment. This is Faust’s space. I haven’t even second-guessed why it’s dark in here, because it’s so unsurprising.
Shit, what if the doormen made a mistake, and this isn’t Faust’s apartment?
Fingering the pepper spray key chain in my pocket, I edge into the hall, the tips of my shoulder blades finding the wall.
It’s quiet. The large window on the wall facing the door has its thin gray blinds drawn, letting in only the ghost of sunlight.
Then I turn and see a living room, a big gray sofa, a shape on it, him.
For a moment, I clutch my pepper spray as I register the mop of un-spun brown curls on top of his head, his arm thrown over his face. Feel a pit of chewing anxiety from nowhere, that I promptly shut. He looks like he’s asleep—fuck, he is asleep—
“Arcadia?”
He doesn’t sound asleep.
I abandon my pepper spray. “Hey!” I say, forcing my frozen legs to carry me over to the sofa, despite my instinct to double back to the door. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to barge in. If the team had known you were”—the words taking a nap die in my mouth, too intimate—“resting, they would’ve rescheduled.”
Not true, but, whatever. His mouth ticks at the very corner, like he also knows I’m lying. “And now?”
“And now,” I repeat with my own smile, “I can tell Mei you’d like to take this evening off, but they’ll probably make you reschedule the photoshoot. Sorry.”
With a groan, Faust pulls his elbow away from his face. “Stop apologizing.” He blinks his eyes open, first unfocused, then on me. “Monaco’s tomorrow.”
“I know. It’s fucked, in my opinion. Can’t imagine anyone genuinely cares if you model Dior this weekend or the next.”
There’s a small whoosh—like Faust’s laughing under his breath—then he pulls himself up, ever so slightly.
By his arm. Which flexes, distractingly.
“Monaco is tomorrow,” he says again, this time adding more of an emphasis on the name of the country, and briefly, I wonder if this is it.
Our moment. He knows I’m dumping Bernard today. I’d told him that ages ago.
Then I remember that Faust has pole position, and it’s Monaco, and these past few years have been horrible for him, in Lilah’s words.
“Oh.” I drop to kneel by the sofa. “No, you’re—you’re going to do well tomorrow.”
Saying that the Monaco Grand Prix is the most famous Formula 1 race feels a bit silly, because if you know F1 at all, even at a passing fancy level, you know about Monaco.
But what most people don’t know—unless you’ve actually watched drivers race here—is that it’s infamously difficult to overtake on Monaco’s narrow streets.
If you’re passed, you’ve screwed something up, biblically.
And Faust is on the starting line tomorrow.
He’s expected to win. He needs to win. And anything less, even P2, will be seen as a failure.
Right when I’ve been hoping he falls back in love with racing.
Faust peers at me in the dark. With me on my knees and him on the sofa, we’re close to eye level. Then he covers his face with the crook of his elbow again. “Can you grab something from the bathroom for me?”
My stomach flips. “Of course.”
“Excedrin.”
“Got it.”
See, I think as I find my way to his bathroom vanity, already knowing his pill bottles will be lined up by the sink.
This is why I’d wanted to avoid him this weekend.
I don’t need the glittery rush of seeing his tiny, neat handwriting on a tiny, plain Post-it Note next to the bottles, detailing what looks to be instructions for different migraine approaches from his doctor.
Really had been hoping to avoid the debilitating ache in my fingers when I spot his birthday printed on a label.
April 28. The same date as the Day Gala. The night we’d…
I grab the Excedrin and return to the floor next to him, pills and a cup of water in hand. He hadn’t mentioned his birthday then. I shouldn’t mention it now.
We aren’t serious.
“One?” I say, opening the bottle.
“Mm.”
He takes the pill, then covers his eyes back up. “I’m good.” His voice rumbles out from the depths of his broad chest. “Just precautionary.”
“Should I call someone? If you have, um, a headache.”
It’s a stupid thing to call a migraine, yes, but the M-word feels forbidden to say in Faust’s own apartment. Particularly when it’s dark, and he’s lying down, and is that why he’s here? Is he worried that he’s going to get a migraine and not be able to drive tomorrow?
“Not yet.”
Hate that. But I nod, forgetting that he can’t exactly see it.
I shift to a more seated position. Imagine reaching over and—I don’t know—stroking his arm.
It’s right there. I could touch it, him, feel the soft brown peach fuzz that covers his tanned skin, where his veins dip between his muscles.
Is that what a regular employee would do if they stumbled on their driver clearly going through it the night before a mega stressful event?
What would someone who hasn’t slept with Faust do?
“Are you staring at me?” Faust asks from behind his elbow.
“No.” I sound startled, and a smile catches on his lips. “I mean, okay, yes. But you’re kind of worrying me, with the whole Excedrin-and-darkness of it all. Because I really could go get something. Coffee or french fries or—”
I’m still rattling off the migraine cures I’ve seen people post about online when Faust’s free hand lands on the top of my head, and then I’m not speaking, not at all.
I don’t move, either, as I attempt to process how to react to this, his fingertips working through my hair just so, ruffling my hard work out of order.
I’d straightened the hell out of this blonde mess, and he’s ruffling me.
“Calm down,” he says, warm and gruff at the same time. “Just sit here and talk to me until I go to sleep.”
Until he—goes to sleep. Sit here. With his hand on me? But that could take hours. Or all night. And I have places I need to go, a man I need to see.
Only…
Monaco’s tomorrow. And it would be really cool if Faust won.
“I don’t know how to calm down and keep talking,” I whisper.
He hums, amused. “Oxymoron for you?”