Chapter 17
Annalise
“Are you taking care of yourself?” my mother asks as I pace one of the quieter halls of the paddock.
It’s Sunday, only a few hours before the start of the Grand Prix. I’ve spent the morning running around to scheduled meetings, and shuffling Travis from one place to another, or blocking potential sponsors—and even Norm—from taking up too much of his time before the race.
Now, I’m on the phone with my mom, who along with my dad is up in the middle of the night to watch my brother race. The one good thing about not having much time during the past couple of days is that I’ve been successfully able to avoid the lump in my chest.
Almost.
It’s always in the middle of the night when I should be sleeping that my guilt-riddled thoughts manage to catch up with me.
“Yes, mom,” I drone without thinking.
“I don’t believe you,” she immediately replies. “I understand what a big help you are to your brother and Alyssia there but you have to remember to take care of yourself too, Annalise,” my mother lightly scolds.
“It’s my job to be on top of things,” I remind her. “That’s what I’m here for.”
“Not at a cost to your own well-being.”
I bite my bottom lip, trying but failing to ignore the guilt that’s ridden me ever since that day I walked in on Max’s mother and him.
“I understand,” I say, mostly because I don’t want to have my mom continue to beat a dead horse. “And I hope you’re taking your own advice,” I say. “You and Dad are the ones up in the middle of the night.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” she reminds me of the huge time difference. “We’ll catch up on our sleep when we can.”
“You do know that’s not actually a thing, right?” I pounce on that little factoid. “The body doesn’t actually catch up on sleep. Which is why it’s important to keep the body in a regular circadian rhythm because …”
I trail off when my mother clears her throat. I press my lips together to stifle my smirk.
“Anyway, what do you think Trav’s chances are today?”
“To win?” I ask. “You know I don’t like to speculate too much. It’s bad luck.”
“But he’s starting from pole. His season is off to a better start than last season.”
“Which is why we continue to not speculate. Don’t want to jinx anything,” I counter.
“I don’t believe in jinxing. But speaking of, keep an eye on that teammate of his.”
My chest compresses when my mother brings up Max.
“Why?” My voice comes out high-pitched, but my mother seems not to notice.
“That mess that happened back in Japan. Your father doesn’t think so, but I believe it was intentional. Just like when he–”
“He didn’t hit Trav on purpose,” I say without thinking.
It’s not until about ten seconds into the ensuing silence that I realize what I’ve done. I just defended my brother’s biggest rival to my mother of all people.
“I mean, you know how competitive all drivers get, and in the heat of the moment things can go awry. Anyway, I think Max was fined or something.”
“Hmhm,” my mother says. “The team put out a statement that they’d handled the situation internally and won’t disclose the punishment to the public.”
My chest tightens again. A sigh releases from between my lips, louder than I realize.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” It comes out too quickly.
My mother gives me about two seconds of silence before she asks the question again. This time more insistent, like when I was a kid and she knew I’d taken an extra cookie after she said we each could have only one.
Mom asked me twice before holding up the mirror to my face, showing me the chocolate crumbs around my mouth.
It’s not my fault she’d made chocolate-chocolate chip cookies and then tried to limit my intake to only one. I’m only human.
“Annalise.”
I push out a heavy breath. “It’s, well, I was kind of rude to someone,” I tell her without going into detail.
The last thing I want to do is explain to my mom what I said to Max back in Japan after his crash with Travis. The words I’d said to him in a fury after that accident come back to mind, coupling with hearing the horrid things his mother said to him only two days ago.
My heart retreats deeper behind my ribcage, making it slightly less easy to breathe. I accused Max of causing the accident, and stopped just short of calling him a dirty driver. How is what I said different from the ugly words his mother threw at him?
Who knows how often she says those types of things to him.
“I’m sure you weren’t as rude as you’re telling yourself you were. You’re harder on yourself than anyone I know,” Mom’s saying, but I can’t accept her comments as truth.
“No.” I shake my head. “I was a total bitch.”
“I doubt you were a bitch.”
I part my lips to respond, but my dad beats me to the punch.
“Who called my baby a bitch?” His voice booms from the background.
My stomach plummets when there’s a second of wrestling.
“Hello? Annalise?” My dad’s voice verging on something I don’t want to put a name to pushes through the phone line. “Annalise? Baby? Who called you a bitch?”
My heart starts to race because while ninety percent of the time my father is the most charming, loving, and jovial person you’ll ever meet, he also has a hard line when it comes to his family.
And his temper is shorter than cat hair if it comes to one of us being harmed or threatened.
“Hi, Daddy,” I say, trying to diffuse his growing anger. “How are you?”
“Hi, baby. Who called you a bitch?” Obviously, he won’t be deterred.
“No one. I called myself a bitch because I was kind of mean to someone,” I explain as simply as I can.
“I don’t believe you. Baby girl, are you trying to save someone? Precious,” he calls my mom, using the pet name he’s had for her since before I was born. “Did she tell you who called her a bitch? Was it a man? It better not have been anyone on that damn team. Or an opponents’ team. Is that it?”
At this point, I don’t even know if he’s asking me or my mom.
“No one called her a bitch. Not that I know of,” I hear my mom say.
In the beat of silence, I hope my father accepts this explanation.
“Because I’ll book a flight to Bahrain right now,” he says.
“Daddy, by the time you arrive the race will be over, and I’ll be on my way back to Monaco,” I reason.
“Yeah, and where will the person who called you a bitch be? Because that’s who’s ass I need to speak to, and by speak I mean have my knuckles separate his teeth from his gums.”
“Daddy, no one called me a bitch. I promise. I’d tell you if they did,” I lie.
“You’re lying,” he calls me out. “Like when that little boy was harassing you in the third grade, and you didn’t tell any of us. Your brother had to find out and handle it himself.”
I groan at the memory. As a kid, I was a little more sensitive which left me more susceptible to classroom bullies.
Travis, Tristan, and I were in different classes at the time because our parents wanted to ensure the three of us were given the opportunities to develop a social circle and friendships outside of one another.
Well, one boy in my class thought I was an easy mark. Every day he’d pick on me about one thing or another. One day during recess Tristan saw him try to trip me as I came out of the bathroom.
That day was the first time I watched my brother dunk a boy’s head in the toilet and flush it. Needless to say, that little boy never called me another name. But once my dad found out what happened, he confronted the boy’s father and … well, let’s just say his exit from our school was swift.
“I’m not …” I sigh. “I was the only one to call me a bitch. No one else. I promise.”
He’s quiet but I don’t trust it. He confirms my suspicion when the next thing he says is, “Yeah, don’t think I won’t find out if someone’s out there calling my daughter a bitch.”
“Give me this phone,” my mom says, her impatience finally reached. “If Annalise says no one called her a bitch, then it’s true. We can trust our daughter.”
“Thank you, Mom,” I reply, feeling a little less in danger of having my father fly across the world under the mere suspicion someone verbally assaulted me.
I move from the hallway to one of the paddock rooms with multiple screens that will allow me to watch the race from a distance. I’m surprised to find the room empty but grateful for the solitude.
“Race is starting soon,” I tell my mom as I stand with my back to the door.
Before she can reply, a noise signals someone entering. My body goes rigid as Max enters and comes to a complete stop when he sees me. Something inside of me ignites. It rivals the guilt that’s been a part of me for the past two days.
“Mom, I have to go,” I tell her mid-sentence.
“Okay, tell Travis we said good luck and we love him so much. And give Lucky and Alyssia a kiss for us and—”
“Okay, I will. I promise.” I never cut my mom off while she’s talking. But standing here with Max’s unwavering gaze on me makes it feel imperative to get off of the phone as quickly as possible.
He watches me lower my hand with my phone down to my waist.
Wordlessly, he points at something on the far table before walking over to grab it. It’s his racing gloves. I hadn’t noticed they were there before.
I watch him as he moves toward the door after putting the gloves on.
“Good luck today,” I blurt out before he can leave.
Max pauses, one hand on the doorknob, head tucked, frozen.
Did I wish him luck or did I say something else? Maybe I called him a jackass but just think I said good luck. Was it my tone?
The intrusive thoughts begin to pile up in the ensuing silence. I don’t allow myself to follow them though.
Don’t feed the beast. As my therapist used to say.
But that doesn’t mean that I don’t acknowledge them as they come and go in the time that Max stands there with his face turned to the door, not exiting but not turning toward me. Until he does.
“What did you just say?”
I don’t have time to decipher his tone and the words at the same time.
I wrinkle my forehead, confused by the question.
“I wished you luck.” Maybe he misheard me and thought I said something else. Or, more likely, he probably thinks I’m being condescending. I try to recall my tone. I’d said it as politely as I could.
In the time it takes me to process my previous comment, Max has crossed the room, standing less than a foot in front of me.
“Good luck,” he repeats, arms folded across his chest.
“Yes, I didn’t mean it as an insu—”
“No,” he cuts me off with the shake of his head.
I jut my head back. “What?”
“No. You don’t wish me good luck.”
I know my face reveals the utter confusion racing through my body now.
“Bahrain two years ago directly before qualifying you wished me to have a slow pit stop.”
My mouth falls open. “I—”
“Shanghai last year, the night before the Grand Prix, you wished for me to have a bird strike that would take my car out without injury but take me out of the race.”
“That was—”
“Three years ago, Miami, you wished that I would pit at the wrong garage.”
“What are you—”
“You don’t wish me luck,” he says, cutting my question off. “Not once have you ever wished me luck. And not in that tone,” he says like I spit the words at him, which I’m pretty certain I did not.
“Don’t start now,” he tells me. “Not now. Not just because …” His nostrils flare as his words taper off. “Don’t start now.”
A lump forms in my throat, constricting any reply I might give.
I nod.
It’s a pathetic reply in the face of everything that’s gone unsaid, but it’s all I can give. Though it feels like not enough of a reply to me, it must satisfy Max because he dips his head before turning away from me and heading to the door again.
“Hey,” I call out before I can stop myself.
When he turns to me, I say, “I hope you get caught in someone’s dirty air.”
Nothing prepares me for the way my chest blooms when the corner of Max’s mouth kicks up into a smirk. The expression matches the spark that ignites in his hazel eyes. I hadn’t noticed how dull they appeared until his smile burned the dullness away.
“Thank you,” he replies before vanishing behind the door.
I can’t explain the smile on my own face, or the fireworks popping off in my chest from whatever the hell that exchange was, but it’s flipped my entire mood around.
I carry this feeling all throughout my watching of the race. Through all of the twists and turns, the multiple lead changes. It’s not until later that I realize that I kept searching out the wrong Amato driver.
I cheer at all of the right moments. Like when Travis lost the third place position but made a bold move to gain it back.
However, it’s when Max made an absolute beast of a move to first create a hole and then uses it to slip past the Kr?mer driver who was in the lead. The entire garage went up in applause when he pulled it off.
Including me.
I don’t bother moderating my applause as Max crosses the finish line to the black and white checkered flag.
When I turn to Alyssia, she’s smiling but it’s mild because I know she was cheering for Travis who came in third. Still a good finish for him and for the team as a whole, but my thoughts and gaze stray to Max’s car.
My heart races when the garage begins vibrating from the rush of his engine as he pulls in. Everything turns into a blur of applause, cheers, and congratulations as the team rushes in to both him and Travis.
I watch as Alyssia goes up and hugs my brother, but I stand back, knowing that he would’ve liked a higher finish. Even though it’s not possible, he’d love a first place finish at every single race.
My eyes flit up toward the screen replaying Max’s first place finish. I decide to turn away from the crowd and search out a private place where I can decipher all of the weird emotions rushing through me.
I don’t get the chance before someone’s grabbing my arm, stopping me.
Max lowers himself close to my ear.
“I think I’ve just found my good luck charm.”
As soon as the words are out of his mouth, the pressure on my arm releases and he’s gone. I turn to find his back disappearing into the crowd of the Amato team.