Chapter 7 Alekhine’s Gun #3
Getting to know anyone besides Eddie, around Eddie, is impossible.
Over dinner—plain chicken with vegetables for the drivers, coffee and french fries for me—he regales us with his life story.
It’d be annoying if he wasn’t incredibly endearing and baby-faced.
“I should’ve become an influencer, too, but Dad said I had a real knack for karting, and I was too much of a stubborn ass to quit.
” He chases a perfectly round pea around his plate.
“Also, I bet Christine a hundred dollars that she’d get into F1 first, and she said I wouldn’t get my money if I quit. ”
“Quitters are losers.” She smirks at Eddie. “Are you a loser?”
“In many ways, yes.”
The surface of my coffee ripples, and Eddie yelps. I think Christine kicked him under the table. “You’d have left me to the sharks?”
“No!”
“What sharks?” I ask.
“The movie crew,” Eddie says, as Christine hisses, “Bernard.”
Faust snorts. I glance up from my fries. Our eyes meet; he looks away.
Interesting. I dip a fry in my ketchup-mayonnaise concoction. “You weren’t going to drive for Stark-Benzin if he was here?”
“No way. He isn’t cancel-worthy, just desperate.” She laughs. “Faust did me a favor making this his—oh.” She bats her blue eyes in Faust’s direction, clearly remembering she wasn’t supposed to say something. Very interesting.
“I vouched for her,” Faust says stiffly. “That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Eddie imitates, pitching his voice down. “Um, we’re on Stark-Benzin with you, our literal childhood idol.”
For once, Christine doesn’t sarcasm Eddie’s point away, and the soft smile she wears as she takes another bite confirms it.
He is their hero. At eighteen and nineteen, they would’ve been in the baby racing leagues when Faust was dominating Formula 1.
And now they’re here, with him on his team—like me.
Out of nowhere, my heart squeezes, surprisingly painful.
I might be over my crush on this man, but I do remember watching him win the World Drivers’ Championship the summer before I left for New York.
My stuff was packed, and Dad was barely talking to me, but when Faust blew past the checkered line, proverbially cinching the championship in September, it was the first time I’d seen Dad cry since Grandma passed.
Then Dad’s friend Billy had put on ABBA—“The Winner Takes It All”—and everyone had laughed because God, what a horribly sad song.
But that’s how I knew Dad and I would be okay, eventually, even if I had to leave to take care of them: Someone was out there, winning, baptized in champagne.
Standing on the nose of his car, the Portuguese flag hanging from his triumphant fist.
He looks so different now, without that feeling all over him. What happened to that champion?
Christine peels away from our group when we’re back at the hotel, explaining that she has to “go fucking smile for the cameras.” Eddie sees us up to our floor, seeming to remember his original topic at the last minute.
“Cat!” He flails his arm out the elevator door to keep it from closing.
“We have to work together!” The older woman next to him side-eyes him silently.
“Nobody else cares about clothes on this team. I’m dying!
I’m alone! Don’t leave me!” She presses the close doors button; Eddie starts to say something else; his arm darts back in and the doors shut.
I giggle. “Damn.”
Beside me, Faust starts walking toward our rooms. “Whoa, wait.” I catch up with him, which is a bit hard in not-yet-broken-in ballet flats. “Come on, you like him, don’t you? He’s so much fun.”
Faust keeps walking. I look over, tilting my head to catch his expression—though a lot of good that does me. “Seriously? Nothing?”
“As long as he can drive, I like him.”
“You didn’t even stop in that photo booth with us.”
“There wasn’t room.”
“We could’ve squeezed.”
“It’s okay.”
Doesn’t seem okay. I walk a bit behind him for the rest of the hallway. At our doors, I smile and slide my key card out. “Thanks for dinner. It really was fun, even if we didn’t get our work done.”
“Was it?”
I lower my key card, blinking. He doesn’t.
“Did you have fun?” Faust continues, staring straight at me. “I can’t tell.”
“Mmhm.” My voice is barely strained, though inside, I’m panicking. That is the weirdest question I’ve ever been asked.
His head cocks to one side, jaw ticking. “Why?”
Actually, no. That’s the weirdest. “Why… did I have fun?” I laugh in disbelief. “I don’t know. I just did.”
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s do breakfast tomorrow, then. Do the work.”
“Tomorrow—”
“Seven work for you?”
“I, yeah. Okay. Seven.”
“Good. We could make it a tradition. You and me. Breakfasts.” He swipes his key card, and the door lock whirrs mechanically. “Got a lot to learn about each other.”
There’s only a second between his door opening, the cool air, a sliver of his room peeling into view. A nicer bed, king-sized. A wall between us. Then he’s gone, and I’m still standing here, key card in hand, dazed. What just happened?
I stand like that until it hits me. Then… I grin.
Alert the freaking presses. I’m so good, I think I just inadvertently thawed the ice king’s heart.