Chapter 25 Triangulation
Christine is beautiful tonight. And so, so drunk.
Faust switches her to bottled water by eleven p.m., then when he learns that the U.S. drinking age is twenty-one, he sends her and Eddie to the hotel with a lecture they’re far too drunk to comprehend now or remember tomorrow.
And then it’s us adults, on the edge of Monaco.
“Oh?”
“Long story.” The music drops into a mellower rave track and she mumbles, “Thank God.”
“So, how long have you all known each other?” I ask, feeling a bit like the odd one out. Arthur has wrenched Faust away for a “look at the stars,” which I’d assumed was a cigarette but neither he nor his wife drink. So again, who knows.
“A few years now, I guess.” While she talks, Lilah picks at the napkin that came with her soda water. “Faust and Arthur used to be on the same team, sort of. Arthur was on reserve while Faust was supposed to be driving, but then Faust was out for basically the whole season because of—you know.”
For once, I do. I guess the migraine stuff isn’t private, but I still don’t want to talk about it. It was supposed to be private, for him. “Was it that bad?”
“That year? Oh, horrible.” She plucks a corner of the napkin straight off with a snort.
“That was my first year here, though, and I didn’t get to know Faust until after Arthur and I went to Cavalli.
So I didn’t see it from his point of view ’til Arthur started going after him—we’re going to be friends…
I have this therapist that can help you…
we can hang out now that we don’t have to duke it out for your seat.
This was before Faust had come to Stark-Benzin, while he was still on the team that benched him.
So they’d stopped seeing each other as competition. ”
I roll my lip between my teeth. It’s kind of funny, and so sad, too.
“But,” Lilah adds, holding up her paper-dotted hands with a flourish, “I think it was good in the long run. They both realized they deserved better than a team that fucked with their self-worth. And now Faust is here, and he seems happy.”
“Do you really think so?” I wonder if that’s what Faust has told them. If he’s starting to want to stay at Stark-Benzin, or the sport.
“I do.” Behind her glasses, Lilah gives me a suspecting look, and I lean back in the booth under the weight of her surprisingly intense eyes. “Hm.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Self-conscious, I cross my arms. “What?”
Without saying another word, she smiles, a dimple in her left cheek catching the overly dramatic club lighting. “Nothing, nothing.”
Don’t like that. Not one bit. And she makes films about us, so whatever she’s angling for, I’m not going to give her. But—I look down at my margarita. I’ve sipped through half of it since we got here, hoping it would make me forget that we’re flying to Monaco tomorrow. It hasn’t worked yet.
I take a dainty lick of salt rim, finish the drink, then say, “I just want him to be happy.”
It’s as much as I’ve said to anyone, anywhere. Because I know Lilah understands what I’m saying; she’s married to one of these frustrating, incredible, magnetic drivers herself. On cue, her smile drops, and she picks the paper bits off her hands. “Yeah,” she says softly. “Do you want my advice?”
No. Yes. “Um.”
“Don’t go.”
I tilt my head. “Go… where?”
“Wherever you think you have to go after this, without him. Don’t go to where you’ve told yourself you have to go. Just stay.”
Huh. That’s not bad advice, on a base level. And it would be relevant if I had anywhere I was running toward. Or, if Faust had asked me to stay, which he hasn’t. There can’t be any after this if there isn’t any this.
And then I remember that after Monaco Qualifying, Lilah’s going to know that I didn’t end up with Faust at all, not one bit, and my heart goes crashing down. “Thanks. But it’s just a crush, I guess.”
“Sure.”
“Really, like a game.”
Her nose wrinkles. “A good one, at least?”
“Totally.”
“Well then.” She says this like it wraps up our conversation entirely. “In bocca al lupo.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, you know—break a leg, rabbit rabbit. Hey, do you think they’re still out there?”
“Outside?” I frown, then stand. How many languages would I need to know to hang with Faust and his crew on a long-term basis? “I’ll go check.”
She throws me a little smile. “Cool, thanks.”
On my way to the front, I pass by a blond man who looks like Arthur—though he’s a bit hidden by the crowd, and if that was him, wouldn’t Lilah have seen him on his way back inside?
I step outside, surveying the stragglers in front of the club.
It’s a lot of sequins, bandage dresses, and men in clavicle-bearing shirts.
No Faust. Did he leave? That would be weird, but not—I don’t know.
Not totally out of the realm of possibility.
It’s past midnight, he raced all weekend. He could leave.
I sit on the curb, tequila and emotions twisting in my stomach, making my eyes sting.
And those words. Don’t go. Just stay. Isn’t that the hardest thing to do for everyone?
Nobody stays, right? And then I’m thinking about Christine and her pink jacket, and Eddie and how he’d saluted Faust and me from the cab, and Mei’s fifteen thousand texts about Faust’s race, and him.
Maybe people do stay, in this world, with each other.
They don’t leave in a caustic blaze of glory, like I’m going to.
But I can’t stay.
“Are you okay?”
I look up. There’s Faust, because there isn’t anyone else it would be, standing there in his black slacks and black shirt and bright, crisp concern.
“I’m fine. Just—” I wave a hand. “Need a moment. Alcohol. I’m not actually a big drinker?”
Without so much as a noise, Faust sinks onto the bumpy curb next to me. “You need a water?”
“No, really. I’m okay.”
“You looked…” He stops. “You sort of looked like you might cry.”
“I wasn’t.”
He sets his elbows on his knees, as if he’s planning on sitting here until I decide to get up. “Is this about the breakup?”
“No. Not—not Bernard.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
He says that last word so, so softly, and I turn to meet his worried eyes.
“I think.” I hesitate. Lick my lips. “I think there’s something wrong with me.
Like, I don’t know how to stay still.” He nods, listening, and that’s all the tequila inside me needs.
“It’s like… there’s this hole inside me.
And if I don’t keep moving, if I turn around and look at it, I’m going to fall in.
But sometimes I do anyway. Sometimes, after a good day, it just happens. ”
“You fall into yourself?”
“Yeah. God, it sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”
More than stupid. I’ve never said this to anyone. I hadn’t even put a name to the creeping-closer dread before now, the fear that’s kept my perpetual-motion machine spinning. Coffee. Running. Traveling. Working. No attachments, no strings, nothing to tie me down.
If I keep moving, I don’t fall in.
If I keep moving, the dark doesn’t find me.
Faust’s hand finds the curve of my back, instantly warming me through the thin fabric of my T-shirt. I stiffen. Then, relax.
“Made sense to me, Arcadia.”
There are a million things I could say to that. Why do you always listen to me? Why are you so accepting? Are you lying? “Why do you always use that name?”
“You mean, your name?”
“Yeah, that.”
He’s still touching me, an invitation to a calmer world. “It’s a good name.”
“Fausto is a good name. Arcadia is weird.”
“Do you actually think that, or do you feel like you need to say that?”
“Offensive.” I laugh. “I like it, okay? It was my grandma’s name.”
He smiles. I hear it in his voice, feel it through his palm somehow, even if I’m not looking his way. “You’re named after her?”
“Mmhm. She claimed she hated it. Told my parents off for making me live up to her famous reputation.”
“Wow, a legend.”
Memories shimmer behind my eyelids. Grandma in her perfect, chaotic purple kitchen. Showing me how to plant black-eyed Susans. Sneaking me Kill Bill on DVD when I couldn’t sleep and needed action-overkill to numb my tired brain. Silly rabbit. Trix are for kids.
“I miss her,” I tell him. But mostly, I tell Miami. Miami doesn’t know her. She’ll never get to come here. I want this place to hold her memory, if only for tonight. “I don’t like being the only Arcadia Alden around.”
Faust’s hand stills, his fingertips slanting against me. Though he doesn’t say it, I think he wants me to lean against him. Offering, in that quiet way of his.
And I really shouldn’t. Really. This will hurt in the long run—sooner rather than later.
I imagine saying how I feel. Faust, my rules have changed.
Because you were right. The sex got me. What you said, about wanting to see me every day, about me being your lucky charm, got me.
And not just that, but all of this. You.
Your personality. Your humor. How much you hate the people I hate and love the things I love.
And I really wish I was one of those things for you, instead of just fun.
I know I just said I always go, but you’re letting me, and it hurts.
But sitting on the curb isn’t exactly comfortable, either. And if he’s going to try and soothe my tequila neuroticism away, well. Okay.
I pull my knees in closer, tilt and shift and wriggle until the side of my cheek is against his shoulder.
He really has the best shoulders. Strong, round, but pillowy despite their definition.
He moves to loop his arm around me, and we’re pressed together tighter, the smell of his woodsy bodywash an undercurrent in the cool night air.
“We probably look really drunk,” I say, after I’ve enjoyed the quiet for a bit too long. The night, the mostly obscured stars, sitting here with him.
“We’re in Miami. Anyone who’s awake is drunk.”
Giggling a bit, I look at his shoes. He’s in simple black boots, nothing I’ve bought him. For some reason, seeing them makes me tired. Like I can relax, knowing Faust could feasibly carry me to the hotel without tripping.
“Arcadia?”
“Mm?”
“Still awake?”
My throat knits together. At least eventually, I’ll run my way out of how this feels, too. With my own two feet. “Yeah, sorry.”