“Tough race out there today,” he says. “Tough race. Obviously it’s hard to be out there today, after yesterday. Talk us through your feelings coming into today.”
Talk us through your feelings.
Well, Pat, my boyfriend’s lying unconscious in a hospital right now, possibly dying as we speak, and I’m not allowed to set foot inside his room. I haven’t slept in almost thirty hours and if someone asks me a single question about it, if someone so much as says his name out loud, I might break down right here and now.
Eric Clayton answers for all of us. “Yeah, it’s not easy. No one wants to be here right now. I’m sure none of you want to be here. But we have to be, so we are. It’s definitely not easy, but yeah. I think we were all racing for Ellis today.”
“Josh, you knew Ellis Parrot quite well,” the reporter says. “How are you holding up?”
Josh scrubs a hand over his head. He looks almost as bad as I feel. “Yeah, I knew him from F2. It’s definitely hard.”
“You raced with Nichols quite a bit, too, didn’t you?”
My heart twists. I know he doesn’t mean it the way I’m hearing it, but the way he says it makes it sound like Jacob’s already dead.
Josh nods, and the reporter continues, “Have you heard any news about him or Antony Costa?”
“I spoke with Jacob’s brother this morning,” Josh says, and my head swivels toward him so fast, I get dizzy. “They can’t give out much information, obviously, but... yeah. It’s not good. It’s areally tough time for all of us. And I haven’t heard anything about Antony, unfortunately.”
Matty is giving me an odd look. He leans toward me with his hand over his mic, like he’s going to ask me something, but another reporter interrupts.
“Travis, I have to ask—starting from P4 and ending up in tenth, your worst finish this season. Do you think yesterday’s crash was playing at all on your mind? Did you know Ellis Parrot well?”
All eyes move toward me, and I hear myself answer as though from far away. “No, I don’t really know any of them.”
Matty frowns at me, but luckily the reporter moves on to him, leaving me to feel disgusted with myself. I should’ve said I knew them, I realize belatedly. Then I’d have an excuse to go back to the hospital. I should’vesaidI was going to visit them, that way no one would be surprised when I showed up. But no, instead I sat there on television and said I don’t know the only person in the world who means anything to me. The only person I’ve ever loved.
Not that he’ll ever know I loved him. I’ve wanted to tell him for months now—I’ve felt it for even longer—but I kept chickening out. I had a hundred opportunities. A hundred chances. Now, even if he wakes up, he might not be in any fit state to understand me. God, why did Matty have to mention brain injuries?
Matty grabs my elbow on the way back to our trailer after the press conference.
“Yo, Keeping, are you okay?” He punches me hard on the arm when I weasel out of his grip. “Seriously, man, you look like hell and you raced like shit. Do you need to see the team doctor or something?”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Slept like shit, that’s all.”
Matty grimaces. “Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s so fucked up. Ellis was a really good guy.”
I grunt in acknowledgment and then escape into my room. I pull on my street clothes without bothering to shower. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and see that, yes, Matty is right. I look appalling. The dark circles under my eyes are almost violet, but more than that, I look like I’ve aged ten years overnight.
I can’t blow off our team debrief without calling attention to myself, so I trudge over to the motorhome meeting room and spend an hour reassuring the team that no, the car doesn’t have any issues, and no, I’m not sick, just tired. Matty shoots me suspicious looks from across the table, frowning even deeper every time I repeat my lies. My temper starts to fray by the end of the hour, and I snap at one of my favorite engineers, Katie.
“I just had an off day, alright? I’m not allowed one fucking bad day?”
I regret the words even as I’m saying them. Forget about being unprofessional, I sound like an absolute dick. Katie raises a sharp eyebrow but mercifully doesn’t call me out on it.
“I think that about wraps things up,” says our chief engineer, Freddie, after shooting me a frown.
Harper’s team boss, Stefan, who sat silently through the meeting, corners me afterward. He’s a gruff, bearded fellow who’s usually about as talkative as I am, but today he thumps me on the shoulder like we’re old friends.
“It isn’t easy, racing after a bad crash,” he says in his thick Swedish accent. “You rest up the next two weeks.”
“Yes, sir,” I mumble.
“And you talk to your team like that again, I send you packing, yes?”
He’s probably not kidding. “Yes, sir,” I say quietly.
I escape to the parking lot, avoiding every microphone and camera and fan in sight, and then drive alone back to my hotel room.
