“You guys do know I don’t need babysitters,” I tell them the night before qualifying. They both showed up at my hotel room and dragged me to dinner at some ludicrously expensive sushi restaurant in downtown Abu Dhabi.
“We’re not your babysitters,” Heather says. “We’re your keepers. Totally different.”
Matty laughs. “Hear, hear.”
“We’re distracting you,” Heather adds. “Keeping you out of your head.”
“I’m fine,” I tell them. “Seriously.”
“You’re not nervous,” Matty says doubtfully.
I take a sip of water. “Not really. I’ll either win or I’ll lose.”
Matty shakes his head. “You’re a robot, Keeping.” (And okay, my heart still does tighten just a little at that, thinking of Jacob.)
“I want to win,” I admit. “But it’s not the end of the world if I don’t.”
Matty feigns a gasp. “Blasphemy. If you win this year, my contract value is definitely going up. Championship-winning car and all that.”
“Yeah, but you’re only fourth,” Heather points out.
Matty scowls. “Keeping, talk to your woman.”
I laugh, but it’s partly forced. The media has really run off with this “me dating Heather” thing. Some news site got a picture of her kissing my cheek outside the hotel a few weeks ago, and everyone thinks she’s my girlfriend, even in the paddock. I’d set the record straight, if anyone ever asked me about it directly, but no one ever does. They just write about it in articles, making confident statements about things they know nothing about. Heather says to ignore it, and Hunter doesn’t seem to care, but it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
“You’d be second, if you hadn’t had such shitty luck,” I tell Matty.
His mouth twists, a rare look of unhappiness flickering over his face. “That’s generous,” he says.
I bite my lip and say nothing, because if I’m being honest, it was a bit generous. Matty’s a great driver, but he’s had a few less-than-stellar performances this year. I think he gets in his head too much about what the media says.
“You’ll get it back,” Heather tells him. “This time next year, you two will be at each other’s throats fighting over the championship.”
Matty manages a grin. “Or I’ll be kicking your ass,” he says to me, “and you’ll have to pretend to be as gracious and wonderful as me.”
I chuckle. “Deal.”
For a minute or two, we eat in silence, then I look up to find both of them watching me.
“You’re going to win tomorrow,” Heather says. “I can feel it.”
Matty nods. “She’s right, man. You’ve got this.”
One corner of my mouth turns up. “Thanks. For everything, I mean. These past few months—”
“We’re the best, you wouldn’t have gotten through it without us, blah blah blah,” Heather says. “We know.”
Matty touches his glass to mine. “No need to thank us. We love your strange robot ass.”
“We love you,” Heather echoes. “And you’re going to win.”
The next day, I only come seventh in qualifying. Mahoney and Clayton are first and second. I could’ve been higher, but there was a yellow flag at the worst possible moment in Q3, and I had to abort my last lap. Heather and Matty take me out for dinner again—they really are my keepers—but afterward, I put my foot down and insist on going back to my hotel room alone.
I sit cross-legged on my bed with my phone on the bedspread in front of me, staring at the background. I haven’t changed it, not even after everything. It’s the same photo from the hike in Scotland, the one that Jacob and I did together all those months ago.
My world has color again, and I have friends, but I still miss Jacob so badly sometimes, I feel sick. Every time something good happens, I want to tell him. And I desperately want to know how he is. If he’s okay. If he’s happy. I know he’s out of the hospital and doing rehab in Albuquerque. Josh Fry told me that much, but that’s all I know.
I want to know so much more.
