My mouth twitched up reluctantly. It was true, I wasn’t known for being particularly friendly. It wasn’t that I was trying to be rude, I just always felt... out of place, I suppose. Uncomfortable. The only place I didn’t feel like that was inside a race car. In the real world, with people, I was rubbish. Luckily, it seemed to have translated into a “strong, silent type” sort of image in the media.
Right now, though, I wasn’t feeling particularly strong. Jacob was grinning at me, and I felt like he could see everything, from the flush on my neck to the unsteadiness in my hands. Not just that he could see it, but that he knew the root cause.
“What are you listening to?” he asked, nodding at my abandoned phone. Without waiting for me to answer, he took my phone out of my hand. He pressed the home button, then raised a surprised eyebrow as the home screen popped up. “You don’t have a passcode?”
I shrugged. I’d never needed one. I didn’t have any social media, despite the Harper press team’s longstanding campaign to convince me to set some up. The only texts in my phone were work-related.
I waited for Jacob to open my music, but instead he blinked up at me. “Did you just get this phone?”
I cleared my throat again. “It’s a few years old.”
“Your background is the default home screen,” he said slowly.
Color was spreading farther up my face. I felt off-balance, nettled and pleased by his attention. “So?”
“So you must have one picture you can put as your background.” He tapped the Photos icon and then stared at me in horror. “You’ve never taken asinglepicture on your phone? Are you a robot?”
I grabbed my phone back, my heart twitching nervously as my fingers brushed his. “I don’t use it much.”
He barked out an incredulous laugh. “You fucking weirdo.” He snatched the phone back. “Let’s see if your music has a personality, at least.”
He looked down at my phone again, and I leaned closer under the slim pretense of looking at the screen. My eyes traced the lines of his neck, smooth tanned skin and strong muscle disappearing beneath the soft collar of his T-shirt. I had a sudden, overwhelming urge to put my mouth there.
At the same time, my mind was skittering. It wasn’t just that Jacob was another driver. It was also only the second time I’d thought something like that about anyonereal. I was aware of my sexuality, in a distant, inconvenient sort of way, but it was something I kept firmly relegated to the corners of my mind. For years, I told myself if I didn’t pay any attention to it—if I kept my fantasies vague and faceless, never attached to a real person—then it couldn’t really matter.
Then, on a flight from Montreal to London a few years earlier, I sat next to a guy who spent the whole flight typing some research paper on his laptop. I spent the first hour plotting his death—he typed loudly and inconsistently, so every time I started to doze off, I was woken up by an abrupt burst of clacking—but then he pushed his sleeves up to his elbows, and I spent the next five hours sneaking glances at his forearms and fantasizing about feeling his fingers moving over my skin. That night, in my bedroom in London, I could hardly sleep for thinking about him.
Then I woke up the next morning, completely horrified, and vowed never to think about a guy like that again.
I took every thought and desire and shoved it into the darkest corner of my mind. Every time a feeling threatened to arise, I pushed it into racing instead. It was the first time I realized the sheer force of my own willpower. I told myself I wasn’t attracted to anyone, and I was so convincing, I think I actually believed it.
Then Jacob stepped into the picture, and it was like I was back on that plane, shivery and wrung out from five hours of longing.
“I’ve never heard of any of these bands,” Jacob said, wrinkling his nose. “?‘Race playlist’—what is this, like, pump-up music?”
He clicked play and listened for a minute with one earbud. I bit into my lip, fighting the smallest smile, because I knew it wasn’t exactly pump-up music. It was just calm, mellow indie stuff, most of which was only instrumental.
Jacob pulled the earbud out and stared at me. “This is the kind of music they play atspas,” he said in horror.
I frowned. “I’ve never been to a spa.”
He ran a hand over his forehead. “Good god, Keeping. You really are a robot. Someone needs to teach you how to live.”
He dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone, a battered iPhone with a splintery crack in the screen. His background image was a group of ten people grinning at the top of a mountain hike. They were all squished close together with their arms wrapped around each other. I’d never been in a picture like that in my life.
“See?” Jacob said, holding up his phone for me to get a closer look. “This picture says something about me.”
“It looks like an ad for some sports clothing company.”
I won’t pretend it was a particularly clever thing to say, but it was an attempt at a joke, and my heart was racing at my own boldness. I was rewarded for my bravery with a crinkle at the corner of Jacob’s eyes.
“I do look like a model, thank you,” he drawled. “No, it says I like hiking, and being outdoors, and being with friends.”
“What does mine say?” I asked.
“Yours?” He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know. 110101. Robot speak.”
He laughed at his own joke, and I smiled without thinking about it. His eyes dropped down to my mouth, then back up again. Something shifted behind his dark gray irises, and a beat of loaded silence fell between us.
