The only other downside, which I’m trying not to think about, is how this could affect things with Travis. Not that there’s anything to affect.
“He’s probably still with that guy from the parking lot,” I tell Kelsie for the fiftieth time. “So, it’s probably just as well.”
She gives me a skeptical look over the rim of her coffee mug. It’s midmorning on a Saturday, and I’ve been rambling at her for about ten minutes now.
“Even if he’s not,” I continue, “he probably doesn’t want to get back together. I was such an asshole to him. Plus he’s, like, a world champion now. He could date anyone he wants.”
Kelsie opens her laptop. “Mm-hm.”
“Plus, I still think it’d be kind of rude to just show up out of nowhere at his door. If he wanted to see me, he could. So, I should just... respect that. Right?”
Kelsie doesn’t look up from her typing.
“Right?” I say again. “Kels?”
“Huh? Oh—sorry, babe. I was just Googling synonyms for ‘coward.’?”
I give her a flat look. “Ha, ha.”
“‘Chicken,’” she reads. “‘Scaredy-cat.’ ‘Wimp.’ ‘Milksop.’ Ooh, I like that one. Stop being a fucking milksop, Nichols.”
“Hilarious.”
She grins. “I thought so. For real, though. You want to be with him, so just stop making stupid excuses and go talk to him.”
I fiddle with my coffee mug. “They’re not stupid excuses. Okay, they’re notallstupid excuses,” I clarify, reading her expression. “It could ruin things with Crosswire if I got back together with Travis.”
“They can’t fire you for dating him, that’s discrimination.”
“If they fired me for dating guys in general, yes. Not for dating their main competition.”
She shrugs. “So don’t tell them.”
I shift uneasily, remembering Tom’s penetrating stare. “I don’t think I could do that.”
“Okay, so then don’t try to date Travis again. Give up on him completely. Forget him and move on.”
I look down at my hands. “I don’t think I can do that, either.”
She gives me a fond, exasperated look. “Duh. Look, babe, not that I don’t enjoy our heart-to-hearts, but you’ve been saying the same things for, like, days now.” She kicks me under the table. “You know what you need to do, so just stop whining and godoit.”
I fall silent for a while, chewing the inside of my lip.
She’s right. Obviously, she’s right. I’m just latching on to the Crosswire thing as an excuse.
I don’t really think that Crosswire would fire me for dating Travis, but if they did... if they did, I would survive it. It would mean going back to the drawing board, maybe waiting another year or two to claw my way back into F3 or F2... but I would do it. If Crosswire couldn’t trust me to date Travis and still be loyal to their team, then I would suck it up and find another way back into racing.
But I can’t see any way forward without at least trying to get back together with Travis. If he doesn’t want me anymore, that’s one thing. But as long as there’s hope, even if it’s a one-in-a-million chance...
“I’ll go and see him,” I say.
Kelsie grins. “Finally.”
I convince myself it’s better to wait to talk to Travis during F1 testing in Barcelona. If he’s still dating someone (and he probably is, even though hedidcome to see me after I saw him and that guy together), there’s no way he’ll bring them to testing. Or if he does, they won’t be following him around all the time. Surely I’ll be able to talk to him alone.
Testing is a bit later than usual this year, the very last weekend in March. I’m flying over with the Crosswire team, although I won’t be doing any driving. They’re really putting me through the ringer with fitness and psychological testing, and I’ve been sitting in on tons of engineering meetings.
Yesterday, though, I got to drive an F1 car for the first time. It was Crosswire’s car from two seasons ago, before the regulations changed, and Tom arranged to let me drive it as a sort of welcome to the team. It was crazy, really. This entire team of people bringing a monstrously expensive car out on track just so I could drivearound in it awhile. When I first got there, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience, like I was floating off the ground, watching someone who looked like me walking around the car in a race suit and answering the team’s questions.
