“If you want to go, please just go.The crew can see there’s tension, and it doesn’t help my bloody fear that I’m not cut out for the job,” she says, her eyes misting a little.“I’m very well aware I’m a PR exercise, but I thought, maybe stupidly, that I could prove them all wrong.That I am good enough.”She drops her head into her hands, and I reach my hand across the table, my fingers outstretched toward hers.
She ignores it.
“Chloe,” I say gently.“You do deserve this.You are cut out for it.”
“On the one hand I know that’s true; on the other, I feel like the impostor I am,” she says, shaking her head.“I need time to settle.Find my feet.Fire that wanker of a strategist.But time I don’t got.”
The honestly from Chloe is arresting.
Tell her.You owe her at least the truth.
Her head is still in her hands, her gaze fixed on that damn coffee.I steel myself.
“Chloe,” I say quietly.
“Yes?”
“I’m getting flashbacks,” I tell her finally, pulling my hand back across the table.“At night and on the track.”
She turns her head back to me.“The crash?”
“Yes.I have these physical reactions.Tight chest.Hard to take a deep breath.I have to slow down.I get worried I’m going to...well, crash again, I suppose.”
I watch Chloe absorb the information.“Shit, Matt.I’m so sorry,” she says quietly.
“Anyway.Now you know.That’s why I think it’s time to quit.Even if I really don’t want to.Even if, as Barry says, there is still some bite in the old dog.If I can’t drive, who am I?What use am I?”
“Is there really?”
“Really what?”
“Bite in the old dog?”
“Dunno.Sometimes I still feel it.For a second.”
“Really?”
“I think so,” I say honestly.“I think so.”
“We can work with this, Matt.If you want to drive,” she says.“You have a whole bunch of training and discipline issues.You need a pre-race routine, one that helps you focus.A therapist to work on the mental blocks.”
She blinks a few times, worried, I think, that she’s said too much.But I just laugh.To myself mostly, because no matter what, Chloe has been and will always be an optimistic fixer.
“What’s so funny?There’s nothing wrong with therapy,” she says quickly.
“No, it’s not that,” I say, shaking my head, not ready to share with her that, in fact, I have been seeing a therapist.“I’m just remembering how you always know what to do.Remember when you whipped me into shape back in Juniors?”
I grin, but Chloe doesn’t.Instead, her eyes flicker to the back of the room.“That was a whole lifetime ago,” she says, with a laugh that soundsalmostbitter.“But really, I can help you get back to the driver I know you can be.What do you say?”
“If anyone can do it, it would be you,” I say, tipping my coffee cup at her.
She stares hard at me, scanning my eyes, searching for something.
“I’m serious,” I reassure her.
She finally nods.“Okay.Great.We can focus on those things, while you work with a therapist.We can get more help for you if we need to.We can claw back some pace in other ways.”Chloe is awake, suddenly.Excited, even.She springs up and starts to pace.
“I guess so.”
