“For what?”
“For showing me something you love. For trusting me to understand it.”
Jonathan looked at me with an expression I was beginning to recognize. Hopeful, vulnerable, like he was offering me something precious and wasn’t sure how I’d handle it.
“This is what I want to do with my life, Waldo,” he said. “Not the family business. Not the safe path everyone expects.”
“It’s not exactly a hobby.”
“No,” he said quietly. He gestured toward the track where people paid money to drive cars as fast as physics would allow. “I know it sounds crazy.”
I looked at him then. His hands were still trembling slightly, and the focus in his eyes hadn’t faded even now that the engine noise was gone. This wasn’t a fantasy. It was a direction.
“It doesn’t sound crazy,” I said finally. “But it does sound like something you’d have to choose.”
He smiled, quick and sharp. “I already have.”
When he kissed me in the front seat of his BMW, tasting like adrenaline and possibility, I felt the pull of his dream. The danger in him, the part that refused to settle.
He rested his forehead against mine, breath still uneven. “You should know something,” he said softly. “I’m not very good at taking things slow. Cars. People. I tend to… commit.”
I huffed a quiet laugh. “Cars have brakes,” I said. “People don’t.”
His smile was sharp and unrepentant. “I guess we’ll find out.”
I realized I was falling for more than just Jonathan the person. I was falling for Jonathan the dreamer, the one who was brave enough to chase something that mattered to him regardless of what anyone else thought made sense.
The recognition hit with a jolt of clarity. We were moving too fast. I knew it even as I leaned into him. I knew that sensible people built this kind of intimacy slowly, with caution and distance and time to think.
Some small, rational part of me wanted to pull back. Another part, one that was louder and hungrier, refused.
With that refusal came the quiet, unwelcome thought that loving Jonathan might mean following him somewhere I wasn’t sure I could go.
It should have been a warning sign. Instead, I chose it anyway. And in the choosing, it felt like coming home.
5
DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
When Jonathan talked about racing,his voice changed. It sharpened, focused, the way my father’s did when he talked about engines. I understood the shape of the obsession, even if I wasn’t sure where it led, or what it would ask of anyone who followed.
Spring break loomed ahead of us like a storm cloud.
Jonathan was going to Dubai with his family, some combination of business and vacation that would last ten days. I’d be staying in Philadelphia, working double shifts at the bookstore to save money for the summer.
“Come with me,” he said a few days after the race track visit, like the idea had just occurred to him.
“To Dubai?” I laughed. “Right. Let me just check my trust fund.”
“I’m serious,” Jonathan said. “My parents would cover everything. Flight, hotel. They’d love to meet you.”
The ease of it made my chest tighten. That this was something he could offer so casually. That it didn’t seem to occur to him what saying yes would make me.
“I can’t,” I said.
He frowned. “Why not?”
“Because I have to work. Because I can’t afford to miss those shifts. Because I don’t belong in Dubai with your family.”
