“Surreal,” Jonathan said, clinking his bottle against mine. “I keep expecting to wake up and find out it was all a dream.”
“It wasn’t a dream. You were brilliant today.”
“The car was brilliant. The team was brilliant. I just tried not to screw it up.” He took a long drink, then looked at me seriously. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“When I crossed the finish line, when I realized how I’d placed, the first thing I thought wasn’t about my father or the team or my career.” He paused. “I thought about you. About how you saw the whole thing. That made it even better somehow.”
I felt that familiar tightness in my chest, the same feeling I’d had in college when Jonathan said things that made me believe in possibilities I couldn’t afford to chase.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“Now? Now I go to Barcelona and try to do it again. And again after that.” He reached across the small table, taking my hand. “What happens with us?”
It was the question I’d been avoiding all weekend, the elephant in the room that had been growing larger with every conversation, every look, every moment of connection that reminded me why I’d fallen for him in the first place.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “This weekend has been… Unexpected.”
“Good unexpected or bad unexpected?”
“Complicated unexpected.” I squeezed his hand. “Jonathan, you just shone in the Monaco Grand Prix. You’re going to be traveling the world, fighting for championships, living a life I can barely imagine. I’m a journalist covering your sport.”
“We’ll figure it out as we go.”
“Is it that simple for you?”
“It is now.” Jonathan’s expression was completely serious. “Waldo, I’ve spent years building a career, proving I belonged in Formula 1, chasing this dream of winning races. And you know what I realized today? None of it means as much as I thought it would if I don’t have someone to share it with. Someone who knows me in the way you do.”
I stared at him, seeing the successful racing driver but also the boy who’d cried in my arms the night we broke up, who’d chosen his heart over his head and somehow made it work.
“I’m covering five more races on this European swing,” I said slowly. “Barcelona, Austria, Silverstone, Spa, Hungary.”
“I’ll be at all of them.”
“And after that, ifApexoffers me the permanent position…”
“Then you’ll be at all twenty-three races next season.”
“It’s complicated, Jonathan.”
“The best things usually are.” He smiled, that easy confidence that came from having just conquered one impossible dream and being ready to chase another. “Besides, we’ve got five races to figure it out. Starting with Barcelona next weekend.”
“Is that what you want? For me to keep covering your races while we… what? Date? See where this goes?”
“I want you in my life, Waldo. However that works, whatever that looks like. We can set boundaries, maintain professionalism when we need to. But I don’t want to spend another ten years wondering what if.”
I looked at him, really looked. Jonathan Hirsch, Monaco Grand Prix finalist, sitting in a dive bar in Monte Carlo at midnight, asking me to take a chance on something that might be wonderful or might be a complete disaster.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“Okay, let’s see where this goes. Barcelona to Spa, five races to figure out if we’re brave enough to make this work.”
Jonathan’s smile was radiant. “That’s all I’m asking for.”
He kissed me across the small table, soft and sweet and tasting like beer and possibility. Around us, the bar continued its late-night rhythm, oblivious to the fact that a Formula 1 driver and a motorsports journalist had just decided to rewrite their carefully planned lives.
