“There’s a reception tonight. Team sponsors, some media. Very casual.” He chose his words like defusing a bomb. “If you want to come, I could get you an invitation.”
Professional courtesy? Personal truce? I couldn’t tell. Didn’t matter. I needed the access. I needed… something.
“That would be great,” I said. “Good background material.”
“Right.” His smile was smaller now. Realer. “It would be nice to talk properly. Catch up.”
“Jonathan!” someone called from across the paddock. A woman in team gear, headset around her neck. “Interviews in five!”
“I have to go.” He stepped back, but not before squeezing my shoulder, just once. Two seconds. Enough to light up every nerve but not enough to mean anything.
Or too much.
“But Waldo?” he added.
“Yeah?”
“It’s good to see you.”
He walked away before I could answer.
I stood there, heart pounding, exhaust fumes in my lungs, notebook heavy in my hand.
Story first, I told myself.
Everything else could wait.
But as I watched him disappear into the media center, I wasn’t sure that was true anymore.
2
THE NARROWEST MARGINS
I spentFriday morning doing what I’d been hired to do, watching practice sessions, interviewing other drivers, soaking up the atmosphere that made Monaco unique in the Formula 1 calendar. The track was unforgiving, a street circuit that wound through the principality with barriers on both sides and no room for error. One moment of inattention, one slight miscalculation, and a million-dollar car became expensive scrap metal.
Jonathan was fast in both sessions, consistently in the top three. One of the other journalists reminded me to call them P1/P2 in my reporting.
I watched him from the media center, taking notes. In reality, my pulse was doing 180 beats a minute and I couldn’t feel my feet.
His line through the Swimming Pool section was absurdly clean, brushing the barrier by what had to be a few millimeters. I remembered him parallel parking like shit outside my apartment during senior year at Penn. Now this.
At Tabac, one of the most brutal corners on the calendar, a corner I’d seen written about like it was myth, he barely moved the steering wheel. Just… trusted the car. Trusted himself. It made something twist behind my ribs.
Then he threaded the needle through the chicane, an artificial narrowing of the course, with the kind of precision that looked effortless but required absolute commitment. It made me wonder what he had committed to in his personal life, if anything.
“First time covering Monaco?” The question came from the journalist sitting next to me, a weathered man in his fifties with the kind of deep tan that spoke of decades following racing around the world.
“First time covering Formula 1 at all,” I admitted. “I’m filling in for Rory Webster.”
“Ah, poor Rory. Hell of a writer. You’ve got big shoes to fill.” He extended a hand. “Mason Banning,Motorsport Weekly.”
“Wally Pulaski,Apex.”
“American?”
“Philadelphia.”
“Long way from home. What’s your angle for this weekend?”
