“I have a few days before I need to be in Zandvoort,” he said. “Elena mentioned she could arrange something private. Maybe Greece? A few days, just us, where we can talk this through?”
“A secret vacation to discuss not being secret anymore?”
“The irony isn’t lost on me.” He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “But I think we need this, Waldo. Time together, away from all of it, to figure out what we want.”
I thought about Thea’s guardrails, about disclosing a vacation with Jonathan, about the optics of disappearing to Greece together during the summer break.
But he was right. We needed this conversation. And we needed to have it in person.
“Okay. Send me the details.”
“Elena will handle everything. Tickets, villa, complete privacy.” He looked relieved. “Four days. No paddock, no press, no guardrails. Just us.”
August 22nd - Planning
The logistics came together quickly once Elena took over. Flights booked: London to Mykonos on the 22nd, Mykonos to Amsterdam on the 26th. A private villa on the quieter side of the island, owned by a discretion-focused luxury company that catered to celebrities and athletes who needed to disappear.
JONATHAN:Can’t wait to see you. Properly see you, without having to worry about who’s watching.
WALDO:Four days. Then back to reality.
JONATHAN:Four days to figure out what we want our reality to look like.
I packed light, summer clothes, sunscreen, the confidence that we could figure this out face to face. The anticipation was almost unbearable, three weeks of separation about toend in complete privacy, away from the paddock scrutiny and professional obligations that had defined our relationship since Monaco.
For four days, we could just be ourselves. No careful choreography, no screenshots and disclosures, no consideration of how our relationship looked to colleagues or affected our careers.
We’d be free to explore what we’d been building in the shadows of the Formula 1 circus.
The Greek islands beckoned, promising sun and privacy and the chance to have the conversation we’d been avoiding since Spa: not just whether we could make this work, but whether going public was worth the cost it would exact from both our careers. I had four days to decide if I was ready to be known as Jonathan Hirsch’s boyfriend — and whether that was a role I wanted to claim or a trap I needed to escape.
I didn’t tell Thea we were going to Mykonos. I noticed the omission and let it stand.
34
WINE-DARK SEA
The Aegean hitme like a slap when I stepped out of the plane onto the tarmac in Mykonos. Blue so intense it didn’t look real, a color cranked up past nature to an impossible digital palette. The hot air shimmered with salt and sun as I walked across the open ground toward the low terminal building, sweat already beading on the back of my neck.
From the airport, I saw the harbor in the distance, with a tangle of fishing boats rocking against sleek white yachts. I heard the faint whine of scooters carrying multiple passengers, and the smell of grilled octopus drifted on the breeze from a nearby stand.
I’d never seen water this clear in my life. The sunlight cut straight through it, turning the shallows into liquid glass. Whitewashed houses stacked themselves up the hillsides like sugar cubes, doors and shutters painted the same impossible blues as the sea, laundry flapping from balconies like flags of surrender to the sun.
I took a cab to the address he’d given me. The villa sat high above the harbor, reached by a road so steep my cab driver crossed himself before starting the climb. White walls, blue shutters, and a terrace that looked like it belonged on a postcard.
Jonathan opened the door as I dragged my rollaboard suitcase up the driveway. “Welcome to Mykonos, Waldo,” he said, like he owned the whole damn island.
Inside, the place was cool and spare, stone floors, whitewashed walls, everything softened by sunlight bouncing off the water outside. I dropped my bag in the living room as Jonathan turned to me, grinning. “Bed first, sightseeing later.”
I didn’t need convincing.
We barely made it to the bedroom. Clothes came off in a clumsy rush, laughter turning into hunger as soon as skin met skin. The heat of him, the familiarity of his hands, the way relief slid so quickly into want, it all collapsed the weeks of distance into something urgent and undeniable.
He took me with the same certainty he brought to everything, and I let myself give in to it, to the simple truth of being wanted and held and known. When it was over, we lay tangled together, breathless and spent, the Aegean breeze drifting through the shutters as if the island itself were exhaling with us.
Jonathan drifted off first, sprawled naked across the white linen sheets, one arm flung over his head. The Aegean light poured through the shutters and painted him in stripes, his chest rising and falling in an easy rhythm.
I should have followed him into sleep, but my body hummed with leftover energy. Carefully, I slid out of bed and padded barefoot across the cool stone floor.
