“Sure,” I said, narrowing my eyes.
He didn’t look right. I wanted to reach forward and offer him a hand, but the last time he’d touched me, it hadn’t ended well.
That was a lie.
It hadn’t ended appropriately for the workplace.
“I’ll have to try harder next time,” he said and brushed past me, towards the tunnel.
There he went again with the‘next time.’
As if it were more than a one-night stand.
“How much of the argument did you hear?” I asked, rushing after him.
“Not much. Couldn’t make out nearly anything you said. Though I heard my name.”
I stopped, and the gravel crunched under his next two steps before he looked over his shoulder.
“Are you going to Imre’s party?”
“Party?” he questioned, and I panicked that I’d mispronounced it. “What party?”
So he’d lied to get me to Hungary. My hands balled, and if Zoltán thought he’d really heard me scream earlier, he was in for a high-pitched treat.
“Oh. Party.” He nodded as if he’d remembered something. “Next month. Yes. Are you?”
“I guess so,” I said. “Do you know him well?”
“I do. He’s… he was really there for me after the… after the crash. He’s closer with my brother, though.”
Yes, Benedek had somehow climbed the ranks of motor sports, shouting about his grandfather at every opportunity,becoming a spokesperson for the Farkas family. Somehow, he still managed to be his brother’s manager.
I wanted to ask,‘In a fatherly way?’but I didn’t know if I could cope with the answer.
Imagining my absent father being more paternal to the man I wanted to fold me up like a garden chair… hit a tender spot.
But I had to fill the silence with something.
“So, we’re not going to talk about how you nearly fainted two weeks ago, and now you’re throwing up behind the trailers like a plague-infested rat?”
He groaned, rolled his eyes, and leaned against one of the trailers.
A grinning Luca Mendes looked down at us in last year’s Ciclati leathers.
“So now we talk?”
My brows pinched. “Huh?”
“Now we talk.”
“I don’t… understand.” Was there some new slang I’d missed out on? Had I missed him saying something to me earlier?
“We haven’t talked for weeks. And now you want to. In person. Do you not use your phone for anything other than posting pictures?”
I blinked, unsure if I’d lost all ability to comprehend words.
Because I still didn’t understand.
