“She ‘figured’ it because you strongly implied as much.”
“Yeah?Good.Because it’ll take a lawsuit to get me to reveal my mole at the rehab.” After a pause, she sighs, switching to the weary, chiding tone of disappointed nanny. “Oh, Al. We coulda done something great together, you and me. But you got swayed by that little tramp and lost your edge.”
Reaching my car, which has the top down, I set the pastry box on the passenger seat. “I couldn’t be happier to have retired my ‘edge.’ I’ve wounded enough people with it over the years. Not that you need my advice, pet, but you might be happier—and your estranged daughter certainly will be—if you spend less time sharpening yours. Best of luck to you.”
I hang up and pocket my mobile. Leaning against the car, I look up at the smoochingly perfect late-June sky, streaked with clouds, and feel a wash of something like peace for the first time in five weeks.It’s going to be okay. Different, but okay. As long as Sage is happy.
I reached out to her via email (though I can’t be sure it’s the right one—I think she has several accounts) after Badrick’s wedding, as promised, but got no reply. I then made the mistake of trying to get a message to Sage through Phaedra Morgan, and she shut me down handily, responding,You know what it means when a woman won’t reply to your overtures, right? Fuck off and leave my driver alone.
So that’s it. My Salvi is no longermySalvi. It’s over.
I have Google alerts set for her, of course. I haven’t seen any paparazzi snapshots of her hitting the clubs yet, but it’s just a matter of time. I’m steeling myself for the pain that will come the first time I see pics of her on someone’s arm.
As I take out my car keys, my attention is drawn to a young boy dragging his mother by the hand over to the window of the bakery, pointing and pleading. She looks harried, trying for stern but telegraphing grief as she tells him, “It’s too expensive! We have buns at home.”
For some reason, the pale, lanky, dark-haired tot reminds me of the one in Bahrain to whom I gave a biscuit just before he swiped my mobile. I remember striding into Sage’s driver room later that day, confronting her about her practical joke sending me out to the shops for those ridiculous items. The frustration I felt that she already had the upper hand where my heart was concerned. The electricity between us when I touched her sternum with a fingertip. How she boldly held her ground, eyes glittering.
Taking the pastry box from my seat, I hold it out to the boy and his mother as she hauls him away from the bakery window. “Please, take these. My treat.”
“Can we?” the boy begs his mother.
Her eyes narrow with suspicion, so I manufacture a quick white lie to make the offer seem less dubious. “It was the wrong order, so they gave it to me for free.” I lift the box another inch toward them. “It’ll just go to waste, truly.”
The boy hangs off his mother’s sleeve. “Pleeeeeease?”
Her arms lift, and I hand over the box.
“Maritozzi, lemon curd buns, and cornetto al pistacchio,” I tell her. “You’re doing me a favor.”
“Thank you,” she manages. The boy gazes at me like I’m the Saint Nick of sweets.
On the drive home, I feel lighter. Not just because I’ve divested myself of a kilo of baked goods and am vowing I’ll have muesli and fruit for breakfast, but because in this moment, after CJ’s call, I have a sense of closure. The breakup with Sage hasn’t stopped hurting and may never heal completely. She will always be the ideal to me.
I’ll never have that again—the love I felt with her. No stepping in the same river twice, as it’s said. Once an unrepentant player, I now can’t stomach the thought of spending time with any woman other than Sage. But one day, perhaps, I’ll meet someone else… and deserve to.
25
ENGLAND
SAGE
Predictably, my drive in Spain was shit. I made the mistake of trying to “soldier through” with the back pain because I was afraid of looking weak. But winging my arm out like a pissed-off chicken when Alexander touched my elbow, the night we broke up, I tore the muscle.
During the Spanish GP, I was breathing shallowly when I needed every fucking cubic centimeter of air, and my right hand had poor grip and was twitching. It was a miracle I came in twelfth. My back was so locked up by the end of the race that I literally had to be lifted out of my car, and… yeah, I took endless shit about that online from everyone who hates women drivers. It didn’t matter that it was reported soon after the race that I was playing hurt.
Phae and the team batted around the idea of me sitting out Monaco and having our reserve driver Kalle take my place, since it was only a week later and I wasn’t at 100 percent. ButI was desperate to prove I could do it. I’ll admit, I just didn’t want Alexander to see that I was struggling. So I got a shot in my back on race day, and it did help with the pain, but I wasn’t moving naturally and my drive was compromised. I only squeaked out a point in tenth place because Akio Ono and João Valle had a dustup and retired.
The two weeks’ break before Baku helped a lot, both for my fucked-up back and my emotional state. I was worried about lagging so far behind Cosmin in the points, since we have that 100-point-gap contract clause. But Aoife, my manager, told me there’s an exception for injury, which in my cluttered, pain-exhausted, grief-addled brain is something I’d forgotten. I finished P8 in Baku, then P6 in the Canadian GP ten days ago, despite a dramatic crash during quali that caused me to start pretty far back on the grid.
Healing up from this injury (okay,injuries, if you include the broken heart) has ruled out any kind of socializing or partying. I’ve been tempted to go out to a club and get my freak on and have pics splashed all over the internet of me dirty dancing with a gorgeous stranger, tongue down their throat, not a care in the world. But even if I were in shape to flail around on a dance floor, the vengeful impulse to show off for Alexander is always short-lived—a pulse of spitefulness that gets swallowed up the next second by the pain of missing him.
And Ido. So much I almost can’t stand it. Especially because it now appears I fucked up and accused him when he wasn’t guilty.
Julian earned landline phone privileges a month ago and we’ve been talking every other day, and one of the first thingshe told me was that he’d revealed in group therapy meetings his guilt over what happened in Thailand. It was such a relief to clear the air with him about all that and apologize for assuming the worst for years. Our talks have been amazing, honestly. I can’t wait to see him when he’s done with his program.
Anyway, clearly someone at the treatment center passed that shit on to theSports and Tortesharpy. But there was no way I was gonna call Alexander up and tell him,Oh, my bad.
I did what I’d always hopednotto do: showed him my worst self. Realistically, he’ll get over me. He’s probably relieved to go back to his “three-shag limit” with the haut monde A-listers. I blocked his number the first night because I was mad, but… to be honest, itstayedblocked because that way I don’t have to know and be hurt by it if he doesn’t ever try to call. I’d be checking my phone constantly for messages.
