“I found her Tony, it was…” Rocco actually shudders and I feel cold inside.
Antonio then stands up. “I mean, fuck, can we stop talking about something that almost happened ten years ago? It was an accident.”
He storms off, and I’m left sitting there with Rocco. He rubs the back of his neck like he does after a particularly shitty race. “When did he get so… angry?”
“I’m not sure,” I reply and lean back in my chair. “But he’s been off the rails since Bash retired. Something about Frankie triggers him irrationally but why is anyone’s guess.”
Rocco shakes his head. “To be honest, my father had to talk me into making him part of this plan. I wanted only you.”
Oh wow.
Rocco sighs. Suddenly, he seems much older than me. Much more than the five years he’s actually got on me. “Fuck man, I don’t hate her, you know? I get that the whole overdose thing threw her off-track. I know if it hadn’t happened, she’d have spent all her time working under her dad, for the team, and she’d be more than ready. But she didn’t. And I did.”
I swallow hard and take a deep breath. “What exactly happened that night? You were there, right? It was your boat.”
“It was a yacht my dad was renting,” Rocco explains, with green eyes staring at the tarmacs outside the lounge window but seeing some horrible memory in his head instead. “We were throwing a party in between races for my uncle who was spending the summer with us after a shitty divorce. There were a lot of parties that weekend because of my uncle and his mid-life crisis, which I thought was fun, you know? Anyway Frankie said she wasn’t coming, but then, suddenly, she was there. I remember seeing her, even though I was drunk as a skunk and there were about a hundred people on the yacht.”
“Why do you remember her?”
“Because she looked upset,” Rocco replied and my chest tightens with guilt. “Later, Lucia told me she’d been stood up or something, and so she was angry, and they were going to party it off or some such shit. I don’t know. Maybe Antonio can tell you more, he was there too and spent more time with her that night. Anyway, I was hammered but the next thing I remember, I walked into a bathroom off one of the bedrooms and there she was. Lying on her back in the bathtub, covered in vomit and barely breathing. I… I fucking screamed like a little bitch until someone called an ambulance.”
Clara has arrived and is walking toward us. Rocco sees her first and nods and smiles. “Hey.”
“Hi,” Clara says with a brief smile. Her hair is loose. “Flight boards in ten.”
“Okay. Yeah.” I stand up. I was beginning to feel gross talking about Frankie like this anyway. But I want to talk to her about that night on the yacht… when I can face her without looking as horror stricken as I feel.
