“Look at you, knowing about sports.”
“Don’t distract me.” She points a finger. “People are going to notice this race car driver is dating the ‘Hilton Heartbreaker.’?”
“And?” I shrug. “Dating and breaking up with shitty men isn’t illegal.”
“But disturbing the peace is.”
“That was such a stupid case. That judge was biased.” I frown and top off our mug. “No one’s going to notice. It’s been what, five years since that stupid article? I’m just some silly fashion influencer who’s going to, woops, stumble into a Formula 1 driver’s life and, bam, make him fall in love with me. This happens every day.”
“Is that what happened to the client?” Renata asks. “Who even is she?”
“Imogen Baldwin, she’s a ballerina at the American Ballet Company.”
“Oh, soshe’sa famous athlete, too?”
“She’s ablueprint. The little swan and the big European athlete who swept her off her feet. Come on, you know I can do that.”
When Renata gets irritated with me, like actually irritated, not pretending to be mad so that she can swindle me out of the last mozzarella stick, she grinds her teeth so hard that I can practically hear her dentist’s screams. “Show me the text again.”
Smiling smugly, I unearth the encrypted message I’d received from none other than Imogen Baldwin. Her maid of honor must’ve given her my contact info, and I have to hand it to them; thereis something perpetually endearing about being part of women’s whisper networks.
Bernard is about to start the next Formula 1 season, so he will be traveling constantly. But I know people on his current team (Stark-Benzin) and have three job openings I could get you into.
“Paperwork,” Renata hisses. “You can’t be a fake WAG with a fucking paper trail!”
From the living room, Rowan starts to howl.
“It’s actually really smart,” I explain. “Formula 1 travels around the world. The races are basically in new countries every week. Which is why I think it makes the most sense, narratively, to be his new coworker. I take one of these little gigs, magically appear in his life, publicly fuck him over, and vanish into the night. Also, the teams are huge, like nine hundred people. So nobody will even remember me once I bounce. Same with the internet stalkers.”
“I don’t like it.”
Very aware of this. I press on. “If anyone realizes I’m the ‘Hilton Heartbreaker’?”—I air-quote the stupid tabloid moniker, cringing—“then I look like I’m trying to clean up my act. The paperwork is a good thing.”
Renata is quiet for a long moment. “How do you know this much about Formula 1, anyway?”
I blink, surprised by her question. “Oh. I’ve just seen it around. My dad watched it when it was on.”
This is only partially true. But I haven’t exactly told Renata thatFormula 1 was my family’s version ofFriday Night Lights. That despite every odd, my Midwestern mechanic dad caught one of the few American broadcasts and fell in absolute love with it. He’s the reason we watched Silverstone and Monaco and Monza like other families celebrated the Super Bowl, Crock-Pot queso dip, and canceled plans, Dad pestering the guys from the garage into drinking Budweiser from their work boots whenever Stark-Benzin finished first.
Yup. I used to be a fan of this guy’s team.
Back when Faust drove there, too.
And now I can’t tell Renata any of this, since she’ll think I’m just taking this job for sentimental reasons. Which I’m not. Sentimentality is dangerous in my line of work.
I reach a hand out, and this time, it isn’t for alcohol. Renata rolls her eyes, acts like she’s debating some grand equation, then winds our fingers together. I smile at the way our fifty-cent mood rings click. Hers is always that same deep, dark navy blue. Mine’s been stuck on black since I accidentally washed it in the pocket of some jeans.
“I miss you,” I admit.
She looks at our rings. Blue and almost blue, or black and almost black, depending on how you look at them. Half-empty, half-full. “You know I can’t come save you if this shit turns sideways,” she says. “I’ve got Rowan now, and I still haven’t told Bryce about all this. He still asks me when I’m going to introduce him to the rest of my modeling friends.”
Ah, Bryce. The exceedingly average computer programmer who stole my Little John away. “It’s not going to go sideways. When’s he back from his work trip, by the way? I could do a Bryce intervention, too.”
She snorts. “Tuesday. The pink hair will be enough.”
After putting Rowan to bed we move to the bathroom, Renata delicately plopped on the closed toilet lid, Manic Panic jar in her lap, me cracking the window so we don’t asphyxiate. “One of Bryce’s many perks,” Renata says with a smug grin. “He comes from a long line of Astoria realtors.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I mumble, as if I didn’t officiate their wedding five years ago.
