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“My dad,” I said, forcing it out. “He doesn’t like you. He thinks—” I cut myself off.
“He thinks I’m not real competition,” she finished flatly. “Or that girls can’t race.” She mocked a man’s voice but didn’t crack a smile. Instead, her eyebrows crushed together, and she looked genuinely annoyed. A moment passed like that, and I couldn’t think of any words to say because there was nothing I could do to help. Maisey let out a dramatic huff before rolling onto her back again.
“Cool. Love that.” Frustration seeped into her words as she stared up at the stars.
“I don’t think that though,” I added quickly, mentally kicking myself for not thinking to say that earlier. Of course I didn’t think that. I thought she was an amazing driver, the only one who’d been neck and neck with me, the only one who trained as hard or took it as seriously. She went quiet again, as if really thinking hard. She had a tendency to do that, the long pauses between her many words.
“I like talking to you,” she said suddenly. The words caught me off guard.
“…Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, shrugging like it was nothing. “You just get it. Racing being everything and all that. The pressure of it.”
I stared up at the sky again. “Yeah,” I admitted. “You do too.”
“Sometimes I wish it wasn’t so…consuming,” she said quietly.
I turned my head slightly.
“What do you mean?”
She picked at a piece of grass, twisting it between her fingers. “Like,” she started, frowning a little, “I love it. I really do. But sometimes it feels like if I mess up once, that’s it. Like everything disappears.”
My chest tightened. “Yeah,” I said. I knew exactly what she meant. My father said I wasn’t bold enough on the track, that winners didn’t hesitate. But the thought that one crash could take you out of the next race or more was overwhelming and always on my mind.
She glanced over at me. “You ever feel like that?”
I hesitated, then nodded once. “All the time.”
She studied me for a second, something softer settling in her expression. “Okay,” she said quietly. Like that answered something for her, or like she understood. We stared at the stars again, both lying flat on our backs. I put my hands under my head and small gray clouds floated over the moon. I knew an hour had likely passed by then, but I couldn’t find it in myself to move. For the first time in maybe ever, I felt truly calm.
“Hey, Bauer?” Maisey knocked her feet into mine after a while, a buzz shooting up my leg at the contact.
“Yeah?”
“When I win a championship one day,” she said, her voice teasing again, “I’m wearing bright pink, just in spite of boys who think girls can’t race.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Good.”
“With bows.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
She grinned. “And you’ll have to watch.”
“Doubt it,” I said. “I’ll be too busy winning it myself.”
“Oh, it’s on,” she said, sitting up slightly, pointing at me. “You’re going down.”
“Keep dreaming, Andrews.”
She flopped back down dramatically. “Rude.”
I shook my head, smiling despite myself. The noise in my head wasn’t loud, and my thoughts were still. The racing world felt far behind as we lay in the grass under a sky full of stars.
12
THEO | PRESENT
