Page 32 of Double Apex

But I would be a fool for you.

Good night, draga.

11

BARCELONA

MID-MAY

COSMIN

I nearly managed third place at the Spanish GP. It would have felt like a podium if the twelve points I won had earned a smile from Phaedra, but her brief thaw at Baku was just that.

In the two weeks since, she’s avoided me aside from work. I tell myself this is for the best. When Jakob and Inge invite a small group to spend an afternoon on the fifty-foot yacht he bought Inge for their first anniversary (the lovestruck fool spent half his year’s salary on it), I accept only because I know Phaedra will decline.

To my surprise, when I board the shuttle bus taking us to the marina, Phaedra is sitting at the back, her freckled nose buried in a hardbound copy of the newest Julian Barnes novel. She’s wearing a man’s blue oxford shirt, unbuttoned with sleeves rolled to the elbows, and a white bikini top beneath.I wonder if it’s tied with a simple bow, and what it would be like to pull the string and free her breasts and hold their warmth in my hands.

The time we were caught in the rain on Santorini, her thin shirt clung to her and I noticed she has a large tattoo on one shoulder blade. I hope to see it in detail today if she removes the shirt to sunbathe.

Her unadorned green eyes meet mine for a moment, then refocus on the page. As I make my way up the aisle, I greet Reece and her wife, then Jakob’s race engineer, Alfie, and his wife—a woman I’ve never met, who is introduced to me as Georgie. Based on the woman’s volume, and the way she grips me when we shake hands, I suspect she had cocktails with breakfast.

I sit sideways in the seat in front of Phaedra’s, resting my arm along the back. “An unexpected pleasure, draga. Typically you avoid such gatherings.”

She touches her tongue with one fingertip and turns a page. “As long as no one gives me shit about reading all day, I might as well get some fresh air. Plus Klaus wants to talk.”

I tap the edge of the novel. “Which of Barnes’s books is your favorite?”

Her glare is suspicious. She tucks the cover flap into her page and closes the book. “You’ve read his stuff?”

“I’m fond of postmodern writing. I’ve not read that one yet—perhaps you’d lend it to me when you’re finished.”

“Stop doing that.” She sits back, squinting.

“Doing what?”

“Liking what I like. It’s creepy.”

I laugh. “It’s a coincidence. We simply enjoy many of the same things.”

“Yeah, I’m not buying it.”

The van starts up, and Jakob and Inge climb aboard, merry and chatty and looking very young and in love. The door closes and Phaedra’s attention snaps to the window.

“No,” she breathes.

I follow her eyes. Klaus is still outside, staring at his phone, and the van is moving. Phaedra puts both hands against the window like a child realizing she’s being taken to the dentist. The strains of Elvis’s “Big Boss Man” jangle from her phone, which she fumbles from a straw beach bag.

“Klaus, why aren’t you on the bus? Should I ask the—”

I can hear the rumble of his voice leaking from the phone. She’s taut as a bowstring and after a long moment of listening, wilts dramatically.

“Okay, fine. Sure, bye.”

I raise questioning eyebrows. She stuffs the phone back into her bag.

“He claims,” she says crisply, “to have ‘an urgent matter requiring attention.’”

“Klaus has many responsibilities.”

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