Page 60 of Double Apex

She fusses with her cup, rotating it. “It’s fine. I know you didn’t mean it the way I took it.”

Now I feel guilty because I absolutelydidmean it the way she took it.

“Of course not,” I assure her.

I slice a triangle of my salmon Benedict and eat it, keeping an innocuous “I’m just so content to be sitting here with you” expression on my face, even though I’m actually worried things aren’t settled between us, but for our own reasons we’re feigning that they are.

She eats a bit of scone with a microscopic dab of jam on. I point at her little plate while swallowing my own food, then ask, “How is it?”

Her polite smile is affected, and I have to take my hat off to her. She’s good at pretending to pretend something.

“I think the butter was too warm when they cut it into the flour,” she says with a careless wave. “The texture’s off. But that’s totally not your fault—you’reabsolutely the sweetestto have ordered it for me.”

I give her a radiant smile anyway, delivering the line we both know comes next.

“No,you.”

18

ENGLAND

MID-JULY

COSMIN

The British Grand Prix holds a special magic. It’s historic, fast, challenging, and the English weather can be a bit of a wild card even in the middle of summer. I’m especially excited to be in England because Phaedra’s family owns a small home in Towcester, a few miles from the Silverstone Circuit, and I’ll be staying with her there alone. No sneaking, no pillow-muffled cries, no panicked alibis.

On Tuesday of race week as I drive my rented BMW up the A5, I feel light and buoyant. Bowie’sDiamond Dogsplays through the speakers, and I sing along, remembering when I saw Phaedra playing the album after she left the gym in Bahrain.

I’ve told everyone I’m staying with friends in Milton Keynes so there’s no suspicion about why I’m not in the motorhome.During European grands prix, drivers typically stay in luxury motorhomes that travel from country to country, and hotels provide our home base during races on other continents.

Six uninterrupted nightswith Phaedra. A podium finish could scarcely please me more.

I pull into the drive of the Tudor-style house and see the curtains twitch. Phaedra comes out barefoot, in baggy cut-off jeans and a lacy white blouse. She wears white often now, and it makes my heart skip every time, remembering that first conversation about it, and how it stunned me breathless when I saw her in the bar in Melbourne.

I’m pulling my travel bag from the trunk when she walks up, hair tumbling over her shoulders in a mahogany waterfall. I loop an arm around her waist and go in for a kiss, and she veers back.

“Nosy neighbors,” she whispers. Flicking a glance across the street, she deposits a dry peck on my cheek. “There,” she says, stepping back with a wooden social smile.

I give her a wink. “I’m sure the neighbors will be fooled, considering I’m holding a suitcase and your nipples are hard enough to be visible from a block away.”

“Smug bastard.”

“You love it.”

I maintain an appropriately platonic distance as I carry my bag inside, resisting the urge to lace my fingers with Phaedra’s.

The truth is, my feelings for her are starting to make me reckless. I almost wish for a leaked photo or gossip-site murmur to force our hands.

Wednesday evening, I’m in the large bathtub with Phaedra, soaking the tension from my muscles after a long training session with Guillaume. There’s a faint dappling of sweat on her upper lip, which I’m imagining licking off.

Her arms stretch to drape along the edge of the tub where she reclines across from me, and her breasts rise above the waterline, tempting pink nipples breaking the surface. Our legs are entangled. My phone is on the floor beside the tub, connected to a Bluetooth speaker on the counter that plays Slowdive’sSouvlaki, the dreamy buzz echoing in the tiled bathroom.

Phaedra drags aside a tendril of hair that has escaped the pile on top of her head. I cannot help but marvel at even the smallest of her details—right now I’m admiring the way the wet tip of the lock of hair is dark, with threads of copper.

I’ve never felt this before: a near reverence for mundane personal detail. Everything about this woman seems miraculous, from the tiny toast-colored beauty spot on her left earlobe to the pale moons of her fingernails. I want to hoard her like rare books.

“Let’s play the game,” Phaedra says, her eyes sparkling.

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