Page 33

and I finished second the year before. Surely some team will want me.

Spoiler alert: they don’t.

I start to have nightmares about e-mails. Every time I go to therapy, I get this weird terror that Amanda is going to sit

me down and tell me it’s finally time to give up. And when I’m at home, I get these random bursts of panic, my heart rate

suddenly taking off at the thought of wasting another day in Albuquerque. I need to get back into racing. I need to get out

of my parents’ house.

“Get an apartment now, then,” Amanda says, when I tell her this.

I shake my head. “I’ll need every dollar I’ve saved if I want to race in F3 or F4.

Unless I can find a sponsor, which I can’t.

” Trying to get sponsors has been even worse than trying to find a new team.

At least the teams tell me no. Sponsors—the big money ones, anyway—don’t answer e-mails, and they definitely don’t answer cold calls.

“Who was your sponsor before?”

I make a frustrated noise. “They were all through Porteo. I got into their young driver program in karting, then I was with

them all through F3 and F2.”

My manager was through Porteo, too. I reached out to him weeks ago, and he sent back a polite e-mail saying he thought it

would be best if we parted ways. On his website, he has Estefan Ribiero listed as a new client.

Amanda opens her mouth and then closes it again, and something wobbles inside of my chest.

“I should give up now, right?” I hate the way my voice shakes. “I know you’re thinking it.”

“No,” she says slowly. “But you might end up having to try again next year.”

I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. “ Fuck .”

“Is that the worst thing?” she asks. “Your physiotherapist’s only just cleared you to race again. Is waiting another year

really all that bad?”

“Yes.” I swipe angry tears from my face. “It is the worst thing. I need to race this year.”

“Why?” she asks. “And don’t tell me about the younger drivers again. I’ve done my research, you know. There are plenty of

twenty-three and twenty-four-year-olds in F2. I know it’s not what you wanted, but in the grand scheme of your life—”

“I have to race again this year,” I interrupt. “I have to. I can’t piss away another year. I can’t go another year feeling like this . I want my old life back.”

She looks up from her notepad. “Your old life?” she asks. “Or Travis?”

My stomach lurches forward, as if I’ve come to the end of a set of stairs and thought there was another step at the bottom.

“What do you mean?” I ask warily.

“I know you want to get back to racing,” she says, sounding like she’s choosing her words carefully. “But is this also about

Travis? Being part of his life again, maybe, or being ‘good’ enough to be with him?” She frames the word “good” with her fingertips.

My face is on fire. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I look down at my hands. “No. I don’t know.”

She nods slowly. “I see.”

I scowl at her. She knows I hate when she says that. Just like she knows when I’m being full of shit.

Because, yeah. I have been thinking about Travis lately. Almost constantly, really, since my hike in the park. It’s, like,

part of the cycle of feeling shitty. Send an e-mail. Get my hopes up. Think about what Travis will do when I show up at the

track again. Play out the first conversation we’ll have. Think about having sex with him again.

Get rejected. Feel like shit. Repeat.

“If you want to see him again,” Amanda says, “then go see him.”

My cheeks burn hotter. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I stammer. “I don’t have a seat for next year. I can’t even get the worst teams in F4 to take me.”

“So?”

“So, it’s pathetic.”

“Is that what he liked about you? Your racing credentials?”

I scowl. “Don’t say it like that, like it doesn’t matter.”

“Does it?”

“Yes,” I snap. “It does. I wouldn’t be into Travis anymore if he turned into a shit driver. I wouldn’t be attracted to him

if he got really lazy and stopped caring about winning. And that’s not being a bad person, okay, that’s just being honest.”

“Okay,” she says slowly. “But we’re not talking about you being lazy, or being a ‘shit driver.’ You’ve had some terrible luck,

and yes, you don’t have a new team yet. But you’re working incredibly hard. Your rehab team cleared you two months earlier

than they thought they would. And you haven’t given up, even after all these rejections.”

I make a dismissive noise. “Yeah, and I have nothing to show for it.”

“I disagree,” she says. “You are a completely different person compared to when I met you. Do you know how rare it is, for

people to change?” She gives me a small smile. “You’re very impressive, Jacob. Truly.”

I look away from her, discomfited.

“Look,” she says. “Do you know why a lot of people struggle with diets? It’s because they keep waiting for the ideal circumstances

to start. They’ll start working out when their new gym equipment arrives. They’ll stop eating sugar after that office party

next week. They slipped up at breakfast, so now there’s no point eating well the rest of the day.” She shrugs. “If you wait

for everything in your life to be perfect before you take action, then you’ll be waiting forever. If you want something, and

it’s within the realms of reality that you can get it...”

“You need to do something,” I mutter. “You’re really proud of that one, aren’t you?”

“Definitely.” She smiles. “I think it’s a new classic.”

I manage a small smile in return. “I guess... you’re not wrong.”

“High praise.”

I look at my hands. “But, like... even if I wanted to see him, I don’t have his number anymore. I got rid of my old phone.”

I don’t tell her about the time a week ago, when Paul and his girlfriend—fiancée, now—came over for dinner and I was playing

a drinking game with myself, where I drank every time I wanted to smack him, and I accidentally got drunk and stayed up till

two a.m. trying to remember Travis’ number. That’s the problem with cell phones, you don’t ever see anyone’s number. I thought

it ended in 4697, but the old woman who answered that number was definitely not Travis and definitely didn’t appreciate being

bothered on a Sunday morning.

Amanda raises a wry eyebrow. “If only there were some other way of communicating with people these days...”

“Travis doesn’t have any social media. I mean, he must have an e-mail address, I guess, but I don’t know what it is.”

Amanda frowns. “I thought he had Instagram.” She reaches into her pocket and takes out her phone. “I would never look up a

patient’s partner online, mind you, but when I was reading about F1 I could’ve sworn I saw a post from his Instagram.”

I shake my head. “His team has an account, it was probably from there.”

Amanda is still frowning at her phone. “Isn’t this him?”

She hands me her phone, and my stomach drops.

It’s an Instagram account, @traviskeeping94, with a little blue check by his name and 4.

6 million followers. There are only three pictures.

The first is a picture of him, Matty, and Heather.

It must have been taken right after he won the championship.

They’re all smiling, and bits of golden confetti are caught on their hair and clothes.

Travis has one arm around Matty’s shoulders and the other around Heather’s waist. There isn’t any caption.

The next picture is of a dog with black fur and a white patch over one eye. It’s one of the dogs from the shelter near his

house. It’s sitting on his kitchen floor—I recognize the tiles—wearing a bright blue collar that looks new.

The last picture is another one of him and Matty and Heather. It looks like they’re camping somewhere. Heather is sitting

in a camp chair with a beer in her hand, looking effortlessly pretty with her long hair tucked under a ball cap, and Matty

is laughing at something, and Travis is only half in the frame, putting a log on the fire. There’s a big lake in the background,

and a mountain.

“I’m sorry,” Amanda says. “I didn’t realize you didn’t know. I shouldn’t have sprung it on you.”

I try to answer her, but there’s a painful lump in my throat. I swallow hard until it goes away. “It’s fine. Looks like he’s

doing great.”

She frowns at me. “Right. Because everything that’s posted on Instagram is a completely realistic reflection of a person’s

life.”

I give her a hollow smile. “Travis doesn’t play games like that.”

“Okay,” she says. “Maybe he is happy. Or maybe he’s miserable. Or maybe he’s happy some of the time, and miserable some of

the time, and in-between some of the time, like most human beings are. Maybe he misses you and wants you back, or maybe he’s

moved on.” She gives me a gentle smile and a shrug. “You’ll never know unless you reach out.”

It takes me a day to work up the nerve to log in to my Instagram account.

I haven’t been in it for months. I have to download the app on my phone again and reset my forgotten password.

The moment I log in, I’m hit with that stupid little red number on the top right-hand corner telling me I have sixty-six new messages.

I stare at the number with my gut twisted into knots for ten minutes before I finally click on it.

All the messages are months old, every last one of them. I click through them slowly. Most of them are from other drivers

or people involved in F2, polite messages saying they hope my recovery is going well. One of my exes sent me a weird, rambling

message about how the crash “made her realize how much she needed me,” and how she always thought fate would bring us back

together, and to message her so we could meet up. I click on her profile and see about fifty pictures of her with some muscular

guy I vaguely recognize as an Olympic skier. I snort. I guess fate took her in a different direction when I didn’t message

her back.

I get to the end of the messages, trying not to be disappointed that none of them are from Travis. Slowly, I type in his handle