Page 21

Chapter Twenty

Shantal

B ahrain, first race of the season, dawns on us quickly – like, really quickly .

‘ Let’s go, plane leaves in two hours! ’ Miguel yells in his biggest Barca matchday voice, banging on all our doors bright and early on a Monday morning. I think I’m going to cry. I’ve never been the most chipper of morning people without a coffee (which I realize I need badly), and I can barely figure out how to roll out of bed, a situation that is exponentially harder knowing I’ll need to be on a jet in a couple of hours.

I’m an unhappy mess, with tangled hair and eye bags heavier than my luggage. Someone’s rented limos that we get to take to the airfield, and it’s so bad that I miss the first one with the three trainers, hopping into the second with the drivers. It’s all very posh in said limo, except that I couldn’t care less, and Henri’s bouncy enthusiasm isn’t curbing my irritation.

‘Whoa, there’s champagne!’ he yelps, grabbing himself a flute and pulling the entire bottle out of its bucket of ice. Miguel shoots him a look of slight judgement from where he sits, lounging with a bag of fancy little peanuts.

‘Hey there, buddy.’ Darien chortles. ‘Easy on the bubbly. You’ll throw it all up the second the plane leaves the ground.’

‘Are you even legal, dude?’ Miguel adds with a raised eyebrow.

Henri fumes for all of three seconds before giddily getting back to his champagne.

‘Wake up.’ Darien throws a peanut at me. His aim is unfortunately true. It knocks me right in the forehead.

‘Hey!’ I whine around a great big gulp of my coffee. ‘I am awake, thank you very much.’

‘You’re not a morning person,’ remarks Darien.

‘Oh, he’d love to know.’ The snort that escapes Miguel’s mouth is ridiculously loud. Even the limo driver glances at his rear-view mirror with disdain. ‘Sorry, Hen, but I think your girl’s been looking for a guy who could grow a beard the entire time.’

‘I can grow a beard!’ Henri tries, but the laughter in the limousine almost drowns him out.

‘I believe you,’ I tell him with a tired drawl and a defensive clearing of my throat. ‘But I’m not looking for beards, no beards, any kind of beards.’

‘Yet she’s all eyes for another man.’ Miguel clucks his tongue dramatically, shaking his head for that little extra sting.

I almost fling my coffee cup his way at that, but Darien glows pink. It’s quite funny to see how he gets. Regardless of the flair and the murals and the dances and the funk songs to his name, he’s really not hard to fluster.

Seeing him off his game like that definitely wakes me up, if not the barrage of peanuts.

I chug the last couple of sips from my coffee with a contented hum, rubbing at my eyes. Darien’s shoulder nudges mine, and I look up to see the most precious smile on his face. He’s as tired as I am, but rather than bleary, his eyes are full of admiration. For what, I am not totally sure, but he says to me, ‘You ever realized something?’

‘I’ve not got enough brain power for that right now,’ I tell him with a yawn. ‘What did you realize?’

‘I dunno.’ He shrugs, gesturing to my almost-empty cup. ‘Just that we need to get you bigger coffees.’

‘Tell me about it,’ I groan into the depths of my depleted caffeine supply. ‘I need more. I need to start drinking those Jolt Simply Strawberry things.’

‘Don’t do it.’ Darien shivers so obviously that I feel his entire body do a funny little wiggle beside mine. ‘Jeez. It gives me the goosebumps just to think about it. You know how much sugar is in those things? You think they end up all pink like that ’cause of nature?’

‘That’s kind of the reason I need those things.’

‘Oh, yeah. I heard if you drink an entire case, it’ll give you a heart attack.’

‘Heart attacks are not funny, Darien.’ I elbow him in the ribs, and he makes this obnoxious wind-knocked-out sound.

‘I didn’t say they were!’

‘Maybe you didn’t.’ I set my jaw. ‘But when you put bad energy like that out into the world, it tends to come right back to you.’

The second we arrive in Bahrain, fresh from the airport in a new limousine, it’s like Darien’s done a shot of espresso. He hops down from the limo with raised arms, both hands waving wildly, a huge grin on his face. He’s so genuine with his fans. He jumps across the line of barricades and officers to grab phones and take pictures, sign shirts and posters. Miguel is much the same way, and Henri mimics the two of them, his eyes wide in awe at the sheer number of people here calling his name, waving his photo around on massive boards. With a chuckle, I grab my suitcase to follow the rest of the team into the hotel, but then I hear Darien’s voice.

‘Shantal!’ he calls.

I tentatively head over to where he stands with a family that’s talking to him in rapid, excited Portuguese. He has the dopiest smile as he interacts with them, pulling the hat off his head and fitting it on the youngest of their kids’ heads.

‘What’s up?’

He shouldn’t be able to hear me over the clamour of the crowd, but he turns around immediately, a silver Sharpie marker and a photo in hand.

‘Please,’ he says.

It’s a photo of the two of us on the pit wall together at the Heidelberg Hybridge Ring, across from the practice track, and it appears we are each giving the other a fairly dirty look. I remember this one clearly because it had been taken when we were first reviewing the drivers’ stats from last season, just before I pulled Darien aside to talk about the Cantagalo fiasco. Before things between us started to change in the strangest of ways.

‘Come on,’ begs Darien. ‘ Please do me this little favour. You’re a part of team Heidelberg now. You’re gonna get asked for autographs. And besides, I’m a Shantal fan. Would you turn down a fan who just wants you to sign a photo?’

I accept the Sharpie and photo from him with a heavy roll of my eyes. ‘Oh, my god.’ I’m using all the energy I have to keep a straight face, but I feel my cheeks going pink. After all the antics I had to put up with at practice and everything riding on this race, I should still be upset at him, but I can’t be. It’s adorable .

I scrawl my name across the bottom of the photo in flyaway cursive with the S as a big swoosh and the remaining letters crowded up against it.

Darien gives the photo a big, tacky pat. ‘Thank you, Shantal.’ He catches my eye, and his smile only broadens.