Page 8 of Racing for Redemption (Backmarker Love trilogy #1)

We're in this together

Violet

D awn breaks over Bali in layers of pink and gold, light spilling across our villa's infinity pool in trembling ribbons.

I've been awake for an hour already, my body clock still synced to race weekends and early meetings.

Anna emerges from her room with tousled hair and sleepy eyes, wrapped in a silk robe patterned with cherry blossoms—a souvenir from her life in Tokyo.

"You're up," she mumbles, accepting the coffee I offer.

"I was going to surprise you with the sunrise trek. "

"Beat you to it," I say, smiling. "Old habits. But, I've found something better than a volcano hike."

I show her the map on my phone, a route marked to a small coastal village north of Ubud. "The driver can take us there in forty minutes. Supposed to be untouched by tourism. No Instagram influencers posing in flowing dresses, or screaming for their live streams. "

Anna perks up, caffeine and curiosity working their magic. "Sold. Give me fifteen minutes."

She reappears exactly fourteen minutes later in loose linen pants, and a simple tank top, her wavy blonde hair tamed into a messy bun.

My own hair is pulled back in a practical ponytail, and I've opted for comfort; denim shorts, and a breathable blouse in a shade my mother would call "dusty coral", but is really just faded pink.

The driver—a local man with a permanent half-smile—navigates narrow roads with practiced ease. We pass terraced rice fields glowing emerald in the early light, temples with intricate stone guardians, and villages just beginning their daily routines.

Anna leans her head against the car window, watching the world slide by. "Everything's so vibrant here," she murmurs. "Tokyo is beautiful, but in a different way—all glass and precision and order. This is..." She gestures vaguely at the lush landscape outside. "Wonderfully chaotic."

When we reach the village, it's exactly as promised—a small cluster of buildings nestled against a crescent-shaped bay.

Traditional wooden boats line the shore, painted in fading blues and greens, some actively being prepared for the day's fishing, with others resting on the sand like sleeping creatures.

We thank the driver, arranging to meet him in a few hours, and set off on foot to explore. The village awakens around us. Women sweep storefronts with bundled palm fronds, children race down alleys on their way to school, and the smell of cooking fires mingles with salt air and tropical flowers .

"Look at that," Anna says, pointing to a wall where vibrant street art covers what was once plain concrete.

The mural depicts local life—fishermen with their nets, women carrying baskets of fruit, children playing traditional games—in a style that blends modern techniques with traditional Balinese art forms. Thank god for my mother having been a painter most of her life.

I learned a couple of things which allow me to appreciate art beyond finding it aesthetically pleasing.

It also means I can have conversations about art with potential sponsors.

"It's incredible," I agree, stepping closer to examine the details. "So much story in one image."

We follow a narrow footpath that winds along the shoreline, occasionally passing fishermen mending nets or sorting the morning's catch. An older man with skin weathered by decades of sun and salt glances up as we pass, offering a gap-toothed smile, and a friendly nod.

The path widens as we approach what seems to be the village center, where a small market is taking shape.

Vendors arrange fruits in precise pyramids, their colors almost artificially bright against woven baskets.

A woman with silver hair twisted into a knot calls out to us, gesturing toward green coconuts stacked beside her stall.

"We should," Anna says, already moving toward the woman. She points to two coconuts and holds up rupiah notes. The vendor nods, takes a massive cleaver, and with alarming precision, slices the top off each coconut before inserting straws .

The coconut water is cool and sweet, nothing like the packaged version I've tried at fitness-obsessed team events. We sip slowly, wandering through the small market as more vendors set up their wares.

"Oh, we need to try these," Anna insists, pointing to small rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves. She negotiates with the young woman selling them, using a combination of broken Indonesian phrases she's picked up, and universal hand gestures.

We find a low stone wall overlooking the bay to sit and eat our impromptu breakfast. The rice cakes are sticky and slightly sweet, filled with what tastes like coconut and palm sugar.

"So," I say, wiping my fingers on a napkin, "tell me more about Japan. You mentioned your team is working on cutting-edge tech for medical diagnoses?"

Anna's face lights up with the particular enthusiasm she reserves for work she loves.

"It's fascinating stuff. We're developing neural networks that can identify patterns in medical imaging that doctors might miss or take longer to recognize.

Early detection algorithms for degenerative diseases, especially. "

"That sounds incredible," I say, genuinely impressed. "Important work."

"It is," she agrees, "though some days, it feels like we're just programming computers to say 'this might be bad' slightly faster than a human could." She laughs. "But, the potential is huge. If we can catch these conditions even months earlier, treatment outcomes improve dramatically."

"Are you working with hospitals there? "

She nods, finishing her coconut water with a noisy slurp. "Three major university hospitals in Tokyo, plus one in Osaka. The Japanese healthcare system is amazing—incredibly efficient, but also deeply traditional in some ways. Getting them to trust tech recommendations has been... challenging."

I can imagine. The racing world still has similar tensions between innovation and tradition, between data-driven decisions, and the human element of instinct and experience.

"Also, the cultural adjustment was harder than I expected," Anna continues, her gaze drifting to the fishing boats now heading out to deeper waters.

"Not just the language, though that's been a struggle.

It's the unspoken rules—knowing when to speak up in meetings, understanding that 'we'll consider it' usually means 'absolutely not'. .."

"Sounds familiar," I say dryly. "The paddock has its own unwritten rule book. Especially for women."

"Exactly." She tosses her empty coconut into a nearby bin. "Though Japanese work culture has its own special brand of gender issues. I'm often the only woman in technical meetings, and definitely the only foreign woman."

"How do you handle it?"

She shrugs—a small, defiant gesture. "I've developed what I call my 'polite bulldozer' approach. Unfailingly courteous, absolutely immovable. Works about seventy percent of the time."

"And the other thirty percent?"

"I cry in the bathroom, then come back and try again," she admits with a self-deprecating smile. "Very professional. "

I laugh, but I understand completely. I've had my own moments of bathroom breakdowns at Colton Racing, though I'd never admit it to anyone but Anna.

We resume our walk, following a different path that leads inland through the village. Children in school uniforms wave as they pass, and an elderly woman beckons us to admire the intricate fabric she's weaving on a small loom set up outside her home.

"The strangest thing about Tokyo," Anna says as we pause to watch the weaver's deft movements, "is how it can feel so crowded and so lonely simultaneously. Millions of people around you, all carefully avoiding eye contact on the subway."

"Have you made friends there? Outside of work?"

"A few. There's an expat community, of course, but I wanted to avoid just hanging out with other foreigners.

I joined a pottery class—taught entirely in Japanese, which was terrifying at first. But it forced me to learn, and I've met some wonderful people through it. I still speak broken Japanese, though."

She pulls out her phone to show me photos of misshapen bowls and cups—her early attempts—followed by increasingly refined pieces. The most recent is a delicate tea bowl with a mottled blue glaze that reminds me of the ocean behind us.

"That's beautiful," I tell her. "You've always been good with your hands."

"Unlike someone I know who nearly failed that mandatory art class in university," she teases, nudging my shoulder .

"Engineering and business principles can't be applied to watercolors," I defend myself. "I tried."

As we walk, Anna shares more stories from her life in Tokyo—the time she got hopelessly lost in the subway system when she had to catch a train, and ended up in a suburb two hours from her apartment; her first experience in an onsen , where she accidentally violated several unspoken bathing protocols; the neighborhood grandmother who now saves vegetables from her garden for "the beautiful foreign girl with the big smile. "

I listen, asking questions and laughing at her mishaps, but part of me is simply enjoying the cadence of her voice, the animated way she talks with her hands, the occasional Japanese phrases that now pepper her speech without her seeming to notice.

This is the Anna I've known since we were kids, but also someone new—shaped by experiences I haven't shared, growing in directions I can only hear about secondhand.

There's something bittersweet in that realization.

Our lives have diverged in significant ways since our school days.

We're no longer sharing cramped student housing, or pulling all-nighters for exams. She's building cutting-edge tech systems in Tokyo; I'm running a struggling F1 team.

Our day-to-day worlds rarely intersect anymore.

Yet, here we are, eating rice cakes by the sea, falling back into the rhythms of friendship as if no time has passed at all.