“You want to be friends?” She emphasizes the word friends like it’s the most disgusting thing she’s ever heard.
“I’m asking what you want.”
“I don’t think I can be your friend.”
I take a deep breath and try to reign in my thoughts, try not to show my disappointment. Still, even if there is only one percent of hope, I don’t know how to give up. Not with most things, and definitely not with her.
It may be naive, but I want to believe there’s still something there within her, something lying under the pain and anger. Sitting this close to her, hearing her voice, looking into those deep brown eyes again—I have to try.
“How about just being friendly, then?”
“Friendly?” She asks skeptically.
“We do have to work together, like you said,” I shrug. “We’re going to have to communicate and spend time together.”
She thinks about it for a moment, takes a deep breath and nods, “Okay.”
I smile and lean back. Sometimes one percent is enough. Nothing is over until it’s over.
This is a start.
“I have questions,” she pulls her knees up underneath her on the couch and looks at me.
My heart drops.
It’s too early for the questions I’m afraid she’ll ask. I’m not prepared, and if we get too deep into the past right now, she’ll run.
Emily doesn’t run from commitment. She runs when failure might be an option, and when it carries consequences that she can’t accept. I think I might just be her worst-case scenario now.
“Some of the things you say in the car, on the radio, I don’t understand what you mean,” she explains.
Oh, thank christ. Just car questions.
“Like what?”
“You said the rear felt loose.”
I spend a minute telling her about understeer and how we can change the wing setups, how it affects cornering in the car, but she cuts me off after a minute or two.
“I know the definition of it, Cole. I need to know how it feels.”
“How it feels?”
“Good engineers listen to needs and wants and then create a solution. I know what all the parts on the car do, or can do. I don’t know how it feels to drive the car, and I need you to explain it to me. So when you say it feels loose…”
I rub my chin and think about how to describe the feeling to someone who’s never driven a Formula 1 car. Only a handful of people on earth will ever experience it, and it’s not as easy as one might think to put it into words.
“It’s not sticky. It’s like there’s no foundation when it’s loose. It’s like the car pushes itself around, doesn’t do what I ask. Like it slips out of my hands, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Like you.
“And then you don’t trust the car heading into a corner,” she says.
I can almost see her mind working. As gorgeous as Emily has always been, she’s absolutely brilliant, and it turns me on as much as her body does.
She’s probably the reason I have no tolerance for ditzy chicks. The bar has been set so fucking high.
“Right, it makes me lose confidence like I’m going to spin and lose everything. It makes me hesitant to go as deep in the corners or push as hard when I don’t know if the car will be there for me.”