I will have bloody stumps for fingers if I keep chewing them, put your hands back on the steering wheel, Cole.
They don’t play his post-race radio message this time. Lennox has just won the championship, and the announcers are consumed with talking about that, playing Lennox’s team radio conversation, instead.
I’m happy for him, and Mallory, but I want to hear Cole’s voice. I’m desperate to know if he’d mention me again.
He and Lennox do a victory lap together—it’s touching. Then they all pull into parc ferme, Dante in third place, too. They’re all out of their cars, hugging, jumping, being swallowed up by their crews who are congratulating them all.
I should have been there.
“Oh shit, he’s going to do it again,” Makenna whispers.
My breath stills.
Please do it.
But, as the camera faces Cole, he pulls his helmet off instead of pointing to my initials like he did at the last race. His balaclava comes off to reveal his sweat-soaked brown hair and piercing blue eyes. He rips his earbuds out.
As the camera begins to pan away from him, he suddenly pulls it back to him. He shoves his helmet right at the lens. It’s a Dia de los Muertos design this week. He points at one of the skeleton characters with a big red heart inside its chest, the initials EW inside it.
He did it.
And then…
“Oh my god,” Klara leans toward the television.
/> “Is he…” Makenna whispers.
He is.
Cole is full-on kissing and licking the lens of the camera. Flicking his tongue up and down it like, like he’s having sex with it. Everything is blurry on the television now because the live camera is covered in Cole’s lips and saliva.
The British commentators on television are laughing and apologizing for the suggestive gesture they’ve just shown to the entire world. You can hear women in the crowd squealing in appreciation. I’m pretty sure the collective panties of everyone in attendance just dropped.
Then the screen cuts to a second cameraman’s feed, one that is not obscured by lips, tongue, and raw sex appeal.
“I’m going to Texas,” I state, all of us in a trance watching the television.
I don’t say it loud or proud. It’s a whimper and not a scream, but I said it.
I have no idea what will happen. No matter how many scenarios I plan for in my head, I can’t predict it. For the first time in my life, I am making the decision to walk into the unknown.
I’m terrified.
But I’m even more terrified of what could happen if I don’t.
I don’t want to go back to my life of hiding, being closed off, never taking any risks because there might be consequences, being so afraid of everything. Being afraid to fail.
What if I fail now, at the thing I care about the most?
Twenty Nine
Emily
This is a far cry from the private jet.
Nice things are nice. Were nice.
“Sir, this plane is not taking off until you turn off your cell phone,” The flight attendant chews out a jackass in a business suit next to me. The plane hasn’t even taken off, yet he is man-spread into the already cramped leg quarters of my economy seat.