Fast & Hard: A Formula 1 Romance (The Fast Series) Page 3

  “Let’s get it over with,” Aria slaps my thigh and we make our way past the manicured potted hedges and enter the double-wide white doors.

  I hate this Georgian nightmare home.

  “Darling,” Mom calls as she greets us in the foyer and gives me a kiss on the cheek. Lydia Mitchell is dressed to the nines even though this is just a family dinner. Nothing is more important than appearances to Mom.

  She has a new little white dog in her arms that is yipping and wiggling about at the commotion and I think it may have peed a little on her white Chanel, which pleases me.

  “Aria,” Mom’s voice drops an octave and she plasters a fake smile on to greet my oldest friend, “don’t you both look lovely. Come in, your brother and sister are in the sitting room.”

  The foyer is mint green this month and there’s a new abstract modern art piece on the wall which sums up Lydia’s sense of style and decorating sense. If it’s expensive, it must be good. It doesn’t matter that it defies logic and looks ridiculous amongst the gold plated mirrors and chairs that are for looking at, not for sitting in.

  “Hey hey, there’s our little English muffin!” My brother, Cody, leaps to greet me when we enter the gaudy sitting room. Who needs a room just for sitting?

  He’s got a tumbler full of cognac in one hand because he’s also a prepared person like I am — I pre-gamed this little shindig, even — and he wraps his free hand around me and pulls me into his side. “So proud of you,” he whispers into my hair as he kisses my head.

  I knew I could count on him to say it, anyway.

  He gives Aria a big bear hug and musses up the long hair she had piled neatly on the top of her head. I always hoped Cody and Aria would get together but it’s never happened and both feigned repulsion whenever I brought it up in the past. I think they doth protest too much, but alas.

  “Girls, nice to see you,” Dad greets us from a tall leather chair next to a plush settee, which also looks wildly out of place in the room. “Join us for a cognac?” He asks.

  “Yes,” Aria and I both answer in unison.

  “I got it, Dad,” Cody tells him so he doesn’t need to get up, and sets to filling tumblers for us from the glass bar cart. My father, the distinguished Robert Mitchell, is used to people waiting on him.

  My sister, Emma, is sitting in the settee next to Dad but doesn’t bother to glance up from her phone. Her wine glass sits empty on the coffee table in front of her. Looks like everyone is on top of their coping mechanisms this evening.

  “Dinner will be in ten,” Mom sing songs back into the room and sits on the armrest of dad’s chair, new little dog still in tow.

  “Oh Mallory,” Dad says, “David won’t able to join us this evening. He sends his regrets but deadlines wait for no man.”

  Aria sighs and I swallow down my first gulp of cognac, which is disgusting but gets the job done.

  It’s not enough for David to miss my send off but he calls my father to let me know. Mom and Dad think we’ll be getting married soon and I’d like to tell them that the last time David even fucked me was three months ago. So I don’t see wedding bells or grandbabies in their near future.

  Or ever.

  “Make sure you make time to see him before you leave, Mallory. Leaving a man like David behind is a risk and you’ll want to give him something to remember you by, if you know what I mean.” Mom winks and Dad chuckles and puts a hand on her knee seductively.

  Gross. Gross. Gross.

  The thought of Lydia and Robert banging is perplexing. If she didn’t have three children, I’d swear Lydia Mitchell was far too prim and proper to ever be caught naked or in an unsavory position. And when would Dad have time?

  “Jesus, Mom,” Emma shudders and makes a vomiting face even though she never stops swiping through her phone.

  By the time we’re halfway through our gluten-free dinner meal even though no-one has celiac disease, the whole table is several coping mechanisms into the cognac and wine and the nitpicking has started. I can feel the argument coming like a train rolling down the tracks.

  Emma’s hair is looking rooty and needs a touch-up. Cody needs to choose a wife already because he’ll do better at work if he appears to be a family man. And me? I’m throwing my whole life away chasing my naive dreams, running around to Europe like a “high school student on her gap year.”

  “All your father means, Mallory,” mom says swirling the wine around in her glass so vigorously that some has already spilled onto the tablecloth but she doesn’t notice, “is that this social media thing was fun while you were young, but David isn’t going to wait around for you forever.”

  “What does David have to do with my career?” I take the bait, fueled by liquid courage.

  Aria starts to make some comment about David not deserving me at all if he can’t support me or be faithful while I’m gone, but Dad interrupts her as if she’s a ghost at the table and he can’t hear her. Aria has always been far beneath Robert and Lydia Mitchell.

  “I wouldn’t call social media a career, dear,” Dad chortles.

  And here we go again. Because the whole family, Cody and Emma included, work in the traditional print media corporation that Dad built, my stepping foot outside it into a new marketplace is a grave offense. A total waste of my journalism degree. An offense worthy of shunning their youngest child.

  “Oh yeah? Tell me, Dad, what would you call it then?”

  “Well, at this point, I’d call the whole stunt a disgrace,” he extolls without an ounce of hesitation.

  “Dad, come on,” Cody tries to reason with him like he always does. But there is no reasoning with my parents. God knows I’ve tried over the past 26 years.

  Still doesn’t stop me from arguing with them because I don’t need this crap. I’ve never needed any of their crap. I graduated from college and then refused to take one more penny of their support because it comes with strings attached, like all shitty gifts from shitty people.

  “This is not a stunt,” I growl and slam my glass tumbler to the table, “this is my life!”

  “Mallory, please, after the last public embarrassment working with that hoodlum basketball player don’t you think it’s time to stop this?” Mom’s eyes are glazed over but she’s dead serious. For months I had to hear about how her snooty friends at the club kept bringing up her poor misguided daughter and she never once defended me even though I had nothing to do with the debacle.

  “Just wait Mom, I’m going to bring all the shame upon our name now. So much shame you’ll need a pitchfork to shovel it all. I have a much bigger platform now and by the time I wrap up this job I’ll be able to open my own firm and then shame will rain down from the heavens!” I realize I’m slurring my words and should probably quit with the cognac but fuck them.

  “Your own firm!” Emma snorts and heckles me, “You’re drunk!”

  “And you’re a bitch,” I seethe back at her. She’s said a dozen words to me all night and now she only throws gas on the dumpster fire.

  “Enough!” Dad roars. “Mallory, enough is enough. You need to grow up. Your mother and I agree, this ends now. Or,” he pauses.

  “Or what?” I challenge him. What else could they possibly do to me?

  “Or we’ll have no choice but to disavow you, update the will and remove your inheritance,” he finishes.

  Inheritance, is he serious? “That the best you have, Dad, huh? I was never going to see a penny of that anyway and I don’t want it!”

  “I’ll take her share,” Emma smirks over her wine glass.

  Cody has his head in his hands over the table, rubbing his temples.

  “Alrighty then,” Aria stands and shoves her chair back, sending it toppling over sideways onto the floor. Lydia clutches her actual pearls. “This has been a lovely evening but I think we’ll bid you a fond adieu now,” she says in a faux French accent and tries to take a dramatic bow but only ends up drunk stumbling onto Cody.

  I stand to join her and Cody walks us both
to the front door so he can call us a cab since neither of us are in any condition to be driving anywhere right now.

  “Why do you put up with them, Cody, why?” I ask him as we stand outside trying not to fall over as we wait for a cab. Cody works for Dad too but he’s not like them, he never has been. He was my only salvation growing up in this gauche mint-colored house of horrors.

  “Shit, I don’t know,” he scratches his head, “I just don’t have the energy to fight with them all the time. Always respected that you do, though.”

  He wraps his arms around me and rests his chin on my head. “You don’t have to leave you know, don’t run away for them,” he says.

  “I’m leaving for me, Cody. For me.” I mumble into his side.

  “Then you do you, little sister. Go find what you’re looking for. See the world. Run far enough that you find yourself.”

  I squeeze him harder and nod. I refuse to cry over my parents, though. They don’t get my tears anymore. “I’ll come home and visit you when I can.”

  “Pfft, I love you but I kind of hope I never see you back here again,” he chuckles.

  “Ugh, me too!” Aria announces and launches herself into us to join the group hug and the three of us nearly fall onto the sidewalk giggling.

  Thank god for her comic relief and a big brother who never lets you down.

  Four

  Photo: Lennox Gibbes and Celeritas Arrive in Melbourne

  staceyq1998: how can anyone be so hot after a 20 hour plane ride? sigh…

  llamalover4life: he’s washed up and needs to retire. and maybe shave.

  fortytwodogs: Nooooooo! No shaving! He’s so delicious when scruffy!

  purplelipstick99: girl, did you see the pics of him with Kate Allendale?! I’m so jealous. :(

  fortytwodogs: Yes! I’d cut a bitch to be that close to him. I wonder what he smells like.

  michael650004: smells like failure

  mustbetoast: hasn’t driven well in two years, fire the loser!

  atsronautfeet11: I don’t care how he drives as long as he does it naked

  kiltsandkites: Scotland stands with you, Lennox! Bring us home a victory!

  ieatlemons: speak for yourself, mate. dude’s an asshole.

  Lennox

  There’s a loose thread on the hem of my black Cerelitas polo and I’ve been picking at it endlessly. I want to pull it off but it’s cinching the seam up instead and won’t budge.

  “Lennox? Lennox?” I glance up and one of the crackpot F1 journalists in the pre-race driver press conference is standing with a microphone looking at me like he’s waiting for me to deliver an epiphany.

  “Sorry mate, can you repeat the question?” The crowd giggles because it’s no secret I don’t pay attention during these, not that any other driver does either. They’re all bullshit with the same tired questions and we deliver the same tired answers.

  Or, I used to deliver the same tired answers. Now I don’t give a shit. That’s what happens when your loyalty is abused and you’re stabbed in the back enough.

  Case in point, the first burning question from this reporter comes, “What is your strategy for the first race here in Melbourne?”

  “Well, I just came up with this late last night and I’ve been thinking a lot about it so I’m glad you asked.” The twenty-five or so journalists in the room all quiet themselves and dial into the profound words I’m about to speak. You’d think they’d learn. “I thought, and this is pretty radical, I thought I might try to win the race.”

  The journalist huffs audibly into the mic and sits back down with a smarmy purse of his lips. The two drivers sitting behind the media table with me chuckle.

  Every single interview is the same and has been for all the years I have been driving. They ask the world’s most inane, boring questions or they purposefully exploit the smallest mistake or weakness to sell their bloody rag sheets in the grocery aisles. All of them out for themselves with no regard for anyone else.

  Creating drama where there is none.

  Pick pick picking at the scab.

  “This question is for Lennox,” another one of them stands and is handed a microphone by the F1 Press Coordinator. “Lennox, is this your comeback year? Is this the year you’re going to make a run for the championship and return to your previous form? And the second part of my question is…”

  “What kind of question is that?” I interrupt him. “Do you think I, or any of the drivers sitting up here,” I wave my arms toward them, “set out to not win a race? Do you think that’s why we got into racing, to not win?”

  “I just, I mean,” he stutters, “I just thought we’d like to hear your thoughts on being relegated to the Number Two driver at Celeritas and if that team structure still exists this year.”

  This fucker.

  The correct answer, the one Celeritas wants me to give, is that this is a team sport and I have the team’s full backing and I will do whatever is in the best interest of the team. That’s the canned response. I know this because they give me actual printed materials of acceptable answers.

  And those go right into the bin.

  Because the real answer, the one I should give to this asshole, and all his asshole colleagues, is that my team hasn’t had my back in two years and I no longer give a shit about them beyond ensuring they deliver large sums of money into my bank account on a regular basis. I should tell them that the team would happily tie me up and light me on fire in a blazing effigy if someone paid them enough money to do so.

  I should tell them that I still race to win because I fucking love this sport, the one I have dedicated my entire life to, but that my own team doesn’t really want that. They don’t want me to win. I’m welcome to come in second place, of course, but winning is frowned upon.

  But instead of that, I answer in the only way I can possibly muster and still have some sense of dignity - with sarcasm. “Is this my year?” I start, “Probably not. Might want to try back next year.”

  The journalist sits back down, or maybe he’s still standing, I don’t know. I’ve gone back to picking at my loose thread.

  My phone starts buzzing in my pants pocket so I pull it out while half-listening to the journalists terrorize the other drivers and I’m grateful for whoever this is that’s sending me a text or an email, anything that is more interesting than this press conference.

  Text Alert - New Nanny: STOP IT!

  I pick my head up from looking at the phone hidden in my lap under the table and there’s my eager little babysitter scowling and shaking her head at me from the back wall of the press conference room. She’s standing with Jack who is oblivious to these ongoings by now and is as bored as I am.

  But Mallory’s pissed.

  I was split fifty-fifty on whether she’d even show up in Melbourne. I was rather hoping not. A grown-ass man doesn’t need a full-time babysitter, regardless of what Celeritas makes her official job title. I guess I need to try harder to get rid of her and send her back home to New York or New Jersey or wherever the hell.

  I grin at her mischievously and fire back a text, the journalists still droning on about some new regulations and how we feel about them. As if anyone cares how we feel about them. We just drive the cars and dance like monkeys when ordered.

  Lennox: You look hot in that little team uniform.

  New Nanny: Act like an adult and answer the questions appropriately!

  Lennox: Undo a button on your shirt and I will.

  New Nanny: Are you insane? What is wrong with you???

  Lennox: is that a no?

  New Nanny: Of course it is a NO, you pig! Do your job! This isn’t funny!

  Lennox: Ok then.

  I continue staring at Mallory and refuse to take my eyes off her even when the next mundane question from the next bloodsucking wanna-be journalist comes my way.

  “Lennox, it’s obvious there’s been tension in the team since DuPont came aboard, is there anything you want to address with us today on that matter?”
>
  A corner of my mouth quirks up and my eyes are still locked in on Mallory’s as I answer, so much that some of the people in the room are looking over their shoulders to see what I’m staring at. Mallory fists are clenched at her side and daggers and ice explode from her eyes.

  “I’d say I’m more focused on undressing things right now, mate,” I say into my mic while still locked onto Mallory like a heat-seeking missile.

  Alessi, one of the drivers from Anora Sport who’s sitting next to me at the press table, snorts and hangs his head as he laughs trying to hide it from the press.

  The room is giggling as several of them turn to look at Mallory who is absolutely livid. Jack is giggling next to her and as the room quiets and everyone turns back to face the front she whips an arm across her and smacks Jack in the side.

  I expect her to race out of the room and finally go home to whatever vanilla office job she belongs in but she stays, in quiet rage, for the rest of this dull press session. As soon as it’s over she tears out of the room though.

  Good, she’s on her way home. She’s a sexy babysitter in her little black team shorts and a tight polo shirt, but it’s time for her to go, just like all the others.

  Celeritas doesn’t get to win this fight.

  Alessi and I are shooting the shit on our walk out of the press conference down a long hallway headed back toward the garages when he taps me and points. The goddamn nanny is waiting for me at the end of the hallway and it doesn’t look like she wants an autograph or a selfie.

  “Don’t leave, mate. We’ll need a witness when she murders me and throws my body into the bay,” I grumble to him.