100

Marianna POV

Duane: Actually fine. McCartney checked it post-race. Eighty-six. The Parabolica exit was a six.

I file the six. Add a note about the Parabolica exit load for the Suzuka call.

Me: Get some sleep.

Duane: You too.

Then, after a pause that's longer than usual:

Duane: You were right. About what you said last night. About deciding.

I read this three times.

Me: So were you. About okay being enough.

No response for a few minutes. Then:

Duane: Goodnight, Marianna.

Me: Goodnight.

Monday. The paddock dismantles itself with the efficiency of an operation that has done this seventy-odd times a year for decades. Trucks. Crates. The organized reverse of everything that took days to build.

I'm packing the Kinetic kit when Oliver appears in the doorway with two espressos and the expression of someone who has been waiting for a reasonable hour to have a conversation and has decided this is it.

"Sit," I tell him. "The client chair."

He sits. Hands me one of the espressos. "How are you?"

"Better than Saturday," I say honestly. "The team principal conversation happened. Whatever that means practically, it's in motion."

"Good." He drinks his espresso. "I spoke to two journalists in the media pen after qualifying. Redirected a story that was moving in the wrong direction." He says it plainly, without self-congratulation. "I don't know if it helped."

"It helped," I say. "Even if it only slowed it down."

He nods. "The debris incident—"

"I know."

"I'm not saying it was deliberate," he says carefully. "I'm saying the timing was—"

"I know, Oliver."

He looks at me. "Are you actually okay or is this the professional version."

I consider the question the way it deserves. "Both," I say. "The professional version is holding up the actual version while the actual version figures out what it thinks."

"That's very Marianna."

"It's the most I've got right now."

He accepts this. We drink our espressos in the dismantling paddock, Italy doing its post-race Monday thing outside—the park returning to itself, the tifosi gone, the enormous trees standing the way they've been standing for a century, completely indifferent to race results.

"I have to ask you something," I say.

"Okay."

"The thing Luca was saying. About me." I look at my espresso cup. "Does it—has it changed how people see me here? In the paddock. Is that something I have to manage going forward or did your redirecting actually—"

"People in this paddock," Oliver says, "care about two things. Whether you're good at your job and whether you're trustworthy. You are both, demonstrably, and everyone who's worked with you knows it." He pauses. "What Luca was saying is the kind of thing that circulates fast and dies faster when it doesn't find purchase. It didn't find purchase."

"How do you know."

"Because I've been in this paddock for two seasons and I know how information moves through it." He meets my eyes. "And because you treated Hale's hip flexors back to health and now Hale has points on the board and the Alpine team thinks you're brilliant, and that's a much better story than whatever Luca was selling."

I sit with this. The espresso is good. Italy, doing it on purpose until the last moment.

"Thank you," I say.

"Thank your hip flexors," he says. "They did the work."

The flight from Milan to Miami is eleven hours. I sleep for four of them, which is a personal record for in-flight sleep and which I attribute to the specific exhaustion of a weekend that required everything and then some.

When I land it's Tuesday morning, Miami time, and Marco is at the arrivals gate with two coffees and the expression of a man who made a strategic decision to show up rather than just text.

"You didn't have to—" I start.

"I was in the area," he says, handing me a coffee.

"The airport is not in anyone's area, Marco."

"I was in a general eastward direction," he says. "The airport is east. It tracked."

I take the coffee. We walk through arrivals in the specific sibling silence that contains multitudes—the whole Monza weekend, Alina's visit, Luca's word circulating through paddock conversations, Duane's text at midnight (you were right about deciding), the debris on the Monza tarmac, all of it present and unspoken and somehow fine to carry this way.

At the car, Marco puts my bag in the trunk. Comes around to the driver's side. Stands there for a second with his keys.

"You good?" he says.

"Getting there," I say.

He nods. Gets in the car.

We drive back to Wynwood in the Tuesday morning Miami traffic, the city doing its warm and relentless thing around us, and I drink my coffee and watch it go past and think about what Oliver said: that's a much better story.

I think he might be right.

I think I'm going to let it be right.

My phone buzzes. A text from a number I don't recognize, with a Miami area code.

Hi Marianna—this is Dr. Sarah Chen, therapist, recommended by a mutual contact. I have availability Thursday afternoon if you'd like to talk. No pressure either way.

I read it twice. Then I look at Marco, who is staring at the road with the studied neutrality he's been perfecting since Montreal.

"Did you—" I start.

"I know a person," he says. To the windshield. "She's good. Georgetown-trained, did her residency at Jackson Memorial, specializes in—" He stops. "She's good. That's the main thing."

I look at my phone. At Dr. Sarah Chen's text, sitting there patient and unpressured, a door that's been quietly opened.

"Duane asked me on the beach," I say. "If I'd found someone."

"I know," Marco says.

"You two talked."

"We talk," he says simply. Like this is established fact that requires no further elaboration. Like the conversation on the beach at Zandvoort and the conversation in the Wynwood kitchen and all the other conversations that have been happening in the margins of my life between the two people who know me best are just—an ongoing thing, a constant that I've been peripherally aware of and only now understanding.

My brother and the man I'm falling for, talking about me. Not managing me. Not deciding anything. Just—talking. Because they both give a shit and they've found a language for it that doesn't require me to be in the room.

I don't know what to do with that.

I text Dr. Chen: Thursday at 3 PM works well. Thank you.

She responds in minutes: See you then.

I put the phone in my pocket. Drink my coffee. Watch Miami happen.

"The cacio e p**e at that trattoria," I say.

Marco glances over. "Yeah?"

"It was actually as good as Oliver said."

He's quiet for a second. Then: "I told you Italy was different."

"You did," I say. "You were right."

He indicates left. Merges into traffic. Outside, Miami is warm and loud and completely itself.

"Marco," I say.

"Mm."

"Thank you. For Dr. Chen."

He changes lanes. "Don't make it weird," he says.

"Too late," I say.

He almost smiles. Almost—the Reyes family's version of emotional expression, close enough.

We drive home.