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2026-09-04 11:50:11Marianna.
The Publix on Brickell smells like air conditioning and existential dread, but tonight—tonight it smells like victory.
Okay, that's dramatic. It smells like floor cleaner and the faint desperation of a thousand office workers buying pre-made sushi at 7 PM. But to me, right now, standing in the frozen foods aisle with a basket that isn't empty for once?
Victory.
I got the job.
I got the fucking job.
Tomorrow. I start tomorrow.
Fifty-four thousand dollars a year. That's $4,500 a month before taxes. That's rent and student loans and food that isn't off-brand peanut butter. That's a life. An actual, functioning, adult human life that doesn't involve hiding behind kitchen islands or crying into borrowed pillows.
I'm so happy I could scream.
Instead, I'm standing in front of the frozen pizza section, having what can only be described as a religious experience.
Because here's the thing: I don't have to buy the $4.99 Totino's Party Pizza. I don't have to count the pennies in my bank account and calculate whether I can afford the extra $2 for DiGiorno. I can just... buy what I want. Like a person. Like a normal, employed, salary-having person who doesn't subsist on shame and carbohydrates.
I reach for the Amy's Organic Margherita. $8.99. Practically luxury.
My hand hovers there for a moment, trembling slightly, like I'm about to commit a crime.
You deserve this, I tell myself. You just got a job that pays more than you've ever made in your life. You can afford the fancy pizza.
I put it in my basket.
Then I add a bottle of wine—the $12 one, not the $6 one that tastes like regret and battery acid. A bag of those pretentious organic chips that Jill always buys. A container of hummus that costs more than my hourly wage at Eastside used to be.
I'm shopping like someone who has a future.
It feels... strange. Good-strange, but strange nonetheless. Like wearing shoes that actually fit after years of cramming my feet into sizes too small.
The checkout line is short—just me and a man in a suit buying exactly one banana and a Red Bull, which feels like a cry for help—and I pay with my credit card without flinching. The balance will be manageable now. Everything will be manageable now.
I walk back to Duane's building with my grocery bags swinging, the Miami evening warm and humid against my skin, and I feel something I haven't felt in... god, weeks? Months?
Hope.
Disgusting. Pathetic. Probably going to bite me in the ass.
But hope nonetheless.
The apartment is empty when I get back.
I know this immediately—can feel the absence of him in the air, the way the space relaxes when he's not in it. No presence lurking in dark corners. No threat of running into six feet of emotional unavailability in the kitchen.
Just me. Alone. With my fancy pizza and my $12 wine and the knowledge that I'm getting the fuck out of here.
I've already done the math. My first paycheck will hit in two weeks—Kinetic does bi-weekly pay, direct deposit, like a real adult company. With $4,500 gross, I'll probably take home around $3,400 after taxes. Enough for first month's rent on a modest apartment, plus security deposit if I find somewhere reasonable. Enough to not be here anymore.
Enough to never see Duane Richter's stupid, perfect, emotionally constipated face ever again.
Well. Almost never.
The thought niggles at the back of my brain as I preheat the oven. Kinetic works with F1 teams. With his team. There's a non-zero chance that—
No. Stop it.
Miami is a big city. Kinetic is a big facility. The odds of me, entry-level nobody, being anywhere near the star driver of Veloce Racing are basically zero. They'll have me doing intake paperwork and sanitizing equipment and all the other grunt work that new hires get stuck with. I'll be invisible. A cog in the machine. Exactly what I want to be.
I pour myself a generous glass of wine. Raise it to the empty apartment.
"To never seeing you again," I say out loud, to no one. "Except I definitely will, because you live here, but after that—never. Gone. Deleted from my life like a bad Tinder match."
The wine is actually good. Fruity and slightly dry, with notes of "I spent more than six dollars on this" and "my life might not be a complete disaster after all."
I eat my fancy pizza standing at the kitchen island, scrolling through my phone, reading the employment contract Dr. Lindholm emailed over. Standard stuff—confidentiality agreements, non-compete clauses, a section about professional conduct with high-profile clients that makes me snort.
Employees are expected to maintain appropriate professional boundaries with all clients, regardless of their public profile or celebrity status...
Yeah, no shit. I'm not planning to throw myself at any athletes, thanks. I've learned my lesson about unavailable men. About men in general, actually. About the entire concept of romantic attachment and its ability to destroy everything it touches.
I'm done. Finished. Closed for business.
The clock on the microwave reads 9:47 PM. Tomorrow I have to be at Kinetic by 7:30 AM for new employee orientation. I should sleep. Should get my shit together, lay out whatever passes for professional clothes from my pathetic Target wardrobe, try to look like someone who deserves a $54,000 salary.
Instead, I pour another glass of wine and text Jill.
Me: I got the job.
Her response is immediate:
Jill: EXCUSE ME
Jill: THE SPORTS THING???
Jill: THE ONE WITH THE F1 CONNECTION???
Jill: MARIANNA REYES YOU ABSOLUTE LEGEND
Me: Calm down. It's entry level. I'll probably be mopping floors.
Jill: Entry level at FIFTY FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS
Jill: That's literally double what I make
Jill: I'm so proud of you I could cry
Jill: Also I'm furious that you're succeeding in Miami while I'm here eating ramen alone
Me: You could visit.
Jill: With what money bestie
Jill: Some of us work for nonprofits and hate ourselves
Me: When I get my first paycheck, I'm buying you a plane ticket.
Jill: Don't you dare
Jill: Save your money
Jill: Be responsible
Jill: ...okay maybe one ticket
Me: Done.
Jill: I love you
Jill: Now go to sleep
Jill: You have to be a professional adult tomorrow
Jill: God that sounds exhausting
I put down the phone, smiling despite myself. Jill is the one good thing I didn't fuck up. The one relationship I managed not to destroy through sheer incompetence and emotional dysfunction.
The apartment is still quiet. Still empty. The city lights glitter through the floor-to-ceiling windows, all that Miami glamour reduced to pinpricks of gold and white against the dark.
I should feel lonely. Should feel the weight of all this space, all this silence, all this grey marble and expensive emptiness.
But I don't.
I feel... free.
Tomorrow, I start my new life. The one where I'm not anyone's charity case, not anyone's burden, not anyone's pathetic little sister who needs to be managed and pitied and told she's not their type.
Tomorrow, I become someone else.
Someone better.
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Saved by Brother's Best Friend 100
Marianna POVDuane: 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?""B
Saved by Brother's Best Friend 99
Marianna POVI sit on Table 3 in the empty treatment room and let that land for a while.Sunday. Race day.The shoulder tape goes on at six fifty AM, seventeen minutes earlier than Thursday because Duane's pre-race focus sharpens the schedule—he arrives earlier, moves through preparation faster, the entire system of him calibrating toward the start lights. McCartney does the primary work; I assist with the AC anchor strip, which requires a specific angle that's easier with two sets of hands.We work in the efficient silence we've developed. McCartney assesses, I apply, Duane sits on the table and occasionally reports a sensation with the accuracy that has been consistent since Zandvoort. Eighty-seven percent today—he offers it unprompted when he comes in, before McCartney asks, which she notes in the file with what I've come to recognize as her version of being pleased."The 130R equivalent here is Parabolica," I tell him, while McCartney does the neck work. "Sustained lateral load in
Saved by Brother's Best Friend 98
Marianna POVHe arrives at the Kinetic space, still in team kit, hair slightly damp from the post-qualifying shower. He closes the door behind him and reads the room in approximately two seconds—me sitting on the edge of Table 3, hands in my lap, the specific quality of someone who has been waiting and has used the waiting time to organize her thoughts rather than spiral through them.He sits in the chair across from me. Oliver's sprawling chair. Alina's chair, from this afternoon."Tell me," he says.So I do.I keep it clean, the way McCartney delivers information. Alina's visit. What Luca has been saying. The word that's been circulating through paddock conversations. The probable chain of transmission from his apartment hallway to Alina's careless dinner conversation to Luca's deliberate distribution of something that was never his to touch.He listens without interrupting. His face does the controlled thing, the mask settling into place, but underneath it something is happening—I
Saved by Brother's Best Friend 97
Marianna POVThe thing about Alina Lindqvist is that she's very good at waiting.I don't fully understand this until Friday morning, when she doesn't do anything. She's just—present. In the paddock, which she has credentials for because she's been a Veloce brand ambassador for two years, a fact I learn from Oliver's comprehensive source network at approximately 9 AM.In the hospitality unit, talking to team partners with the easy fluency of someone who has been navigating these spaces since before I knew what a paddock was. Near the garage during FP1, standing with a group of sponsors in a way that puts her in Duane's sightline every time he comes off the pit wall.Not doing anything. Just being there.It's actually impressive. As a strategy, I mean. Clinically speaking.I treat Luca at eight, Oliver at ten, spend the lunch hour writing up the Suzuka preparation notes for Patrick's Wednesday call. McCartney finds me at two with an update on Duane's shoulder—AC joint down to minimal in
Saved by Brother's Best Friend 96
Marianna POVThe trattoria is exactly what Oliver described and also completely beyond what Oliver described, because Oliver's descriptions are enthusiastic but his sensory vocabulary is primarily sports-based, so the owner has been making it for forty years doesn't quite capture the specific atmosphere of a room with six tables and a ceiling that has absorbed forty years of good cooking, a woman in her sixties who assesses us when we walk in with the calm authority of someone whose cacio e pepe doesn't need our approval, and candles that are the working kind rather than the decorative kind.We're given a table in the back. The kind of table that a restaurant like this gives people it has decided to accommodate—tucked away, good light, slightly separate from the room's main current of activity.Duane orders in Italian, which I was not prepared for. Not tourist Italian, not the careful pronunciation of someone working through a phrase from their phone—actual Italian, easy and unaccente
Saved by Brother's Best Friend 95
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