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47

ผู้เขียน: Ana Hertales
last update วันที่เผยแพร่: 2026-09-04 11:57:40

Marianna.

"We need to talk, Marianna."

Marco holds the serious face for exactly four seconds. Then his mouth twitches. Then the corner lifts. Then—

"About how you are going to pay me back for this insanely expensive souvenir I lugged across the Atlantic."

He is grinning. Full dimples. The same grin he used at age twelve when he convinced me our goldfish had run away from home.

It was a joke. "We need to talk" was a joke.

I am going to murder my brother.

"Your face," Marco wheezes, doubling over. "Oh my God, Mari, your face—you looked like I was about to read you your Miranda rights—"

"I hate you," I say, but the relief flooding through me is so intense I feel dizzy. Or maybe that is the stitches. Or the malnutrition. Or the general condition of being Marianna Reyes. "I genuinely, profoundly hate you."

"You love me. I am your favorite sibling."

"You are my only sibling. That's not a compliment."

Duane has not moved. He's still standing at the mouth of the hallway, freshly showered, damp hair, watching this exchange with an expression that could mean anything from "mildly amused" to "planning a strategic retreat." His eyes flick to mine—brief, electric, loaded with everything we can't say in front of Marco—then away.

My brother. His best friend. The girl who kissed his best friend while wearing his best friend's clothes in his best friend's apartment.

This is fine. We are all fine.

Marco straightens up, wiping his eyes. "Okay, okay. But seriously—" He points at my forehead. "What happened? And don't say 'I fell.' You already said 'I fell' and it sounded like bullshit then and it sounds like bullshit now."

"I fell."

"Mari."

"I fell, Marco. In the hallway. Hit the console table." I gesture vaguely toward the scene of the crime. "Duane took me to get stitches. It looks worse than it is."

Marco looks at Duane. Duane nods once. Minimal. The universal male gesture for confirmed, moving on.

"You've always been clumsy," Marco says, but his voice has softened. The big-brother radar is still pinging, but he's choosing to accept the explanation. For now. "Remember when you fell off the trampoline at Tía Rosa's and broke your wrist?"

"I was nine."

"You cried for three hours straight."

"Because my wrist was broken, Marco."

"Mami thought you were dying. Called the ambulance and everything. You should have seen Papi's face when the bill came—"

"Can we not relive my entire catalog of childhood injuries? Please?"

He laughs. Then seems to remember something, holding up one finger—wait—and jogs back to the living room where a beat-up carry-on suitcase is sitting near the couch. The suitcase is the same one he's had since Georgetown. Black. Scuffed at the corners. One wheel slightly wonky, so it always pulls to the left like a shopping cart with commitment issues.

"I brought you things," he announces, unzipping the front pocket with the enthusiasm of a kid on Christmas morning.

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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

    Marianna POVMonza in September is everything Zandvoort is not.Where Zandvoort is compact and coastal and smells like the sea, Monza sprawls through a royal park north of Milan with the unhurried confidence of a circuit that has been here since 1922 and has no particular interest in impressing you. The trees are enormous. The tarmac is old in a way you can feel through your shoes. The main straight is so long that watching cars accelerate down it feels less like motorsport and more like witnessing something that should probably be illegal on principle.The espresso is extraordinary. Italy is doing this on purpose.My hotel is a twenty-minute bus ride from the circuit, in a part of Monza that is regular-city rather than race-weekend-city—a pharmacy, a bakery, a woman who yells something at a cat from a third-floor window every morning at seven, a specific kind of narrow street that seems designed to fit exactly one Fiat Punto and the memory of a Fiat Punto. My room has a window that l

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