80

Marianna POV

I've been operating at approximately one hundred and twelve percent efficiency for nine days. Waking up at 6 AM without an alarm. Eating actual meals at actual mealtimes instead of the stress-eating-or-forgetting-to-eat binary that has governed most of my adult nutritional life.

Doing the hip flexor exercises I prescribe my clients, which I have historically never done, because healthcare workers make the worst patients and I contain multitudes of hypocrisy.

I've responded to thirteen emails in under four hours. Reorganized the treatment supply cabinet at Kinetic, which nobody asked me to do but which needed doing desperately and is now color-coded by application in a way that would make a German engineer weep with joy. I've been early to everything. I've been, by all measurable metrics, a functioning adult human person who has her life reasonably together.

This is what waiting does to me, apparently.

I am storing energy like a car on the grid before the lights go out.

"You reorganized the cabinet again," Derek says, standing in the doorway of Recovery Suite 2 with a coffee and an expression of profound wariness.

"The massage oil was next to the sports tape. That's a contamination risk."

"It's been next to the sports tape for three years."

"Then it's been a contamination risk for three years. I fixed it. You're welcome."

He looks at me for a long moment. Then at the cabinet. Then back at me.

"Priya says you alphabetized the client folders."

"By last name, yes. The previous system was chronological by intake date, which only makes sense if you remember the intake date for every client, which—"

"Marianna." Derek holds up his free hand. "What day does Duane Richter land in Miami?"

My face does something. I can feel it doing something. Whatever it does, Derek sees it, because he points at me with absolute vindication.

"TODAY," he says. "It's today, isn't it."

"I'm just maintaining—"

"You ALPHABETIZED the FOLDERS—"

"PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS—"

"You're wearing the good blazer on a Tuesday!"

I look down at myself. The blazer that is not the Target one. The blazer I bought three weeks ago with my second Kinetic paycheck, from an actual store, that fits properly and does not suggest I raided a clearance rack in a moment of financial desperation.

"It's a perfectly normal Tuesday blazer," I say with dignity.

Derek points at me again. Says nothing. Goes back to his coffee.

I close the cabinet.

He lands at 4:40 PM.

I know this because Duane texts me from the gate—Landed—with the economy of a man for whom punctuation is optional and context is assumed. Two words that tell me everything I need and none of what I want.

What I want is something like: I'm back. Nine days was too many. I thought about you every time the car went through Turn 3 and also in the hotel at Zandvoort when it rained and also when Patrick made a very Patrick comment about tire degradation that somehow reminded me of your voice explaining things to me like I'm not an engineer by default.

What I get is: Landed.

I've learned this is the same thing.

Oliver wins the Zandvoort Grand Prix. This is not a typo. Oliver Hale, my client, my golden retriever in human form, the man whose emoji-based physical therapy compliance has become something I reference in case notes with genuine admiration—Oliver Hale wins the Dutch Grand Prix in what the commentators spend forty-five minutes describing as "the emergence of a generational talent" and what Oliver describes, in a text sent from the podium while apparently still holding the trophy:

I WON

MARIANNA I WON

TELL MY HIP FLEXORS THEY DID THIS

Followed by: Mum's making another banner.

Followed by: This one says HALE TO THE KING.

I text back: This is the greatest moment of my professional life and I need you to know I'm telling everyone.

He responds with fourteen celebration emojis, a photo of the trophy, and a voice note of him screaming that I replay three times in the Kinetic break room because the pure joy in it does something medicinal to my nervous system.

Duane finishes P4. Which is where you finish when your shoulder is at seventy-three percent and your reserve driver has been leaking your medical data to unspecified parties and your team principal is having difficult conversations that you summarized over the phone as fine in a tone that meant something slightly more complicated.

P4. Still championship points. Still closing in on the title with six races remaining.

I text him: P4 with seventy-three percent. You should be proud.

He responds, twelve hours later, from what I assume is a debrief followed by a flight: The shoulder's at seventy-eight.

Me: When did—

Me: You didn't tell me it improved.

Duane: You didn't ask.

Me: DUANE.

Duane: Landed.

This is how I find out he's in Miami.

Marco is making coffee when I walk into the kitchen at seven PM, having stayed late at Kinetic to reorganize nothing, absolutely nothing, I was doing legitimate work. He's in a Georgetown Law shirt that has seen better decades and he's stirring the coffee with the meditative focus of someone who has been thinking about something for a while and is trying to decide whether to say it.

He lets me get my glass of water. Lets me stand there for a full thirty seconds.

"Duane's back," he says. To the coffee.

"I know," I say. To the water.

A beat.

"He texted me from the car," Marco says. "Henri picked him up."

"He has a whole system."

"He mentioned he might come by later. For dinner." Another beat. "He does that sometimes. When he's just landed. The apartment's too quiet or something."

"That's nice." My voice is completely normal. I have the vocal control of a seasoned liar and the internal temperature of a radiator. "Very considerate. Neighborly."

Marco turns to look at me.

His eyes do the three-millimeter thing.

"Mari."

"Marco."

"Is there something you want to tell me."

"No," I say, with the confidence of someone who has definitely prepared for this question and is absolutely certain the answer is not yet and maybe never and also possibly very soon depending on how this evening goes.

He looks at me for four more seconds. Then he turns back to his coffee.

"Okay," he says.

"Okay," I say.

We are the children of a woman who expressed love through feeding people and a man who expressed it through asking no questions he didn't want answered. We are extremely good at this.

Duane arrives at 7:43.

I know the specific weight of his footsteps on Marco's landing. I've memorized them the way you memorize anything you encounter with sufficient frequency and sufficient attention—unintentionally, completely, the information lodging somewhere below conscious recall and surfacing only when it's relevant.

He knocks twice. Marco answers.

"Hey." Marco's voice from the hallway, warm and immediate, the particular register of someone receiving a person they genuinely care about. "How was the flight?"

"Long." Duane's voice through the wall of Marco's apartment, doing the thing it always does in physical space versus phone space. More real. More present. The frequency of him occupying actual air instead of being compressed and transmitted. "Brought food. Thai place on Flagler."

"Oh, you absolute legend. Mari, Duane brought Thai—"

And then he's in the kitchen doorway.

Dark jeans. White t-shirt, which is unusual—Duane Richter owns approximately one white garment, and I have never seen him wear it before, and my brain immediately and unhelpfully logs this as new information, store this, this is important. His hair is slightly long, the way it gets at the end of a European stretch when he hasn't had time for a haircut, curling slightly at his neck.

He looks tired. Post-long-flight tired, post-nine-days-of-racing tired, the specific exhaustion of someone who has been giving their full function to the car and the team and the championship for six days straight and has finally, finally come somewhere they don't have to.

He looks at me.

I look at him.

"Hi," I say.

"Hi," he says.