by Kat Ransom
Imperium is relatively new in Formula 1. It hasn't been around since the 1950s, like some of the original teams, but we’ve done well regardless. They’re all about young drivers, innovative tech, cutting edge design. We tend to attract the younger generation of fans. Our merchandise is all bright green and matte black. It brings in the high energy, extreme sports crowds.
“Now that’s an ass,” Dante stops. He looks down a hallway to our right and holds up his fingers in a square as if he’s taking a photo.
I look up, and my breath escapes me. I feel organs shutting down.
Emily is standing at the end of the hallway facing away from us and staring out a glass exit door. Her long brown hair is almost to her waist, which is wrapped in a grey asymmetrical skirt. She’s shifting from foot to foot on heels that accentuate her naked, toned calves. She runs her hands down her sides and over her pretty clothes.
She’s nervous.
“Ask the gods, and you shall receive,” Dante makes the sign of the cross over his heart and looks to the ceiling before he takes a step toward Emily in the hallway.
I put a hand on his shoulder and fist his shirt, “No.” I drag us a step back behind a giant palm tree as Dante twists his face up like I’ve gone mad.
“I saw her first. What do you say in America, shotgun?”
“Shut the fuck up,” I push him back into the wall and keep watching Emily between the palm leaves.
“That’s her,” I growl while holding Dante against the wall, my eyes never leaving Emily, who continues to fidget and look at her watch.
“Her? Ohhhh,” it finally dawns on Dante. “That was today.”
I nod.
What the hell is she doing? I check my watch, it’s almost 9:15, and she’s on the ground floor hiding in a hallway. Of course, I’m hiding in a goddamn palm tree like a pussy, so this is a fine predicament.
Fuck that.
I step out from behind the palm tree, put my hands into my pockets, and stroll to the entry of the hallway she’s in. Dante follows and stands silent next to me as we watch Emily from twenty feet away.
As if she can feel my eyes boring into her, like she also feels this electric wire connecting us, she stops fidgeting and slowly turns her head.
That’s right, baby, you feel me here?
Her big brown eyes meet mine, and she holds my gaze as her body turns toward me. Fuck, I haven’t been this close to Emily Walker, up close and personal, in years. She was always beautiful but now…
Now, her curves are on fire. Her silky cream blouse drapes over full round tits, and she walks toward me with a sway to her hips of a woman who is very much all grown up.
I’d swear my blood has stopped pumping because my limbs are suddenly numb, yet I can hear the whoosh-whoosh of my heartbeat in my ears.
She brushes her long hair over her shoulder and picks up a black leather portfolio bag from the ground, her eyes never leaving mine. One corner of my mouth turns up in a smirk as she gets closer.
“Emily,” I greet her in my best bedroom voice. Her name rolls off my lips, muscle memory returning as I say it aloud, not just in my head for the billionth time.
She has a thin gold chain around her neck that hangs off her collarbone. I force myself to keep my hands in my pockets when I catch a trace of her familiar smell. It’s something clean and fresh like sunshine hitting laundered sheets hanging in a garden or some girly shit.
“Cole, how nice to see you,” she smiles and crooks her head a bit like she’s surprised to see me here.
Bullshit.
“Been a long time,” I let my eyes run down her neck and past the first couple of buttons undone on her blouse. It’s been at least a thousand years, but who’s counting?
“Ahem,” Dante elbows me in the side. The prick is still here. I don’t want to waste the few words I get with her on Dante.
“Emily, this is Dante Renzo, my teammate. Dante, this is Emily Walker, an… old friend from high school.” I tip my head toward Dante for the introduction, but don’t take my eyes off Emily. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.
Dante takes Emily’s hand and kisses the back of her fingers, “Ciao, Emily, Pleasure to meet you.” Emily smiles at him sweetly. I’m going to rip his head off for that, later.
“Nice to meet you, Dante,” she takes her hand back. “So, you both work here, then?”
You know goddamn well I work here.
“Yep, what brings you to London?” I ask since apparently she still wants to play these games.
“Small world, I have an interview for an engineering position,” she answers in a tone that is way too chipper to be genuine.
“Is that so,” I say as a statement, not a question.
“Unless, of course… would that bother you, Cole?” She cocks her head to one side and blinks her long lashes at me.
Dante lets out a muffled snicker beside me.
I crinkle my brows at her.
Then her lip quivers the tiniest bit, her tell.
“Bother me,” I laugh, “that’s hilarious. We were just teenagers having fun. No harm, no foul, right?”
No harm, my ass. The countless hours I’ve spent keeping track of her, watching her across an ocean, pining after her—and she still wants to play cat and mouse games with me.
Did you think she was going to leap into your arms, asshole?
“Perfect, glad to hear it,” she clutches the leather strap of her bag and puts it over her shoulder. She checks her dainty gold watch, “I’d better go. Dante, nice to meet you.”
She reaches to shake his hand, and being the opportunistic tool that he is, Dante kisses the back of it again. The fact that his lips get to touch her skin infuriates me.
“I hope to see you again soon,” he whispers.
“I’d like that very much,” she smiles back at him. “Cole, nice seeing you,” she nods to me, keeping her hands very much to herself when dismissing me.
I take a partial step out of the hallway entry so she can squeeze past me, “Good luck, gorgeous girl.”
Her smile drops faster than light the moment she hears her pet name leave my lips.
That’s right, baby. You want to play games?
She sizes up the gap between Dante and me that’s blocking her exit path to the lobby, and even though I feel like I will literally die if another day passes without touching her, I stand farther back and let her through. I may play our familiar games—the ones she loves so much—but I won’t go that far in manipulation.
Dante and I both turn to watch her walk away into the open lobby, where she stops at reception and gets directions. My feet stay planted, my gaze locked on her until the elevator doors close. They steal her from me, and then she’s gone, on her way upstairs to meet Edmund.
Only then do I suck in a breath and feel air return to my lungs.
And then I shove my best friend into the nearest wall. “Your smarmy lips never touch that again, asshole.”
He smiles, showing me all of his white teeth, and lets out a bellow of a laugh. “Man, you have to step up your game if you want to get that back!”
“What are you talking about?” My hands are on my hips, and my breathing is still all jacked up. I don’t need to hear whatever Dante’s brilliant advice is.
“You were a dick! You have to woo women, talk sweetly to them, speak to them in the language of love,” he whispers and kisses his fingertips.
“Shut the fuck up,” I shake my head at him.
“Like this,” he approaches a planted tree in the lobby and starts delicately petting a long green leaf, cooing at it, “Bellissima, mio amore, senza di te la mia vita non ha senso.” He starts making kissy noises at the leaf.
“The hell is wrong with you?” I watch him romancing the potted plant as two mechanics walk by and take in the scene.
“I will teach you, you’ll see. ‘Gorgeous girl,’” he mocks my American accent. “Try tesoro, cuore mio, polpetta.”
“Meatball? You want me to call her a meatball?�
� I’ve picked up some Italian from Dante over the years, though polpetta probably came from restaurant menus if I had to guess.
“If you want her to feast on your meatballs ever again, yes,” he nods.
Jesus Christ, this guy.
“She likes gorgeous girl,” I mumble and shuffle my feet. Part of me is keenly aware that I am now discussing wooing Emily with Casanova here who wants me to call my girl a meatball.
Also, I haven’t decided yet if I am wooing Emily. I don’t woo.
Not anymore.
I wouldn’t even know how to woo anymore.
“Hmm,” he thinks as we leave behind his latest girlfriend, the potted plant, and continue through the lobby, “smart girl like that probably wants you to appreciate her mind, not her body. Maybe luminoso?”
“She knows she’s smart, doesn’t always know she’s beautiful,” I sigh and think of all the times she trusted me with her insecurities and fears. All the times I kissed them away and showed her just how goddamn gorgeous she is.
“Interesting,” Dante nods.
“Pro-tip, you douche, smart girls want to be called pretty, and pretty girls want to be called smart.”
My girl, she’s both.
“This is brilliant, I’ll try that out tonight,” Dante slaps me on the back.
“You do that.”
Dante keeps walking past the elevators and doesn’t notice that I’ve stopped and am waiting for the damn thing. Finally, he looks back, wondering why I’m not following him to the simulators. “Tell the guys I’m sick or something,” I shrug.
I have bigger concerns right now.
Ninety minutes later, I burst through the door of Edmund’s office. Emily has finally left the building, though I can still feel her energy buzzing around me.
“What took so long?” I’ve missed my session in the simulator and will have to make it up later.
Screw it.
“That was amongst the strangest interviews I’ve ever done,” Edmund scratches his gray beard from behind his desk.
“What does that mean?” I plop down in a chair in front of his desk and lean forward, waiting impatiently.
“Well, she’s either a total ball-buster or she doesn’t want this job,” Edmund crooks up his head and looks out the window.
I was afraid this was going to happen, that she’d turn the position down to avoid me. She probably has hundreds of companies recruiting her. Though she is also now perfecting the art of ball-busting, which is new.
“Did you offer her the position?”
Edmund inhales deeply, “Well, we’d be stupid not to. Mechanical engineering bachelor’s from MIT, Chancellor’s Excellence in Engineering Award at Cambridge, her Master’s thesis in tire composition could bring the specialty experience we need. God knows we can’t figure out why the bloody Concordia tires are such rubbish,” he throws his pen onto the desk. “Roger Tillman says she’s brilliant.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know—did you offer her the position?” I roll my hands for him to get on with it. Everyone knows Emily is brilliant. I know every accomplishment and degree and award she’s won for the last six years.
I know them by heart.
“I did, even though she was twenty minutes late, and it was like pulling teeth to get her to talk about her achievements.”
She wasn’t late. She was downstairs hiding at 9:00 am.
“And then she demanded nearly double the salary,” Edmund rubs the bridge of his nose.
I grin proudly at that attempt. Good one, Em.
But I’ll pay her salary demands out of pocket if Emily thinks that’s going to get her out of working here. Now that she’s this close, now that I have spoken to her again, there’s not a decision left in my mind. I have no choice.
“I think I got her, though,” Edmund grins like the Cheshire cat.
“How?”
“Took her for a tour of the factory and the lab. It’s what sold me on F1 when I was recruited out of university. Her eyes lit up,” Edmund makes dazzle hands with his fingers.
Our labs and factory would make anyone’s eyes light up. It looks like a spaceship with all the computers, instruments, and manufacturing equipment. The wind tunnel in the aero lab, all the beakers and chemicals in the fuel lab, the molding and injection lab where we make most of our parts and 3D print components. I should have thought of that.
“Then what?”
He laughs, which sends him into a coughing fit but then recovers, “Then we went through the composites lab. She seemed to like the carbon fiber process the most, though she told me we can get the resin curing time down if we raise the atmospheric pressure in the autoclave, and she wanted to know the exact chemical structure for our materials. She’s got balls.”
That’s my girl.
Edmund twirls around in his chair and steeples his hands, “I like her. She’d fit in. Imperium needs bright, young minds and big balls. I’m an old man. I can’t keep up with all this technical shit anymore, and I won’t be around forever.”
“So, is she hired, or what?” I ask and wish he’d get to the point already.
“Ball’s in her court,” Edmund shrugs. “I made the offer, she has until Monday to accept, or we’ll keep looking.”
Monday.
That leaves just the weekend for me to convince Emily Walker to take this job, to stay in London, to stay with me.
I did my part, don’t run now, Em.
Six
Emily
There are very few problems in life that I have not been able to solve through science and data. But with a spreadsheet before me outlining the pros and cons of accepting the job at Imperium, I’m stuck at the concept that things aren’t always so cut and dry.
The pro-Imperium column is extensive:
The most incredible labs I have ever seen.
Opportunities for advancement in materials science that could revolutionize the auto industry and lead to road safety and green Eco-solutions.
Travel the world.
Absurd salary package they inexplicably agreed to.
PhD reimbursement.
Work Visa, would not have to return to the US and do not want to deal with Dad.
One of the most innovative companies in the UK, future opportunities endless.
Klara could quit the cafe.
And then there’s the cons column:
Cole Ballentine.
I spent all day running a dozen different types of charts and models issuing scores and giving weight to specific priorities, but if there’s one thing I hate in science, it’s bias.
No matter how hard I try, I am looking for data that proves what I want it to, not the truth.
And after Friday, after seeing him in person for the first time in almost six years, the only truth I know is that I am not over Cole Ballentine.
I don’t know how to assign him a score for the impact he has had on my life. It would surely be biased.
Part of me hoped when we’d see each other again, I would snap out of it. Nothing would happen, I’d feel nothing, and I’d realize I was only a naive teenager back then. I would hop and skip away, and the rest of my life would be rainbows and unicorns.
But I didn’t imagine the chemistry we’ve always had. I wasn’t overblowing the way he makes my organs somersault or my brain misfire. Time has changed nothing. If anything, it’s magnified the intensity of all the emotions swirling around inside my chest.
Now, I’ve been reminded that they’re all still there. All the feelings, the anger, the hurt, feeling like a piece of me is missing, and I will never be whole or structurally sound without it—all still there.
It was all I could do to plaster the fake smile and confidence over myself while he stood tall before me, cool as a cucumber, and dared to tell me we were just kids having fun.
It wasn’t fun when I was heartbroken, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and was ready to give up going to college to follow him to Europe. It was not fun when my life went to hell in a handbasket, not
fun at all.
I felt like a fool when he said that. I wore a new skirt and heels and walked into that building with my shoulders back, ready to face my demons. Ready to take my life back and get over this shit.
That lasted all of fifteen minutes.
Seeing him online, in photos, or on TV did not do him justice. How unfair that men never fail to get more attractive as they get older. The tall, lean eighteen-year-old I last saw has turned into a broad-shouldered, muscular man with a chiseled jaw and the confidence of a reigning king.
His neck and traps doubled in size since he was karting in Florida. The results of his F1 training to withstand extreme g-forces now rise out of his green and black Imperium tee-shirt. His forearms were thick, corded, and developed. It was hard not to stare at either when I saw the muscles flexing in the hallway.
I used to be able to tell when Cole was stressed or upset by watching his neck muscles tense. But cornered in the hallway with him, I was too afraid to gawk the way I wanted to. I’ve always been a ‘neck girl’ and a part of me, a part I am very disappointed in, wanted to lick and bite that neck again.
I hate that what I really wanted was for him to throw me over his shoulder and drag me back to his lair. Even after everything.
Weak, weak, weak, Emily.
His brilliant blue eyes are the same, though.
Looking into those cobalt pools sucked me right back in, reminders of the ocean water, the days we spent at Florida beaches wrapped around one another in the rolling waves. They brought back all the feelings I’d sworn to myself I would never allow myself again.
Every inch of him seems to hold a memory I’ve stored in the recess of my mind. They’re flooding back to me now that they’ve been rekindled for even the briefest of moments. The more I try not to think about them, the more vivid the recollections become as if my body is operating at some primitive level focused only on its survival.
I’m pissed at myself for letting him affect me like this. I’m disappointed in me. I was doing pretty well, on the surface, until he went and called me ‘gorgeous girl.’ Then the dam broke, and the riptide was set free.