Page 88 of Until The Lights Go Out

The hotel room smelled faintly like vanilla perfume, coffee, and the strawberry lip mask Serena swore cured everything from dry lips to emotional distress. Outside the giant windows, the city was gray and drizzly, but inside the room, everything felt soft and warm.

“There,” Serena announced dramatically, leaning back to admire her work. “You look heartbreakingly pretty.” I glanced at myself in the mirror beside the desk and barely recognized the girl staring back. Normally on race weekends, I looked polished in the very controlled, media-trained way I’d learned quickly. Hair up. Minimal makeup. Structured outfits. Nothing too soft. Nothing too vulnerable.

My hair fell loose over my shoulders in soft waves, since Serena had bullied me into keeping down. The oversized pink-and-red sweater swallowed my hands, cozy and warm, paired with light-wash jeans and gold jewelry that Serena had thrown onto me while calling me “a winter Pinterest board.”

And the glitter—okay, maybe the glitter was cute. I caught Serena watching me in the mirror.

“What?” I asked suspiciously.

Her expression softened. “Nothing.”

“Rena.”

“You just…” She shrugged a little. “You look lighter today.”

The words settled somewhere deep in my chest. I smiled despite myself, staring down at the painted pink nails we had done last night over room service and romcoms. Sometimes I forgot how lucky I was. I always tried to stay present, to be hyperaware of it. But since the whirlwind of accepting this job, I did feel lighter. Depression had a funny way of being ever-present some months, and during others, it was like my medications actually worked. I didn’t have time to mope around my city apartment, and I was doing something I genuinely really enjoyed. Everything with Theo felt big and messy. Somehow feelings from ages ago and feelings from now twisted and knotted around my heart. Through all the mess of my life that had happened in the last decade, I’d found people who made the hard parts survivable. I didn’t know if I could survive losing Theo again though.

Serena flopped onto the bed beside me with a sigh. “Okay. Important question.”

“That tone scares me.”

“Do we have a game plan for seeing Theo on the paddock today?”

Heat immediately rushed to my face. “We don’t have a game plan. My game plan is to take it slow; ball’s in his court.”

“He’s going to die when he sees you.”

I groaned, throwing a pillow over my face.

Serena ripped it away immediately. “No hiding. We discuss.”

“There is nothing to discuss.”

“You kissed him. He kissed you! There’s so much unsaid!”

I stared at the ceiling dramatically. “You’re making it sound so dramatic.”

“It is dramatic! Your life drastically flipped around. You went from working in a stuffy office reading data sheets to reporting on data you actually care about. You’re back in your dream world, AND the long-lost love of your life is now in your daily life! I should write a book about this.”

I laughed helplessly. “It does sound rather dramatic when you put it like that. And he’s not the love of my life. I don’t even know what love is…” Then, quieter, “We were so young. It was just a crush.”

Serena’s expression softened. “And?”

“And what?”

“And, it has ruined any chance of dating anyone seriously because you have compared every single man to a certain Irish boy from the circuit.”

I let out the biggest sigh of my life and threw my hands over my eyes. “That makes it feel so serious, S! It could be nothing, we just kissed, that’s all. And⁠—”

“And you literally said it was the best kiss of your life last night.”

“Okay, in my defense, we were like three glasses of wine deep into romcom night.”

“Drunk thoughts, sober truths, or whatever,” Serena shrugged then turned to me, her hands under her face just like the night before. I rolled over and matched her position. “How did the kiss make you feel? Good? Filled with dread? Terrified?”

“It felt terrifying.”

“Mm.”