"Welcome to Macao," the commentator shouted, "great weather and beautiful fog. The driver Alan Marti is leading, representing Spain, while Finn Aldon, representing the UK, is barely holding fifth place. He swore this would be his third Grand Prix of the season, but he's just been overtaken by Christopher Crust. But what do we have here..."
"A Yummie," Christopher Crust said over the radio.
People laughed at his bitter joke while the Boss only snapped back:
"Never advertise a brand that doesn't sponsor you again," he said over the private channel. "Warning. Next time, I'll fine you."
Christopher just let the turbine deafen him before he could close the radio channel. The smell of burnt rubber was making him fall in love, and between shouts of adrenaline-fueled joy he kept going faster and faster.
Alan Marti looked nervous. Through his team's private radio, he could hear them telling him that if he didn't move, they were going to give him a blue flag. But he was fully focused. The corner he was approaching scared him a little; he was afraid of crashing. To his surprise, Crust passed right next to him, taking the curve with a confidence and ease that made Alan even more uneasy—until he noticed the trick.
He was taking the middle of the curve, not the lower inside line like Alan was.
When he copied it, he made it through perfectly.
"Why did you say lower inside?" he asked the Boss over the radio.
"Let someone else test it first. Don't scrape the ground. Then overtake."
No matter how hard Alan tried, Crust crossed the finish line with a ten-second lead. And just two seconds before Alan reached second place, Tyler took his position.
Crust and Tyler celebrated as if they had won the World Cup.
The press questioned all three of them after the race, but most of the questions were directed at Christopher Crust.
"It was about time," said the Spanish press. They spoke to him in Spanish, not even knowing he spoke the language.
"It's time to make a comeback, once and for all," he said, with perfect command, though a bit stiff.
The crowd applauded.
"What happened out there, Alan?"
"Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. See you in Barcelona. At home, I won't disappoint."
"You will disappoint," Crust joked.
"I hope not. If I don't win first place at home, people will lift me on their shoulders."
He said it calmly, but a drop of sweat ran down his forehead.
"You sound confident," the reporter said to Crust.
"Coastal flat tracks are my thing."
"Do you want to respond?" they asked Alan.
"268," he said before walking away, giving a half-smile without showing his teeth.
Christopher didn't even show up to the afterparty. They had promised it would be a proper farewell to China, but he preferred to go to the gym instead.
He didn't even really know how it worked. He tried watching YouTube tutorials for every machine, but almost everything felt impossible. He tried the bench press, but on his first attempt he couldn't even lift the initial fifteen pounds on each side. He tried again with just the metal bar and managed only three reps before his right arm stopped responding.
The bar was about to fall onto his face when, out of nowhere, Alan Marti appeared and stopped it.
Christopher got up without saying a word. He just walked away, pretending nothing had happened, and sat down near the rowing pulleys.
"Relax," Alan said. "It happens to all of us. You just didn't warm up. You're fine, really. You just... weakened for a second, that's all."
He was trying to be kind, but Christopher got angry. Alan immediately realized that weakened sounded like he was mocking how skinny he was, how little he weighed.
Christopher's face tightened before he moved to the other side of the gym. He got on one of the stationary bikes and started pedaling.
"Weakened," he muttered to himself. "Asshole."
Alan heard him, but completely ignored it.
Christopher stayed silent as he pedaled. He planned to ride for fifteen minutes; by minute five, he was already exhausted.
Meanwhile, Alan Marti was lifting serious weight. Christopher noticed that on the bench press he had at least 140 pounds on each side—meaning that, with each pectoral, he was practically lifting Christopher himself.
It was a weight Alan could lift, but not one he fully dominated yet. Apparently, he was only thinking about impressing him.
Christopher kept wondering why.
After all, he didn't really feel that Christopher Crust was a threat. Christopher could win every Grand Prix, and Alan could lose all of them, and he would still be beating him. It was almost impossible for any other competitor to even catch up, so there was no real reason to worry.
Christopher just stared at him. He didn't even try to hide it. He was just there, watching him, feeling a flicker of anger each time he remembered, and pedaling a little faster.
He didn't really care about Alan himself—only about what he represented. And at the same time, he realized that maybe he had never truly paid attention to him before. If he thought about it, he couldn't even remember his face perfectly.
"Fuck." He hit the machine. Alan looked over, startled out of his focus. "He's even better-looking than me, too," he thought.
He tried to store the boy's appearance in his mind. His face—very attractive to Crust—was the kind of face anyone with the slightest attraction to men would love.
His body was slender. Still a teenager—seventeen—but he would likely keep the same structure. Broad bones, a large frame overall. Slim, fairly tall, almost six feet—though Crust was at least taller. He was six feet.
That made him feel better.
It wasn't like the guy was truly muscular either. Today, you could call it muscle, though not defined. As Crust tried to describe him to himself, he imagined him in a wrestling uniform.
Yes. That was his body type.
A lot of volume, little definition. He would almost look chubby if he wore more clothes.
"Fuck." He hit the machine again.
This time Alan looked at him suspiciously.
"What the hell is wrong with him?" he thought.
"It's the kind of body anyone with the slightest attraction to men would like," Crust thought.
Their eyes met for a second. Alan rolled his eyes and moved on to chest extensions, the machine allowing him to turn his back to Crust.
"Sorry about the other night," Marti said. He wasn't looking at him.
"It's fine. You were just mad because I beat you."
Alan thought he was an asshole, but didn't keep talking. He preferred to focus on himself.
He heard the door open, and when he realized it, Crust was already gone.
The boy took a shower—first very hot, then very cold. He breathed deeply, visualizing himself in Barcelona, beating him.
He lay on his bed, scrolling through his phone. Messages from Finn asking where he was. Tyler telling him how much fun they were having.
At the club, there were lots of girls and alcohol.
Crust didn't even try to hide his look of disgust.
"The women in Macao are way hotter than the ones in Shanghai," Tyler said in a voice message. "Damn, I feel at home. I feel like I'm back in Brazil."
Christopher Crust would much rather lock himself in his room than go to that place and pretend he cared about the cabaret girls of Macao.