Chapter Text
The morning of the last day of the season, Max asks his assistant to book him a one-way ticket to Bali.
She asks him when he has a nice gap between factory duties and seeing his family for Christmas – he hadn’t bothered to tell her the dates. Tonight after the race, he replies, with steady fingers and a shaky breath. The first flight there is.
Thirty minutes later, his personal email pings with the confirmation from the airline and soon after, a hotel booking. Already, he feels lighter knowing he has an escape in a matter of hours, his thoughts focussed on the other side of the world instead of the race he has to complete before he is allowed to drop off the grid. Fifty-seven laps, familiar straights and open corners he could do with his eyes closed, an hour and a half in a car that feels like an extension of himself. Three hundred and eight kilometres, give or take.
It’s barely anything, objectively. It feels like an eternity.
He watches the Bahrain sky turn from blue to pink to orange, watches the amber floodlights come on against the dark backdrop, tries to calm his breathing. He’s always loved the atmosphere, here, but tonight it feels barely less than stifling. The fairy lights that give everything a festive, comforting glow, the formality of proceedings, the energy of this being the last race for months to come – it all feels like a heavy weight on his shoulders, pressing down into his muscles and tensing them until he knows he’ll feel it for days to come. He can’t wait to escape the artificial golden hue of the track.
He doesn’t intend to explain himself to anyone, because he can’t. There are no words to express the compulsive tightness wrapped around his lungs that manifests every time he sees the racing track, or a member of the team, or sees the Red Bull logo embroidered on the shirts he has to wear. There is no right sentence to convey how he feels better during his off days than throughout race weekends, maybe because he doesn’t know why that is himself. Six months ago, he wouldn’t have understood this, and he doesn’t expect anyone to do so now either. How do you explain to someone that the thing you’ve worked your whole life for, that so many people around the world dream of achieving, now causes your stomach to turn?
There are no words for how he feels, or for how he doesn’t feel. There is just the hollowness, and the squeezing wrap around his lungs, and he doesn’t think his plan will solve it, but staying in Europe and going through the ordinary off-season motions won’t, either. A Christmas with his family isn’t going to cure him. A trip to Ibiza with his friends won’t suddenly reroute his genetic make-up that seems to be mutating by the hour.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing himself, and he doesn’t think it through – he just acts. Like driving a car, on instinct, he listens to his inner voice and follows his gut. He’ll course correct if he needs to, later. He doesn’t know what he would say, if someone asked him.
Once the race is done, he mostly functions on autopilot. He collects his trophy and smiles for the cameras, and says to everyone how much he will miss racing over the winter break, how he can’t wait to come back next season. He accepts the congratulations on his title, and on the team’s title, and completes each of his duties like he’s supposed to. He does his interviews, he films the end of the year video with Red Bull’s PR team, he says goodbye and wishes everyone a good break. No one can point a finger at him and say he didn’t do what he needed to or what was expected of him.
Then, he makes a beeline for the airport.
Max boards the plane with headphones on and collapses into his seat, already strapping himself in and pulling on the sleep mask before boarding is fully complete. He lets it rest on his forehead as he remembers his phone tucked into his back pocket, blindly fumbles around for it. He ignores all notifications, pulls up WhatsApp, a stone lodged in his throat, a twinge of guilt swelling inside him as he types.
I need some time, he texts Daniel, and turns off his phone.
He pulls the sleep mask down over his eyes. He’s so tired.
***
At the airport, his assistant has arranged for a local driver to pick him up. The cardboard sign he’s holding up reads Max V, whether to protect his privacy or because the man didn’t want to go through the trouble of spelling Verstappen – one way or another, he shows no signs of recognising him as he picks up Max’s one and only piece of luggage, a carry-on emptied of its usual contents of team branded clothing. It’s a relief, but not a surprise, part of the reason he had chosen to come here. Max doesn’t know if there has ever been an Indonesian Formula One driver; he supposes he should, since he knows everything else about the sport. It feels like yet another thing to press uncomfortably at his brain.
The air tastes sweet as he follows the man to the car, fresher as he breathes it in. On their way, he bins his bright orange cap with 33 embroidered on it, Red Bull’s logo stark on the brim. He thinks about how much reputational and monetary damage the sight would cause to the brand, and then he doesn’t.
He’s still wearing his dark blue team kit, not having packed anything else for the race weekend. He wonders if the man knows about Red Bull Racing, or if he just thinks Max is an extremely dedicated energy drink fanatic. Maybe he thinks he’s a fan. It’s a comforting thought, to be granted the illusion of anonymity, no matter how temporary that may be.
The man tells him it’s about an hour to their destination in broken English and turns to the road, leaving Max to his thoughts in the backseat. He cracks the window open a little bit and lets the warm air take up space around him, taking in his surroundings as they move through the airport and onto a motorway. The heat clings to his skin, uncomfortable, but it’s already better than the Bahraini climate, if only for the implication.
Outside, it’s dark and green. The vegetation is thick, tropical plants lining up one after another so closely it turns into a blur at the speed they’re going. Every few minutes he notices a religious shrine built in between the trees, on the corner of roads that veer off the main motorway. They are built out of stone, offerings of colourful flowers placed in the midst of them, standing out against the thick of the trees, and he has an irrational urge to ask the driver to stop the car to run his fingers over the vivid oranges and pinks and yellows on the other side of the window. He wants to reach out and touch one, trace his fingers through the carving in the stone, the smooth loops of it; feel whether the cobble is cold or warm under his fingers. Sometimes they remind him of miniature temples, other times they’re made to look like the smallest classification of an altar. Each is more beautiful than the one preceding it, and he finds his eyes tracing every one he can until it all blends into one.
Ten minutes before they’re due to arrive, Max asks the driver to stop at a corner shop. He exchanges two hundred euros into local currency, the only cash he has with him, and spends a fifth of it immediately. The vendor hands him an old BlackBerry model, one Max hasn’t seen in over a decade and tentatively hopes he’ll know how to use. It looks like it just about has enough functionality to connect to WiFi to check his emails from his assistant every couple of days, if the urge strikes. He doubts it will.
When he arrives at the hotel, he goes through the ingrained, over-practiced motions of checking in etched into his source code, escorted to his room on a buggy on the hotel grounds. The room turns out to be an entire bungalow, but Max sees little of it before he collapses in bed despite having just spent the entire flight asleep. He needs to catch up on sleep after the long season behind him. Perhaps more than just one.
***
Max wakes from a dreamless sleep. His stomach is rumbling, the lack of food in his body making itself known, and his arm is numb from where he slept on it. The bed and the air around him are warm; he is used to the source being another body, usually, but this time around the heat is inherent, a characteristic of the climate he is surrounded by. Daniel would love it here, he can’t help but think. He carries the same unrelenting warmth inside him.
He looks over at his discarded iPhone on the bedside table, still turned off after his flight. He reaches for the air-conditioning remote next to it, instead.
He stretches, feels the slight ache of his body from where his left knee has never quite fully recovered from a crash three years ago, from where his neck twinges with the reminder of the G-forces he subjects his muscles to on a regular basis. He has to shift not to lose his balance, and as he does, his foot slips out from under the duvet; one of his toenails is black after a kick he delivered to a wall two months ago when he was taken out of the race and temporarily lost his championship lead. It’s not painful, not physically, but it is ugly. He thinks about how every part of his body has a mark of the sport on it.
When he pulls back the curtains, the bright light of the outside fills the room, Max squinting against it. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust. Outside, it’s vast and sudden. A valley of a rainforest spreads out in front of him, tall palm trees for miles in each direction, green upon green upon green. It’s a surprise, but not an unpleasant one; he doesn’t know why he expected to be by the beach, when he hadn’t seen anything coastal on the way here. He supposes he wasn’t paying much attention, too out of it, but the jungle he takes in is unexpected.
He walks to the door, keen to get outside, and opens it only to be immediately hit with overwhelming humidity. He finds a carefully laid out cobble stone path from the front door and behind his bungalow, which leads him to a private garden with some sort of gazebo installation in one corner of it, and a private pool at the other end. He doesn’t feel particularly compelled to explore either option, now, maybe not today at all, and instead he closes his eyes for a moment, breathes in the clean air.
The only sounds he can hear is the rhythmic chirping of birds, some running water in the distance when he focuses, and for a moment, it’s enough to be away from his usual setting – and then it’s not, and he scrambles to get inside as fast as he can, the air clinging to his skin, sticking to his clothes, making it hard to breathe. He wants to see outside and be reminded of where he is, halfway across the world from where he’s expected to be, and at the same time, he wants to forget that he’s anywhere at all. He settles for camping out in his room by the window, marrying the two thoughts together. The air is cooler here, more calming on his alert nerves.
He can’t resist the physical call of his stomach, though; the room service he orders is as carefully neutral as possible, eggs on toast and a fruit platter. He leaves the tray outside his door when he’s done, and spends the rest of the day soaking in the oversized bath and looking outside the window again, tracing his finger over the binder detailing day trip offerings and nearby activities, not taking in a single one.
He watches as the bright sun fades away, replaced by dark clouds, and then he can’t take his eyes off the thunderous rain that starts beating against the trees, the chorus of the splatter violent enough to be heard clearly through the window. His insides echo the growl of the storm.
He goes to bed before the weather fully calms, but enough to see the beginnings of the gold rays of sunshine start filtering through the screen of clouds again, his skin prickling. He dreams of the roar of engines, waking up twice.
***
On the second day, he is woken up by the brightness streaming in from a window he forgot to blind. He stretches, feels a new sting in his shoulder from having slept on it funny. At this point, he hardly notices the new pains and aches unless they truly cause him discomfort when driving, but here, where there is nothing he would be late for and nowhere he should have been twenty minutes ago, it’s a point of focus. He supposes he should start feeling his age at some point – there are much worse things than being thirty-three, after all. He could list items to fill the fingers of two hands at the drop of a hat.
He doesn’t actually want to nor intends to leave his lodgings today, either, but his plan to continue to hide out from the world comes to an end when his lack of foresight catches up to him and he needs clean underwear. Checking the time on the digital clock on one of the bedside drawers, he groans at seeing it’s only slightly past seven a.m., but diligently gets up and ready for the day.
Instead of calling for a buggy, he opts to walk to the main cluster of buildings where the breakfast terrace is located. The sky is much the same it was yesterday, bright and clear, but his skin isn’t crawling from the heat yet, which he supposes is down to the early hour. It’s actually quite pleasant, outside, and it’s either too early for anyone else to be up yet or the resort is vacated during winter months, but he hardly sees people on his way up the narrow, swirling road leading to the upper grounds.
He falls into his thoughts, carefully thinking about nothing and failing at that, when he passes a clearing to his right, an open area with an expansive stone floor. If he pays it more attention, it seems more like a performance area, nearly comparable to a Roman amphitheatre, steps rising across four directions, but he would hesitate to call it anything other than an outdoors stage. In the centre of it, there is a small group of people on top of mats, an instructor stretching into a complicated pose in front of them. The group of people copies him, with varying degrees of success.
Fucking yoga, Max thinks and rolls his eyes to himself. It’s exactly the type of activity Charles probably thought about when he sarcastically suggested Max go away and find himself, I don’t know. Max doesn’t know why he listened to Charles to begin with; in all of their shared history, Charles has had a very limited number of good ideas.
But two months ago, Max had just had a petty fight with Daniel, and Christian was getting on his nerves with his expectations as if Max didn’t know what he was doing and wasn’t trying his best or driving better than anyone else on the grid, and Charles had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Max had been sat in the lobby bar of a Portuguese hotel on a Thursday preceding a race, working up the guts to go back up to his room and apologise, when a suspiciously red crew had arrived, speaking loudly in Italian and causing the other guests surrounding him to look up interest. Max had huffed and taken a sip of his gin and tonic, begrudgingly observing as the team checked in and started dispersing. The lobby quietened down some fifteen minutes later, and thinking the coast was clear, Max headed to the lift to take him up, if not fully ready to swallow his pride, then at least regretful enough to attempt a silent truce.
He had just entered the lift, watching the doors start to close, when an obnoxious hand had shot into the weaning gap, a body wiggling in against Max’s desires that must have been visible on his face.
Charles had raised his eyebrows comically, eyes widening; still a parody of his stupid twenty-year old self.
“We are on the same floor,” he said, pressing 12 for emphasis like Max was too thick to understand the words or like he hadn’t pressed the same button just seconds ago.
Max didn’t respond, choosing to ignore him instead. He often found that to be the most effective way to deal with Charles.
Charles continued, undeterred, when the little screen showed 9.
“I have mini bottles in my minibar,” he stated matter of factly, forgetting that Max was staying in a room nearly identical to his, probably. For whatever reason, Max still nodded despite his annoyance, and then followed Charles out of the lift and into his hotel room, watching him kick his suitcase into a corner while Max himself splayed out in the middle of the bed, because fuck Charles.
Charles crouched in front of the mini fridge and tossed to him what seemed to be its entire contents.
”We will drink all of that, and then you leave. But before that, you can talk.” Max picked up a miniature bottle of whiskey, shrugging and twisting the cap open. He took a swing, passing it over to Charles. The gold burnt lowly on its way down to his stomach, and Charles laughed at him despite grimacing at the taste himself a second later.
Max didn’t talk until there were three empty bottles lying in the space between their legs, Charles scooted so close to the edge of the bed he looked like he might fall off any second. Max would kick him if it was less effort.
“I just don’t feel like myself when I'm racing, anymore,” he said, hollowly. It was an understatement, a single drop of the storm that made him dizzy on the morning of a race, that coalesced under his fingernails until the grip he had on the steering wheel was powered by sheer compulsion. He couldn’t get the other words out, maybe because or even though it was Charles hearing them.
Charles snorted, moved to open a bottle of red wine. His face was nearly as red as the shirt stretched tight around his shoulders.
“Are you having an identity crisis or something?”
“I shouldn’t have come here.” Max made a move to get up and off the bed, but Charles’ hand caught him by his wrist, easy.
“Relax, I am just kidding.” He pulled at Max hard enough that Max tumbled back down onto the bed, now staring up at the pristine white ceiling while Charles looked over him, eyes bleary. Max remembered always having held his alcohol better than Charles, anyway – which was childish, maybe. Max should have been above their little rivalry by now. “Why do you not feel like yourself?”
Max shrugged, and took the bottle of wine that Charles handed to him. It was Port. Max hated port, but he hated not being drunk enough more.
“I don’t feel right behind the wheel. Remember when you were little and you crashed, and then you went over the mistake a million times to make sure you never do it again?” It only occurred to him after the words were out of Max’s mouth that maybe Charles hadn’t had the same experience, when he had been seven. “Now, I don’t want to fix my mistake. I don’t want to make it better or learn or go back on track or do the race over again, better. I don’t even know who I am, because that’s what I've done, my entire life. And now I don’t want to.”
Silence lingered over them, and for a moment Max thought Charles wouldn’t respond to him, or perhaps that he had fallen asleep, that he hadn’t even heard. But then he did answer, and he procured another bottle of wine from between them, clinking it against Max’s half empty one. “To less mistakes, then.”
Max grinned sadly at him, but nodded. “To less mistakes.” He didn’t think Charles understood, but it was the best he could ask for from him – a quiet acceptance.
When both bottles were empty, he headed towards the door. “Next time, we drink from my mini bar.”
Charles twisted his mouth, amused. “Next time,” he parroted. “If you have not gone to Bali to find yourself, or whatever.”
“Yeah, you just want me to go so I don’t win the championship,” Max joked back, but the response to his words was humourless, dry.
Charles held Max’s gaze for a prolonged second. “I am not as cruel as you think I am, Max.”
Max didn’t respond, but when he made it back to his hotel room, he didn’t need to search for the words to say to Daniel. They were already on his tongue.
Max sort of resents Charles now, for the throw-away comment he had made; he doesn’t want him to know he actually ended up taking his advice, and he stomps past the yoga class determinedly. This is what he probably had in mind, some soul searching or other shit like this. Max won’t give him the satisfaction, even if Charles would never actually know.
At breakfast, Max sits at a view overlooking the same valley visible from his own window. From this angle, the stream is more in sight, and as his eyes are drawn to it naturally, he realises there seems to be movement on it. Max eats his considerably less geographically neutral meal of dragonfruit and plantain pancakes and watches as bright orange rafts descend down the river, time after time, carried back up over the stream by a set of wires each time to another group of awaiting tourists eager to make their way down. It reminds him of racing: trying to control something going at a high speed, fighting with the natural elements to keep it steady, smooth, going down the same path until you can do it with your eyes closed. A blur of orange, returning to the starting point, over and over again. The initial high of the speed, getting carried away with it; finding yourself used to the movement, the wavering under your feet no longer a challenge.
The boats are no bigger than the tip of his finger, from this distance, but they hold his focus anyway. He thinks if Daniel was here, he would make them go down there, do a round or two. They would fail miserably, probably, at least one of them ending up in the water, hauling each other in by the safety vests strapped around their chests. Max could kiss him, here, soaked but happy, just once. He wouldn’t have to worry about other people.
After the breakfast, he gets the hotel’s shuttle bus to the local town an hour later, sharing it with an elderly couple from South Africa who keep telling him about a jewellery making class they booked online yesterday. He smiles and nods politely, even if taking a jewellery making class is absolutely the last thing he plans to do today, or this entire trip. He might be having some sort of crisis, but he’s not completely lost his mind, yet.
Instead, he wanders around the town. He’s not sure what he expected, but what he finds is nothing like he imagined; busy, tiny streets zig zag across the town, a serving platter for the various shops and restaurants and temples he sees wherever he looks. It’s touristy, and it’s not, locals dressed in traditional clothing going about their day-to-day business, but it’s inviting, everywhere, every door standing wide, every gate propped open against its very purpose. Max wants to go everywhere at once, overwhelmed, and nowhere, at the same time, a knot sat tightly in his gut looking at everything he can and can’t explore.
Instead, he stubbornly asks a temple caretaker for directions to the nearest department store. The caretaker shrugs, and vaguely points left, says shops, over there. Max doesn’t quite think he will be successful.
He heads in the direction the man pointed in, anyway. Like he predicted, he doesn’t end up finding a department store, but he does manage to buy what he needs from perhaps the only shop in town that advertises Calvin Klein on its window. The lack of commercialism, beyond the independent shops selling beachwear and trinkets and religious paraphernalia, is both inconvenient and refreshing. He fully intends to head back to the car park the hotel shuttle had dropped him off at, intent on spending the day in his hotel room just like the one before, but one moment he recognises the street and the next he doesn’t, and he can’t make his way back.
He supposes he could use the steps, if nothing else.
There’s a religious proceeding, at a temple he finds twenty minutes into his aimless wander around the town, and suddenly he’s unable to tear his eyes away from the locals flowing in and out through the gates. The rhythmic ring of bells and maracas draws him in, smoke of incense rising high above them, a parade-like stream of women in long, colourful wrap-around skirts, men in white high-neck gowns, pieces of cloth wrapped around their heads. He ends up following the festival float, joining the other tourists in their trailing of the music and portable shrines, ducking though small streets and down wider main roads until the sun is hot in the sky. The parade, as quickly as it had formed, disperses, and he’s left in the middle of the town, a plastic bag in one hand and emptiness in another.
He ends up finding a small restaurant for a lunch, a dark, covered room that’s as full of tropical growth as the outside – long, green leaves just above eye level, dimmed lamps. From where he sits, he can hear the engines of cars outside, unwillingly and automatically compares them to his own.
He studies the menu, begrudgingly but not surprisingly finding none of his go-to meals there. He downs a shot of a local rice liquor brought to him as he debates over the menu. He reads over the names of the dishes, eyes catching on unfamiliar words, eyes lingering on the meat side of the menu. He flickers to the fish, looks back at the meats. You’ve never liked fish, baby, he hears his mother’s voice, even though she’s not even here. She wouldn’t know. He orders the calamari anyway, and sits through a long lunch alone, finding that it’s not as awful as he thought, maybe. It’s decidedly lonely, but not in a sense he minds; it’s refreshing, nearly, to only have himself for company.
He doesn’t have anyone to talk to, and he doesn’t have his phone to fiddle with, check the latest iRacing ratings, maybe, or catch-up on the football transfer window, but it’s not so bad. He has the time to look at the other customers, etch into his memories a teenage couple sharing a dessert, a waitress hugging her colleague goodbye, a toddler in a high seat smiling at him from across the room. He wonders when the last time he noticed these things was, when he wasn’t too preoccupied to look up from his screen or had eyes beyond his company.
The journey back from town is quicker, when he knows what to look out for. He’s alone in the car, this time around, too early for anyone else to want to return yet, but it pays off when he books himself into a massage in two hours’ time.
He dresses himself in a white hotel-issue robe as soon as he gets back to his bungalow and sits out on the garden, this time. The gazebo he climbs onto shades him from the sweltering sun, and he wishes he had a book, maybe, to read.
He hasn’t read anything but race briefs and debriefs in years, which he thought used to irritate Daniel when he retired. He seemed to manage to immerse himself into a new book each week, whether he was rereading Harry Potter or studying about some marine mammals that Sebastian had told him about the week before. The first year of Daniel’s retirement, he had tried to make Max read, too, with very little to show for it. It’s not that Max can’t or doesn’t find it interesting – he just thinks there are other interesting things, too, like going on his sim or riding his jet ski or playing Call of Duty, but he still admires Daniel’s persistence. He admires Daniel, in general.
His massage feels raw on his tender, pinked up skin, but he can’t decide whether it’s because he nearly managed to burn himself, or because the entire experience leaves him mildly shaken. No one has touched his muscles professionally quite like this – firmly, digging in, with the sole focus of releasing the tension and relaxing him. He’s nearly forgotten his body is more than an instrument, that the ligaments slot into each other for purposes other than providing him endurance for a race and strength to stabilise him against constant movement. It’s different from how his performance coach kneads at his body, just as clinically but with a single-mindedness about it; there’s certainly no ocean waves coming from the speakers, no flower petals lying on the floor on the rare occasion he opens his eyes. The crack of his knee never comes, even when the masseuse moves on to his legs.
Back in his hotel room, the old model BlackBerry stares at him from the bedside table. He thinks, tomorrow, and quietly gets ready for dinner.
***
On the fourth day, Max wakes up early. He rifles through the only carry-on bag he brought with him, and forces himself to pull on his trainers and attempt some exercise. It’s cool enough still that he gets a solid forty-minute run in before sweat is dripping down his forehead and his shirt feels like a second skin, and then he hops into a cold shower, standing under the spray until he feels like a new person. It’s a small step, making himself exercise, but it does its job: he feels more ready for the day, more like a human who can do something productive instead of limiting his contact with the outside world to the bare minimum.
He has to be ready to go out at some point, really – being holed up in the bungalow, the hotel, isn’t exactly serving the purpose he came here for. He could have done this at home, if he wanted to just be alone inside four walls, sit and stew with his own thoughts that won’t quiet down. He didn’t run away and seclude himself away from everyone just to waste this time. He has to get on track, today, do something more than what he’s amounted to in the last three days, which is a miserable showing, if he’s being honest with himself.
Against his optimistic plans, yesterday was another wasted day where he didn’t do what he had planned despite his promises to himself. He spent it in bed, instead, flicking through the local channels he didn’t understand and watching news that felt so disconnected from where he was, and imagining what it would look like if it started to rain outside, erupt into one of those tropical storms he’s only ever heard about and never experienced. He thinks Australia has them this time of year.
Today, instead, after spending an appropriate time staring at the green wilderness and the rafting steam running through it at breakfast, mindless, he gathers himself and starts to walk up to the reception where the concierge desk is located, ready to face the day and the world. He doesn’t have a to-do list or a travel agenda prepared, but he guesses an overview of nearby activities is as good a start as any.
In passing by the reception, Max sees the same elderly South African couple at the counter. They’re holding hands while the man reads something out loud to the woman, their backs turned towards Max. He can’t tear his gaze away and ends up tripping on the two stairs leading down to the reception, causing the couple to look up.
The woman smiles and waves at Max from where she’s huddled over the desk surface. The skin around her eyes is thin and crinkles easily with the stretch of her mouth, making her look younger. Her eyes are brown.
“Oh, it’s you! Planning a day out again?”
Max shrugs, waving towards the concierge desk noncommittedly. “I thought I'd explore my options, since I'm here anyway.”
The woman nods, glances at her husband and they share a brief moment of eye contact. Max feels like he’s witnessing a conversation he’s not part of, but it passes quickly when she blinks at him.
“Why don’t you come with us? We’re renting a car to drive up to a walking trail and see a waterfall or two on the way. We’d love for you to join us.”
Max scratches at his shoulder, shifting his weight from one foot to another.
“That’s very kind of you, but I'm good. I will make some plans.”
The woman shakes her head, but her eyes are kind.
“What’s your name?” She asks, and Max feels compelled to answer truthfully despite the relative anonymity he’s losing here. He tells her his name.
“I’m Yvonne, and this is Andile,” she points to her partner, and is silent for a moment. “It’s not good to be alone, Max,” she says, simply. It doesn’t sound pitying, but it does have a concerned edge to it.
His mind immediately goes to Daniel. He doesn’t even know where he is; he guesses London, maybe, if Max is not in Monaco with him. He thinks of him in their England house, one they bought because Daniel wanted to live in a country that spoke his language and have a garden and be close to his ex-driver friends.
Max doesn’t know why every time he looks at his dead phone his heart clenches with an ache. He’s been away from Daniel for longer periods of time, even if Daniel is allowed and even encouraged to be at races. Sometimes Daniel would rather spend the weekend at home instead of taking long-haul flights, sometimes he visits Australia and Max can’t make the long journey in between races, and sometimes their schedules just simply don’t align, and that’s okay.
They’re grown-ups and they can handle a bit of distance without throwing a whole fit about it. They have a healthy amount of co-dependency, and Max has a folder of photos of Daniel in varying states of undress for when he gets horny as well as permanent thumb ache from texting him when he can’t call. He permanently wears a lock bracelet on his hand that Daniel has the key to. He’s spent eight years balancing what is inconspicuous in public with what amount of distance he can handle without going crazy.
Sometimes, he needs to try and stretch that distance. There are things that he needs to figure out on his own, and he’s adamant to ignore the dull ache under his ribcage whenever he thinks of the alternative.
“My partner isn’t here,” Max says, the words tumbling out of him before he can really take full ownership of them. He tucks his lips in and runs his tongue over them.
Yvonne looks at him quietly, her hand still intertwined with her husband’s. It makes Max stash away thoughts about the future, about tattoos and never-ending warmth.
“If you want your person here, you should tell them. People can’t read minds.” She nods determinedly, and her face blooms into yet another smile. “So until we get to meet your partner, would you like to join us?”
Max looks at the concierge, now speaking on the phone and urgently writing something down, not paying them any attention. He supposes it wouldn’t be too bad – to make friends and spend some time with other people. He did promise himself he would try, after all, so this is him trying. He can't remember the last time he spent more than an hour or two in the company of someone who didn’t know what he did for a job and didn’t somehow try to indirectly ask him about it; the fame, the engines, the lifestyle. His luck might just be turning.
“Sounds good,” he agrees, and watches the couple smile at him in delight at the words. The dread he expects never comes.
As advertised, they make the short drive to the walking trail, the entirety of which Max spends talking to the husband. It comes easy, with no expectations, and he finds he enjoys listening to the steadiness of his voice as he tells Max about his career. He used to be a teacher before he retired.
Max can’t imagine having such an ordinary work life: working nine to five, Monday to Friday, being bound to one physical place for years and years on end. Going out to the shops and seeing your co-worker, turning off your phone on the weekends. It sounds otherworldly, but not necessarily bad.
He’d miss the thrill, the vibration of a running engine below his thighs, the singlemindedness of speeding through the track. The people Max tends to share his space with might not necessarily have the same reference points, but they have the same focus and understanding that Max does. Sometimes, one interest can mean more than anything else to you. The way Andile talks about his job reminds Max that people can have other passions, too. Yvonne keeps tearing her eyes from the road to catch a glimpse of her husband every so often.
They soon arrive at the walking trail, which turns out to be a narrow nine-kilometre path leading through a few sightseeing hotspots. The walk reminds him of abandoned train tracks, like someone had ripped them out of the ground and left a winding road of tamped down dirt in the wake.
They get started on the trail, and Max is grateful when Yvonne turns out to know much of the history of their surroundings, turning into a makeshift guide for them once he admits he hasn’t done much research into their location at all, which is already an exaggeration. He doesn’t think he even remembers the name of the hotel, should he need to get back to it on his own. He plans to keep that piece of information firmly to himself, because something about Yvonne’s air makes it seem like she would be disappointed in him.
The trail takes them through sweeping hills and a valley, and they walk slowly, taking in the view that seems to change with every turn the road takes. In the distance, Max can make out a rising mountain, the perfect backdrop to the wild, untamed jungle and a scattering of village houses just small enough for the human eye to catch them. With each turn in the path, they seem to distance themselves more from any civilisation, and it’s freeing to only exist with the people hiking ahead of them when the only other sight is green growth as far as the eye can see.
It’s not where Max would necessarily choose to go, himself, but it’s not bad at all – getting away from the masses and surrounding himself with a peaceful, unfamiliar environment. He’s distinctly aware of how hot it is, the sun increasingly warming the air the later it gets in the day, and he lets out a sigh of relief as they start nearing a temple in the distance, Andile suggesting they stop there for a break.
This temple is bigger than any of the ones Max saw in town, and they tour through the wings of it, shielded away from the sun. It’s old, and pretty, and unique in its build, but to Max it’s all and the same, more or less: he can appreciate culture, but he’s itching to get going again, get his foot into the ground and tamp away at the dust settled there. He finds himself restless as they settle down for coffee in the nearby shop, and notices Yvonne and Andile looking at him as he plays with the cork of his water bottle.
“Good to get out?” Andile asks, an opener. Max could take it or leave it.
He shrugs. “I’ve not made the most of my time here so far. Thank you for inviting me,” he says, takes a sip, corks the bottle. Uncorks it a second later.
Yvonne raises her eyebrows and places her arm on top of Max’s when he corks the bottle again, a nervous twitch. It should be uncomfortable.
“It’s a beautiful country. You can almost forget about your worries, whatever they are. Reminds you there is more to the world than what you’re used to. That there’s beauty even if you don’t always see it.” Max looks at her for a long second, her kind eyes, nearly shining in this light, now. Her skin is darker than his on top of his hand.
“Is that why you’re here?” He asks, doesn’t think to question whether that’s too personal until it’s out of his mouth. He doesn’t know why he feels so comfortable around a couple he only met forty-eight hours ago.
They both smile at him widely at his question, and Andile shakes his head. “No, we’re here to celebrate our anniversary. Fifty years we’ve been together.”
Max doesn’t know what his face does at the words, but he can feel his cheeks hurting a second later. His eyes must be wide, if anything, and both Yvonne and Andile laugh at his expression.
“That’s longer than I've been alive for!” He says, like he’s seventeen all over again. Back then, signing his name on the dotted line for a promise of two years had seemed like an eternity, and he still can’t imagine what fifty years would look like. Spending that time with another person by his side. He feels like he’s five, at times, and sometimes he feels like he’s been living year after year for as long as time has existed, going through the motions.
“Way to make us feel young,” Yvonne grins at him, squeezes his hand before she retreats.
“You’ll always be young to me,” Andile replies to her, and she angles her body towards him, her eyes bright.
Max can’t help the hum he lets out, even if something in his gut clenches, not unpleasantly. Like a reminder of the hindthought of nerves.
Yvonne’s eyes flick to Max’s left hand, and then she focusses on him again. “Word of advice, marry a charmer,” she winks at Max before she leans over to press a kiss to Andile’s cheek.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he promises her, goes to twist the cork again as he watches them hold each other’s gaze a bit.
Andile coughs to get his attention.
“Before you so rudely offended our age,” he begins, teeth showing, “we just wanted to tell you to enjoy it. If you don’t let this island show you its good sides, you won’t see them. Whatever the reason you’re here.”
Max bites down on his lip, and this time when he uncorks his water bottle it’s to take a sip. “Is it that visible?”
They shrug in unison, nearly, but it’s Yvonne who speaks.
“Why would someone come to Bali alone,” she says. Max wishes he had an answer for her, but the only reason he can think is to get away from the rest of the world, which sounds miserable at best. He’s not escaping the world, as such – maybe his own world, and a lot of the factors that it comes with, but not everything.
He likes his life. He likes that he achieved what he has wanted since he could barely talk, that he got the opportunity to do it professionally, and he likes that he’s proven he’s the best at it, multiple times, even. He likes the people he’s met along the way, those who challenged him and those who supported him, whatever capacity he might have gotten to know them in. He likes that he’s financially independent, and that he can spend money on the people he loves. He likes that he can come home – to either family, the one he grew up with and the one he now forms half of, and that they understand what he’s talking about after a race. He has no reason to dislike his life. Many would kill to be where he is. Many would say he’s ungrateful to even think there are cons to it.
Not that he can say any of that to Yvonne and Andile.
“Sometimes life just works out that way,” he shrugs, and hopes it comes off as casual as he intends it to be.
Andile looks at his carefully, cautiously. Hopefully, maybe, although Max can’t quite tell. He might be reading on his face what he wants to see, at this point – an external sign that he’s done the right thing by coming here.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Max hopes so, too.
***
When Max gets back to the hotel, it’s late. He feels tired, but not down to the bone like has done the past few days. It’s a different kind of exhaustion, settling into his veins and making his body heavy, but it’s not unwelcome. He goes to lie down on his bed, and even though he feels the day taking its toll in the way his skin is dry and his bones ache, his mind is clear. He stares at the ceiling, and he doesn’t feel that pull to bury himself in the sheets that he’s nearly come to expect with being in this room. He feels better, energised, his mind alert as his body sinks into the mattress.
Yvonne and Andile drove them to a waterfall, after they completed the hike and looped back to where the car was parked. The waterfall turned out to be part of another hiking path, and if Max wanted to make a joke for finding the most active elderly couple on the whole island, he bit his tongue and followed them down the route. They split up halfway through, Max wanting and able to climb onto the higher ledges, and took the long way around to walk the paths going behind and above streams.
He wished he had his phone with him; he didn’t necessarily need a photo to post on Instagram, certainly didn’t want to share his location and what he’s doing with the world, but it would have been nice to have something to remember this moment by. Something to etch into his memory how he felt looking down at the water cascading in front of his eyes, loud enough to drown out the noise of his brain, the drum of blood flow at his temples; how droplets spat onto his skin, cold and fresh, and how Max wanted to reach out his fingertips into the fall, feel the pressure of water sinking into his skin and bouncing off it. He had felt the regret of not having a photo at each waterfall, not least of all when he climbed to the highest point of the trail and could see three waterfalls at once, illuminated by the bright daylight and reflecting colours.
It’s pretty impressive, if someone asked what he did on winter break: went hiking, explored the nature. He’d show the photo, and no one would ask how long he spent away from Europe and where he disappeared off to.
He looks to the blinking numbers of the alarm clock on the bedside table and thinks back to the time difference, realising he never even counted the hours. It should be day time back in Europe, though, maybe afternoon.
He digs through his carryon to find the charger, then shoves it into the wall, powering on his phone. He really only needs one thing, doesn’t want to look at all attempts at contact with him. It hits him anyways, as he’s going through his last calls, never having the knack for memorising numbers, no matter how important. He types it out on his ancient BlackBerry, wants to turn it off completely, but something catches his eye, one message worming itself into his mind, sticking to it with glue even as the screen goes dead when all the notifications have buzzed in and killed any remaining battery.
Christian: can you do next week? everything you asked for, just need lawyers to have one final look first
Max’s gut churns unpleasantly, for the first time all day. When he looks outside to distract himself from the message, the sky is golden with the oncoming sunset, the sky bright with colours, intensifying by the minute.
He can’t – he doesn’t want to think, not about that. Not after he’s had a good day, where he didn’t have to be reminded of who he is and what he does, where he could be Max, the man that didn’t know much about Bali and could make friends with strangers without assuming they had ulterior motives; the man that had time for hikes and didn’t get recognised once.
He doesn’t want to be Max Verstappen, right now, doesn’t have it in him to play the role and shoulder the expectations and pressure that mount no matter how many times he shows they don’t matter to him. His name always carries so much with it, wherever he goes, and he doesn’t go that many places where his name is just another combination of letters. When he says Verstappen, it means something, to people. It comes with awe, sometimes disdain, but always prejudice one way or another – he hasn’t felt like strangers see him for more than five titles and a claim to fame in a long, long time. More importantly, he has felt like Max Verstappen off the track more than he has on track, gripping the wheel and not thinking of the finish line when the lights go out, awaiting the cool down in his motorhome more than seeing the chequered flag.
He can’t imagine responding, one way or another, having the clarity to consider his future for another three years and leaving himself trapped by black words on white paper.
He can’t imagine going back to that. Not yet.
Instead, he saves the typed-out phone number to his BlackBerry and opens up WhatsApp.
I’m in Bali
Can you come
Please
It takes two minutes, and then he’s receiving video call. The background is grainy, whether for the shitty WiFi or even shittier phone, but Max can make out the shape of his most favourite face in the world.
“Max,” Daniel says. “Max.”
Max smiles at the camera, but it’s tentative and merges into something closer to longing half a second later. He can’t decipher the look on Daniel’s face.
“You can be mad at me. Just please come, if you can,” Max repeats, swallowing nervously. It’s dark outside, now.
Daniel rubs at his temple, sighs, then nods.
“I’ll be there,” he says, and Max’s lungs push out the air trapped inside him, heavy and full of relief.
Max goes to sleep feeling lighter than he has since he arrived on the island.