Nuwanda

Wolff Media, having apparently decided subtlety was for cowards and companies with less money, has rented out a few cinemas around England for selected screenings. Not a huge release, obviously. Still, sponsors will be there, some people from Lewis’s team will be there, and Nico’s, even if Lewis and Nico themselves are not attending. There’s even a Sky F1 presenter joining George onstage before the screening for a moderated introduction and Q&A, which George has been trying not to think about for three days and failing spectacularly.

The print issue will come much later. Tonight is the thing with lights and seats and people where George has to stand in front of a cinema full of viewers and speak from presenter cards he currently cannot find.

“Fuck,” George says, with feeling. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Max says nothing.

George opens the top drawer of his desk for the third time, as if the cards might have grown there through pressure and prayer.

They have not.

“Fuck.”

Max stands in the doorway of George’s office in a black suit with a bow tie George has already decided is too large on principle. Max insists he already owned it, and therefore buying anything else for one event would be stupid. George had looked at him when he arrived and said, “You’re wearing that?”

Max had looked down at himself, then back up. “Yes.”

“That tie?”

“It is a bow tie.”

“I can see that.”

“Then why ask?”

George had taken one breath, then decided he had too many other things to survive tonight and Max’s formalwear philosophy would have to remain between him and God.

That had been ninety minutes ago.

Now George would pay actual money for Max’s bow tie to be the largest problem of the evening.

“Where are they?” George mutters, more to the drawer than to Max.

Max leans one shoulder against the doorframe. “Maybe in the conference room.”

“They are not in the conference room.”

“You looked?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Five minutes ago.”

“You have looked in many places in five minutes.”

“Because I am searching.”

“You are storming.”

George slams the drawer shut and turns. “Do you want to help?”

“I am helping.”

“You are standing there.”

“I am watching you look in places you already looked. This saves time later when you accuse me of not knowing where you looked.”

George points at him. “I am not in the mood right now.”

“I noticed.”

The Wolff Media office is technically having a party around them.

A restrained party, because it is still Wolff Media and half the staff treats canapés as a networking opportunity. There are people in the main open-plan space with glasses of champagne and branded napkins. There is a board near reception with Racing Lines: Premiere Night printed in enormous glossy letters. Someone has arranged little framed stills from the documentary along the walls: Nico in the chair at the studio, Lewis in the garage, old archival footage, a shot of George from behind that Joanna described as “pensive presenter silhouette” and George described as “evidence that I need to stand up straighter.”

Everyone involved is meant to board the huge shuttle in twenty minutes.

Everyone except George and Max. Because George is not getting on a shuttle.

Nobody said that outright. Nobody has to anymore. Oscar quietly arranged for them to take a car separately. Toto signed off on it with one brief nod and no fuss, because Toto, for all his many terrifying qualities, has learned which questions not to ask. Max had only looked at George when the email came through and said, “I will drive.”

George had said, “I don’t need you to drive.”

Max had said, “No, you need me to drive.”

Which was annoying because it was true. To their grace, Toto had already arranged a driver for them. But now George cannot find his presenter cards, so perhaps the car will have to drive itself into the Thames and solve everyone’s problems.

He leaves his office and strides into the corridor. Max follows silently.

Max has a way of staying close without crowding, of being present like a fact George can lean on if required and resent if he has energy to spare. It usually helps. Tonight it makes George feel hunted by indifference.

He enters the smaller meeting room and starts moving things that do not need to be moved: a stack of programmes, a laptop charger, three empty champagne flutes someone has abandoned near the speakerphone.

“You already looked here,” Max says.

“I am aware.”

“So why are you looking here?”

“Because they have not been found elsewhere, Max. That is how searching works.”

“You should have kept them in your bag.”

George rounds on him. “I thought you had them.”

Max stares. A dangerous silence opens.

“I had them?” Max says.

“Yes.”

“Why would I have them?”

“Because you said you would check the final run sheet.”

“The run sheet,” Max says. “Not your presenter cards.”

“They were with the run sheet.”

“No, they were not.”

“They were supposed to be.”

“Because you were supposed to put them there.”

“I was busy.”

“You were flirting with the sponsors.”

“They were asking me whether Nico and Lewis would attend together, which is not a question one can answer with grace.”

“You handled it.”

“That is not the point.”

“What is?”

“I have to stand onstage in front of sponsors, Lewis’s team, Nico’s team, a Sky presenter, senior staff, and several hundred people who have paid actual money to watch something I helped make, and I do not have my presenter cards.”

Max looks at him for one second too long. Then says, “Already, you know what you will say.”

George makes a sharp, disbelieving sound. “That is not the same thing.”

“It is close.”

“It’s absolutely not close!”

“You wrote the introduction.”

“Yes, on the cards!”

“Also, you wrote it in your head.”

“I wrote it in my head because I wrote it on the cards.”

Max folds his arms. George would like to strangle the bow tie.

“You are being difficult because you are nervous,” Max says.

George laughs once. “Astute. Have you considered a career in psychology?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“You are also blaming me because if it is my fault then you can be angry and this is easier than being scared.”

George goes still. Max realizes half a second too late that he has said something accurate in a tone George is currently incapable of receiving.

George says, very quietly, “Do not therapize me while wearing that tie.”

Max looks offended. “There is nothing wrong with it.”

“It is enormous.”

“It is so normal.”

“It looks like it will fly away.”

Max’s eyebrows lift. George knows he sounds insane. Unfortunately, knowing has never stopped him.

“Also,” George continues, because momentum is a disease, “you were meant to be in charge of the cards.”

“I was not.”

“You were.”

“No.”

“How do you know they weren’t with the run sheet?”

“Because I checked the run sheet.”

George stares at him. Max stares back. There is, horribly, a laugh waiting somewhere at the back of George’s throat. He refuses it and turns to leaves the meeting room.

Max follows again.

They pass the main office, where the party continues in sparkling, soft-edged chaos. Carlos is standing near Oscar with a glass in each hand, wearing a suit that somehow looks expensive and relaxed and indecently good on him. Oscar has his laptop tucked under one arm despite the fact that he is wearing formal shoes and has been explicitly told not to work tonight. Carlos is saying something into his ear. Oscar is attempting to look angry and failing because his mouth keeps bending.

Oscar sees George and immediately stops failing.

“You found them?” he asks.

George says, “Does it look as though I found them?”

Oscar takes in his face. “No.”

Carlos leans slightly away from Oscar to inspect him. “You are very red, Russellino.”

“Thank you, Carlos.”

“I mean it good.”

Max says, “He lost the presenter cards.”

“I did not lose them,” George snaps.

Oscar looks at Max. “Did he lose them?”

“Yes,” Max says.

George turns on him. “Unbelievable.”

Carlos grins. “Is this foreplay for you both?”

“No,” George says.

Max says nothing, which is not helpful. Oscar, traitor, takes a sip of champagne. “You probably have them in your bag.”

George points at him. “I have checked my bag.”

“When?”

“This afternoon.”

Oscar blinks. “George.”

“I checked it.”

“Before the final meeting?”

“Yes.”

“Before you put anything else in it?”

George opens his mouth. Closes it.

“No,” he says, because he will die before conceding this to Oscar and his stupid calm face.

Oscar looks at Max. Max looks at Oscar.

George says, “Do not look at each other like that.”

Carlos says, “I love this.”

“Everyone is taking the shuttle,” George says, seizing on the point as if it is evidence of anything. “You should be downstairs.”

“We have twelve minutes,” Oscar says.

“Eleven,” Max says.

George looks at him. “Whose side are you on?”

“The side of time.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

The problem is that George doesn’t. The problem is that he is one misplaced presenter-card stack away from a nervous breakdown, and Max is standing there in that suit looking unbothered and solid and very much like someone George wants to either murder or kiss or both, preferably in an order that allows them to arrive at the cinema on time.

He leaves them all behind and goes to reception. The cards are not there.

They are not on the windowsill, nor beside the champagne bucket, nor under the programmes, nor in the drawer where someone has placed approximately four hundred emergency name badges and one ancient packet of mints. Max waits by the door while George searches.

Still silently.

George’s nerves begin to fray in earnest. The premiere is not simply a premiere. It is the end of months of work, yes. A public-facing celebration of the documentary, a chance to thank the teams, sponsors, production staff, everyone who helped make it happen. But it is also the first time the thing exists outside their hands. Once Racing Lines plays in that cinema, it belongs to other people too.

Lewis will be watching. Nico will be watching. Toto will be watching. Susie will be watching.

Alex is not watching.

George shuts the drawer too hard.

The thought arrived without permission. It has been doing that all week. Alex would have loved this big of a premiere. George knows it with a certainty that hurts more on good days than on bad ones. He would have turned up in a suit with one button slightly wrong just to make George fix it. He would have charmed the sponsors, kissed Linda on both cheeks, asked Toto if he had prepared remarks and then pretended to be scandalized when Toto actually had. He would have sat somewhere in the cinema, probably beside Oscar, and made faces at George until George almost lost his place.

He would have been proud.

That one still gets him.

Max says, softer now, “George.”

“No.”

“We have to go.”

“I know.”

“George.”

“I said I know.”

Max steps closer without touching him.

“With cards or without them, we have to be there.”

George turns sharply. “Do you think I’m unaware of that?”

“No.”

“Then stop saying it.”

“You are acting like if you find the cards, you will stop being scared.”

George’s face burns. “That is not—”

“You can do it without the cards.”

“I don’t want to do it without the cards.”

“I know.”

“I prepared them.”

“I know.”

“I wrote proper cues and timings and transitions for the Sky segment because obviously I know the material but that is not the same as—”

“I know.”

“Stop saying you know.”

Max’s expression shifts. His patience thins visibly. “Then stop acting like the world ends if you cannot hold paper while talking, because you can. I have seen you do it.”

For a second, the office noise seems to shrink away from them. Then someone by the lift calls that the shuttle is boarding downstairs. George grabs his laptop bag from where he had abandoned it by reception and swings it over his shoulder.

“Fine,” he says. “Let’s go.”

They move through the office, down the corridor, past people calling good luck and see you there and George, you’ll be brilliant, which makes George feel as if his bones are trying to leave his body. Carlos gives him a thumbs-up from the lift, already surrounded by half the crew. Oscar mouths check your bag with such smug precision that George considers ending their friendship on the spot.

The lift doors close before he can respond. Max holds the stairwell door open for him.

“Absolutely not,” George says. “I am in dress shoes.”

“We are taking the lift.”

“You opened the stairwell door.”

“To annoy you.”

George stares. Max’s mouth barely moves. Something in George’s chest loosens despite himself. Then tightens again because they are still late and he still has no cards and this is not the time to find Max funny.

They take the next lift down in silence.

The car is waiting out front, glossy and black and hired, not Carlos’s rattling nostalgia trap, thank God. The driver stands by the door looking professionally neutral in the face of George’s expression, which is kind of him. The shuttle is still parked farther down the curb, huge and lit from inside, crew visible through the windows, someone waving with a champagne glass they absolutely should not have taken into a vehicle.

George gets into the back of the car. Max gets in beside him. And as the door closes, the city becomes muffled. For two seconds, neither of them speaks. Then George says, “You should have checked.”

Max turns his head very slowly.

“One of your jobs was ensuring that the presenter had his presenter cards.”

“The presenter is 28 years old and owns a bag.”

George makes a sound of pure outrage. Max continues, “The presenter also made the cards. Printed the cards at night, loudly while I was trying to sleep. Cut them to the exact size he wanted—”

“They needed to be readable.”

“Of course.”

Max looks out the window for half a second, jaw working, and George realizes with sudden fury that he is trying not to laugh.

“This is not funny.”

“No.”

“You think it is funny.”

“A little.”

“Max!”

“You are very red again.”

George turns away and stares out his own window. London passes in evening blur, office glass and traffic lights and people on pavements having perfectly ordinary nights that do not involve premieres, lost presenter cards, major sponsors, absent dead boyfriends, or infuriating Dutch boyfriends in bow ties who have the nerve to be correct about things.

Boyfriend.

The word still catches sometimes.

It isn’t that they have not said it. They have, eventually, with the same terrible awkwardness with which they do most things that require tenderness. Max had said, “So what are we doing,” in George’s kitchen some time after Madrid, while holding a mug with one of Linda’s cats on it. George had said, “I don’t know, Max, clearly we are knitting.” Max had said, “George.” George had said, “Fine. Boyfriends, perhaps.” Max had nodded as if approving a schedule change and said, “Okay.”

And that had been that. Mostly. Nothing with them is simply that. George shifts in his seat, trying to breathe past the tightness in his chest. The presenter cards are gone.

He can do it without them.

He hates that Max is right. He reaches into his laptop bag for his phone, needing something to do with his hands. His fingers hit cardboard. George freezes.

No.

He knows the shape instantly. Matte. Thick. Cut to size. Held together by a black binder clip. His heart stops. Then starts again so hard he feels faint. He pulls the presenter cards out of his laptop bag. They sit in his hand, innocent and perfect and exactly where they have apparently been the entire time. George closes his eyes.

“No,” he says.

Max says nothing. George opens his eyes and looks at him. Max is staring at the cards. Then at George. Then at the cards again. His face is completely blank except for the enormous effort he is making not to become the worst person alive.

George says, “Don’t.”

Max’s mouth twitches.

“Don’t you dare.”

Max inhales through his nose. George points the cards at him. “I was under pressure, so shut up.”

Max turns slightly toward him. His eyes are bright now, and that is dangerous. That is Max amused and fond and vindicated, which is perhaps the single worst combination available to him.

“I told you,” Max says.

George’s mouth drops open. “You absolute arsehole.”

Max’s thumb brushes the edge of his own knee, a tiny, betrayed movement of suppressed laughter. “They were in your bag.”

“Yes, thank you, I have gathered that.”

The relief is starting to move through him. Sharp and good and almost too much after the panic. He has them and can stand on the stage and be George Russell, presenter, professional, person who knows exactly what to say about the documentary he helped make. He can do the evening. The relief hits so hard his whole body goes loose.

“Fuck,” he breathes, but differently this time.

Max watches him. Something in his face softens.

“Come here,” he says.

George looks at him. “We are in a car.”

“Yes.”

“With a driver.”

“The driver is paid to ignore things.”

“I am not—”

Max reaches for him, fingers at George’s chin, and turns his face gently but firmly until George is looking at him.

“You lost them,” Max says.

George glares.

“They were in your bag.”

“Fuck you.”

Max’s thumb moves along the sharp edge of his jaw.

“I told you,” Max says, softer now, and this time it is not smug.

George means to say something cutting. Something about Max’s bow tie or the fact that Max only looks wise because he spends so much time being indifferent.

What comes out is a laugh that is ssmall at first. Then bigger, because Max’s face changes with surprise and pleasure, and because George has been so tightly wound for the past hour that laughter feels almost violent in its release. He tips forward slightly, cards pressed against his chest, and Max catches him with a hand at the back of his neck.

“You are an ass,” George says, still laughing.

“Yes,” Max says. “But you have cards.”

“I hate you.”

“No.”

“I hate you a little.”

“No.”

“You’re very confident for a man wearing that bow tie.”

Max kisses him.

It starts with George still smiling, which complicates the angle. Max makes an annoyed sound into his mouth like George has personally inconvenienced the concept of kissing, and that only makes George smile harder until Max pulls him closer by the nape and kisses him properly. The presenter cards crinkle slightly between them. George shifts them to one hand without breaking away, because he may be emotionally compromised but he has not spent all evening suffering over cards simply to damage them now.

Max tastes faintly of champagne and mint.

George lets himself have it for a moment. More than a moment. Lets the closed car and the soft motion of the road and Max’s hand at his neck become the whole world. The panic is still there, waiting.

But Max is here too.

That still startles him sometimes.

Max, who knows where the panic lives and does not always touch it carefully but tries. Max, who is maddening and blunt and occasionally so tender without warning that George has to look away. His boyfriend who has somehow become the person George can fall apart in front of and then argue with in the same breath.

Their foreheads press together when the kiss breaks. George keeps his eyes closed for a second. The car moves through traffic. The driver remains a saint.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” George says quietly.

Max’s hand stays at the back of his neck.

“The premiere?”

“All of it.” George opens his eyes. Max is close enough that his face has gone slightly wonky. “This. The documentary. The fact that people are going to watch something we made. The fact that I have to stand on a stage with a Sky presenter and pretend I’m not thinking about whether the lighting makes my head look long.”

“It does not.”

“You haven’t seen the lighting.”

“Your head is fine.”

“That is not romantic.”

“I did not know we were doing romance.”

George huffs a laugh. “And I can’t believe you.”

Max looks at him then properly, his hand gripping his chin. George swallows.

“You,” he says again, because apparently that is all he has.

Max’s expression goes still in that way it does when something matters too much for him to decorate it. “Well,” Max says. “You had better start believing soon.”

George laughs, breath shaky. “That was almost inspiring.”

“I can do inspiring.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I can. I choose not to.”

“How noble.”

Max kisses him again.

Harder this time, less comforting, more like impatience finally finding somewhere to go. George’s hand, the one not holding the cards, grips Max’s lapel. The suit really does fit well. Infuriatingly well. Max leans into him, and for one brief, dangerous second George forgets entirely that they are in a car on their way to a professional event at which several important people expect him to arrive unsullied and articulate. Then the car slows at a light and George comes back to himself with a jolt.

He pulls away.

“Stop!”

Max looks at his mouth, still chasing. “Why?”

“Because we actually have to go.”

“We are going. The car is moving.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No.”

“Max.”

Max settles back an inch, which is not nearly enough. “Fine.”

George straightens his jacket, then looks at the presenter cards and smooths the top one with his thumb. He can feel his face still warm from kissing, from panic, from everything. Max watches him.

George glances over. “What?”

“You look beautiful.”

The words are so serious and plain that George does not understand them for half a second. Then he does. Heat rises up his neck at alarming speed.

It is ridiculous. They have fucked, fought, cried, kissed, emailed and survived. Max has seen him furious, grieving, hungover, overcaffeinated, badly dressed in Oscar’s shorts, vomiting and drooling, and still.

Apparently a compliment in the back of a car can still undo him. George clears his throat. “Where is this coming from?”

Max looks at him as if the answer is obvious. “I like you when you are angry.”

George’s mouth opens. “Sorry?”

Max’s eyes flick over his face. “You get very alive.”

George stares.

“You have been engineering arguments for pleasure?!”

“No.”

“You have!”

“No,” Max says, then pauses. “Not only.”

“Oh my God.”

“You are the one who starts most arguments.”

“That is so, so, so untrue.”

Max smiles with teeth and crinkly eyes, quick and real. George feels it somewhere stupid. Then Max’s expression settles again, softer under the teasing. “I have never seen you in a suit like this.”

George looks down at himself.

It is a very good suit. He knows that. Blue, sharp through the shoulders, tailored properly because Susie had once looked at one of his old suits and said, with terrifying kindness, “No,” which had apparently been all the intervention required. His shirt is white. His tie is narrow and silver-grey. He had spent twenty-three minutes deciding on a pocket square and then removed it because he feared whimsy.

“You have seen me in suits.”

“Work suits,” Max says, like this is different.

“It is a work event.”

“No.” Max’s gaze moves over him again, less hungry now than openly appreciative, which almost makes him feel naked. “This is different.”

George’s blush deepens. He is furious about it. Max notices, of course.

“I like it,” Max says.

George grips the cards with both hands and looks out the window because if he keeps looking at Max he will either kiss him again or do something more humiliating, like believe him.

“You look ridiculous,” George says.

Max huffs. “Liar.”

George glances at him. The bow tie is still too much. The suit fits perfectly otherwise.

 “Fine. You look acceptable.”

Max smiles a hand quickly coming up to George's cheek before letting go quickly.

The car turns toward the cinema. George breathes in, presenter cards finally safe in his hands, Max warm beside him, the premiere waiting ahead with all its lights and noise and impossible proof that this is their life now.

Max bumps his knee lightly against George’s.