ever in earnest

Casey ignores her doctor, her mother, and even her husband when she bundles Ari into her car seat and drives herself to airport on Thursday. She booked her flight to Melbourne on Tuesday, an impulsive decision after one too many re-watches of the last race. Ari is an angel on the flight, she passes out in Casey’s arms as soon as the plane is level. But it’s a long drive to Philip Island, even longer when Ari won’t fall asleep to the calming music that the other mums in the mum and baby group she goes to swear by.

When she gets there, after listening to her own voice crackling through the radio telling everyone to say “yes equality” every 15 minutes because Ari wanted to hear mummy on the radio the entire drive over from Melbourne, Casey knows she looks like a mess. She definitely feels like one. But everyone congratulates her on how good she looks. Not before greeting the baby balanced on her hip first. Not that Ari is really a baby, she’ll be three in February. A toddler, who can walk and laugh and speak.

They all say the same thing when they finally look at her too. How it still looks like she could get right back on the bike. The highest of compliments they could imagine for a retired rider.

Casey smiles and thanks them all. She knows they all think she left too soon, gave it up because she wanted a family more then she wanted to race or was just too soft to keep going. If they knew what she looked like under her thin quilted jacket and jeans they wouldn’t bother with pretending at wanting her back. Instead, she bites back her grimace and waves Ari’s chubby toddler hand at them and tells her to say goodbye.

It works.

Well it works most of the time. Valentina to no one’s surprise doesn’t take the hint, and tries to get Casey to pass her daughter off to Salucci of all people so she can keep cornering her about whatever it is she wants to hear herself talk about. Casey isn’t afraid to admit that she uses her daughter as a weapon to fend of Valentina’s advances to get her to a secondary location. She has learned her lesson about following Valentina anywhere. It helps that Salucci looks wide-eyed, a little like Vale just threw a nuclear bomb into his lap when she offers up his babysitting services.

She can also dissapear back into the Ducati garages where Valentina, for all the good will she had curried with the nation of Italy, cannot follow her beyond the red metal door.

It would be a better escape if Andrea Dovizioso was not waiting on the other side of that door.

Last year it had been different. Then she was there as a rider. Now she is a guest, the same as her daughter. They had been presented with two matching visitor’s passes when Casey had arrived at the circuit on Friday. Ari’s photo was one that had been posted to Casey’s Instagram right after she was born. The tiny black and white picture washes out the redness she remembers at the beginning. They had reused Casey’s photo from 2012. It feels a bit too similar to Valentina who refuses to let them update the photo of her all pimples and short hair, forever sixteen years old.

Like having one too many 31st birthdays. It’s a little embarrassing to be seen like she’s still clinging onto the past.

Because she isn’t.

Casey has her beautiful daughter, and her husband who loves her in sickness and in health. She doesn’t need to be here. She is the one everyone wants to talk to, for her unquestionable place among the greats of the sport, it’s her that journalists flock to for her as an the authority on the season’s title fight as the only one to win a championship for both Honda and Ducati. There is nothing left for her to prove to anyone.

She keeps having to remind herself that there is nothing left for her to prove.

Which is why letting herself into Dovi’s rider room is a bad idea. The kind of bad idea, like going mountain biking while sick, that lands you hospital for a week with a broken ankle and kidney failure. But Dovi hasn’t look at her once the entire weekend without the vaguely disinterested smile of a woman who has decided years ago that she has no interest in children and being anywhere near them. Which is why Ari is down for an afternoon nap she doesn’t need, that Casey will be paying for later tonight, sleeping under the watchful gaze of Casey’s former press officer and two other women Ducati had hired since she left.

It feels like she is abandoning Ari every time her daughter is out of arm’s reach. She must be a bad mother, leaving her baby behind is too easy.

Casey does it anyway.

It’s so cold on the island that the rain feels like sleet. She lets herself drip onto the towel someone has placed at the door for a second. Soaking up the warmth pouring out of the little portable heater in the corner while the door clicks shut behind her. Philip Island clearly hasn’t given up on winter just yet, and its the warmest she’s felt all week.

Casey strips off the team jacket she had borrowed, leaves it to drip onto another bright red towel lying underneath the coat hooks by the door. She keeps her shoes on. The sound of wet rubber against linoleum is unbearably loud in the quite of the mostly empty room. None of the little personal touches she remembers. Just the spare helmets stacked neatly in their cases. A spare pair of leathers with a new patch of leather sewn onto the leg where Dovi has scrapped off the sponsor’s name low-siding across the tarmac in FP2. Three Red Bull water bottles up against the wall.

Her hands iche to straighten them out. She curls her hands into fists instead, her fingers are icy cold against the heat of her palms. The space heater whirring away in the corner is no help thawing her hands. The steady gust of warm air leaves her colder then before every time it passes over her legs. The debrief is done, she had seen mechanics and technicians starting to duck into the warmth of the Ducati hospitality just after she had left.

Dovi will be here soon, unless Gigi and her decided to start arguing after the meeting finished. There’s no point in crouching down in front of it and trying to warm her hands like it’s a real fire, all she would get is caught humiliating herself. It’s easier to stand by the unused desk up against the wall and shiver.

She’s just about contemplating the true cost of her dignity versus the warmth of shoving her hands in her armpits when Dovi lets herself in.

Dovi sweeps inside in a rush of cold air and half-mumbled Italian. Alone. That’s good for Casey. She had heard second-hand that Dovi had pushed everyone away towards the end of her last title fight too. Had assumed, but didn’t know. Not for sure.

“Dovi.” Her name sticks in Casey’s throat, like she hasn’t spoken in days.

That stops her, makes her turn and face Casey. Finally look at her.

It’s the first time Casey has felt Dovi look and see her. All week she has been stuck as a ghost in her own life, haunting the places she once lived.

“Dovi,” Casey can’t stop herself from reach out. “I-” The skin on her wrist is burning hot, and Dovi flinches away from her.

“Fuck, you’re cold.”

She doesn’t stay away. Steps closer, grabbing Casey’s hands trying to rub some heat back into them. Brings them up to her mouth and her chapped lips brush Casey’s fingers as she breaths warmth back into her.

That thaws something in Casey. Something that had been lodged in her throat since she’d seen how easily Dovi had turned towards Marc and pulled her in. How slow she’d been to let her go. It’s the kind of feeling her therapist tries to make her sit with, identifying the way her emotions feel inside her body. The exercises all seem meaningless now that Dovi is holding her again.

“I was waiting for you,” She hates herself as soon as she says it.

“In the rain?”

“Well, I picked the lock eventually.”

That gets a laugh out of Dovi. Casey is surprised, she didn’t realize how much she’s missed hearing that until now.

“They should have got better security, if we’re on an island full of criminals.”

Dovi squeezes Casey’s fingers when she laughs, and Casey realizes that her hands are warm again.

“Have you come to steal our team secrets, or did you miss me?”

There are too many things she could say to that. So Casey kisses her instead. Their hands are still tangled together, pressed between their chests. And this is the warmest Casey has been all weeks. Maybe since last summer even. Any carefully laid plan she might’ve had before Dovi walked in is long gone.

It’s not their best kiss, not by a long shot. But it’s familiar. The way Casey didn’t let herself worry it might not be. She still kisses Casey the same way. Laps at her bottom lip and then lets Casey come to her when she finally opens up.

Their next kiss is better.

Dovi threads a hand through the blonde hair hanging loose down Casey’s back. Angling her head just so, and kissing her deeper. Always in control, even when Casey finally breaks away to breath.

She presses a kiss to the corner of Casey’s gasping mouth before mouth along her jaw. Sucking at the delicate skin behind her ear, threatening a leave a mark just to feel Casey’s hand spasm in hers and draw out the breathy kind of sound she hates that Dovi loves to hear her make.

Casey had forgotten what wanting feels like. The rush of it. How it pools in her stomach and makes her blood warm. She hasn’t felt this in so long. Maybe since before Ari was born.

She lets herself be crowded against the little desk. Her warm fingers clinging to Dovi’s belt loops, pulling her closer. Lets her hands wander under Dovi’s boxy team shirt rediscovering the flush skin hiding underneath.

“Missed this,” She bites her lip and tries to swallows down anything more embarrassing that might tumble out next.

Dovi presses in closer, her thigh between Casey’s legs, and pulls another hapless gasp from her.

She hasn’t been fucked in so long, but they’re both getting a little desperate. Casey fumbles with the fly of Dovi’s jeans, while she rucks Casey’s shirt up high enough to get her tits out.

“Fuck, look at you.” She thumbs across a pink nipple as she looks her fill.

Her head is spinning too much to remember any Italian, but fuck is still familiar. A good sign. Dovi must like the way she fills out her bra now. But all Casey can focus on is the lightning path of her arousal, it goes all the way down to her knees, as Dovi sucks one of her nipples into her mouth through the lace of her only good bra. She should have worn a skirt. Dying of hypothermia in the rain would be a small price to pay to have Dovi’s hands on her. Inside her, filling her up.

Chasing the molten sensation of Dovi’s teeth and tongue on her skin Casey manages to stick her hand down Dovi’s pants as she arches up into her mouth. Her skin is burning hot against the cool skin of Casey’s hands, a familiar map of firm muscle under soft skin. But instead of her fingers finding the soft cotton of the boxers Dovi used to wear or even the coarse hair of her happy trail that promised the easy access of bare skin, her fingers catch against flimsy picot edging before slipping against silky lace.

Casey had done the ice bucket challenge just like everyone else in 2013, she remembers the way the ice water had made everything in her seize up and she had felt for a moment truly out of control of her body. The realization of what she’s doing here —what they’re doing— isn’t too dissimilar. She freezes just like she did then. Her fingers still touching the soft lace of the low-cut underwear Dovi has on as she pulls back to admire the rosy peaks she had worked Casey’s nipples into. The rough touch of her calluses as she rolls the pink buds into hard peaks sends a sharp jolt of arousal down her spine that makes Casey recoil.

Her stomach twists and her throat closes up. Casey fumbles trying to rip her hand back and out of Dovi’s pants.

“Casey, what-” Dovi asks, confused.

She feels like an idiot. Of course there was someone else. Of course Dovi would never have shown up after practise all cleaned up in jeans that make her ass look good because she was expected Casey to be there waiting to ambush her. She doesn’t know why she’s surprised, there were always other girls before. Why would that have changed just because Casey wasn’t around anymore.

“I didn’t. You have a-” She can’t even get the word out around the lump in her throat, “And I just barged in-”

“Casey, slow down! What are you saying?”

Dovi is still holding onto Casey, her warm hands are burning against Casey’s bare skin. And all Casey can think of is how the pastor used to describe the hell fire awaiting sinners when they died before Sundays became race days instead of church days. They left Australia before she had her Confirmation; and after they left her father decided that there was no time for God in between races, and training, and school.

A woman’s voice cuts off anything Casey could have said to explain herself. The tiny sound of a Spanish love-song ringing out from the back pocket of Dovi’s jeans.

“Casey,” Dovi ignores it, her voice soft and patient the same way Casey speaks to her daughter. As if Casey were a child, “What’s wrong?”

Dovi tries to brush Casey’s hair back from where it has fall over her face. She shrugs her off.

“Shouldn’t you pick that up?” She sounds acerbic. It’s better than defensive.

“It’s not important, it’s probably just Marc.”

And of course, of course it’s Marc. Who else would it be.

“I have a husband,” She swallows against the bile rising in her throat, “I have a daughter.”

Dovi looks like she wants to argue, press the issue.

“I have a family,” Even to Casey’s own ears it sounds like she’s trying to remind herself more than Dovi.

Dovi steps back from Casey. Let’s her hands drop off Casey’s thin shoulders until she is stranded in the middle of the room. Alone again. Dovi turn away from her, not unkindly, just looks away from what she must see in Casey. Gives her a moment unwatched to pull back the desperation and want she can feel in every line of her body back inside herself. Casey knows the ugly look of her want, sees it on herself when she passes by mirrors unknowingly, it is easy to understand why its unwanted here.

The bright noise of Dovi’s phone ringing cuts off.

Casey tries to take the kind of calming breath her therapist likes to coach her through. In the sudden silence it comes out strangled, a little wet. Good enough.

“Good luck.”

She doesn’t look back at Casey, and she refuses to let herself want Dovi to.

“You’ll need it, you’re still shit in the wet.” Neither of them mention her win in Motegi. Or Marc.

Casey has never hated how all the mobile homes they use in the paddock have soft-close hinges on the door before. It seems pathetic to try and get the last word in before making a dramatic exit when it’s followed by the limp hiss of hydraulics.

The next breath she lets out sounds wetter. Uglier.

The icy rain soaking the entire island means that no one is lingering outside. There is no one to care if it sound like she’s crying or if the tip of her nose isn’t red from the wind whipping through the paddock.

On Sunday, Casey holds her daughter like a shield between herself and everyone in Ducati red. Dovizioso had qualified 11th. She finishes even lower. Her worst result of the year.

Being proven right feels like a hollow victory. Valentina had always seemed so pleased with herself when she made a curse stick. Casey can’t find anything worth gloating over while she’s stuck watching from the garage with with her daughter on her hip as they congratulate each other on the cool down lap. And she doesn’t stick around to watch how Dovizioso justifies Scott Redding, on last years bike, finished higher then she did in the dry.