Jaxon
Thanksgiving is a holiday I usually spend feeling thankful that it’s not celebrated in Europe. But now my dining room is filled with members of the SportyGoCo family, talking and laughing and indulging in the massive feast that Chef Ursula prepared before leaving for her own family—turkey, stuffing, all the works, plus copious amounts of wine and pumpkin pie. And people have brought things, too. It’s mayhem—unruly, festive, messy mayhem. I love it.
Arnold comes and joins us at one point. He’d gotten a bit of notoriety as my cruel tormentor, and people are having a lot of fun with that. They also seem to just enjoy his company, which warms my chest in ways I’m still not able to express.
I didn’t know that a family like this was an option. I didn’t know what a family was at all, I suppose.
Jada takes my hand under the table and I’m feeling like the luckiest guy in the world, even after everybody piles on me during an argument about whether Formula One is a real sport or not. (It is.) I know they’re just saying it to annoy me, but still.
“You guys have no idea what you’re talking about!” I protest. “We work out, we have quick, rapid-fire reaction time and we—”
“You’re dismissed,” Renata says.
We set to dismissing each other, and then we chat and laugh late into the night. At one point I look up at that photo on the wall, the one that Jada and I put up there. There’s unhappy me, wanting so badly to have a family. Fighting for a family the only way he knew how. “You won’t always be alone,” I imagine saying to him. “You’ll find your people.”
Later, after everybody’s gone home, Jada and I head out to the Wilder Club. We meet up with her huge gang of friends—our friends, now—who’ve rolled in from various Thanksgiving dinners with families and found families, and we talk about what we’ve eaten and groan about how full we feel.
I already met Kelsey and Tabitha that day on the roof, as well as Dr. Tonio, aka Antonio, who comes in and gives me a big bearhug and immediately wants to talk racing.
I’ve met Max Hilton, Mia’s significant other, before—we were both at a lot of the same parties during one notorious season on the French Riviera.
Jada looks beautiful. Her outfit is all sparkles. She’s like a magpie with the sparkles when she’s not at work, and she’s wearing a bun with a pencil in it—not the writing kind, but a glitter-encrusted pencil I saw in a shop on Fifth Avenue. She looks beautiful and relaxed, and my heart swells ten sizes to think she picked me.
The mayhem is at its peak around one in the morning.
Jada snuggles into my side and tugs at my knit hat. “Are you ever going to take this off?” she asks.
“Is that a request? For me to go back to my other outfits?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” I tease.
“You’re dismissed,” she says.
“Dismiss me all you want,” I whisper in the split second before I kiss her. “But I’m never leaving.”
