Page 5 of Heart of the Race

After I graduated with my bachelor’s in business administration, I went to work for a real estate developer while going to school for my MBA at night. It felt good; I was on track toward my goal of security. Varro didn’t get that. He wanted me to go on the road with him.

It became a weekly thing. He’d call from clubs, parties, places I didn’t want to know about, and beg me to come to wherever he was and stay with him.

“Are you doing body shots off a model?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

I’d groan and tell him I was hanging up.

“Just come stay with me.”

Always he entreated me to just get on a plane. And I understood: he didn’t know what had happened. It wasn’t his fault I fell in love with him. He wanted his best pal back, his adopted brother. I was the one carrying the torch and interfering with our lifelong friendship. But we were also simply growing up.

“We weren’t going to live together forever.”

“Why not?”

I was incredulous. “Because we’re grown men.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So you’re gonna want a family someday––so will I.”

He scoffed. “You’re my family, Brian.”

“I’m a member of your family, yeah, but⁠—”

“No. You’re it.”

He didn’t understand.

“Come see me. Come watch me race.”

I felt like crap about it, but being around him, having him manhandle me, hug me, kiss me in the whole touchy-feely way he had, was agony. My body heated when I was near him; my skin ached to touch and be touched in return.

I was hungry to taste him, and it was a consuming, unrequited desire. The only way I knew how to deal with it was to impose distance.

I went home for Christmas only when I knew he couldn’t make it. Mrs. Dacien always had the same lament, that someday, before she died, she would like all her boys home together. Little did she know that I checked the Internet and the company blog, stayed on top of his status on Instagram and YouTube to make sure I knew where he was at all times. There were no surprises. I became the master of last-minute changes.

“So you’re not coming now?” he would snarl into the phone from his parents’ home.

“No, I gotta work,” I reported, and really, it wasn’t a lie. I covered the office all the days before and after the holidays so people with families could have the time off. “I have a real job, you know?”

“Racing is⁠—”

“A real thing, I know.”

“You’re such a dick sometimes.”

“Well, then, lucky for you, you don’t have to see me.”

He hung up, and it hurt, like a knife in my gut, but it saved me the pain of seeing him and not having him. I was also sparing him the humiliation of being grossed out by my advances. I was keeping us both safe from a shitload of grief.

What I didn’t anticipate was that the better he got at his sport, the more dangerous it became. You had to keep taking bigger chances, the bikes got more powerful, and the competition grew so much more fierce.