Chapter 15 15

Chapter 15 15
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I thought distance would fix it.
That if I put enough oceans, time zones, and degrees between us, he’d fade like a bad dream.

Spoiler: he didn’t.

By February, New York felt less like a city and more like punishment—loud, gray, unrelenting.
It didn’t let you think. Or maybe that was the point.

My apartment was the size of a broom closet. The radiator hissed like it had opinions. And the only light came from a cracked window that looked out onto a brick wall covered in graffiti and regret.

But I loved it.
Because it was mine. Because it didn’t smell like gasoline, or sound like the roar of engines that reminded me of him.

I was nineteen.
Half broke. Half terrified.
But I was free. Or at least pretending to be.

Classes at Columbia were brutal. PR theory, crisis communication, marketing ethics—ironically, all the things I’d one day need to clean up the messes of men like him.
Back then, it just felt like survival. Coffee, notes, subway, repeat.

It worked. For a while.

Until one afternoon, in a tiny coffee shop near 112th Street, his voice came from a TV over the counter.

It wasn’t live. It was a replay. Some sports segment on European motorsport.
“Seventeen-year-old prodigy Rafael De Luca Ricciardi wins his first F3 championship in Monza.”

The sound hit before the words did.
That smooth, calm tone.
The way he smiled for the camera—not arrogant, just sure. Like he was born to be watched.

He was wearing his new team jacket. Neon Apex. The same team that would later define his legend.

My coffee went cold.
I told myself not to look.
But of course I did.

The screen cut to him, drenched in champagne, eyes lit up, shouting something in Italian I couldn’t catch. The reporter asked how it felt to win.

He grinned. “It’s everything I’ve worked for.”
Then paused. “And a little bit of what I lost.”

My stomach twisted.
I told myself it was coincidence. Just a soundbite. Just PR.

But he never did anything “just.”

The barista asked if I was okay.
I lied and said I’d bitten my tongue.
Then I threw away the untouched coffee and left.

⸻

By spring, I had learned how to function around ghosts.
You stop checking your phone.
You stop replaying what-ifs.
You stop imagining what he’d say if he walked through the door.

You don’t stop missing him.
You just get better at pretending you don’t.

One night, after a late shift at the student office, I came home to find a small envelope slipped under my door. No return address.
Inside—
A magazine clipping.
Motorsport Europe Weekly, dated two months ago.

A photo of Rafael, mid-turn, car blurred behind him.
Someone had underlined a sentence in black ink:

“De Luca Ricciardi dedicates his first championship to ‘someone who believed before I did.’”

No signature. No note.
Just that.

I stared at it until the ink smudged under my thumb.

Then I laughed.
Because what else was I supposed to do? Cry?
I’d already done that.

Instead, I pinned it on my corkboard next to my class schedule, like it was some kind of motivational quote.
Work harder. Forget faster.

⸻

Summer came, humid and heavy.
I started interning for a small PR firm in Midtown—a chaotic little agency that handled everything from startup tech bros to minor scandals involving celebrity chefs.
It paid crap, but I loved it.

I learned how to build statements that sounded honest but weren’t, how to make chaos look polished, how to say we’re deeply sorry in six different ways without ever admitting guilt.

It was twisted. Addictive.
And somewhere between drafting crisis lines and scheduling press briefings, I realized I was good at this.
I could take something messy, emotional, human—and turn it into control.

Maybe that’s why I did it.
Because it was the opposite of him.

Control versus chaos.
Silence versus engines.
Me versus him.

Except, of course, the universe doesn’t let you escape that easily.

⸻

It happened again that fall.

I was on the subway, heading downtown, when I saw him.
Not in person. On a billboard.

Massive, backlit, smirking.
“Rafael De Luca — The Future of Speed.”
Some new sponsorship with an Italian watch brand. His eyes looking right through me even from a printed image.

I almost missed my stop.

By winter, I stopped pretending he wasn’t everywhere.
TV ads. Articles. Merch.
The racing world’s golden boy.

And me?
Just another face in a crowded city, building a future while trying not to trip over the past.

I dated a guy once.
Finance major. Smart, decent, smelled like citrus and ambition.
It lasted three weeks.
He asked why I never talked about my ex.
I said I didn’t have one.
And maybe that was true.
Because Rafael wasn’t an ex.
He was a chapter I never got to finish.

⸻

One night, during a storm, I dreamed of the greenhouse again.
Except this time, when I turned to show him my sketchbook, he wasn’t there.
Just the sound of rain and the faint smell of gasoline.
I woke up crying, angry at myself for still caring.

So I did what I always did best:
I worked harder.
I graduated early.
I got hired by a bigger firm.
I traveled.
I stopped checking the news from Europe.

Or tried to.

Because every once in a while, a headline would slip through:

“De Luca Ricciardi Wins Again.”
“Four Consecutive Podiums.”
“A Star Unlike Any Other.”

And every time, I’d feel that stupid mix of pride and resentment tangled up in my chest.

Like I wanted to slap him and hug him at the same time.

By the time I turned twenty-three, I’d mastered the art of the detached smile.
You know, the one that says I’m fine, really even when you’re not.

And when people asked if I’d ever been in love, I’d say,
“Once. But it didn’t stick.”

They’d laugh.
I’d laugh too.
Because that’s what you do when a ghost still feels real enough to ruin you.

⸻

The last time I heard his name before everything started again was at a gala two years later.
A man from Mercedes PR mentioned him casually—“You know, that De Luca kid. He’s the real deal. He’ll own the next decade.”

I smiled politely. “I’m sure he will.”

And I meant it.
Because I always knew he would.

I just didn’t know that one day, I’d be sitting across from him again—older, colder, wearing a headset instead of a heart, telling him to smile for the camera while pretending mine wasn’t breaking all over again.

But that’s the thing about first loves.
They don’t end when you walk away.
They wait.
Patiently.
Until the day the universe decides to be cruel enough to let you see them again.

And when that day came, I didn’t run.
I just straightened my jacket, checked my lipstick, and reminded myself—

I wasn’t seventeen anymore.
And he wasn’t the boy in the greenhouse.
He was the man I’d have to manage.
The story I’d have to rewrite.

And maybe—
the mistake I’d make all over again.

:::