Page 16 of The Big Race
“That’s beautiful,” Zoe said softly.
“We learned everything by doing it wrong at least once,” Ray added. “How to choose between a five-year-old’s side part and center part. How to make macaroni dinosaurs. How to talk about death without terrifying a kid.”
“Would you say raising a child prepared you for the challenges of the race?” Miranda asked.
Ray nodded. “If you’ve ever navigated TSA with a cranky kindergartner and a stuffed monkey named Pickles, you can do anything.”
I chuckled. “And at least onThe Big Race, nobody throws up on you mid-leg.”
Miranda leaned in. “How about intimacy—has the strain of parenting, aging, and now this race impacted your emotional or physical closeness?”
My eyes widened slightly. Ray didn’t miss a beat.
“We still know how to push each other’s buttons,” he said smoothly.
“Oh, is that what we’re calling it?” I muttered.
“You’d be surprised what a shared sleeping bag and a stressful customs line can reignite,” he added with a wink.
I wanted to die. Miranda and Zoe looked delighted.
“Final question,” Zoe said. “Why should we cast you over other couples?”
“Because we’ve already lost something, and we’re fighting to get it back,” I said. “We’re not perfect. But we’re honest. And we know how to show up for each other, even when it’s hard.”
Ray looked at me, then added, “We’re not just running the race for fun or fame. We’re running it to find out if we still belong on the same team.”
There was a beat of silence.
Miranda nodded. “Thank you, both. We’ll be in touch soon.”
As the Zoom window closed, I slumped back against the couch.
“I can’t believe you said ‘shared sleeping bag,’” I groaned.
Ray shrugged. “They loved it.”
“Yeah, because you flirted with them.”
“I flirted withyou,” he said. “They were just collateral.”
I wasn’t sure whether to believe him. But the truth was, for thirty minutes, we had acted like a couple again—sniping, snarking, supporting. Maybe even surviving.
Chapter 8
Into the Unknown
The next morning, an email arrived with the subject line:“Next Steps: Psychological and Medical Screening.”Just seeing the phrasepsychological screeningmade my palms sweat.
Ray, naturally, was unfazed. “How hard can it be? Circle a few bubbles, talk about our feelings, move on.”
“You know these are modeled after the ASVAB or the MMPI, right?” I said. “They’re designed to detect inconsistencies, contradictions, and latent sociopathy.”
Ray gave me a crooked smile. “Good thing I’m a consistent, openly non-sociopathic guy.”
That afternoon, we each received links to an online battery of multiple-choice questions so long it needed to be divided into sections. I poured a cup of tea, opened a spreadsheet to track my answers in case I needed to refer back, and began meticulously working through the prompts.
Ray completed his in under forty-five minutes.
