Page 20 of The Genius
“Yeah, how are they?”
Tristan smiled and looked at the action in front of us. Eight drones were hovering above the ground in the starting area, while the last two were slowly lifting up to get in position. “Sometimes, I envy my dad and Athena. What they have together is so rare.” He turned his head to me and looked serious when he spoke. “Did you know they hold hands in public? Like they can’t stand to not touch each other.” Tristan shook his head. “It’s weird, but at the same time, I fucking wish I could find that with someone.”
“I’ll hold your hand if you want me to,” I offered and held it up for him to take.
Tristan took me up on my offer and smiled. “Thank you, Shelly. You’re a good friend. Too bad that we don’t have that chemistry thing between us.”
“We wouldn’t have been a good couple. You’re as quirky as I am.”
Tristan laughed. “No one is as quirky as you are.”
“That bad, is it?” I wanted to release his hand, but he grabbed it more firmly.
“You’re perfect the way you are, quirky and all.”
While Tristan returned his attention to the race and watched the drones take off, I kept thinking about his words:No one is as quirky as you are.
“Fucking amateur.” The man in front of us screamed as the crowd erupted in shouts and boos after a blue drone bumped into a red one that had a black line in the shape of a lightning bolt on it.
There had to be at least two thousand people spread out on the bleachers, and more viewers would be located along the route. Drone races were popular in the Northlands.
“Did you see that?” Tristan stood up, shielding his eyes from the sun with both hands and looking in the direction of the drones. “He blew it. I told the pilot to push to the max from the beginning. I fucking built that machine to take a beating, and then he goes easy.” Grumbles of annoyance were followed by more complaints. “And why would he try to get on the right side of number eight? He could have been number one by now.”
“The pilot can still catch up, can’t he?” I asked to cheer him up.
“I doubt it.” Keeping his eyes fixed on the large screen where we could follow the race, Tristan sat down again, grabbing for another chicken stick in the box.
“Sure you don’t want one?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m sure.” While he watched the race, I looked at the men around us, catching some of them staring at me with curiosity. These past ten years thousands of women had moved to the Northlands, but men still outnumbered women by a lot, and strict laws protected women from being approached or touched by strangers without the woman’s consent. It wasn’t illegal to look, though, and many of them had no manners when it came to ogling women. I ignored their staring eyes, finding none of them the least bit attractive. Again, memories of my time with Marco flooded back and I took a deep breath to steady my beating heart.
“Hey, Shelly…”
I turned my head to meet Tristan’s eyes. “Yes?”
“Stop thinking about your work. I can hear your head spinning, and you need to relax for a few hours.”
“I wasn’t thinking about work.”
“Good, because you need some balance in your life.”
“I’m balanced,” I lied, knowing full well that a seventy- to eighty-hour work week didn’t leave room for much else. “I was just looking at the spectators, wondering what is going on with the beads.”
“Ahh.” Tristan waved his hands in a dismissive way. “It’s a fashion thing. Apparently, Magni wore a single dark blue bead in his beard, and you know how everyone wants to be like him.”
I counted at least twenty or thirty men, each with a single bead braided into his beard.
“Magni would be the last person I would expect to wear a bead. That’s something Motlander men would do.”
“Maybe he lost a bet,” Tristan guessed. “Either way, he looked pretty badass with it and now it’s high fashion.”
“Do you talk to him often?”
“Nah, sometimes. Mostly, I speak with Mila.”
Mila had been a student at the experimental school, and she’d been adopted by Magni, the second in command in the Northlands, and his wife, Laura.
“I heard she’s still kind and gentle,” I said.
