ALICE Ch 111

Alice is not proud of herself. She’s widely regarded as an easygoing person by those who know her, but what happened in Baku got under her skin, understandably.

“Would it work if I just looked pissed off?” she jokes to Cosette as she sits topless in the makeup chair. Her emotions are such a mess that she’s not even nervous about this photo shoot.

Cosette looks sympathetic, shaking her head.

Well, there’s a small amount of worry. Alice is a little chilly as she sits there in just her briefs. Her nips are all puffy, but she doesn’t care about that. She just doesn’t want a boner in front of all these fancy perfume people. And by all these, there’s the girl doing the light, the photographer, and Cosette. That’s all. It’s really not so bad. Not yet, at any rate.

The makeup is minimal; it’s what they’re doing to her hair that’s crazy. Alice has just gotten a cut and they are making the most of it. Her short, fairly gay hairstyle is already meant to be shaggy, but the Diorgasm girl puts all this gel in it, artfully creating an intense look of bedhead.

They take Alice to the spot, where she’s made to crawl onto a low table. On all fours in her underwear, she looks down at the photographer lying under the table, pointing her camera up.

“And my boobs aren’t going to be in this?” She’s embarrassed to ask the question because she’s so flat, but she asks it anyway. “No nips? Promise? Cosette?”

But Cosette is looking at her phone. Cosette glances up, straight at Alice, as though what she’s just read has something to do with her. A wave of chills and goosebumps washes over all of Alice’s exposed skin.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

FF1

Bright lights shine on the simple chair.

Will Buxton chews his lip. “Under normal circumstances,” he begins, “Glynda Darcy would be pleased. The FUTA car probably isn’t fast enough to win races on its own merits, but it’s fast enough to capitalize on the mistakes of others, and that’s staggeringly good for a new team. But that’s a very businesslike way of looking at it. And while Alice has shown tremendous maturity in her interactions with the press, she is a Formula One driver. She’s shown how good she can be and now she’s staring down the barrel of a season in which victory is dependent on other people cocking up. Meanwhile, her own team is cocking up. That’s an uncomfortable spot for a driver to be in and Glynda knows it. The optics on FUTA are already bad with Faye Darcy driving a car. Supposing their lead driver were to run mid-season, that would be devastating. You can bet the bigwigs at FUTA would be looking for someone new next year and Glynda would be looking for a new job.”