Father nods. “And I asked, ‘Not even if you’ve seen them half naked?’ She reconsidered after that. We went for drinks at the Beguiler. She told me she was glad I was entering the Races that year, because she planned on winning them the next. I remember laughing, but gods, you should have seen just how serious she was. I knew then and there I’d marry her.”

They smile at each other again. You and Bravos met at a bar, so you won’t have some classy shaving story to tell your children, but you think it’s more than enough that they’ll see the two of you smile at one another like your parents are smiling at one another now. You’re so hopeful for that future that you ask the one question you’ve always been too afraid to ask.

“What would have happened if you had raced the same year?”

They both smile at the question. Mother’s the first to answer.

“I would have won, obviously.”

It’s such a quick, direct response that you all laugh, but Father can’t hide his first reaction to it. There’s a flash of something on his face and you recognize it instantly. He wants to object, to beat his chest, to call himself a champion again. That burning and competitive part of him snaps back to life at your mother’s words. He takes a long swallow of wine before answering.

“I would have raced like hell,” he says eventually, with false humility. “And she still would have waltzed across the finish line before me.”

You smile at him, but you’re startled by the lie, the pride he’s still breathing out like smoke. For years, you’ve been watching the old Races on vintage chat-casts. And you’ve always favored your mother’s chances in an imaginary race between the two of them.

Watching Father was like watching a storm. Fast and reckless and vengeful.

But watching Mother? That was like watching whatever person, whatever god, had summoned the storm into being. She moved every competitor like a piece on a game board. Her phoenix rebirths were masterpieces, her chosen route flawless. No one in the history of the Races has ever won by such a wide margin.

As they head to the theater and as you return to your room, it takes a long time to figure out the real question you wanted to ask, the one hiding beneath the words you spoke aloud:

Would you have ever married if one of you had lost to the other? Would I even exist?