A SECOND CHANCE MAY BE TOO HOT TO HANDLE
They say there are no second chances, and for Lily Onassis, ever since she walked away from Formula World driver Max Becker, she's considered this true. Instead of a glitzy, glamorous life on the auto racing...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
LILY
SEVEN MONTHS LATER
It's still dark when I slip out of our warm, cozy bed at six in the morning. Even though it's Miami, it's still a little chilly because it's February, so I go to the walk-in closet and throw on a pair of fuzzy socks, along with my favorite pink sweatshirt and a pair of pink-and-white flannel shorts.
As I'm padding out of the bedroom, Max's voice hits my ears.
"Babe? Why are you getting out of bed so early?"
I return to the bed, leaning down to kiss his neck. His smooth skin smells faintly of his cologne and warm, sleepy man.
"I'm making something special for today."
He reaches for me, trying to pull me back on the mattress. "What's today?"
For a second, I think he's serious and I'm about to reprimand him, but when he laughs softly, I realize he's merely joking.
"You know what day it is," I tease, nibbling on his neck. "Now let me go cook. Go back to sleep."
He lands a playful swat on my butt as I climb out of bed and head into the living room. The morning sun is about to break over the horizon of the Atlantic Ocean, and a soothing, dusky, blue hue illuminates the sky. It's warm glow reflects off the other skyscrapers nearby, the light bouncing off the cold steel and glass.
My first order of business is the most important: making a pot of coffee.
Then, as I check on my plants, I repeat my new mantra. It's a new one, different than what I used to say each morning in my old job, and during those crazy weeks when I ran Dad's Formula World team.
First I say a little prayer silently to the universe, then to the people I love, and finally, to myself. The worry beads live in my home office, near my desk. These days I only touch them when I'm bored on a phone call. The morning mantra works just fine, now that my life is in balance.
May I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be safe, may I live with ease...
I take a spray bottle off the shelf and squirt a fine mist onto the giant green leaves of my Monstera plant. It survived — barely — my Mom and Dad's stay here last summer.
I rescued it from a certain death when I came home that August, a few weeks after Max's terrible crash. When his shoulder was finally stable, he flew here too, and along with the plants, I dedicated myself to nursing him back to health.
First, we found Miami's best sports injury clinic and got him into physical therapy. I won't lie: those initial couple of months were difficult. Although he recovered from his concussion quickly and without any lingering memory issues, his shoulder was another problem altogether.
Max was in a ton of pain, and we both worried he'd never regain use of his right arm again.
But because of Max's fierce determination, he persevered with his therapy. Now he has almost full range of motion in the arm, although sometimes he still is in some pain if he overtrains. He made the decision to retire from the sport, and insists that he has no regrets about the timing of his exit.
