You know, i’ve been your baby since the day that we met. (CEO!H)
Words: 8k
Warnings: Pathetic Fluff, Smut (Praise, P in V, Oral, slight daddy kink)
Summary: Harry is bewitched by her, and he would do absolutely anything to make her happy, even though she sometimes doesn’t want him to.
READ THE FIRST CEO ONE SHOT HERE!
A/N: Hellooo my loves! It's been a little while, but now i'm here with a lil CEO update since you all seemed to enjoy him last time. Please let me know what you think of it, it always makes my day to hear from you!
elle x
It was almost like Harry couldn’t remember a life before her. She had filled the bottomless hole in his heart with her warmth, humour, cleverness and love like it was the most simple thing in the world. Harry had never been so happy.
It’s been just 5 months since that night in Harry’s lounge, where his clammy hands were shaking, searching for hers. Where he bared his heart before her, and hoped, hoped that she’d at least tell him she didn’t hate him. Y/N could never hate Harry. Sometimes, when she comes to think about it, she feels absolutely crazy when it comes to him. Like she can’t believe that he is hers. Like maybe she was made just for him. Like maybe they were meant to meet when she started working for Pleasing.
Harry had kept telling her how hard he fell, that he felt like he was jumping from a plane without a parachute, blindly falling and hoping to be caught in his lover’s arms. Harry fell hard, but Y/N fell first.
Y/N’s interview had went better than she ever could’ve expected. It was just the day before that she was asked to Pleasing’s office to do an interview for a position as a senior creative. She left the interview happy and pleased with herself, but honestly?
She couldn’t tell if it was because she had actually done well for the interview, or if it was the Harry-shaped opening in her heart that was slowly cracking her open. The tall brunette had been so kind to her throughout the interview, even offering her a coffee beforehand.
As her first day a Pleasing came and went, Y/N tried to gather up her things from her new office to head home. It had been a wild day, introductions to new people, online courses to help her with their IT systems and endless and absolutely endless pining for her new boss. She could swear that she had never met anyone like him, and especially not a CEO who acted like he did with his colleagues. Harry had this softness to him, almost feminine at times, but with a strong masculine cologne, broad shoulders and deep, gravely voice. He emitted a light and kindness that was difficult to describe if you hadn’t met him. He was like a magnet.
Y/N was sure that if you were to google the definition of kindness, a picture of Harry Styles would pop up on the first page. Don’t quote her on that, though.
Harry had checked on her multiple times during the day, taken her and a few other colleagues out for lunch as a “celebration” he said. He really didn’t act like any other CEO she had met.
“Hey, are you still here? Thought your day ended at five, you must be exhausted.” Harry was doing a final round in the offices. Y/N was the last one left, just wanting to land back on her feet and feel her surroundings after a long first day. She thought she’d be the last one out, but Harry was there as well. Of course he was. Y/N snapped her head up, looking at him. He had almost scared her with his quiet steps into her office space. “Jesus, Harry, you scared me!” Y/N scrunched her eyes shut, putting her hand over her pumping heart. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I couldn’t resist, I didn’t mean to scare ye’ though.” Harry said with a smirk. Y/N raised her eyebrow at him. “Didn’t mean to, huh? Don’t believe it for a second.” She said, throwing him a suspicious look, but with a smile; she just couldn’t help it. Harry chuckled. “You’ll just have to believe that I’m a kind enough person to not scare away the new employee on the first day, I don’t know what to tell you.” Harry hit back, slight ironic cockiness in his voice.
Y/N just smiled and continued packing up her laptop and the pamphlets she’d gotten from HR, along with a few papers that needed to be signed.
Y/N almost couldn’t look at him without having butterflies erupting in her stomach. Call her stupid, insane, mentally weak, but she could feel a serious crush coming on. Scratch that, it isn’t coming on, it’s already there, burning in her belly and begging to seen and heard.
Or another time, around a month into working for Pleasing when Y/N had knocked on Harry’s office door, almost in tears.
Maybe it sounded dramatic, but getting used to a new workplace, new routines and IT systems; Y/N would find herself frustrated and she hated bothering her colleagues with her questions every 5 minutes.
Y/N knocked on the glass door, her jaw strained and aching with how much she was trying to keep it together.
Harry opened the door, stepping aside. “Hey there, darling. You alright?” He said as he nodded his head to give her a cue to step inside.
He looked so good that day, in one of pristine, ironed suits. The first few buttons were undone, and a fine dusting of hair was peeking out of the shirt as well as the tattoos on his chest that Y/N hadn’t gotten to see the full version of. His lips were chapped, like he had picked on the skin in his anxious thoughts. Y/N swallowed harshly, stepping inside and plopping down on the sofa in his office. “I need your help.” She just said, looking up at him, holding on to her frustrated tears.
Harry could tell she wasn’t her chirpy, flirty and smug self, his heart suddenly feeling gooey and yelling at him to sit down and embrace her.
“Anything, I’m glad you came. What do you need, pet?” Harry said as he closed the door and sat opposite her on another sofa. He was leaning forward slightly, his elbows resting on his knees.
“I just…I feel frustrated because there’s so many things I don’t have the hang of yet and I hate being a bother to everyone and asking questions all the time. It’s either that I don’t fucking get it or it’s because there’s suddenly new things and I can’t seem to keep up.” She said, her eyes stuck on the cushions Harry was sitting on, afraid that she’d break if she looked right at him.
Harry was quiet for a good while, anxiety washing over Y/N when he wouldn’t answer. She braced herself for some kind of lashing out. She knew he wasn’t like any other boss, but maybe coming to him with this was a mistake, a showcasing of her weakness that would be the end of her time at Pleasing.
“Sorry…I-“ She started before Harry spoke up.
“Darling, don’t ever apologise. You need to go easy on yourself, you’ve been here for just a month and there’s a lot to learn, you don’t have to do everything at once, that’s impossible. I’m really glad you came to me, of course I’ll help you with anything I can.” Harry said softly. Y/N relaxed into her seat, feeling almost dumb for thinking he’d lash out at her. She nodded, finally looking up at him, to find him searching her eyes and smiling kindly. “Thank you, H, I just, I know it’s a competitive business, and I don’t want to ever let you down just because I can’t figure out fucking excel.” She chuckled.
Harry laughed and shook his head. “As if you could ever let me down.” He said under his breath, almost like she wasn’t meant to hear it. “Let’s get to it, then, come sit down next t’me and pull out your laptop.”
Harry had arranged a small get away weekend for the two of them. Coming up on almost 6 months, they were yet to go on a trip together, and Harry wanted nothing more than some quality time with his girl. His girl.
He had spent two weeks trying to plan everything down to the food they were going to cook, to what activities they could do to keep them occupied.
Harry had booked them a cabin in the woods, by a small lake. It was around a three-hour drive from London, which was perfect for going away for a weekend.
A weekend where it would be just the two of them, no distractions of phones or other people, just them. Harry was so excited, struggling to keep it a secret when all he wanted was to spill all the details and spoil Y/N with insight into all his plans, but he kept his mouth shut.
They had already agreed to spend the weekend together at Harry’s, so naturally, they’d drive home together after work on Friday. Harry was driving, one hand on the wheel, and the other finding Y/N’s over the centre consol. Fingers lightly tracing knuckles and palms while Harry had their playlist on in the background.
Y/N sat up slightly and her eyebrows furrowed when she realized that they were going towards her apartment instead, and not his.
“I thought we were staying at yours this weekend?”
Harry laughed, the plan in his head was turning out just the way he wanted it to. He parked the car outside of her building. “Get out with me.” He said, meeting her when he rounded the car. His hands reached out and gripped her jaw, placing a few small pecks on her pink lips. Confusion was still prominent on her face. “We’re going to go upstairs, and you’re going to pack a bag for a weekend away. I didn’t want to say anything, ‘cause I wanted it to be a surprise.” He smiled. Y/N melted into his touch. “Are you serious, where are we going?” Her eyes lit up with excitement at his words. “Not telling you yet, you’ll find out.” She shook her head at his words.
“You’re so sneaky. And here I was thinking that you couldn’t keep a secret if your life depended on it.” Y/N teased as she turned on her heel towards her apartment to pack a weekend bag.
The pair had stopped early in their trip to get some snacks at a gas station, just something to keep them awake after a long day at the office. Y/N had taken off her shoes and cozied up in the passenger seat, manipulating her seatbelt so that her back was leaning against the car door. Her feet was propped up on the centre consol as she observed Harry from her seat. Every little hair on his head, his eyes on the road that sometimes glanced over at her, a smile spreading on his face when he caught her looking at him. One of his hands reached for her, hand spreading out over her knee and squeezing it slightly. “What’s on your mind, pet?” Y/N tilted her head. “Like you don’t know.” She laughed and leant back against the door. “Just thinking about how the hell I landed you.” She continued, a slight blush creeping onto her cheeks with the words, but still confident. Harry sighed. “You’ve got it all backwards, I’m afraid. You’re so out of my league it’s insane, I’m surprised I didn’t have to beg on my knees for you to date me.” He replied to her, once again squeezing her knee. “Well, let’s be real, you kind of did.” Y/N said as a comeback, clearly remembering the anxious, thinly spread Harry that night almost 6 months ago. “Alright, that’s enough or I’ll drop you off on the side of the road.” Harry replied, faking a threat as he felt the embarrassment of that evening come over him. “You wouldn’t, think you love me a little too much to leave on the side of the road.” She continued to tease.
Of course she was right.
“Harry. Is this all for us, have you gone completely insane?” Y/N looked at him without a hint of amusement behind her eyes as she stepped out of the car to look at the so called “cabin” that Harry had rented out. Thing is, it wasn’t just a cabin. It was a huge, sprawling estate, hidden away from neighbours and curious gazes. It had to have cost him thousands of punds just for a weekend getaway, and even though Y/N appreciated his act of love, they had had this conversation before; the one about money.
Y/N didn’t grow up with wealth, and neither did Harry. But as the years had passed, Harry had gotten ridiculously rich. No prize on either cars or estates phased him, he barely looked at the cost of things, which Y/N had thought was completely insane, even though she didn’t exactly know the extent of his wealth.
The first argument about money that they had, was early on in their relationship, just a month after they’d become official.
It had been Y/N’s birthday.
They were newly in love. It had been a month. They spent all their awake time together, at work, at home, in bed and weekends. Their hearts were blooming, still with that wondrous love in their hearts each time they looked at each other. Everything was easy, bright and happy.
Y/N’s birthday was coming up, and since she didn’t want to make a big deal of it, she had told Harry that they’d spend it with some of their friends. She had also warned him, to not get her anything as a gift. Y/N wasn’t really aware of what the code was when it’s your partners birthday, but you’re a new couple, so to avoid any awkward feelings, she straight up told him not to get her anything.
Harry wasn’t like that though. He knew her birthday was coming up long before she’d warned him. It might’ve even been one of the first things he’d memorized about her after she left her initial interview at Pleasing. His nosey ass couldn’t keep his nose out of her application papers that was clearly stating her date of birth and age.
He had been a little bit taken aback when Y/N told him not to get her anything, because he had already gotten her something. Something that, in his eyes it wasn’t a big present of any sort, just an appreciation for his girlfriend that he loved more than the number of stars in the sky.
“Can I just get you something small? Please, I know you don’t want anything, but it doesn’t feel right, I just want to celebrate you, you deserve it.” Harry had mentioned over the breakfast they were sharing. Y/N shook her head at him adoringly. “Does it really mean that much to you? A get together with you and my friends is more than enough for me.” Y/N reached out over the table and entwined her fingers through his. He was warm.
“It does, I like giving gifts, and it can be something small, I just want to get you something. If you really don’t want to I won’t but I can’t lie and say it won’t break my heart a little.” He admitted to her. So, she agreed. It was just something small, and she found his urge to care for her so badly very sweet.
And Harry didn’t necessarily lie, the gift was indeed small, but it was expensive. Harry had barely blinked at the prize when he’d went to the jeweller’s and picked out a piece that would suit her perfectly. And maybe that was the problem in all of this. Harry had spent so much of his life by now, bathing in money, and it didn’t really matter to him anymore what things cost him, because at this point, he had made more money than he’ll ever be able to spend.
Y/N didn’t have that, she wasn’t, nor had she ever bathed in money. She was like everyone else, budgeting her money to see what she could spend and save, and she quite enjoyed it, she didn’t have too much or too little of anything.
So when she opened his “small gift” on his sofa, amongst his friend on her birthday evening, she could feel her blood burning when she pulled out a beautiful, white gold bracelet with tiny charms linked to it. Amongst the charms was an “H” initial and amongst a few others that she could recognize meant something to the both of them. A collective gasp was spread through the room, and Y/N knows she should be happy, but right she felt almost embarrassed. Here she was, sat with her regular friends and millionaire boyfriend, while he gifted her jewellery worth thousands of pounds. Harry sat beside her, smiling widely and awaiting a reaction to his gift. Y/N couldn’t find it in herself to be ungrateful, she wasn’t, but she needed to talk to Harry about the way her stomach twisted and turned, how her cheeks turned red and how she felt guilty to receive something like this. But now wasn’t the time. Instead, she turned to him with a weak smile and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, my love.” She simply said before turning back to her friends and picking up another gift. It hurt her. She could see the slight disappointment in Harry’s eyes as she put his gift to the side.
It had all turned into something much bigger. Y/N wasn’t handling his apparent wealth and need to spoil her very well, and Harry was just confused. He couldn’t understand in his wildest mind how she didn’t want him to spoil her. He couldn’t understand her anger, her guilt, and her refusal to let him love her in this way. Because that was it. Plain and simple he loved her. He hadn’t dared to stutter those words since their first night together, and she hadn’t either, but he sure felt it. He felt in his his whole body, and he had for an embarrassing amount of time.
They made up, at last, and she accepted his gift after a few persuasive kisses and promises of no more gifts like these. She made it clear to him that she did appreciate his effort, and the thoughtfulness, but she didn’t appreciate the huge amount of money he had spent. Harry listened and took it to heart. He wanted to make her happy, of course, and gift giving was part of his love language, he just had to learn to tone it down slightly.
That same feeling in Y/N’s stomach that she had on her birthday had returned as she stepped out of the car and looked at the huge house in front of her. It wasn’t like he had bought her a whole house, it was just a weekend away, but it’s the principle of him spending that much money on her that made her uneasy.
“Darling.” Harry just said as he looked over to her. He knew from the look on her face that the same as the one she wore on her birthday. Harry rounded the car to stand right in front of her.
“This isn’t a cabin Harry. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, you know I appreciate when you plan things like this but…” her fingers played nervously with her rings, tears feeling like they could escape from her eyes at any moment. “Look at me.” Harry said, his hand coming up to her cheek, thumb grazing softly over her jaw. “It’s not just a cabin, ‘m sorry. And I know how you feel about this but you also have to know how I feel. I feel like I could never give you enough, you deserve everything I have pet, and sometimes that shows with money. I don’t want it to bother you like this, because I love y- …doing this for you. You must accept that I want to do this and that I’ve got no bad intentions, just want to show you how much you mean to me.” He almost let it slip from his lips. It felt so easy. Y/N swallowed hard. She didn’t want to fight about money, but being taken care of like this was still so foreign to her that she didn’t know how to handle it. She nodded, and looked up at him with watery eyes. “No more.” She just said as she melted into his body, arms wrapping around his middle and her nose searching for his scent lathered in the neckline of his shirt. “There will be more, I want to give you all of it, pet.” Harry replied. She just nodded into the warmth of his chest.
Overwhelmed was the right word. She didn’t know what to do with all these new feelings of guilt that was put in her, where did they come from? Why couldn’t she just accept that he only did this out of pure adoration for her heart?
They got their bags out of the car and stepped inside the house. From the foyer, she could see straight through the house, with a beautiful lake spread out just a few meters from the house. The water on the lake was shimmering in on the roof, which made the whole house look absolutely magical, like something out of a movie.
The house was massive, white walls and high ceilings with an open kitchen carrying dark wooden details and stone countertops. It was the house of Y/N’s dreams.
They spent the afternoon getting settled in, and going down to the lake to have a splash around. Y/N had discovered a porch swing sitting under the balcony, facing the lake and greenery around it, and if she wasn’t already in love with this place, it only intensified when she saw the swing.
But it wasn’t any old, creaky porch swing, it looked almost like a suspended sofa, blankets draped over it and pillows in the corners.
It was her turn to plan something small for Harry.
As they stood in the burning hot shower after their dip in the lake, Y/N hurriedly scrubbed herself down from the dirt and grime and turned to Harry who looked slightly confused at her erratic behaviour. “You got somewhere to be, pet?” Harry chuckled as she hung up her loofah. Y/N had a mischievous look on her face as she wrapped her arms around his middle. “It’s my turn for a little surprise now. I want you to meet my out the back in 40 minutes, and not a minute earlier, alright?” She said as she reached up and placed a single peck on Harry’s chin. Harry nodded, both his hands coming up to her head, carding through her wet hair and pushing it away from the gentle features of her face, then leaning down and connecting their lips. “I’ll be out in 40 minutes.”
Y/N scrambled to put on her comfortable, yet pretty new pyjamas, and dug out what she needed for her little surprise. She pulled out some candles from the depth of a cabinet in the kitchen, a bottle of wine and her speaker, some fruit for them to snack on and finally, a little gift that she had prepared.
The sun had started to set, a few rays still on the porch swing as she got out. She put the candles in the little lanterns and set up a little table for them, wanting to just have some down-time in the porch swing before their evening ended.
Harry stuck his head out the back door exactly 40 minutes later, a big smile on his face, and his freshly washed curls in a mess on top of his head.
Y/N snapped her head around. “Come sit.” Y/N smiled at him and reached out her hand for him, leading him over to the swing. “You’ve made it so lovely out here, pet. So nice to me, always.” Harry whispered to Y/N’s cheek as he pulled her closer to him. Harry was also wearing some cozy clothes, and through her thin pyjamas, she could feel the heat of his body and ripple of his muscle under his skin. He was home.
They sat down and cozied up with a blanked as Y/N poured them wine. “For you, my good sir.” She said teasingly, reaching him the glass of red wine. As she poured herself a glass, she leaned back into the soft cushion of the swing and into his arms. She was curled up, while Harry had his legs on the ground beneath, softly swinging them back and forth.
“I’m really sorry I was acting like I was earlier. I just have a hard time with you spoiling me like this, but I don’t want you to think that I don’t appreciate it, I do, I really do, H.” Y/N admitted as she looked up at Harry. He wasn’t looking at her, his eyes studying the lake that was still catching the last few sunrays. Then he shook his head as he caught her eyes. “You don’t have to apologize t’me, pet. I know you appreciate it. I just…I need you to know that this isn’t a one-off thing. I want to be able to spoil you. I also know that I’ve told you all of my intentions with you, I want always with you. I want us to enjoy our life, I want us to explore, I want to…I want to be with you, and sometimes I want to spend money on you. I can’t say that it doesn’t hurt me a little when you reject me like that, but I also understand where you’re coming from.” Harry laid out. Y/N felt her insides twist at his mention of her rejecting him, cause in her head, it wasn’t like that; not at all. “I don’t want you to feel like I’m rejecting you. I want the same thing as you, I just…that I don’t want to…bother you, I think. I don’t make nearly as much money as you do and sometimes it makes me feel like shit because I can’t bring the same thing to this relationship as you can. I guess it’s just something that’s always going to stick with me, but I want to be better.”
Y/N said, trying her best to be vulnerable and let him see her side of things. Harry snapped his head to look at her. “Is that really how you feel? Like you’re a bother to me?” He asked her, genuinely, not accusing her of her feelings, but sounding like he was genuinely concerned and interested in what her answer might be. “I do sometimes. I work for you, and I’m your girlfriend, it’s a bit hard to navigate sometimes, because we see each other so constantly, and I just don’t want you to get tired of me.” Harry nodded at her words, and stayed quiet for a moment. Y/N could see the wheels spinning in his head, trying to put the right words into his mouth. “You don’t ever have to feel like you’re a bother. Ever. I want to spend every moment with you, and I know I am so lucky to get to see you every single day at work. I do all of these things because I care about you, and in a world where money is everywhere and everything, I sometimes don’t think about the value of some things. You say that you bring nothing to this relationship, but I wish I could put into words how wrong you are.” Harry said honestly, his thumb stroking gentle circles over her cheek as he leaned in to connect them in a kiss. “I’m in love with you. I haven’t told you since that first night, but I don’t think I can keep it in me anymore, I need to tell you, all the time. I need you to know that you’re it, f’me. I love you so much, and you’ll never bother me the way you think you are.” He said against her lips, breaths switching between them because they’re close, so close. Y/N feels like her whole body is on fire, she’s blushing, her lower stomach filling with arousal and all the love she feels for him is just waiting to explode out of her like a fountain. So she does the first thing that comes to her mind. She kisses him again, again and again, until they’re out of breath and panting. “I love you, thank you for loving me like you do.” Is all she says, and she can feel him smiling into their kiss. Y/N moves around on the swing, and gently places their glasses back on the tiny table in front of them before pushing harry down to lay on his back. “Need to show you.” She murmurs against his mouth, as he welcomes her wet kisses trailing down his neck, making the hairs on his body stand up. “Yeah? You’re going to show me how much you love me?” He teased, as he let himself be pushed around to her liking. There was just something about Harr’s dirty talk that got her going even more, his velvety, low voice, combined with those forbidden, almost taboo words, mixed with his high praises and promise of pleasure. It was her favourite thing.
Y/N straddled his hips, looking down at him with a blown out pupils and slight smile as she tugged on her top to discard it on the floor. Harry’s hands instantly came up to touch. First smoothing over her belly and ribs until he reached her fleshy breasts, pinching her nipples and gauging her reaction. Her body caved into Harry’s as he touched her, leaning over him, with her breasts right in front of his face. Harry seized the moment, sticking out his tongue to tease her nipples, nipping them and working his tongue over them. A frustrated, pleasured moan came from Y/N as she started grinding her hips on his warm, plumping cock. Harry could feel her warmth through her bottoms, opting to grab onto her hips with his hands to pull her closer to him. “Can you feel what you’re doing to me, pet? Feel how much I love you?” Harry breathed into her hair, kissing her pulse point right under her ear, slightly biting on the earlobe.
“Mmmh” Was all she was able to get out before Harry pushed her away from him, grabbing her hand and rushing off to their bedroom for the weekend.
They barely made it through the door before Harry’s lips were on hers again, hands over any skin he could get to as they got rid of the remains of clothes that they still had on.
“Wanna taste…wanna bite.” Harry said to her skin, moving down the bed as he placed wet kisses down her sternum, belly, until he reached her mound. Y/N panted heavily with just the feel of his hands and kisses on her skin as she tangled her fingers through his locks to see his face properly. “Please.” She mewled when he teasingly places feather-light licks and kisses on her inner thighs and mound. “Be good, you’re going to get it, but you have to be my good girl, okay?” He said in reply to her mewl and her hands trying to steer her towards where she wanted him. “I’m good, I want to be good.” Y/N replied absentmindedly. And just as she was about to complain again, she felt his hot tongue inside of her, licking broad licks from her opening to her clit. Shivers of pleasure rippled through her body as he pleased her with his mouth, sucking, nipping, licking, and massaging wherever he could get to.
“You taste like heaven baby, so sweet for me, always.” Harry said as he came up for air. “More, please, H” Y/N said the moment his lips left her. She could feel herself getting closer to her that cliff of pleasure, just about to fall off when he detached. “I know, pet, you’re so close yeah? Could feel it on my tongue. Want my fingers too?” All she could do was nod, frustrated and writhing around in the crispy sheets. “You know I need your wor-“ “Yes, yes please, please do anything” She interrupted him in desperation, her hazy mind not caring about her manners at all. “Good girl.” Was all Harry said before diving back in with his mouth and fingers, instantly feeling her clench around his fingers as he curved them, poking the squishy island of pleasure with the tips of his fingers. Y/N moaned out as she got close, closer to the edge of her orgasm, raising to her elbows so she could see him. His eyes were closed as he worked his magic on her.
“I’m coming” Y/N airily moaned as her whole body tightened and she let herself fall over the cliff. Harry continued to work her through the waved of pleasure, prolonging her orgasm for as long as he possibly could.
Y/N in her post orgasm haze shot up from the sheets, pulling Harry up to her as she kissed him. She could taste herself on his lips, residual wetness around his mouth and chin transferring onto her skin. It was so hot. Without another word, she rolled him over, straddling him once again, like out on the swing. She sat right over his hard length, not yet putting him in as Harry had a lazy, smile on his face, pupils blown out in arousal and pleasure. Y/N put her hands on Harry’s chest, feeling up his muscles and dragging down to his toned stomach as she started moving over his cock, wetting him with her own arousal.
“Pet, Shhi- I’m not going to last if you grind on me like that.” Harry said as he fixed his eyes on hers, a little wrinkle of strain between his dark brows. Y/N said nothing to him, continuing to slick his cock with her wetness with a playful smile and moans of pleasure leaving her lips every time the head bumped her clit. Harry’s hands took a firm grip around her wrists as he sat up.
“You’re just asking for it, aren’t you? Thought you’d want it slow and sweet tonight, but I guess I was wrong.” Harry said in a harsh tone, although Y/N could see straight through him. “Doesn’t matter, just want you to fuck me. You always tease me so I thought you’d have a taste of your own medicine.” Y/N replied sassily with a scowl on her face, but a sparkle in her eye that gave her away immediately. “You…” Harry chuckled as he pinned her down on the bed, giving himself a few cursory strokes before lining himself up with her. “Tell me, pet. Tell me what I want to hear and I’ll give it to you” Harry mumbled into her neck, kissing and sucking on her salty skin. “Mhh, I love you, please get in me” Y/N whimpered out as she reached down in between them, trying any and everything to get him inside of her. “I love you too, pet, tell me again” He spluttered out, kissing her lips as he finally sank in to her, groaning int her mouth. A wave of relief flooded over Y/N, her desperation for him finally calming down as he poked and prodded at her insides with his cock. Harry picked up his pace, giving her deep, long strokes with his hips as Y/Ns legs wrapped around his body.
Missionary was a classic for the two of them, people found it boring and plain, but for Harry and Y/N, it was their preferred position. Easy access to one another, being able to touch, look, and swallow the other’s moans as they chased their highs. Few things were as romantic for them as missionary. And don’t get this wrong, they are the couple to explore new positions and find other ways to pleasure, but they always returned to this. There was something so raw and pure about it, and they couldn’t get enough.
Their foreheads were stuck together, panting into each other’s mouths as Harry hooked her legs into the crease of his elbows, allowing him to hit her at a new angle. “Baby” Y/N moaned out from the change in angle, his cock hitting her spot head on as he continued to work into her. A layer of sweat was building on his chest and shoulders from the strain of chasing their pleasure, and Y/N wanted to lick it off. He looked so good like this.
“I know, I know it feels so good, pet, I feel it too. You’re the best I’ve ever had, should never let you leave my bed.” Harry praised her in response as he kissed the sides of her face, looking at her blissed out expression. Y/N could feel her orgasm approaching again, and Harry could tell, letting go of one of her legs and reaching down between them to touch her. “H, I’m going to come, please, keep going” She mewled underneath him, trying to chase his movements with her hips as she threw her head to the side and into the pillow. “I’m coming pet, so fucking weak for you. Want it inside, want me to fill you up, baby?” Harry replied with a raspy groan, and that, that made Y/N tip over yes. Her orgasm wracked through her body, her nails digging into Harry’s biceps as she let out sounds of her pleasure. “Inside, please, Daddy, I want it inside.” She encouraged as her eyes glazed over, fixing her eyes on his as she knew he was right after her, wanting the most out of his orgasm, just as he did to her. “Shit- pet you’re playing dirty, Daddy’s gonna come for you, I-“ Harry groaned as he let out pathetic little whimpers. His hips stuttered, burying himself deeper inside of her and catching her lips in a messy kiss, warm tongue sliding over hers. She could feel her lower stomach, warm with him, chuckling and pushing the hair out of his face as he collapsed on top of her completely.
Her nails started raking through his hair and down his back as they basked in the afterglow of their intense sex. Harry placed a gentle kiss on her collarbone and put his head on her shoulder, looking up at her. “I wish I had more words in my vocabulary to tell you how much I love you, I feel like I love you isn’t enough.” Harry spoke genuinely in a low tone. “Write me a book, yeah?” She chuckled as she tried to settle into the moment and enjoy it before having to detangle from each other. “Don’t joke about that, might as well happen, you know.” Harry laughed as he detached their sticky bodies rising from the bed. “C’mon, my love, quick wash up and then sleep.”
Y/N laid there looking at his outstretched arm, completely bare for each other as her heart pumped with pure love and adoration for the man in front of her. She took his hand, and they stumbled into the shower together.
Y/N was awoken by a harsh light in her face, and Harry sitting up on the edge of the bed. He put his phone to his ear, and she could hear him talking lowly on his phone. Casting her a glance and then leaving through the door as to not disturb her sleep.
She could hear him out in the hall.
“I don’t know what to tell you, I can’t….i can’t do anything from here, I’m away for the weekend…No…Well you’re going to have to fix It in some way, call Niall, I’m not available. All I ask is one weekend in quiet and you idiots can’t even do that. Fine. Call Niall and head of security at IT and figure it out, yeah? Bye.”
Y/N listened curiously in her cocoon of blankets, what time was it, why did they need him now?
Harry stepped inside once again and lifted the blankets. Y/N couldn’t really tell if it was anger or worry on his face. “I’m sorry I woke you up, pet. Some idiots at the office don’t know how to handle their job. Let’s go back to sleep.” She could tell he tried his best not to let anger spill out on their conversation, and she felt bad for him, always having to be available and never catching a break. This job would be the death of him some day.
“You’re alright, baby. It’s not your fault. What did they need you for?” She tried with a gentle voice, welcoming him into her arms as he settled in bed and turned off the bedside lamp. “There’s been some kind of security breach in one department, and someone is trying to leak personal data and now they want a ransom to not leak the data and get out of our systems.” Harry sighed. Jesus. “There’s nothing I can do, but they’re calling in head of IT and security to have a look at it, it’s happened before, but hopefully it’s just a scare. Didn’t want to wake you up though, I’m sorry,” He continued, obviously feeling defeated and helpless in the situation.
“I’m sure there’s a way to make it up to me.” Y/N tried as she placed gentle kisses on his jaw and neck, and she could feel Harry instantly relaxing and smiling at her wording. “Yeah? Tell me and I’ll make it up to you.” He let her lead him on, feeling her hands playing with the elastic of his boxer briefs. “Guess.” Harry shook his head in adoration as he pulled down his boxers and took her underwear off in the same movement, getting in behind her and pushing inside of her. No preparation was needed. Nothing got him harder when he knew she wanted him.
“Fuck, it hasn’t even been two hours and I’ve already missed being inside of you.” Harry admitted with a sigh as he entered her again.
It was lazy, raw and desperate sex, in the middle of the night. Harry couldn’t stop thinking about her, having her in every way imaginable. And he kept thinking about his life from over a year ago, when he had no idea that she, the love of his life, was about to enter into her life. And even if it was just something small, like having sex to take the edge off from the day, Harry couldn’t imagine anything else for his life as they fell asleep cuddled up to each other, leaving no room for work or security breaches to enter his mind. It was just them.
Back at work, a few days later, Lydia, Y/N’s co-worker and close friend smiled suspiciously at Y/N as she prepared her desk for the workday,
“There’s something up with you, and I can’t tell what it is.” Lydia wiggled her eyebrows with an interrogating look on her face. Y/N blushed slightly, but tries to keep a straight face through the conversation, having a sip of her morning coffee. “I’m an open book.” Y/N tried to play, but she could tell that Lydia wasn’t buying it. “You. Me. Meeting in Atlas in 5 minutes. We need to have a MEETING.” Lydia pressed, gathering her things and rushing off to the free meeting room to have a pretend meeting with her best friend. Y/N rolled her eyes and went after her. She could never keep anything from Lydia. She just knew stuff without knowing. Of course, the whole office knew about Harry and Y/N getting involved, but they kept in on the low.
“Alright. Spill the beans, all of them, right now.” Lydia said immediately when she closed the door and plopped down in a chair opposite of Y/N. Just as she was about to answer her, Harry walked by on the other side of the glass. He glanced inside, smiling his brilliant smile and sending her a quick wink before he was off. Y/N looked up with a smile spreading over her face, just from that small interaction. Lydia didn’t even have to turn around. “It’s him, yeah?” Y/N nodded, eyes stuck on the glass where he had just walked by. “I think I’m going to marry him.” Y/N said as she kept looking through the glass. Her heart grew every time she looked at him. If this wasn’t love, then she didn’t know what was.
And Lydia just burst out laughing, a true belly laugh, like she hadn’t heard anything funnier in her whole lifetime. “Babe, tell me something I don’t know. I’ve never seen two people as dumb in love with each other as you two. I’m sure there’s going to be a ring on your finger in the next year, but probably tomorrow if Harry got to have it his way. Plus, you two wreaked of “I just had the best sex of my life” the minute you stepped into the building”
Y/N just blinked at Lydia, blushing at her comment. She hadn’t heard anyone talking about them like that before, and it made her heart grow three sizes. Was it that obvious to everyone? Even Harry?
“Really, you think so?” Y/N replied with a watery smile. Lydia looked at her with a smile. “I know so. There’s absolutely no doubt. I’ve known Harry for about three years, and he’s never been like this, ever. It’s like a different person, I’m telling you- “. Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door, both Lydia’s and Y/N’s eyes flying up to see Harry at the door. “Hello ladies, I was just wanting to borrow Y/N for a quick second.” He tried to be professional, bless him, but the smile overtaking his features revealed him. Lydia smiled at him. “Of course. No funny business, Mr. Styles.” She teased him with a smack on his arm as she left the room, turning around when she was behind him and staring at her intensely, “I TOLD YOU” She mouthed to her.
Y/N chuckled, rising from her chair and meeting Harry halfway around the conference table. “What a pleasure, Mr. Styles, what could you want me for, huh?” Y/N teasingly smiled as she stepped into his embrace. Harry looked down at her with nothing but love in his eyes, his thumb grazing her cheek as she leaned into his touch, “Just wanted to ask the lady if she would like to have dinner with me, tonight. Was thinking about making my famous curry, and I’d like for you to be there.” Harry continued with his little act. “Well, my good sir, I would really like that. I’ll see you later, then.” Y/N replied courteously as she began walking out; but not before Harry grabbed her hand and pulled her back into him. Both his hand on her face, gently passing his fingers through her hair and picking at stray pieces of hair, lovingly. “I love you, be good, yeah?” He said in a way that made her lower stomach flutter with arousal. “I’ll be good. I love you.” She replied before he attached his lips to hers in a long, soft kiss. A few more pecks for good measure, and then she turned around and left, a glimmer in her eye.
Harry stood glued in his spot, completely besotted with her and everything that was her. “I think I need to marry her.” He whispered to himself as he shook out of his daydream, to continue his workday.
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said something stupid, instead of 'i love you.'- c.leclerc
can't we just act like we never broke each other's hearts?
pairing: charles leclerc x female reader
word count: 26.9k (my bad fr fr)
warnings: 18+ minors dni, protected sex, oral sex, google translated french. tw: charles' 2022 season (including france)
a/n: this is something, that's for certain. good or bad is yet to be decided.
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You’d texted him two weeks before the season opener. It was short, simple, and a huge overstep, one you promised yourself years ago you’d never make. Do you have any extra paddock passes? He’d said yes, and you begrudgingly asked if you could have an extra, if you could bring a guest, a boyfriend, Michael. He’s a big fan, of Charles and of Formula One. I really want to impress him.
Michael’s been impatiently itching to meet Charles since he spotted a photo of the two of you in your living room. You thought you’d taken them all down before he came over, but, you missed one. He’s sort of a Ferrari fan-boy, an Italian whose transplanted himself to Monte Carlo. You’d been putting off the meeting as long as possible, forced to consider if Michael actually liked you, or if he just wanted to know Charles. It wasn’t easy, to keep them apart. It was winter break, and Charles was in Monaco too much to be easily avoided. There’s a lot of verbiage that is used to describe home, vast is not one of them.
You feel strangely out of place with someone else to look after in the paddock. Ferrari hospitality had been your home away from home for years now, the way you followed him around the globe like a helicopter parent that first year he wore red. The paddock was always different, but maintained a comfortable familiarity, recognizable faces, names, buildings and colors. Michael was wide-eyed and curious and you smiled at the way the sun bounced off his hair, the excitement he couldn’t contain when amongst the chaos you’d become accustomed to. His presence, though, felt intrusive on something that had, for so long, been just yours.
Arthur’s familiar voice calls your name, over the bustling hum of different important and wealthy figures. You grin when your eyes meet his, stand up from the leather sofa you’re seated on, give him, and Pascale, big hugs. Charles told me you brought someone? She asked, voice sweet and curious.
Her tone was contrasted by Arthur’s quip asking where your arm-candy had run off to, wiggling his brows and searching the room for a man he’d never seen. He’s oblivious to the glare Pascale shoots into the side of his head.
You explain that he’s in the bathroom, check your watch. “Have you seen Charles today?” It’s not like him to not stop by and say hello, to check in and make sure you’re still enjoying yourself–or that you’re still capable of pretending you are. You wonder if he’s avoiding you, annoyed by the presence of your guest, a guest he doesn’t know. It’s unheard of, you asking for passes. It’s literally never happened. You’d asked about the possibility of one for yourself, back when he was with Sauber, and he’s maintained that you have an open invite since.
“We were just with him.” Arthur says.
“How is he?” You ask, because he might be mad at you, but also because you know him. His brain works like clockwork. Two hours before a race, right now, he’ll be doubting himself, doubting the car, doubting himself again. In his moments of downtime, before he’s swept up into the chaos of it all, his brain will pick itself apart with nervousness. You think it’s endearing, his nerves. They remind you that he’s still Charles at times where he feels so grand and invincible.
“He’s good.” Arthur says, because between crucifying jokes and mockings of his big brother, Arthur idolizes him. He’s none the wiser to Charles’ anxieties and insecurities because he’s never looking for him, blind confidence in the man he’ll never admit is his biggest role model. You look to Pascale, who understands the depth of your question, and get a reaffirming nod.
Arthur diggs two sticker tags from his pocket, full grid access. “For you.” He says, fastening one onto your lanyard. “And for the boy.” He holds out the other, presents it like a crown jewel. You sigh, snatch it from his hand and shove it into your pocket. You hate watching races in the garage, with all the hyper-wealthy motherfuckers who buy their way in. You always feel like you don’t belong. Like, no matter where you move, you’re always in someone more important’s way. Your limbs don’t feel like your own, unable to settle, so close to the comfort of your best friend yet miles away from his occupied mind.
“What’s going on?” Michael asks, airy tone in direct conflict to his hand on the small of your back, tense with envy. He’s silently laying claim to you, reminding you who you belong to, and you almost laugh at the thought of someone being threatened by Arthur. Charles, you could see. Charles, you’ve had that argument about before. Arthur, though? Arthur, who slept with his ratty blanket until he was sixteen, who lost not one, but two pet goldfish in the span of a year. Arthur, who is very happily in love with the sweetest girl to ever grace this Earth.
“C’est lui?” Arthur asks, tone bored. “Il est vieux.”
“This is him.” You say, through gritted teeth, introduce them all formally and sit by as an observer in their conversation. The lowlight was Arthur’s mention of grid access, and Michael’s giddiness at watching the race in the garage. You knew then that you’d be uncomfortable well into the night.
You end up in the garage during the driver’s parade. “Don’t touch anything.” You told Michael, the same warning Charles had given you the first time he brought you through a garage. The warning you give was less for your boyfriend, and more for you, who is desperate to run a hand over the red chassis, to memorize every detail of it. If you do, you might feel more comfortable when he’s inside, might be able to pretend you understand the concepts he casually mentions over dinner.
You squeal like a child when you see Isa, hugging her tight and spilling all the details of your lives since Abu Dhabi last year. You introduce her to Michael, who says he’s a big fan of Carlos. Joris tugs on your ponytail, appearing with Andrea, who kisses your cheek, tells you Charles is going to be so happy to see you in the garage. You roll your eyes.
Charles is heard before he is seen, a loud laugh, a familiar voice calling out your name as soon as he turned the corner. He’s probably just as surprised to see you in here as you are uncomfortable about it. When you hug him, the knotted waist of his overalls digs into you awkwardly. “You’re warm.” You say, peeling your body from his sweaty form.
“It’s hot.” He says, runs a hand through his salty hair.
“They shouldn’t make you wear all this during the parade.” You said, and he shrugged it off, asked where your guy was. You look around, search the garage for him. He can’t be far, and surely he’s gawking from one corner or another. If not at the sight of Charles Leclerc, Formula One driver, than at Charles, a man, whose hand hovers just behind the small of your back.
Two hands, two separate distinctions. One, possessive and impossible to ignore. The other, protective, almost goes unnoticed. For a few breaths, your shoulders are relaxed, but then his hand is gone, shaking Michael’s. “Good to meet you, Mate.” Charles says, and the whole place feels like a straightjacket again.
– –
You stand next to Isa, your hands wrapped nervously around each other’s the entire race, watching monitors and listening in on the headsets. “Carlos says the cars have it this year.” She says, while the guys are lining up in their starting spots. It feels like everyone at Ferrari has been chasing it, whatever it is, for a decade. Every year is the year, and every year, you’re begging Charles not to base his self-worth on a bad race or a bad season. You’ll believe in him until your last breath, but your glass of Ferrari is never going to be half-full.
Charles and Max, Max and Charles, Charles and Max. They flip flop positions lap after lap. When it seems like he’s settled in, you allow yourself to breathe. The universe has never allowed him comfort, though. Enter, safety car. The replay is on the screen, and your heart pangs for Pierre, watching his dash go black in system failure. Your heart aches for Charles, though, and the forty-six laps of hard work that was erased just like that.
Max races like Max, inching closer and closer to Charles, practically lining up next to him. You’re rearing up for a dogfight, but Max fucks up. You don’t know what he did, why he did it, and it doesn’t seem like anyone else does either. It doesn’t matter, though, because Charles is gone. Something in you settles, sure and confident, even if it’s not over yet. You hear murmurs, celebrations, Max is retiring. Charles is going to win.
A Ferrari one-two to start the season. Your smile is so big your cheeks ache. Under the lights, watching him up on the top step, listening to your national anthem, you allow yourself to hope, to buy into the hype everyone else is swearing by.
His skin shines brighter than his smile, sparkling with whatever lemon-lime soda they’d filled the champagne bottles with this year. You have a momentary lapse, consider what his skin would taste like, sweaty and sticky and sweet. Michael’s presence, his arms caging you in between him and the barricade, assures that the thought is nothing more than a passing one.
He hugs you when he makes the rounds, being whisked away to whatever media responsibilities he had to fulfill before he heads to the debrief. Sweat and seven-up soaked, he’s running on pure adrenaline, squeezing you so tight you struggle to breathe.
– –
You shower back at the hotel, wash his hug down the drain with the rest of the race anxiety. He takes everyone out to dinner late that night; Arthur, Lorenzo, Pascale, Andrea, Joris, Michael, and you. It’s a tradition. No matter how late or early in the day it happened. A podium, a celebratory dinner. Like always.
The air is light, happy conversations flow from smiling faces, filling the room with laughter and excitement and hope. You’re sandwiched between your boyfriend and your best friend. Charles’ arm throws itself around your shoulder when Lorenzo retells a story meant to embarrass you. Michael reacts accordingly, hand on your thigh, fingers digging into your skin. They’re fighting over you and only one of them knows it.
Charles is engaged in conversation, and you’re pretty sure you’re going to have bruises in your leg by the time you go to sleep tonight. You nudge Charles’ foot with yours, his head turns before his eyes, lingering on Andrea and the conversation you’re pulling him from before he's searching your eyes curiously. You shrug your shoulder, and as if noticing it’s there for the very first time, he drops his arm onto the table and returns to the conversation.
He must’ve showered, changed, and hurried here. His hair is still damp, and you want to play with it. Curl the long pieces around your finger and play with the short pieces at the nape of his neck. You soak up his presence as much as you can, knowing it’s going to be several weeks and several races before you see each other again. Crazy lives and crazy schedules that won’t feel normal again until break. You both take care to cherish the times you do get to spend together these days. You’re not twenty-one following him around the world anymore.
“Merci.” You say, at the end of the night. “For everything.”
He shakes his head, shoos your words away like they’re unnecessary, like you shouldn’t be thanking him for pulling strings. “Ton jouet garçon parle-t'il français?” He asks quietly, just for the two of you to hear. You roll your eyes, shake your head. “Il aest assez fan de moi.”
“Tu l’aime bien alors?”
“Non.” He chuckles. “Je ne l’aime pas. Pas pour toi.” He says it matter-of-factly, annoyingly so and without any elaboration.
“Heureusement, que tu n’es pas ma mère.”
“Heureusement.”
It’s Miami when you see him next. Hot and humid and sunny, once more. Windy, too. Big gusts move the palms, gluing your hair haphazardly across your face before you tie it back, blowing his shirt tight across his chest. “How’s grandpa?” He asks at lunch. You’re sat across from him on the expansive patio of a waterfront restaurant, waves crashing against the cement beams below you, a seagull running around on the wooden planks in search of fresh crumbs.
After Bahrain, Arthur wouldn’t drop the salt and pepper allegations, pushing until he found out Michael was seven years older than you. None of the boys have referred to him as anything but a grandfather since.
“Oh, that?” You say, nonchalant, like you can’t be bothered when you very much were. “He liked me too much.” Translation, he wanted me on a leash.
“He liked you too much.” He repeated, smile tugging on his lips. “Please,” He gestured to you, “Élaborer.”
“You never liked him, anyway.” You say into the rim of your water glass, taking a long, cold drink. The condensation from the glass drips down your wrist, forearm, off your bent elbow and onto your bare thighs, just past the hem of your sundress. The glass makes a heavy clunk when you set it back on the tabletop.
“Oh, I loved him.” He laughed. “He was just wrong for you, chou.”
“You barely knew him.”
“After he left you alone in the garage?” He leans back in his seat, gestures harshly across his throat and clicks his tongue. “There was nothing to know.”
“You leave me alone in the garage.” You remind him and he’s quick to jump in.
“I do not.” He leans forward, elbows on the table, animated. You smile, he smiles. “I leave you with Arthur.”
“You do not!” You laugh, protest without thinking, without needing to. The memory of each and every race you’ve spent in the garage is burnt into your memory. Every second feels like a second and a half. There are no distractions, it’s just you, in the way, and him, flying around in a death trap at a million kilometers an hour.
He tries to argue, insist he would never leave you alone if he thought you were uncomfortable. You don’t want to hear it, though. If he does leave you under the watchful eye of someone, they have always done a pretty shitty job at looking out for you. “Whatever.” He finally concedes. “Who’s on the radar now?” Nobody, you tell him. Going to be single for a while.
“What are your plans tonight?” He asked over the phone. It was the middle of the decade, the start of your first year at University. The longest you’ve been away from home and the only time he’d been there without you.
Jules had died that summer, and the sun had felt dimmed since. You spoke to Charles almost every day, but you were in no rush to get back home. It was ironic, Monaco reminding you of Jules, you finding an escape from the memories in France. It should be the other way around, but, logic has never had much hold over grief.
“I have a presentation, remember?” He listened to you revise for it, mindlessly picking apart your notes, adjusting even the most minute details, for hours last week. You cried when the ancient printer in the library wouldn’t fulfill it’s only earthly purpose, and he patiently calmed you down, stayed with you on the phone until you fell asleep that night. He never acknowledged it, and you were grateful for it.
“That’s tonight?” He asked, sounded defeated.
“Yes. Why?”
“I miss you.” He said, and you nearly crumbled into a little ball on the street. “I was going to come see you.”
You hesitated for a moment, tried to remember just how messy your apartment was, sized up your outfit. You didn’t want him to go telling stories to your parents of a disheveled daughter drowning somewhere just below the surface in France. You wanted to be put together when you saw him again, be the rock you were before you left.
Generously, you would say you fell somewhere in the grey. “Come, then.’ You told him. “You can pick me up.”
– –
Nearly three hours later, after the conclusion of your presentation and his mind-numbing drive, he’s parked a short walk from your university building, waiting for you. “Sulut.” He said.
“Hey.” You replied, climbing into the passenger seat. “How was Portugal?” He’d just gotten home and you’d been too busy with school to check any race results. Plus, you always liked hearing his recounts of races more than Google results.
“How was your presentation?” He asks, doesn’t answer your question.
“Good.” You smiled, buckled your seatbelt.
Last season, before last summer and before Jules, you couldn’t get him to shut up about racing. It was all he ever wanted to talk about. He could be winning races or embarrassing himself on track, it didn’t matter, he’d talk your ear off. Now, he’s a lockbox with a combination that changes every day. You talk and you talk but nothing is really said, not anymore. You use each other’s voices to drown out the ones in your heads, to dull the pain, if even briefly.
Growing up, it had always been your three families. Your fathers were best friends, had known each other before they knew their wives. You vacationed together, spent holidays together, had monthly family dinners and walked to the bus stop together. All of you kids were the same ages. Not planned, completely coincidental, they’d always say. You didn’t buy it, Arthur was the only one without a match, poor kid, the permanent brunt of jokes and the forever baby brother.
“I don’t know my way around here.” He says, hand on the back of your headrest, backing the car out onto the road.
“I do.” He smiles. Oh, how you missed his smile. All perfect and pretty, just like the rest of him, only happier.
You arrive in Spain early, with him. There’s optimism after Miami, Charles is back on track, back to believing he deserves the title and then some. You all spend the entirety of Monday in La Barceloneta, soaking up as much tranquility and Spanish sun as you can.
Someone is knocking–pounding–on the door of your hotel room. The sun has barely risen, pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting hard golden shadows on the entire room. “Fuck.” You groan, rubbing sleep from your eyes, dragging your feet the entire way to the door. When Charles had said, we’re going to spend all day at the beach, you thought he meant midday, at the earliest. “What?” You say, met with Arthur’s annoyed face.
“You could sleep through a freight train.” He says, and you flip him off.
“You could have called me.” You say, yawn, stretch your arms out above your head. He rolls his eyes, and it gets under your skin in a way only a little brother can manage. You wish you had a shoe to throw at his stupid face.
“Charles did. Three times.” He holds up a matching amount of fingers and you nod, that sounds like something you’d sleep through. “Are you ready?”
Deep breaths, deep breaths, don’t lunge at him. “Do I look ready?” He looks you up and down and you can actually see the gears turning in his head, all three of his brain cells working overtime trying to convince him to keep his mouth shut. “Don’t answer that.” You say, stop him before your eye starts to twitch. “Give me half an hour.”
You knock on the door to Charles’ suite forty-five minutes later. Messy ponytail that you barely brushed, swimsuit, shorts, cotton button-up, entirely too large tote bag slung over your shoulder. Lorenzo answers, “Good morning, sunshine.” He says, all sing-songy and stupid. “Sleep well?”
You walk straight past him into the suite. You think your entire room could fit in his living area. You walk through it, past Joris and Arthur, engaged in a heated conversation, and Carla, who looks about as sleepy as you do. Charles is leaning against the kitchen counter, eating a bowl of something colorful. “No coffee?” You say.
Mouth full, he answers around his spoon, “I don’t drink coffee.”
“But, I do.” You say, grab a sliced strawberry from his bowl, eat it in one bite.
“Feel free to make some.” Lorenzo chimes in. You flip him off, too, pouring coffee grinds into a paper filter and starting a pot. Lorenzo grabs a strawberry from Charles’ bowl too, and the metal spoon promptly collides with his arm. “Ay!” He yelps, tries, and fails, to jump away from the cutlery. “You let her have one!”
“She scares me when she’s tired.” He says, and you take another one because you know you’ll get away with it. He points the spoon at you, warningly. You wink, pop it in your mouth and he smiles, chuckles into the breakfast.
– –
You fall asleep on the cabana bed in your shorts and bikini top, cotton shirt unbuttoned and laid over your face like it’s going to block the light out. You wake up when you’re hit with a bottle of sunscreen. There’s a possibility whoever threw it didn’t realize you were asleep, but the seam lines on your legs lead you to believe you’ve been relatively stationary since laying down here.
You pull the shirt off your face, sit up, disoriented from the nap. “You’re going to burn,” Charles says, rubbing the lotion into his face. “You have pink cheeks.”
“No, I don’t.” You say, but lather up anyway, ask Carla to reach the places you can’t.
The first drinks of the day come with lunch, a round of beers. Corona with lime. You keep yourself paced for the first couple hours, a 1:1 ratio between liquor and water. You maintain the slightest of buzzes, one that you really only feel when you catch yourself giggling too hard at one of their stupid jokes. It’s not the beer that takes you out, you’ve spent your entire life trying to keep up with Charles and his professional-drinker friends. It’s not the Sangria, either, however fun that is to sip. It’s the shots. It’s always the cheap tequila shots that do you in. You feel them too late, don’t realize you’re tipsy until you’re shitfaced. You’ll learn one day. One day, but not today.
You and Charles are sent to find tequila, and you walk down the beach until you find a bar that looks like it’s got decent shit. “I like you like this,” You say, toes sinking into the wet sand, cool water washing over your feet with each crashing wave.
“Like what?” He asks, squinting through the sun to see you. You left your sunglasses at the cabana and he gave you his to wear. They were big on your face and you thought if you moved too quickly they’d fall off into the sand. His linen shirt whips in the wind, his hair is sticking up in all directions, greasy with sunscreen. He glistened with sweat and coconut lotion, beautifully sunkissed.
“Just.” You shrug. “Happy.”
“Awww,” He teases, throws an arm around you, makes you miss a step and trip into him. He smells like summer and sandalwood and fresh, warm towels. “So sweet.”
At the bar, you order and he pays. Licking the salt off the back of your hand, you down the shot, pucker your lips around the lime, and set off back toward the rest of the group with a handful of shot glasses. It’s harder to carry them than you thought it would be, both of you fighting laughter when a bit of alcohol spills out of the tiny glasses, moving quickly over the burning sand. Back with everyone, you take another shot, no salt this time.
The next round is broken up by something sweet and fruity. Joris takes a picture of you and Charles drinking them, arms intertwined like newlyweds at their wedding reception. You hope it doesn’t end up on social media, uninterested in a weekend full of online death threats.
Another round of shots follows soon after, and then another. Not a single water has been sipped in hours. “We should go swimming.” You declared, unbuttoning your shorts and wiggling out of them. “Before we’re too drunk.”
“We’re not getting drunk.” Lorenzo says. Carla laughs from Arthur’s lap.
You shrug. “I am.”
“You already are.” Charles laughs into a beer bottle. “No deeper than your ankles.” Fuck you, you mouthed, walked backwards towards the sea. You wade out until the waves splash against your chest. On the beach, Charles is unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it on the cabana, taking off his sunglasses. You feel hot in the chilly water.
“My babysitter!” You laugh when he’s within earshot, slowly cutting through the water to you.
“I told you ankles.”
You shrug, form first with your hands and push them against his palms. “I’m not drunk.” He pushes back, laughing, you are. You shake your head, move your hands from his and run them over your hair, gather it to one side, twist the water from the ends. “The water is sobering me.” You lower yourself, sinking down until the salt water tickles your chin.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” You look up at him, probably with blown, tipsy pupils.
“I don’t believe you.”
You hum, dipping your head back into the water. “You never do.”
“I always do.” He says, and you laugh at the immediate contradiction like it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard. You might be drunk.
You cut yourself off after that, until you can eat something and drink a non-alchoholic beverage. You won’t let yourself get sober, because then you’ll be passed out on someone’s shoulder by sunset. You won’t get trashy, though. It’s a race week, anyone could see him, take a picture with him, a video with you in the background. When you’re together, whether you like it or not, you’re a reflection of him, a public display of the type of people he wants to associate himself with. Tipsy and fun is cute and carefree. Trashed and blacked is messy and irresponsible.
You’re trying to hold your composure in the taxi, resting your head, and eyes, on the window. The guys picked a restaurant while you and Carla were using the bathroom, and now you’re making Charles read you the menu. He’s doing it in butchered Spanish, trying to pick out the words and meals he recognizes.
“Is there tapas?” You ask, smacking his chest with the back of your hand.
“There is tapas.” He confirms.
You almost cry, laugh instead. “My god, I could kiss you right now.”
“You are so drunk.” He chuckles, and you bite your fist, sink into your seat, wish you could fake it better. Have fun and let loose without embarrassing him.
“Je suis désolé.” You whisper, drop your head the other way, onto his bicep. He adjusts, moves his arm so it’s around you, runs a hand over your hair. He doesn’t ask you what you’re apologizing for, knows that you’ll tell him anyway. “Pour être embarrassant.”
“Chérie,” He says into the crown of your head, a soft kiss before continuing. “You could never embarrass me.”
– –
The sobriety returns during dinner, bringing a pulsating headache with it. You drown your sorrows in delicious, cheap food, and drink an entire pitcher of water by yourself. When you leave, on the street outside, a band is playing in front of a fountain. You all stop, gather around and listen, sway to the lyrics you can barely understand. Joris is taking pictures of the band, Arthur is spinning a giggly Carla around. Charles grabs your hand, twirls you around and dances with you under the orange street lights. You rest your head on his chest.
“You should sing along.” The vibrations from his laugh soother your aching head.
It feels like a scene from a movie, like every other person in the city fades away into obscurity and it’s just you and he swaying on the cobblestone street. You’re so close to him, can’t be much closer, wish you could be. If you could, you’d crawl inside him, inspect his brain and the beautiful way it thinks, admire the way he sees the world. You know it’s special. Everything about him is magnificent, from the tallest hair on his head to the soles of his feet, every birthmark and fallen eyelash in between.
Slowly, your sway has come to a stand still, and he’s staring at you with dopey, tired eyes. It should be illegal, the way he;s looking at you. His sightline jumps all over your face. Your right eye to your left, your nose to your lips. They linger there, on your lips, and then he’s staring into your soul, searching for something. Can I kiss you right now. Give me a reason not to. You don’t know what he wants you to silently speak. If you knew, you’d tell him.
A cat-call whistle snaps both of your heads to Lorenzo. “Get a room!” Arthur yells, pretends to gag. Carla smacks his chest a little too hard to be playful.
The gap between you and Charles is only a few inches larger, but he feels unreachable, eyes glossy and avoiding you. “Fuck off, mate.: He says, drop a bill into the band’s opened guitar case.
– –
Sunday is a nightmare. There’s no way to sugar coat it or make it sound prettier than it is. Andrea grabs you from hospitality, throws his pass around your neck because nobody is going to stop him from getting into the garage. He keeps you at an arms length for the entirety of the short walk.
The car is already stopped in front of the garage, he’s climbing out. His posture is defeated, depressing. You wonder if you’ll be able to say the right words or if he’s just going to want to yell. A few people give him encouraging words, pats on the back, a hug. They’re already asking him to go to the media pen, to feed him to the sharks like a bucket of chum. He moves past them all, gets his weight taken and bee lines it to his drivers room.
Andrea nudges you in his direction. You stay in play, your feet frozen. You don’t know what to say. Go on, he says.
Fuck.
You knock on the door softly, nothing. Opening the door just wide enough to squeeze through it, you find him sat on the floor. Knees bent, arms locked and resting on them, fingers intertwined. His back is against the edge of the couch and his head is hung low. He doesn’t look like himself.
“What?” He says, rigid, doesn’t even bother to look in your direction.
“Do you want me here?” You ask, and his eyes shoot over to you. He looks exhaustingly sad and sorrowfully tired. You wish you could make it better, rub Neosporin on his cutes and stick a race car bandaid over them. Promis the wound would get better and know you were telling the truth.
“Stay.” He says, so you close the door behind you.
You sit on the couch, awkwardly scooch yourself over and around him, a leg on either side of his body. His head rests on your knee and your fingers toy with his hair, soaked with sweat. You don’t know how long you sit like that, just that it’s long enough for someone to knock on the door twice. You stay seated.
“You should change.” You finally say, after the third set of knocks noticeably lacks the patience of the previous two.
“Yeah.” He says, and you both stand. “Don’t go home?” He asks when you’re already halfway out the door, when you’re already looking at Mia in the stairwell. You look over your shoulder, nod, smile, and leave the door open for her to slide in and get to work.
You wait on the stairs, take a deep breath before re-emerging into the chaos. Carlos is still fighting for the podium and you don’t want to drag the mood to the Marianas Trench. It’s just so, so hard to see him hate himself.
Energy is low, morale is lower, but you stay seated in the back of the garage. When the race is over, you head back to hospitality, linger in his room there. Your phone is dead, abandoned on the floor and you lay on his massage table, staring aimlessly at the ceiling. Everything replays on the blank canvas. The perfect lap the day before, his pole position. The sparkle in his eyes and the lightness to his voice. A great start and a commanding lead and a quick pit stop and then he’s slowing down, Andrea is grabbing you and hurrying you across the paddock strip.
Your presence scares him, makes him jump when he opens the door. “Fuck.” He says. “I thought you went home.”
You don’t bother to look up at him, to sit up. “You asked me to stay.” You listen while he shuffles around the room. His presence means the presence of others, and it’s not long before Andrea is there, picking up your phone and placing it on your stomach. His brothers are gone, Carla too. Joris lingers, the silent, unrelenting support of a friend.
“Are you hungry?” Charles askes, and you turn your head to face him. His expression is as tired as his voice.
“Are you?” You aren’t, but you can be if he is.
“No.”
“Me neither.” His eyes narrow, trying to decipher if you’re telling him the truth or if you’re being agreeable. He hates it when you do that, when you tell people what they want to hear instead of what they need to, instead of the truth. “Serious.” You reaffirm, and he returns to packing up his things.
You just watch him. There’s nothing else to do, but, you want to live in his head, know what he’s thinking and feeling and fighting. You relish in any hint towards those emotions, from the way his shoulders hand to the way he zips up his backpack.
“Come,” He says, extending a hand, pulling you to your feet. He grabs his sunglasses from their comfortable position on the collar of his shirt. It’s dark out. He just wants to hide the disappointment. There are still people lingering on the track, after all these hours. On your way out, he stops and talks to Pierre and Esteban. About what, you don’t listen. You don’t ever want to talk about this race again, want to leave it in the past. Head down, focused on the things yet to come. When Charles is ready to move on, Pierre gives him a heavy pat on the shoulder and a hug, one of the largest displays of encouragement any of these guys are capable of giving to each other.
It must be so strange, you think, hoping for someone’s success and failure simultaneously.
Fans are still here, too. He holds his head high and takes pictures and signs everything, makes them all feel loved and appreciated. Nobody is any the wiser to his inner turmoil, to the way he wil pick apart every single aspect of the race and internalize it, use it as fucked up motivation. He’s silent when he’s not interacting with the stragglers. You, Andrea, and Joris all trail behind him, engaged in quiet conversation about Monaco; the race, sleeping at home, the always surprising strangeness of a race you could watch from your bedroom window. Ahead, he holds out a hand to you, and you take a hurried couple of steps to match his pace.
“You okay?” You ask. He nods. “Anything but?”
Anything but, a term you’d coined after Jules’ accident, when all anyone ever wanted to talk to you guys about was how you were doing, what you were feeling. The constant retelling, reliving, reassuring everyone you were doing okay when you were far from, it was almost as painful as losing him. Anything but is invoked, and the other has to change the subject, ignore the elephant in the room, no matter how big it is.
A soft, sad smile tugs on his lips, silent gratitude, and he squeezes your hand tighter, barely so. “Yeah.” He says, and you go on about the haircut you’re thinking about getting once you’re back home in Monaco, asking if he thinks bangs are an option on a face shaped like yours.
– –
You’re flying to Monaco with Charles, and the rest of Ferrari, early tomorrow morning, so your small group deciding in the hotel lobby that the night will be made better by liquor, probably isn’t the wisest of decisions. You do it anyway.
You all behave, careful not to get tipsy. Andrea reminds Charles he still has to train tomorrow, and that keeps him from going too far. The rest of you are just following his lead.
He insists on walking you back to your room at the end of the night, even though Andrea and Joris both swore they’d get you there safe. She’s a runner when she’s drunk, he’d said, and you scowled. “Not since I was sixteen!” You defended, insistent that you didn’t need anyone; Joris, Andrea, or Charles, to walk you to your room. It’s not like you’re lost and drunk somewhere in an unfamiliar city. It’s a five-star hotel and you had all of one floor to travel between.
He doesn’t even say anything on the walk he’d insisted on being present for. Your footsteps echo off the carpeted floors, bouncing between the thin walls and reflecting off the sleek, minimalist artwork. He has a beer in his hand, something from the hotel bar, priced entirely too high for the quality, you’re sure. Each time he brings it to his lips, the glass clinks against the ring on his pinky finger.
He’s flushed, beautiful as ever, and you wished you were an overpriced bottle of beer; your sweat on his skin, the cold ring contrasting his warm, calloused hands. Those soft, pink lips on you, the way they almost were this week. They almost were, you keep telling yourself, you weren’t imagining it. “Charles.” He raises his brows, silently tells you to continue. “It,” You hesitate. You falter, because it’s not too late to say nothing, to bask in the silence a little longer. You can still stop yourself, shove the thoughts deep down and abandon them somewhere in the back of your mind. Curiosity, desperation, something sparked by the green in his eyes and the red on his shirt and the condensation on the bottle, it all gets the best of you. “The other night, it felt like you were going to kiss me.”
“Hmm.” He hums against the lip of the bottle, finishing off the last of the drink. There’s a long pause. You, waiting for him to say something, memorizing the strange pattern on the carpet. Him, saying nothing. You reach your room, hold the key card up to the lock. The silence is amplified by the shifting electronic gears and you’re pushing the door open. “Are you going to ask me?” You blink. “If I was going to kiss you?”
You exhale. Long and slow, do you want to know? “I haven’t decided yet.” You finally say. I’m not ready for this to get flipped on its head, you could’ve said. I love you too much to like you, you could have said. You didn’t. “Nuit, Charles.” You say instead, disappearing into the darkness of your room.
“Bonne nuit.”
“I’ve decided against the bangs.” You tell him in the grocery store around the corner from his apartment, leant against one of the doors in the refrigerator aisle. He’s waiting for a text back from his nutritionist, trying to figure out what he’s going to cook on the boat tonight. It’s family dinner night, and he’d volunteered to host, which meant he volunteered you to host on his yacht
“Good.” He says.
“You told me they would look good.” You laugh, wonder if he even remembers the conversation or if your words were just the backing track to his overthinking.
He shrugs. “You’re supposed to stop me from looking like a fool.” He laughs at his phone screen, turns it off and slides it into his pocket.
“My favorite thing about you is that you’re a fool.” He says, pulling open the door you’re leaning against, moving you with it. That’s not very nice, you said as he piled two packages of chicken breasts onto the groceries already in your hands.
“Chicken. Brave.” You add, reminiscent of the last time he tried cooking chicken on the water. It’s a good thing there was a fire extinguisher on board, and saying anything else would break the oath of secrecy you were sworn to.
“Ha, ha.” He mocks. “Not funny.”
“You know what isn’t funny?” You grab another pack of chicken, just in case. “Telling me bangs would be good.”
Good luck this weekend, the cashier tells him when you’re checking out. Break the curse, yes? Charles laughs, because he’s a good sport, and agrees. You hate all the curse talk, it pisses you off, more than it does him. The conversation around it gets worse every year, every time he doesn’t win at home.
They love him so much here, he’s their poster-boy during their poster-week, they don’t mean any harm by it, but it still gets under your skin. Curse this, curse that. Fuck off, shut up about it already. Everyone knows his Monaco track record, can everyone please find anything else to talk about?
– –
He finishes fourth, and it feels somehow worse than last year’s DNF. SO close, only to be screwed by the same shit as last week. You drink your weight at the club that night because maybe a lack of sobriety will make it sting a little less.
“You are not wearing that.” Lorenzo says when you walk out of your building. You groaned, looked down at your outfit. It was slinky, but slinky is what everyone wears to the club, especially during the grand prix.
You settle for a blazer, tell him to suck your dick, and fill the pockets so you can abandon your purse. You start off at a smaller club, one that transitions from a restaurant after dark and has intimate, smaller tables. You’re there for a couple hours, eat something and get buzzed. Predictably, you meet up with half of the grid at Formula One’s favorite club, where you have a bigger section and a bigger group and get a bigger buzz.
“I can’t wear these anymore,” You whined, stopping to lean against the wall of a building to take off your heels. Your feet were blistering, and the thought of having to continue the walk with them on was dreadful. Charles carries them because you keep dropping one without realizing it. It’s not your finest moment, but, you only threaten to jump into one bush on the nearly fifteen minute walk. Overall, a strong showing on your part.
You lose Charles at Jimmy*z, dancing with friends and strangers and other drivers and their parties. You’re drinking Negroni’s, and you aren’t sipping, occasionally splitting it up with a shot whenever someone suggests it. That’s when you see him again, when he’s putting a double shot of something expensive in your hand. I shouldn’t, you say, because you're teetering close to the line of embarrassment. He rolls his eyes, fully inebriated. Shiftfaced, if you will. “Shut up and take a shot with me.”
You do, it goes down smoother than water.
“That’s good!” You say, examininging the glass.
“I know.” He deadpans, and you both laugh. Sober Charles is one of the funniest people you know. Drunk Charles is the funniest person you know. He’s so unserious in everything he does–the way he talks, dances, expresses emotions, there’s nothing not funny about it.
The club comped the table and a few bottles of champagne for the publicity that comes with having half of Formula One partying under their roof. In exchange, a manager is trying to wrangle Charles’ section into a group photo. You were standing back, laughing at them all failing to maintain any semblance of sobriety, all logic and composure out the window three drinks ago. Charles and Arthur are yelling your name, yelling at each other, looking for you in the strobe lights. You move, hope he doesn’t see you. He does, locks eyes with you, dopey smile, summoning you with this come-hither motion, his middle and ring finger calling you to him. Even drunk, you notice the gesture, the subtle curl, twitch of his long fingers.
Fucking, hell. Flushed cheeks burn bright and you’re grateful your hair is down, covering your undoubtedly matching ears. He almost kissed you. He did. You’re not crazy, he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s too smart not to.
You smile, lips pursed, and shake your head. It makes him pout, and then he’s yelling your name, gesturing you over with the rapid movement of his entire arm. His other hand is smacking Arthur’s face, trying to rile he and Carla up. It works, and now half the group is yelling your name, so, you give in. Celebratory cheers leave their mouths and the boys share a near-miss high five. Charles grabs the back of your head, pulls you under his arm in one fail swoop. You hone in on his cologne. Tom Ford Tuscan Leather, no doubt. His signature night-out fragrance, the one you and Lorenzo nearly peed your pants laughing at when Pascale bought it for him a few years ago. The hints of raspberry and amber wood, the ones nobody can smell unless they’re this close to him, make you dizzy.
“You smell nice.” You say, and he just looks at you, lowers his head to talk directly into your ear. You look beautiful, he says, and you might be sober. “Don’t say that to me.” You laugh, smooth down your hair.
There’s a real possibility at least one of the twenty people in the photo were actually looking at the camera.
At some point in the night, you end up in the bathroom with Carla for an evening debrief. You don’t realize how drunk you actually are until you’re staring into your hazy soul in the bathroom mirror. It’s an out of body experience, truly, you’re watching this conversation from the astral plane.
“Fuck.” You say, looking to Carla, who appears to be having the same experience as you. You both burst into a fit of laughter, the hunched over, sore abs, red faces, threat to the integrity of your bladder-type laughter that doesn't require anything to actually be funny. “I have to work tomorrow.” You say, trying to catch your breath. You work from home, she reminds you, and you’re both laughing again. “Je t’aime.” You slur, overwhelmed by the alcohol and emotion. “Beaucoup.”
“Non,” She giggles. “Je t’aime le olus.”
“You look.” You hiccup. “So pretty, I hate you for being so pretty.” Carla shakes her head at her own reflection, adjusts her top, checks herself out. You pat the sweat off your forehead and wipe under your arms with toilet paper from a stall. “Arthur is so, super lucky.” Another hiccup. “You are so pretty. So nice and pretty.”
“No, you are so pretty.” She laughs. “Charles is lucky, and he doesn’t know it.” Charles, Charles, Charles. You don’t want to talk about Charles and his stupid face and stupid smile and stupid fingers and stupid skin. “I should call Michael.” You say, digging your phone out of your jacket pocket.
“You should not.” She laughs, but you’re already searching your contacts for his name. “Nope.” SHe says, snatches your phone from your hands and holds it out of your reach.
“Carla.” You hiccup, pleading and pouting.
“Nope.” She says, putting the device in the bag that hands around her body.
– –
“This is my song!” You yell, quickly downing the shot in your hand, entire body vibrating with the bass pouring from the speakers.
“We should start a band.” Someone says, and Charles laughs.
“We should!”
“You’re my best friend.” You tell him, stumbling over your own feet without even taking a step. His arm reaches out as a stabilizer, just in case you need one.
“No,” He laughs. “You’re my best friend. More-er.” That’s not a word. You shake your head.
“I could play the drums.”
“I know we’re drunk, but, like. I love you.” You slur, test the waters of shifting your weight from one foot to the other. Another stumble, another hiccup. “I’d do, like, anything for you.”
“I know.” He says, but you can’t hear his voice over the music. “I love you.” He adds, smacking Lorenzo on the arm to get his attention, to draw him out of band practice planning. “She’s my best friend!” He says.
“I know!”
“I love her.”
Lorenzo laughs. “We all know.”
“We should take a picture!” You suggest to Charles, and he agrees. “I don’t have my phone. Someone stole it.” He gives you a puzzled look, concerned, grabs your elbow like you’re going to float away in the crowd and asks you to clarify. You just shrug. I have it, dumbass. Carla laughs, takes a picture of the two of you, doesn’t give you your phone back.
The next time you see him, you’re sat at the table having one of those drunken moments of emotional, existential crises. Your fingers twiddle with the fake eyelashes you peeled from your lids minutes earlier. “I’ve been looking for you.” He says, heavily drops into the space to your right, slings an arm around you.
You’re always under his damn arm, you never realized before just how often you’re here. Not that you don’t like it, it’s just an observation, confusing and emotionally charged, but an observation nonetheless. He’s so relaxed, completely slouched into the rich leather, legs spread wider than they need to be, the arm that’s not around you resting on the back of the booth. He’s watching everyone else, observing the different people with sleepy eyes and heavy lids. When he talks to you, he turns his head all the way, cranes his neck so he’s speaking into your ear again. You don’t turn your head, you’d be too close. “I have a secret to tell you.” He doesn’t whisper.
“What?” You laugh, settle into his side, into the laxity of it all.
He opens his mouth to speak, pauses, rests his forehead on your temple. “I forgot.” He chuckles. You hiccup. You both laugh.
Your eyes are closed, tired and so, so comfortable. You might fall asleep here, despite the loud noises and loud music and loud heartbeat. “You were going to kiss me in Barcelona.” You say, liquid courage forcing the words from your mouth like vomit. It isn’t a question. It doesn’t need to be.
“I kiss you often.” He says, a weak defense, and kisses the crown of your head. “See?”
You’re not crazy. He was going to kiss you. He was. “Charles.” Your voice is quiet, strained and scratchy and serious. You don’t open your eyes, can’t look at him when you demand an answer, a confirmation.
“I was.” The admission is suffocatingly delicate, like he might go for it, right then. His hand might grab your face and guide you to him. You’re ready for it, you think, as ready as you’re ever going to be for everything to change.
You don’t have to worry about it, to think about it and dwell on if he’s going to do it. He doesn’t. He just rests his head on yours. Your thoughts race faster than your heartbeat, and you wonder if he can feel your temples pulsing.
2013, family dinner. You’re in your room, hiding out for as long as possible, uninterested in the family events. Very teenaged girl of you, in all regards. Charles burst through your door, no knock, no warning. You didn’t even know they were there yet. Luckily for you, nothing incriminating was happening. He was quite the snitch back then, a real tattletale, especially if you were the one getting in trouble.
“I have something to tell you.”
“Unless it’s that you’re going to turn around and leave my room, I don’t care.” You’d said, annoyed by his presence. At sixteen, your relationship could best be described as friendly enemies. He was always around, especially when you didn’t want him to be, and he was always the golden child. Perfect in school, perfect on the track, perfect son, perfect friend. His existence was infuriating and because you were so close in age, everyone always wanted you to be the best of friends.
As a teenage girl, it was evolutionarily impossible for you to go alone with what everyone else wanted. You had to rebel, to run against the grain. Charles and you were not friends, and you did not care about what was going on in his life.
“Single-seaters.” He said with a dumb smile, leaning on his hand against your dresser. You take maybe one step between your bed and his arms, hugging him tighter than you had since you were children. Okay, maybe you did care about his life. There are some things even evolution can’t change.
“With who?”
“I thought you didn’t care?”
“I don’t”
His smile grew. “Fortec.”
You half-screamed, half-laughed, hugging him again, somehow tighter. “I’m so happy for you, Cha.” You said, with a level of sincerity you hadn’t used in years, especially with him. You thought for a moment you might cry, that he would make fun of you for it, that you’d do it anyways because you were so happy for him.
“Don’t tell anyone, I’m not supposed to say anything.”
“Who knows?”
“Like, nobody.” He’s giddy, it’s almost cute. Almost.
“Jules?” You ask, even though you think you already know the answer. Jules is God to Charles, this untouchable, invincible figure that represents the culmination of all his own dreams. He was the first person, you expect him to say.
“Not yet.” He told you before Jules.
You’re traveling in the weeks after Monaco, jet-setting around the world for your own career. It’s not until France that you see him again. You beat him there, actually, opting to spend some time visiting friends from University nearby, taking a bit of time to enjoy yourself and relax. Despite what everyone in your Instagram comments thinks, race weekends are not a holiday. The nerves and anxiety and heightened emotions you feel during one is so stress-inducing that the work week feels like a week in the Maldives.
Love you, always proud. You texted him moments after he won in Austria, along with a picture of you and the drink you were having in celebration in your hotel room.
You were a little bummed you couldn’t be there, celebrating with him. He really needed that win, and you could only imagine the weight it lifted off his shoulders. It’s been a while since you saw him genuinely happy on a Sunday night.
Love you, too. You suck. He texted back seven hours later, reiterating the sentiment the entire time he was home in Monaco and you weren’t. When you jokingly suggested he come to France early, you were met with the threat of being blocked.
– –
You spent the weekend with Pascale, spending every day at the track trying to out-anxious each other. You don’t know how she sleeps, Charles and Arthur both doing this shit. You’re a nervous wreck and she barely flinches.
“You remind me of myself a lot.” She tells you. Your knee is bouncing anxiously under the table you’re eating at. “Your mother, of course, but. Selfishly, I see the good parts of me in you.”
You’d always wished Pascale was your Mom, growing up. You have a great mother, you love her to death, but she was your mom. She had to discipline you, she had to put her foot down. Pascale didn’t have to do those things, not with you. She could be cool and carefree and spoil you because she was a bonus parent, not an actual one. If you grew up to be all kinds of fucked-up, she could wash her hands of you. Your mom couldn’t do that.
You’re so lucky to have her as your Mom, you would say to the boys. They’d say the same thing to you.
“You’re going to make me cry.” You say, picking at your cuticles.
“Chérie.” She says, grabs your hand, stills your anxious fingers. “Je suis nerveux rien qu'à te regarder.”
“I don’t like Monaco.” You say. “No room for error.”
“You don’t like any track.” She chuckles, releases your hands. You put them in your lap and go back to picking at the skin. “Not when the boys are out there.”
She’s right, you’re squeamish when you watch Arthur and Charles, don’t think you’ll ever get used to it. Charles loves to make fun of you for it, has videos saved on his phone of you, caught on the television cameras, captured by friends, that one time you were in the background of a Drive to Survive episode. He laughs and laughs at them, but when he watches Arthur, he’s just as bad as you are.
It’s different, when you love the driver. When you love them more than the sport, more than the team, more than nearly any other person in the entire world, every corner feels tighter, every straight feels faster, the whole thing feels like a narrowly avoided death sentence.
“I don’t know how you do it.” After Jules, how you do it after Jules. After Anthoine, after hugging a grieving mother and watching your son drive on the same track.
“I love watching them race.” She says. “I hate it, but I love it. All a mother can hope for her children is that they are brave enough to achieve their dreams.” They’re brave because of her, because of Hervé and because of her. They raised all three of their boys to be strong and brave and kind, and when Hervé passed, she picked up the pieces of her boys and glued them together again, built them up stronger, braver, kinder than before.
– –
You don’t see him for a while after the race, don’t know if you want to. He’s been eerily calm all when things have gone wrong all season, at least when you’ve been around. It’s only a matter of time until he loses his cool, until he snaps. That radio call? Snapped like a glowstick. He’s angry, at himself, at the car, at the team, at the world. There’s nothing anyone is going to be able to say or do that would make him happy, neutral even. It’s going to be all pity-party and hushed curses until he gets some rest and resets.
Behind the garage, when you’re finally leaving, he hugs Pascale tight. Her hand runs comforting circles on his back, and then it’s your turn to be suffocated. He squeezes you like it’s the last time you’re ever going to see each other, hangs on like gravity is pulling him in the other direction. “Anything but.” He said. “All night.”
You nod. “My mom sent me a video of Gi playing with the dog today.” You spoke of your niece, of Charles’ goddaughter. If anyone could hit his soft spot, it was her. “Do you want to see it?”
“Yeah.” He said, and when he watched her stumbling around the park, when her innocent belly laugh and giddy screams spilled out of the speakers, he actually smiled, might have even let a little laugh slip. It’s impossible not to, really, with that little girl.
He walks in relative silence back to the driver's lot, just listened to you go on and on. You feel nauseous, watching him put on a smile and interact with fans, laugh and take pictures and make children’s days by just existing. It must be such a strange life, a miracle his head hasn’t gotten ridiculously big.
– –
At the hotel, you can tell he’s still pissed. Rest, reset. He’ll be himself in the morning. You exchange goodbyes in the elevator, you’re on a different floor than him. You expect it’s the last you’ll see of him until summer break. He leaves for Hungary early in the morning and you’re driving back to Monte Carlo with Pascale tomorrow afternoon. You expect, because he’s knocking on your door an hour later while you watch L’Atalante on your laptop.
The light from the hallway is almost blinding in contrast to your dark room. “Hi.” He says, in running shorts and a t-shirt, bare feet. “L’Atalante?”
“How do you-”
He smiles. “You’re predictable.”
“What do you want?” You say through a yawn, shocked he makes out the words at all.
“Can I watch it with you?”
You sigh. “Charles.” You were minutes away from falling asleep, from putting this day behind you. Now, your feet are so cold on the floor it hurts and you’re becoming increasingly conscious and awake with each passing moment.
“Please?” He asks, voice small and broken. Fuck. You hold open the door, because you’re weak when it comes to him. You’d let him treat you badly if it meant he’d treat you. “You know there’s a giant TV right here, no?”
“I like my computer.” You say, crawl back into the bed, sit up against the million pillows. He flops down next to you, on top of the comforter because he runs hotter than a fireplace. When he’s finally done moving around, shifting until he’s nice and comfortable–sorry, he said–you press play on the movie.
“I love this part.” He says.
“You hate this movie.”
“I do not.” He does. He complains every time you watch it, says you need to find a favorite movie that’s in color, that doesn’t have random cat montages, that the main love interest has too many glaring red flags. Watch it with rose-tinted glasses, you told him once, threw a piece of popcorn at his head. “This is my favorite part.”
“No, it’s not.” You laugh. “You hate this part.”
He laughs, too, sweetly and softly, into his own shoulder. “I love it.” You shush him, shove his shoulder because he can’t even say it with a straight face. He doesn’t stay quiet for long, and it’s clear he came here to talk, not to watch the movie, but he tries to pretend. “You need to come to more races.” He says, his head resting on your arm. “I don’t like it when you’re not here.”
“Okay.” You say, only half-listening. It’s your favorite movie.
“Today sucked.” You paused the movie. Blinked twice, hard, frustrated because it;s your favorite movie, but he’s your favorite person.
You look at him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” He reaches over and unpauses it, adjusts so he’s sitting up, too.
You pause it again. “I think you do.”
“I don’t.”
You close the laptop, set it on the bedside table and flip on the lamp. “I don’t know how to make you feel better right now.” You say, stand up, pace the room. It sounds like you’re admitting your defeat, expressing disappointment in yourself with a half-hearted apology.
He stands up, too, follows you for a step but then you're still. There’s something unfamiliar painted across his face. Exhaustion, anger, desperation–you can’t pinpoint it. Urgency. You realize its urgency when his hands are on your face, thumbs dancing on your jaw, eyes darting between yours. Urgency.
He was going to kiss you. He is going to kiss you, you think, and you’re going to let him. He can use you as a distraction, if he needs to. You can kiss it better, you’re sure you can. His forehead rests on yours, the tips of your noses bumping against each other, shuddered, broken breaths. Your lips are so close, jaws slack, sharing the air. You’re dizzy. Dizzy and hot and then he’s kissing you. The taste of his tongue, the scrape of his teeth, the softness of his lips, it’s all so new, so butterfly-inducing. He smells like himself, whatever soap he always uses when he’s traveling. It’s crisp and clean and you want to lick it off his skin.
He’s the one to pull away, but you open your eyes first. “Sorry.” He says. You smile, kiss him again because you’re not sorry, wishing you could crawl inside his mouth and build a home there behind his beautiful, sharp, white teeth.
Your name sounds like a symphony when he says it, all dopey and sing-songy, hands firmly on your waist. “Don’t look at me like that.” He says, laughs into your mouth.
“Like what?” You ask, innocently.
“Just. Fuck.” He shakes his head, one of his hands slipping under the hem of your shirt, open and flat, exploring the vast bareness of your back. “You.”
“Me?” You giggle at his words, the stumble of them, cheeks hot and flustered. You shouldn’t be nervous. It’s Charles. You know him like you know your own hand, but, he’s never been yours, not like this. Your hands have never searched him like this, fingers never tugged on his hair with lust and longing, never felt the scratch of his stubble on your skin.
“Yeah,” He says into the crook of your neck, leaving a flurry of open mouth kisses in the space between your jaw and your collarbone. “You.”
“We shouldn’t.” You say, even though you’re helping him out of his shirt. “We should stop.”
“Do you want to stop?” He asks, his fingers stalling on the buttons of your pajama top.
“We can do this, right?” You ask, because you need his reassurance. You don’t need honesty. You know the truth. You need to hear what you want to hear, for him to tell you if it’s safe to jump, to fall aimlessly into the unknown. You need him to lie to you. “Can we go back to normal after this?”
“Ouais.” He says, and even though you don’t believe him, you think he believes himself. “Retour à la normale.”
“Okay.” You say, and he’s unbuttoning your shirt again. If his mouth didn’t feel so good on you, if his big hands didn’t send shivers up your spine when he ran them up the sides of your body, you might have thought a bit harder about what normal is for the two of you.
His hands do make you shiver, though, and he’s looking at your body with these sweet, drunk eyes, sliding the shirt off your arms and letting it pool on the ground with his.
You’re dropping to your knees on the cold floor next to the bed, pulling his shorts, his underwear, down with you. While he steps out of them, kicks them to the side, you admire him, toned and tanned and so, so pretty. You want to memorize it in case it’s the last time you see him like this, take notes on every freckle and muscle and defining feature under the harsh light. You need to feel him everywhere, to taste him, to make him feel as good as he looks.
He’s already hard, cock twitching with lust and adrenaline and arousal, all for you. Your work is cut out for you. You tease him, whisper profanities and place soft kisses against the skin of his upper thighs. “You make me crazy.” He says, you take him in your mouth, and he goes momentarily stiff before he relaxes, lets your fingers and your lips work in tandem to pull your name from him.
“Fuck.” He says, tastes like sex, sweet and salty and manly. His hands knot into your hair, pull it back into a haphazard ponytail that only loses shape as you continue. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He repeats, rutting into your mouth, fucking into your throat. You swallow around him, hollow your cheeks and he lets out this whimpered, wounded sound, forces your mouth off him. “Don’t do that.”
“You don’t like it?” You ask, take him in your hand, stroke over the slick of your spit, kissing the base of his cock and looking up at him with these big, saucer eyes.
“No,” He shakes his head, drags a hand over his stubble. “You’ll make me come.”
You swipe your tongue in one long stripe, swirl it around the head of him, smile. “That’s the point.” You say, filling your mouth with him again, sinking until he’s hitting the back of your throat, gagging you, tears prickling at the corners of your eyes.
He says your name like he’s battling to reason with himself, his grip on your hair tightening, pulling you off him again. You pout, and he rolls his eyes, shakes his head. “Tu es mauvais.”
“Ç’est vrai.” You roll your thumb over the tip, mindlessly, really, looking at him and waiting for him to speak. You’re an addict, already. It’s just so pretty.
“Want to last for you.” You’re not even standing and your knees are unsteady underneath you. You look at the floor, your forehead on his thigh, and laugh. You laugh harder than you should, just out of shock and disbelief. “What?” He laughs, too.
You’re standing, he’s helping you stand. “Who would’a thought?” You can’t stop giggling, cock your head to the side and try not to smile. “You and me?”
His tongue is in his cheek, eyes rolling in such a bratty way. You wonder if he can see how swollen your lips are, all because of him. Your mouth feels empty without him there. “I hate you,” He says with a smile, and kisses you.
Your knees buckle at the edge of the bed, and it’s too easy, the way you’re both on it without ever parting lips for more than a hasty breath. He moves you around like a doll, gentle and effortless in his removing of your shorts, of your underwear, in the manipulation of your positioning on the soft mattress.
He’s kissing you, sucking bruises into your collar, marking you like there’s any possibility you’re not already his. It’s hazy and intoxicating, him exploring your body, taking his time as he trails down your collar bone, through the valley of your breasts, hot, sloppy breath on your stomach, on your legs. You’re almost disoriented by it all, the natural comfort, the familiarity of him in a place so unfamiliar to his touch. He kisses your clit, you watch him, feel his hot breath on you, jaw slack and eyes glazed over. It makes you hot, makes your whole body flush and shiver.
“Putain, t'es chaud.” He curses, smiles at you from between your legs. His fingers splay over your hip, his thumb dragging itself over you, parting your lips with the slick of you, amused smile tugging on his face. “You’re so wet.” He says, moves up to kiss you.
“Sorry.” You whisper into his open mouth.
He shakes his head, mumbles something incoherent, kisses you again. “It’s hot, chérie. That you want it.”
“Want you.” You say, and he slides a long finger inside you, surprised whimper escaping from your lips into his open mouth. He curls it into you, crooks it at just the right angle and you writhe against the sheets. You can’t believe he’s got you like this, that you’re a mess for him over a single finger.
He moves back down your body, another trail of nibbles and kisses before he laps at you, swirling his tongue around your clit in a way that’s almost painfully good, curling his finger into that same spot. When he slides in another, you’re a goner, moaning out his name like it’s the only word you know.
“Let go.” He says. Your eyes are pinched shut in an attempt to keep yourself at bay for just a while longer. His eyes are glued to yours when you can finally open them.
You shake your head. “I’m not.” You start, stopping short to compose yourself when your leg twitches, shakes in applause of his work. “No ego boosts.” You sputter. He laughs against you, the vibrations of it blinding, a whole new sensation that spreads fire over your skin, sends you over the edge with little warning.
He doesn’t stop, not for a second, when you come. His fingers maintain their rapid pace even as you tense around him, his tongue, his lips, suctioned to you as your body tries to wiggle away. “Charles.” His name leaves your lips in a shudder, your thighs trying to close in on his head, the hand that isn’t inside you holding you open for him.
He works you over, skilled fingers and skilled mouth, coaxing you through another, louder this time. He leaves you catching your breath, restless, incoherent, shaky on the crisp white sheets and two orgasms ahead.
He’s so satisfied with himself, licks his fingers clean and grins and kisses you some more, just because he can. Because, it’s all gone to shit and the unspoken, unwritten rules of your friendship have gone so far out the window, they’re in another country. Maybe they’re in Hungary already, or waiting for the two of you on summer break, in Monza, hell, they might even be Abu Dhabi, there’s no telling.
“Do you have a condom?” You ask.
He freezes, strong arm holding him over you, caging you in. His eyes shut hard. “No.”
“You didn’t bring one?”
“When I came to your room, I didn’t.” He sighs.
“How gentlemanly.” You quip, wiggle out from underneath him. He flops back onto the bed, apologizing. You grab his t-shirt from the floor and hold it up to cover your body, he chuckles at that. “Apologize if I don’t have one.” You say, rifle through your backpack. Your leg shakes under you while you try to balance, squatting in front of the bag. You hope he notices, sees what he’s done to you without even filling you up all the way.
“Why would you have one?” He asks, just as you find the little package at the bottom of your bag. You turn on your heels, still bent over, condom wrapper in your teeth and look at him with narrowed eyes.
“Do you really want me to tell you?” You ask around the wrapper.
He thinks about it for way longer than should be required. “No.”
“Yeah.” You nod, dumbfounded, and stand back up.
“Really, with the shirt?” He asks, laughing about it again.
“Salope!” You say, drop the shirt, throw the condom at him. “Put this on yourself.”
“I don’t even like you.” He says, rips open the wrapper with his teeth and slides it over his cock. It hurts, almost, how badly you want him inside you, how empty you’ve felt since he took his fingers out.
“Don’t do that, you’re going to make me come.” You mock his earlier words, puff out your lips, raise your brows, a knowing glance.
“I was.” He defends, and you straddle him, wrap your arms around his neck.
“No, you weren’t,” You kiss him, his hands explore the curve of your ass, fingers dig into your hips, push you down so you grind against him, spread your wetness over him.
“Okay.” He says with a smirk, lust riddled and completely enthralled by you, one hand moving to thumb at your clit, start chasing another release for you.
“Okay.” You repeat, barely a whisper, lift yourself up enough for him to line himself up with you. You sink down slow, savor the burn of the stretch, wish it was the first time anyone had ever done this to you, that you could belong to him and only him.
“Fuck.” He says into your shoulder, kissing and sucking a purple spot into the flesh there, his hands splayed across your back, warm and strong and dragging across the hot skin. “Si bon.” Every inch of your body can feel him, hungry for more, the insatiable urge to hear his moans, to make him whimper, make him feel how you feel.
You grind your hips against his, chasing an unachievable leverage, a static inducing friction. Your foreheads rest on each other and your noses collide roughly in the sweaty, steamed, hitched breaths.
You’re obsessed with the way he watches your bodies, eyes glued where he disappears into you. You never want to hear anyone else say your name, not after hearing the way he says it while he’s inside you. “That.” He says. “Love that.” You do as you’re told, eager to please, hungry for him to finish. “Es-tu proche?” You shake your head, because you are, but he’s closer.
In a swift movement, he flips you over, switches your positions, slides back inside you. Even when he’s manhandling you, using you as a device for his pleasure, strong and without thought, there’s something gentle about it, something that anchors you to him.
He fucks into you with deep, measured thrusts. The new position, the new angle, it drives you fucking crazy, your back arching off the bed, grinding onto his fingers in the selfish chase of your own high. “Charles. Fuck.” I know, he tells you, shaky, pace reduced to an erratic grind. I know, baby, and you’re coming again, biting into the muscles of his strong shoulders, wet and warm and so fucking full of him.
“I’m.” He whispers into your neck, nibbles on your ear. He pulls out and you whimper at the loss. “Where?” He asks, pulls the condom off, jerks himself with those long, veiny fingers. You smiled, devilish. You wanted, needed, his cum in your mouth.
He’s too close to be gentle, now, to take care and take time. He’s desperate, it’s so fucking hot. His hands are on your head, knotted into your hair, holding you steady so he can fuck your throat. You gag around him, dizzy, hazy, eyes forced shut because everything is white and on fire. “Look at me.” He says. You do, and he has a fucking smile on his face, lewd and practically pornographic.
You hum, pleased with the state you’ve got him in and then he’s bottomed out, still and stiff, coming down the back of your throat, chanting your name like a prayer.
– –
“What am I supposed to do with these?” You laugh into the bathroom mirror, after a shared shower, delicate fingers examining the fresh bruises he burned into your skin. “I’m spending the day with your Mother.”
He’s drying his hair with a towel, laughs. “Nobody thinks you’re La Sainte Vierge.”
You move through the bathroom, back into the bedroom to retrieve your pajamas from the floor. “And what is that supposed to mean?” You tease, returning, tossing his clothes on the counter.
“It means,” He hums, wraps his arms around you, hugs you from behind. Your knees are weak and wobbly, his chin resting on your shoulder, looking at each other in the mirror. “Tu es belle, jeune et amusante.”
“Je suis amusante?” You ask, try to bite back a smile, fail.
“Très.” He says, nuzzles into your neck.
He sleeps in your room that night, wakes up early, shuffles around the bathroom, the light pouring out. His movement stirs you, his heavy feet roaming around the silent room. “Go back to sleep,” He says, kisses your hair, and the heavy door locks behind him.
Tired, from the weekend, from him, you let yourself go back to sleep. You should’ve got up and kissed him, you think. Really, truly kissed him, while the rules still didn’t apply and things weren’t back to normal. Whatever normal is for the two of you.
“What?” You said, spit, when Charles called you for the third time within five minutes. The first Monday of summer break, he’s in Monaco and you’re in France, a thousand kilometers, an hour and a half flight, away. More specifically, you’re standing in the corridor of your office building, meters away from the door you’d just stepped out of, the meeting you had to excuse yourself from leading because your phone won’t stop ringing and surely, something must be wrong.
“Hello to you, too.” He says, and you can hear the smile on the other end of the line. “Where are you?”
“Work.” You say, inspiringly calm. Fuck, she’s at work, you hear him say to someone. “Can I call you back in a bit?”
“Oui, désolée.”
“Ne sois pas.” You force a smile, like he can see it, and hang up, shut your phone off completely before returning to the meeting with an apologetic grimace claiming family emergency.
You call him back an hour later, after the conclusion of your meeting and then some, pushing past the heavy glass doors to your office building and out onto the street, the breeze blowing your hair into your mouth as you step between two buildings. He answers, but it’s just shuffling on the other end, hushed, muffled voices. “Are you there?”
“Oui, oui. Une seconde.” He says, far from the speaker. More shuffling before a proper greeting. “You’re on speaker.”
“What are you doing?” Shopping, he says, moves the phone, how’s work? You have to put a finger in your other ear to hear him, between the sounds of the city and the chatter on his side. “It’s fine.” You say, drag out the vowels because you’re bored, because you wish you were with him. He’s always so relaxed on summer break, so content and breezy and fascinating. You haven’t seen him since he was kissing your hair goodbye in France. You need to know if you can actually return to something normal.
“It’s fiiineee.” He mocks, laughs with whoever else is with him. You smile, all toothy and stupid. “Coming home today?” You can hear the hope in his voice. You’ve been here for less than twenty-four hours, it’s an unusually short trip. Most times, you’re here for a minimum of a weekend, almost always more. He shouldn’t be expecting you.
“Yeah.” You check the time on your watch. “In a few hours.”
“You want to come on the water tonight?” He asks.
“La Mala?” Of course, he says, like it shouldn’t even be a question. “With?” He speaks to someone else in Italian, you think you hear Andrea say something, and then Charles’ voice is louder, off speaker, you assume.
“Lorenzo and some camera guys. We’re doing some… comment dire, day with my life?”
“I don’t know.” You hesitate, because the last thing you want to do is be one of three people, to be on display somewhere on Instagram or Youtube or wherever the video they’re making is going. You love him, but the attention is overwhelming and you like to stay as far from it as possible, especially when you’re nervously sorting out the normalcy of your relationship.
You took a photo of him once, with a fan, just walking around the city. You weren’t even in the photo, didn’t say more than two sentences to the guy he was posing with. And yet, when he posted it on Twitter, said Charles was with some girl, posted a screenshot from your Instagram and said her, he was with her, you had a full inbox begging to know if you were dating Charles, calling you obscene vulgarities, threatening you. You weren’t even in the fucking picture.
“It will be fun.” He says. “I haven’t seen you since france.” Exactly, you haven’t seen each other since France. Just over a week. It’s chump change for the two of you, at least it was, before his spit dripped down your thigh and he came in the back of your throat. Now, a week is the opportunity for an awkward plant to take root, grab onto you and make everything weird and uncomfortable and wrong/ “We’re having pasta.” He says, can sense your uncertainty, knows it sweetens the deal.
“No chicken?”
“Never again.” He laughs. “You’re coming?”
“I guess.”
“You guess.” God, he is a child, truly. “Call me when you land, yes?”
“Yeah.”
– –
You can’t remember the last time you felt so nervous to see him. Sitting on the edge of the concrete landing, watching him cruise in on a little boat full of strangers, it’s almost worse than watching him race. Do you have to say something? Is he going to say something? Do you ignore it? That’s the agreement, right? Everything goes back to normal. Normal, normal, normal.
He looks like he’s been in the sun all day, cheeks pink and rosy, the blue of his shirt mellowing him out, making him glow. A God, Heaven shining down on him, presenting him to you like a gift. You hate that you have to share him with anyone when he’s like this, especially with strangers, with people who don’t know how lucky they are to see him like this.
“Did you miss me?” He calls out when he’s within earshot. You stand up, take your shoes off because there is no way that boat is making it all the way to you.
“Who called who?” You say, and he laughs.
You hopped off the landing into the shallow water, walked out to the boat on your tip-toes, trying to keep the bottom of your pants as dry as possible. You had a change of clothes in your bag, but, even a minute in wet pants is too long. He helps you into the boat and you introduce yourself to the strangers pointing cameras at you.
This was a mistake. It doesn’t even take the distance from the landing to the yacht for you to realize that. So fucking uncomfortable, cameras in your face, recording your conversations, watching the way you look at him. You can already see the comments calling you pathetic, calling you a whore, calling you a bitch.
It is pathetic, you remind yourself when your hand is on his, stepping around him, moving from one boat to another. They will think it’s pathetic and they’ll be right.
There’s more production people waiting for your arrival, waiting to take your place next to Charles and capitalize on the fleeting light and beautiful scenery. It’s unusual, there’s nobody here. You introduce yourself to them, too, because it feels strange not to.
Once you’re onboard, you change in the guest suite. Sweats and a hoodie because the sun is setting, dusk settling on the horizon, bringing in wind with the tide. Bowl of pasta in your lap, mindless television playing, you lounge on the couch, watch Charles do an interview on that stupid little boat, rocking back and forth like a buoy on the open water.
You want to reach out and grab his hand, hold it still, stop him from pulling his fingers and twisting his rings because then nobody will know he’s nervous, that he’s off balance. “What do you think they’re talking about?” You ask, pulling Lorenzo’s attention from the television. “He looks nervous.”
Lorenzo laughs, quiet, under his breath. “You.”
You don’t turn back, know your face is going to give it away, can feel the blood rushing, the skin of your cheeks boiling. There’s no way he knows, right? Charles didn’t tell him. He wouldn’t. Lorenzo has no idea how close his joke hits, how deep the knife cuts. He’s just an older brother, living with the sole purpose of embarrassing you. “What?” You say, force out a laugh and almost choke on it.
“Kidding.” He says, and goes back to whatever is on TV. Your eyes stay on Charles, though, infatuated with the way the wind runs its fingers through his hair, the way it tugs on his shirt and inches the boat closer and closer to the yacht, to you. You stare so hard he can feel it, catches your eyes mid-sentence, smile pulling on his words. You’re convinced the upturned corners of his lips can lift even the lowest of spirits. He winks, and then he’s back in the conversation like he never missed a beat.
Charles has made fast friends with the crew long before you got there. You wonder if they know each other, if they’ve met before. Light words flow with the waves, your body relaxing at the loss of the cameras, put aside to enjoy the experience, to breathe in the moment. His pull is gravitational, even through the strange tension and the awkwardness of the unknown. In your uncertainty, you linger just out of his reach, now comfortable enough to participate in their conversations. He catches you staring off into space, into the vast, starry sky, silently identifying the constellations above you. He pulls your mind back to your body with the tap of his foot on your outstretched leg. With what has to be the softest smile to ever grace this beautiful Earth, he calls you to his side with careful eyes and a subtle nod.
You scooch closer to him, half-expect his arm to lazily drape itself around you because that’s what always happens. It doesn’t, and a pit of something grief-like settles in your chest. Instead, your arms hang at your sides, upper arms gracing each other every time one of you even thinks about breathing. Your hands are knotted in your lap, thumb examining the texture of your palm, fingers tugging on each other with agonizing anxiousness.
You were so naive to think, even for a split second, that you would go back to normal. THe tension you thought would settle has only become increasingly taught.
“You okay?” He asks. You nod with a weary smile. A lie, and he knows it. “You worked all weekend?” He continues to prod, ignores the conversation happening around you like it’s just the two of you in a bubble.
“No, just today.” You said. “Meetings all day.” You don’t look at him, eyes focused on your hands, popping knuckles and digging nails into your palm. You can’t remember the last time you were so unsettled in his presence. “I got a huge logo redesign deal.”
“Of course you did.” He bumps your shoulder, jolts you. “You’re the best they’ve got and they know it.”
“I’m not the best one there.”
"Maybe not the most confident.” He laughs, reaches into your lap and grabs your hands, stilling them like a patient partner would do. “But definitely the most talented.” He squeezes your hand tighter, and you slide your fingers between his, envelope his hand in both of yours like you’re the one doing the comforting, squeeze back, thank you.
Your head falls to his shoulder, sigh like you’re carrying the weight of the world, like you’re moments away from breaking down into a pile of ash, blown away with the breeze. A new normal. Maybe that’s what you’ll have to do, create a new normal that’s just as sweet as the old one. When the only options are a life of awkward anxieties or one without him in it entirely, a new normal doesn’t seem so sad.
– –
He gets stopped seven times on the walk from the berth to the parking garage, takes careful time to be kind, especially to the kids. He’ll never not stop for a child, making their grabby hands, freckle faced days time and time again. You’re a good guy, you say after the fifth, know it’s the last thing he wants to do after his long day. I don’t know how you do it.
He shakes his head, sighs. “Le strict minimum ne fait pas de moi un bon gars.”
“You go beyond the bare minimum.”
He shrugs. “The bar is in Hell, I suppose.”
You take the train to Monza, hunkered over your laptop for the entirety of the ride, working. You weren’t planning on coming in until late Friday night,but Charles asked you if you’d get on the next train, if you’d come with him to sponsorship dinners and obligatory events in the leadup to the weekend. Please, he’d texted. Sayingno, doing anything but getting on the 6 am departure this morning, didn’t feel like an option.
You texted Isa for three hours trying to figure out what the dress code was for these events, planning out your outfit. All you could get from Charles was, I don’t know, I’m wearing a blazer, probably. The last thing you wanted to do was stick out like a sore thumb, draw anymore attention to yourself or embarrass him. Underdressed, overdressed, you don’t know which is worse.
You check your phone, scroll through social media and pick at a meal from the dining cart. You’re met with the same stuff you’ve been seeing since that stupid Monaco Vlog on Charles’ YouTube channel. The general consensus amongst all the strangers who know you so well, is that you and Charles are dating. I want this. They way they look at each other. Couples who are best friends make me melt. A friend told you those should make you smile, they don’t, because you aren’t dating. You aren’t dating and he’s going to see them and everyone wants to know everything about you and someone asked on a bikini picture how good Charles was in bed. None of them made you smile.
Does she know she’s the third choice? Not smiling. Charles, serial monogamist or serial cheater? Not smiling. You’re a whore. You’re a slut. I hope you die, bitch. No smiles.
They stung, they made you cry at your reflection in the mirror, private your accounts, limit your comments. They were everywhere, in your Instagram DMs, your Twitter mentions, your TikTok ForYou page. It was suffocating.
Charles was trying his best to check up on you, which only made it all worse. You wanted to believe he wasn’t seeing them. He was just making sure your head was above water, and it was those best intentions that got you invited here, you assumed. It’s easier to keep an eye on you when you’re with him.
It was a good idea, a good effort, for sure. It was a miscalculation, though, Charles seemingly forgetting just how much attention he has to give to strangers at these events. In a room full of people, dressed in your best cocktail attire, sipping a martini and watching people fight for his attention, you can’t remember feeling so alone, so on display.
Everyone knows, or thinks they know, you’re Charles’ girlfriend. You’re a bigger extension of him than ever. Side-stepping cameras won’t cut it anymore, they’re hungry to judge you. Look who Charles brought, what do we think of her? Look what she’s wearing, how she speaks, how she stands. They hate you, you’re sure of it. You aren’t classy enough for this scene, not sweet enough, not pretty enough. You aren’t important enough.
“How are you doing?” Isa finds you leaning on a tall table, poking your olives around your drink with the toothpick they were originally skewered on.
“Are these things always this weird?” You ask, voice laced with hope that there is a learning curve, that there is some top-secret strategy she can give you so you don’t feel so shitty and deflated again tomorrow night.
She laughs. “You’ll get used to it. But, yeah.”
“Any advice?”
“Threaten a sex strike if he leaves you alone for too long.” Your eyes go wide, shocked by her words. She just shrugs, downs the remainder of her drink. “Works every time.”
“Charles and I. We’re not. We–” You stumble over your words, and she looks at you with raised brows and a grin that makes you think Charles might be blabbing to the whole grid. “We’re not sleeping together.”
“Aren’t you, though?”
“Did Charles say something?”
She smacks her hand over her mouth, muffling her laugh. “No, but you just did!”
You nod, jaw clenched, tongue running over the front of your teeth. You’ve been so paranoid that Charles was going to tell someone and you’re the one who can’t keep their mouth shut. “It was once, and you can’t tell anybody.” You whisper, sharp. “Not even Carlos.”
“I’m going to tell Carlos.”
“You can’t.” It comes out as more of a plea than an argument. “He’ll say something to Charles, and then Charles will know I told someone.”
She says your name so sweet and patient, like you’re a preschooler about to get a passive-aggressive scolding. “I’ve never seen two people look like they want to fuck more than the two of you. If Carlos says something, it won’t be the first time someone has vocalized it to him.” It’s a horrifying thought that burrows all the way to your bone marrow. You’ve always thought you were so good at hiding it.
You’re drowning at this party, under the waves of lingering and prying eyes. It’s been an hour since you’ve spoken to Charles, forty-five minutes since you’ve seen him. You pull out your phone and delete all your social media. This is so much worse than wallowing about death threats in the comfort of your own bedroom with the familiarity of your favorite ice cream.
– –
You’re doing your hair when he knocks on the door. Impatient, impatient, impatient. You don’t answer, he keeps knocking, over and over again. “What?” You say, sharper than warranted, opening the heavy door with as much force as it will allow.
“This is what you’re wearing?” He says, walks right past you and into your room. You’re not in the mood for his humor today.
“That’s really funny, coming from you.” You say, go back to the bathroom, hairspray your hair, pull a few face framing pieces out from the low ponytail.
“I look great.” Says the man who hate-crimed an entire country with his jeans in Monaco, who is cosplaying as a banana this weekend.
“Did you dress yourself?”
He appears in the doorway of the bathroom, leaning on it, looking annoyingly handsome in his suit jacket and white button up. “I did.”
“Oh,” You lock eyes with him in the mirror, put on a phony smile, fingers digging through your makeup bag on the counter searching for eyelash glue. “How nice for you.”
You watch him check his wrist in your peripheral, opening the cardboard lash box and pulling them out, carefully applying glue to one. “What aren’t you ready?” He asks.
“I’ll be ready at five.” You said, setting the falsies on your lash line, trying not to make your concentration face because you know he’s watching.
You put glue on the other lash. “We’re leaving at four-thirty.” Your head snaps up from the task at hand.
“You told me five.”
“I did not.”
“You did.” You say, continue putting the lash on before the glue dries because you don’t have another set with you. Quicker, this time, because apparently you’re running a half hour behind.
“I told you it starts at five.” He says.
Oh. He did tell you that. “We have to be there when it starts.” You say in unison, your foggy recollection becoming clear.
“Wonderful.” You laugh, to nobody at all.
“Are you okay?” He asks, and it feels earnest, makes you laugh harder while you hove all your makeup back into the tiny cosmetics bag. There’s no way he’s that clueless, you think, blink hard in the mirror a few times, size up your hair and makeup.
“No, I’m not okay!” You say, toss the bag onto the counter with a heavy noise. “I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do this.” You push past him in the doorway, stop in the little hall between the bathroom and the bedroom, next to the mini fridge and Keuring-clad kitchenette, sigh at the ceiling so you don’t cry, don’t ruin your makeup. You’re already running late, no time for tear streaks. “I feel like a fucking idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot.”
You scoff, don’t even know why you’re angry, so emotional, why every nerve in your body feels supercharged. “You do a great job of letting me feel like one.” You don’t mean it, not really. You say it anyway. You know it will hurt him, and you’re tired of hurting alone.
“What did I do?”
“Nothing.” You say, hoist the ironing board out of the wardrobe. “You did nothing.” You don’t bother setting the legs up, just lay it across the bed.
“What was I supposed to do?” He asks, grabs the iron from your hands and fills it with water in the kitchenette sink, sets it on the iron board, plugs it in and turns it on. You did through your suitcase for your dress and blazer, shaking them out like they’re dusty old relics rather than something you’d bought just for this.
You don’t know what to tell him. You can’t summarize all of your emotions into something succinct and comprehensible, especially not while you’re in the middle of feeling them. Everyone wants me dead, everyone is staring at me, I know I’m not good enough for this. I want to be good enough for this, to make you proud, but it’s so hard. “You left me alone last night.” You say, roll your eyes and take the tears with it. Elaboration feels like a giant, insurmountable, unachievable challenge. “You left me alone last night.” All you can do is repeat yourself, stare at the dress in your hands, examine the stitching like your life depends on viewing the heather grey fabric at a microscopic level.
You can’t look at him, know he’s going to be staring at you with soft, sad eyes. You see him look at you like that and it’s game over. You’re not leaving the hotel tonight, not making it to that event. You’re going to cry yourself a bath, melt into a puddle of your own tears.
“I’m sorry.” He says.
“Don’t be.” You flatter out the dress on the ironing board. “You’re doing your job.” You move the iron in hard, quick lines over the fabric.
“I’m still sorry.” He’s behind you, wrapping his arm over the front of your chest, pulling you back against his chest in some kind of strangely affectionate reverse-hug. It feels to right, so you squirm from his grip, keep at the hasty ironing.
“Don’t feel bad for me.” Flip the dress, iron the other side. “I can hold my own in a room full of strangers.”
“I know you can.” You hate the tone in his voice; proud, almost. You’re not his to be proud of, even if everyone else seems to think you are.
“Can we just?” You look at him for the first time since he dropped the time bomb on you. “Anything but?” He nods. You nod, switch the dress out for the blazer.
“I like this jacket.” He says. You look at the outfit, grey dress, green blazer, white accessories. You thought it was too Christmas-y, the red accents on the bottoms of your heels and the red of your lip. It’s Ferrari red, Isa convinced you, very subtle. “You look good in green.”
“Green is my favorite color.”
“I know.” He laughs.
“You know.” You yank the iron cord from the wall and pull your top over your head without thinking. You meet his eyes, and they don’t dare to waiver from yours. You nod, an I really just flashed you nod, sigh, pick up the dress and walk past him into the bathroom. “You can stare, Charles. I have good boobs.” A laugh from the other room while you step into the dress, pull the straps over your shoulder and leave the back unzipped. “And, you’ve literally been inside me.” You add for good measure. He coughs, chokes on his own laughter.
Leave it to anything but to abandon one elephant and pick up a new one. “We’re talking about that now?”
You smile at your reflection in the bathroom mirror, wonder if he can hear it in your voice, if he knows you that well, listened to you speak so intently for so long that he can pick out minor fluctuations like that. “Talking about what?”
“You are.” He pauses, you tug on the hem of your dress and it doesn’t give any. You thought there was more fabric than there is. “Are you on something?” You can hear the smile.
“I haven’t been not talking.” You say, coming out of the bathroom, ball of pajamas wadded up tight in your hand. He tracks you across the room, back exposed, while you put the clothes in your bag. You walk back to him, pull your ponytail to one side, gesture for him to zip up the back of your dress. You suck in before he does it, even though the dress fits.
“You’ve been telling people?” He says, his warm fingers gracing your skin, sending goosebumps up your spine. This never would have happened before, you lie to yourself. You’ve been blushing everytime he looked at you since you were in high school.
“Maybe.” You say quietly, bit the smile off your bottom lip when his fingers linger at the top of the zipper. “Have you?”
“No.” He says, and when you turn around his eyes trail up your body slowly, taking your permission to stare as gospel, soaking up every inch of you with unabashed eyes.
“I told Isa.” You say, shove an earring through your lobe.
“You.” Your words pull him back from the glossy eyed size-up with a chuckle. “You told Isa.” The other earring, and then you clasp a necklace, wish you had the nerve to make him do that, too.
“Accidentally.” You add, pull the blazer on, tug on the dress again. Still not budging.
“Does that mean I can tell someone?” He pretends to mess with the settings on his watch. Pretends, you know, because his watch is never wrong. He changes it as soon as he’s in a new location. That watch has been right since his plane landed.
You sit on the edge of the bed, put your heels on and wonder if the red bottoms are really with the pain and suffering. “No.”
“Are we going to talk about it?” He asks, follows you to the bathroom where you’re already twisting your tube of lipstick, painting them a dark, lustful red. Ferrari red, a dark, ferrari red.
“We’re running late.” You close the lipstick, put it into your handbag and clasp that shut.
“We are.” He says, and you’re already tugging the door open and gesturing him out. “I’m sorry for not looking out for you last night.” He says in the middle of the elevator ride. “Really.”
“Don’t.” You say. “We agreed, anything but.”
– –
Anything but, you agreed, but he’s silently apologizing all night. You’re not out of arm’s reach for more than a few minutes the entire night, and when you are, he’s got eyes on you, eyes on the bathroom door, eyes on the back of the head of whoever blocks his sightline. He finds you in the crowd every time. The green, he says, I just look for the pretty girl in green. “Don’t say things like that to me.” You told him, even though it makes you warm and fuzzy and grateful when he says it, when he’s there every time you look for him.
“Questa è la tua ragazza, no?” Mattia says to Charles when he introduces you. You’ve met him before, always in passing, though, so it’s a safe assumption to think he won’t know you.
“Qualcosa del genere.” Charles says, thinks you don’t catch it, pulls you closer to his side.
“Che cazzo significa?” Mattia asks, and all three of you laugh with varying levels of awkwardness, too much to say for anything to be whispered in the unsaid.
By the end of the night, you've spoken to more people than you can count and done so in three languages, four, if you count the butchered Spanish class Carlos held with you. You’ve been confused for his girlfriend a dozen times, and somewhere along the line his corrections progressed from just a friend, through no correction at all, to yes.
“Why did you say that?” You asked the first time he did it.
“They’re going to think what they want to think.” He said. It felt like a cop-out answer.
You don’t know if you’re more affected by his presence or if the hoards of strangers are, but it seems like everyone is more interested in what you have to say instead of just staring you down. Calling yourself comfortable would be quite a stretch, but, the room tonight feels a little less like a fishbowl and a little more like a cocktail party.
You love watching him on stage, really love it, him addressing the audience. You almost burst into laughter, the customer service voice that transcends industries and languages and is something you never get to hear from him. He oozes confidence, talking and laughing with the MC and Carlos and Mattia. He’s so pretty under the hard lighting, it makes all his features look sharper, more defined, somehow. Heaven-sent.
When he comes back he says he’s hot, takes off his blazer and hangs it from the back of his chair, rolls up his shirt sleeves. It’s very grassroots political, very, mind-numbingly attractive. “How are you doing?” He asks, takes a sip of your drink because his is empty, maintains insightful, careful eyes and contrasts them by wriggling his brows over the lip of your glass.
“I’m good.” You say, nod and smile so he knows you mean it.
“Really? He sets the glass back down on the tablecloth.
“Really.”
– –
You’re at the track early Friday morning, watching Arthur’s practice session with Carla. You haven’t seen him race nearly as much as you’d like to this year. In Bahrain, you didn’t come to anything except Charles’ race, so scared about bringing Michael along. No Imola. You wish you could have been in Silverstone, watched it on your phone at work with the volume on level one. The only time you’ve actually seen him race in person was in Barcelona, and you were basically hungover that entire weekend. Hungover, and trying to convince yourself Charles was going to kiss you.
You were going to watch him as much as you could this time around, make up for all the ones you missed. That was one excuse for staying away from Charles. The other, everything the two of you did felt emotionally charged. You’re either wishing you could wring his neck, or wishing you could nuzzle into it. Sometimes both. A lot of times, both.
You grab lunch with Carla in general hospitality and then sneak your way into the Paddock Club’s pit lane walk to blow some time. Charles is doing his warm up, probably playing football or doing neck exercises that could be in the director’s cut of a Fifty Shades of Grey film. Carlos, though, Carlos is talking to some engineer about something or another, and you catch each other’s eye. He smiles, looks away, and does a double take, furrowing his brows. You just shrug, make him laugh and shake his head.
“Heard you were being sneaky today?” Charles asks when you’re leaving the track. Someone ahead is taking pictures of him, one of the regulars, one you recognize but don’t know. He’s the one that always asks Charles for a smile and is responsible for half the pictures in his living room.
You step several feet to the side, remove yourself from the frame, out of the shot. Arthur laughs. No free food for anyone, not even the ones he likes. It’s going to be a long time before you volunteer yourself to be tormented online.
He says your name, the photographer, and it startles you because you don’t know him. He shouldn’t know your name, you’ve never introduced yourself to him. Charles looks in your direction, holds out his hand and even though you don’t want to take it, don’t want any pictures of you two walking hand-in-hand, you also don’t want to leave him hanging like that in front of a camera. So, you take his hand and let yourself get pulled back into the shot. Maybe they’ll never see the light of day, you can only hope. Surely, a million other things will be more interesting than this.
Mr. Photographer, Kym, Charles calls him. Kym asks your opinion on the yellow, and Charles laughs because you haven’t been shy with him about your distaste for them. You know Ferrari is really pushing it, though. “I think they’re great. Very avant garde.” You lie.
Yellow not a favorite color? He asks, says your name again.
“She thinks yellow is a coward’s color.” Charles says, laughs with Kym the photographer. You cringe, even though he’s right. “She likes green.”
– –
You wake up miserable on Saturday, spend the day in your hotel room with the shades drawn and the do not disturb sign hanging from the door handle. Flu symptoms, someone from Ferrari, someone worried about Charles’ possible exposure, delivers a rapid test to your door. Negative.
You have your phone playing on the lowest possible volume, still too loud, if you’re being honest, and listen to Arthur’s Sprint Race, to FP3, to Quali.
I thought you didn’t have it in the straights, you mustered up the nerve to text him. Pole, right? You weren’t positive where anyone was starting tomorrow, too many penalties. If you had to bet on being right about one, though, it’s that Charles is on pole. You’d bet on that blind, though.
We don’t, he replies an hour later. Extremely timely for him, especially on a race weekend. How are you feeling?
Like shit. Even with the brightness all the way down, your eyes still yearn to be clawed out when met with the LCD screen.
Sorry.
You wallow, pick at the entirely too expensive meal from room service, take a few too many Advils because you’re pretty sure this bug will kill you before the liver damage gets a chance. You nap, you shower, shiver and shake, and nap some more. COnsider scoping your brain out and squeezing it until it pops, your pulse making your temples bulge.
Your phone lights up the dark room. You don’t know how long you’ve been staring at the ceiling, forcing your eyes closed until galaxies and oil spills of color paint themselves across your eyelids. It could be eleven in the morning. It could be eight at night. Will you answer if I knock?
You say yes, figure he’s still at the track. He’s not.
A single, quiet knock on the door, he couldn’t have used the force of more than a single knuckle. Your eyes are squinted shut when you open it, hand shielding your eyes. He laughs, just as quiet as his knock, slides into the room and pulls the door closed as fast as the slow-closing hinges allow.
He puts the back of his hand on your forehead. You search to make out his features in the pitch-black darkness. “I’m dying.” You say, pitiful.
“You’re not dying.” You think he’s smiling, can hear it, even with congested sinuses and clogged ears.
“I promise I am.” Your voice is so nasally and muffled and sick.
“Poor thing.” His voice is half an octave higher when he mocks you.
“Did you just come here to be mean?”
“No. I came to check on you.”
“Consider me checked.” You said, crawling back into bed. Even with your hands moving wildly in front of you in the dark room, you still run into the side of the bed with a thud. “Don’t laugh.” You warn, and he tried his hardest not to. You read once that orgasms can cure headaches. Briefly, you consider the logistics of it.
Not worth it, you decide. You’d rather have your brain explode all over the walls of this dark room than make things any weirder, leave more feelings and emotions to linger in the shadows of the unknown. “Sommes-nous bons?” He asks, and your face controls into a twisted mess. No way is he doing this now. No way.
“Pourquoi ne serions-nous pas bons?” You mutter, after much hesitation.
“Je ne sais pas.” He says. “Vous vous sentez loin.”
“Je suis là.” You lie, and reach your hand out. He finds you in the darkness, or you find him. You find each other, that’s all that matters, really. You move in the bed messily, tangling the sheets and comforter with your legs, pulling him with little force onto the bed. “I’m here.” You repeat with your head on his chest, rising and falling with each breath. You don’t say it because you mean it, you say it because you know when his thoughts are on the verge of becoming all consuming. You say it because the last thing he needs to be thinking about this weekend is if you’re distancing yourself from him. You might know him better than he knows himself, you think sometimes.
When you wake up in the middle of the night, you’re feeling alive, less corpse-like. He’s not in the room anymore.
You wonder if it’s possible to distance yourself from Charles, or if your lives are so completely and utterly intertwined that it’s too late for that. A life lived together too long to make distinctions, you think. Nothing is yours, not really.
Fight or flight, you will freeze every time. You can’t take the leap, have the hard conversations. If you do it, and it goes terribly wrong, crashes and burns brighter than the sun, there’s no walking away, no picking up the pieces and putting yourself back together again.
When you were young, your Mother once told you she thought you and Charles were each one half of a puzzle–incomplete without the other. You’re lucky to have him, she told you, people spend their whole lives looking for the other half of their puzzle.
You always found comfort in it. Now, you think maybe you and Charles are two separate puzzles that have been combined into the same box. Sure, they could be sorted, but pieces are probably missing, stolen by time or never there to begin with. The only way to sort each other apart would be to dump it all out on the table, slowly rebuild from the corners in, constantly checking the box to make sure that piece is a piece of you, not him. Nobody has time for that task, not even the people who love the puzzles, not even the puzzles themselves, so you sit on a shelf all mixed up until the end of time.
He came to see you on your nineteenth birthday. Drove in from Monaco to the apartment you were renting with University friends. Four bedrooms, six people, two emotional support cats, low ceilings, broken fire escape, one bathroom, and a pantry full of cheap alcohol.
When he arrived, there were significantly more than six people, the pantry full of liquor was a kitchen full of liquor, and you were dancing on a table, drunk in a way only a nineteen year old is on her birthday. Even sloppy and shitfaced, you could make out the distinctive tone of his holler over the hoots of the rest of your cheer squad.
You’d laughed, giddy and loud, jumped off the table and threw yourself into his arms. “Vous êtes ici?!” You yelled into his ear, adjusting the strap of your top.
“Je suis là.” He said, at a sober volume. “Bon anniversaire.”
“Merci!” You laughed, hiccuped. “Buvons!”
He should have been playing catch-up, but you’d never let a friend take a shot alone. A gruesome mistake you learned when you were curled over the porcelain toilet bowl two hours later.
He had your hair knotted into a shitty ponytail, too loose, the part of your haircut meant to frame your face falling victim to the contents of your stomach. He rubbed his hand on your back, like a parent would, and told you it was going to be okay. You spit, laughed into the toilet because he was always so annoyingly sweet to you. You looked over your shoulder and told him so. You’re too sweet to me, you said, he looked at you all sober and earnest and chillingly, and then you threw up again.
You rallied, though. The birthday girl always rallies. You smoked a cigarette from the perch of your bedroom window and listened to Charles talk about some girl and lecture you, going on and on about how you really shouldn’t be smoking. It’s quite bad for you. You wondered what would happen if you threw yourself out the window, if it would hurt more than his bashful words about her. It’s only the third floor. It won’t kill you. Hearing him say her name and blush one more time might, though.
Jealousy is ugly on you. You realize that in the weeks that follow, and decide that until you have the balls to say something to him, to take charge, you don’t get to be jealous of who he spends his time crushing on. Jealousy is for women who lose, and you’re not even playing, not even on the team.
It’s a good thing you do, put it behind you, because he brings her to the family cabin you spend Christmas at every year. He warms her hands in his and kisses her under the mistletoe hung in the entryway. At the end of the week, he thanks you for being so kind and warm and welcoming to her. You smile, hug him. Anytime, you told him, cry yourself to sleep for three days thinking about how happy he is.
She’s too good for you was the nicest thing you ever said about her. It was a lie. Nobody is too good for someone as sweet as him.
You see him next in Austin, a late birthday celebration in the land of unfamiliar accents and oversized portions. The losing battle for the championship is over, Max won in Japan and sat in some stupidly oversized armchair in the cool-down room. It’s ridiculous, honestly, I’m glad I didn’t win, he told you. You went along with it even though you know he’d give an arm and a leg to look like a fool in an oversized armchair in a cool-down room in Japan.
Despite that, because of that, whatever, the pressure is off his shoulders a bit, the need to perform at superhuman level lowered. He seems lighter when you hug him.
“I did a hot lap with Brad PItt.” He tells you.
You laugh at the absurdity of his life, follow him on his walk up the paddock. “And?”
He shrugs. “Tires were shit.” His typical day at the office might be batshit insane, but he’s always going to be Charles–little boy who loves cars-Leclerc.
“Tires were shit.” You repeat. “That's all you got for me?”
“He didn’t speak much.” Make him speak, Charles. It’s Brad fucking Pitt, you would’ve said if it was a few months earlier and things were normal and deadpan and sarcastic between the two of you. You roll your eyes instead.
– –
“You guys should not let them do this.” You tell the girl working the counter at Austin’s–an amusement park in, you guessed it, Austin, Texas. Americans are incredibly creative, you’ve come to learn. “They’re going to kill each other.”
She can’t be making more than minimum wage–seven U.S dollars and twenty-five cents an hour–but there isn’t any amount that is enough to deal with this crowd in karts. Two of the most competitive men on the planet, egged on by each other and by the group of guys in line behind you trying to pay for your group’s tickets.
Do not let them pay for you, you told Charles and he nodded, told you he knew, paid for everyone’s tickets. At any moment it feels like a little red dot is going to appear on your head and Ferrari is going to take you out. They won’t be thrilled to discover both their poster-boy and Disney prince were out late the night before a race, even less thrilled when they find out Charles and Carlos were risking injury in search of cheap thrills with strangers.
You and Isa share a laugh, feel like mothers chasing toddlers around at Disneyland. We should do that, we should do this. Oh! Look at that, we can’t leave without doing that.
You watch them ignore the teenager telling them the rules about the karts, telling everyone not to run into one another. It’s just the four of you; Charles, Carlos, Isa, and you. You know they’ll be crashing into each other before you get through the first turn.
They argue about if they’re fighting for first or fastest lap, flip a coin and throw a fit about the results, play rock-paper-scissors to come to a decision. They lap you and Isa–the rule followers who don’t exceed the speed limit–fly around the track at a speed you didn’t expect anyone to be able to pull from the cheap karts.
Carlos wins, Charles contests, says he’s going to formally protest it. Then, they want to switch to two-seater carts, so you and Isa are passengers to their reckless driving. Charles wins that round. Carlos and Isa leave after that, claim they’re tired. You and Charles stay for a meal.
“It’s a pre-podium celebratory meal.” You said.
“You’re going to curse me.” He groaned.
For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, a meal shared with Charles is awkward, stiff. Before today, you’d barely spoken since Monza. Your social media was still full of death threats, or so you’d been told. The apps have yet to be redownloaded, it’s not healthy for anyone to see that kind of stuff.
This is how it happens, you think. How lifelong friendships fall apart. There isn’t a separation spot that you can pinpoint and say yes, this is where it all went to shit. It’s a gradual separation, a day without a call, a week without a text, a month without speaking. Slow, steady, and sure, until eventually, you live separate, untangled lives.
“So,” He says, eats a fry. “That big work deal?”
“Yeah.” You nod, cross one leg over the other on the cold metal chair. “It’s good. Almost done, I think.”
“I’m sure you killed it.”
“Yeah.” Uncross the legs. “Thanks.” Cross them again. The positioning of your legs isn’t the problem, the cold metal chair that doesn’t sit evenly on the floor and rocks when you shift your weight isn’t what’s making you uncomfortable. The food is good and the drinks are cold and your waitress is a sweetheart with a southern accent and long blonde hair.
Y’all came from the race? She asked. We were busier than ants at a picnic all weekend. You told her yes. I like y’all’s accents, and that was the end of it. He couldn’t get away with that interaction anywhere else in the world.
Everything is perfect, but you’re still uncomfortable. The problem is him. The problem is you. Everything breaks under enough pressure, even unbreakable things.
“I miss you.” He said, because the closer your bodies are, the further away your minds wander.
“I’m here.” You lie.
He sees right through it. “No, you’re not.” Any possible defense would be weaker than the lie, so you don’t bother, sit in suffocating silence and pick at your fries. “Things have been weird since we slept together.” It was a mistake, you brace for the impact of it. Sleeping with him wasn’t a mistake, not for you. It was everything that has followed that was the issue. It should have been the end of a chapter, a closing book, one way or another. Instead, you’re writing an epilogue and flying by the seat of your pants, stumbling over your words and forgetting characterizations and just trying to make it to the next page. You should be in a new book entirely–a book without him or a book with him on every page.
It was a mistake, you brace and brace but it never comes. He doesn’t say it. The other shoe doesn’t drop. He just looks at his hands, twists his rings on his fingers, pops his knuckles. “I don’t know how to fix this.” He speaks, finally, and it reminds you of when he kissed you, when you didn’t know how to make everything better.
More silence, until you’ve both cleaned your plates, until Mary-Grace, the sweet talking southern-belle, sets the check down on Charles’ side of the table, until you watch him google how much gratuity he’s supposed to leave because he’s always scared he’s going to mess up tipping when you’re in the U.S.
Distance is good, you think. Distance. People need distance. “Abu Dhabi is going to be my last race.” You whisper.
He laughs almost, sliding his card into the leather folder and setting it back on the edge of the table. “It’s going to be everyone’s last race.”
“My last race for a while, Charles.” My last race, ever, you think, if distance goes the way you think it will. “I’m going to–I think we.” You sigh. “We need some space, I think.”
“No. Don’t be stupid.” He shoos your words, brushes them under the rug.
“We can’t fix it. We both know we can’t–”
“--I don’t know.” You speak over each other, building a Jenga tower of lies and one-ups until you finally snap into a different language.
““--Doit-on vraiment continuer à prétendre que tout va bien?”
“I love you.” He blurts, cuts you off like it’s some grand admission, like you haven’t been saying it to each other since before the word love had any sort of connotation to it, back when it was just something people said to each other. The distance, it doesn’t mean you don’t love him. You’ll always love him, he’s Charles. You just. You need to breathe, and you can’t catch your breath when he’s around.
“I love you, too.” You say, like you have a million times before, like you’re almost offended he thought any of this meant you didn’t love him.
“No, no.” His voice is desperate, pleading with you to understand something you’re clearly missing. Surely, he doesn’t mean. “How do you… je suis amoureux de toi.” You clench your jaw and blink, and you’re pretty sure one eye closes before the other.
“Don’t say that to me.” You say. Not, I’m in love with you, too, even though you are. You’re trying to put yourself first here, trying to objectively look at your life, at the things in it that are hurting you. Mixed signals, hurting you. Death threats, hurting you. Unwanted attention, hurting you. The common thread is him, you need to separate yourself from him and he’s saying the only thing that could make you waiver.
“Pourquoi pas?”
“Because.” You dig your shaky fingers into your leg, burrow them into the denim. It’s going to bruise, you don’t care, so will this conversation, so will walking away. “You don’t mean it.” Shake your head, lip quivering like a little girl who got hurt on the playground. He does mean it.You know him well enough to know he does, which only makes it that much fucking harder. “And I’m not going to say it back.”
You love him so much, more than oxygen, maybe. You’d throw it all away for him, your heart would let you lose yourself if it meant making him happy, if it meant being with him. You’d stay off social media and pretend nobody was wishing for your death. You’d sit at awkward dinner parties and watch races with limbs that didn’t feel like your own. You’d do it all, if your heart was in charge, because you love him, and can’t fathom losing him.
Space. Space will make it better, ease the sting of unspoken feelings and heavy words and stupid little games. Space will wash the salt from the wound.
He says your name like a plea, a desperate prayer, bloody knees and lit candles. You say nothing, too much internal conflict to sort out to verbalize anything.
The drive to the hotel is deafeningly silent. You can hear the tires of the rental car on the road below, can hear his feet on the pedals, the grind of his teeth because he’s angry at you. He’s angry and he doesn’t want to be. In love with you and he doesn’t want to be. You understand it well, recognize your own emotions being reflected back at you. If you listen hard enough, you convince yourself you can hear the traffic lights changing colors.
You fly home commercial the next morning, skip the race, hear about his podium three days later from a friend.
You don’t go to Abu Dhabi.
--
You don’t go to November, or December’s family dinner. He doesn’t text you, doesn’t call, makes no attempt at playing phone tag.
--
You skip Christmas at the cabin, find out after the fact that he’d done the same thing.
“Ça devient ridicule, chérie.” Your mother tells you over the phone. “Vous agissez comme un enfant. Vous l’êtes tous les deux.” You’d just told her you were skipping your dad’s birthday party. I have to work, you lied. I’ll bring his gift by the house next week. It was the straw that snapped her back, it would seem. “Vous serez ici demain. Pour papa. Il ne t'a rien fait.” She said it sternly, and if you were sixteen you might have been intimidated by it, might have listened.
You told your sister after you got off the phone with Mom that you wouldn’t be there, told her as a heads up, so she knew the shit-show of slamming cupboards and passive aggressive comments she was walking into tomorrow.
Go to your dad’s birthday. He texted you for the first time in months. I won’t go.
I’m an adult. There’s no way to send a message like that without sounding like a child.
I wish I could see my dad on his birthday. Nobody does the guilt-trip like he does. Go. I promise I won’t be there.
Charles is scarily close to your Dad. Growing up, Charles–hell, all of the boys–they were the sons your dad never had, the ones he didn’t realize he wanted. It was infuriating, sharing him. And then Hervé got sick, and then he was gone, and your dad became a father figure for the boys. It was slow, and subtle, but it happened nonetheless.
You were the one who blew things up, who demanded space and time and distance. If anyone should suffer because of it, it’s you, not him. You should be there.
Not more than you. You disagree, but he’s impossible to argue with without being face-to-face.
I can be an adult. You say, even though you aren’t so sure you can be. We can both go.
– –
You lingered in your apartment, wondered if he was really going to show up, if you were actually going to get in the car and drive over there, if it was too late to say you’d caught Covid or something.
You change clothes seven times. Seven, because you want to look good, but not like you tried to look good. Effortlessly glamorous and classy and sophisticated. You don’t know why, it’s not like he’s the one who wronged you. If anyone should be spending extra time in the bathroom today it should be him, he should be trying to prove you wrong, to show you your mistake in walking away.
It wasn’t a mistake. It was the biggest mistake. There were two very distinct sides to the coin. You’re back on social media, back to living your life without death threats and constant judgment. You haven’t spoken to your best friend in months, have no idea what he’s up to, don’t know anything more than his millions of followers. You miss him, but you don’t miss being Charles Leclerc’s friend, Charles Leclerc’s girlfriend. You like having your own name, being a person with traits that go beyond knowing him. You hate not seeing him, not being with him, worrying that you’re going to run into him around any corner. It’s a small, congested city. He could be any of the faces in the crowd.
You get to your parents house after your sister and your brother-in-law and your niece. The house smells like pasta sauce and your mom’s flowery candle–the one that is teetering awfully close to potpourri and death and elderly woman. The Bianchi’s aren’t coming–they thought the party was next weekend, called and apologized three different times in the past forty-eight hours, according to your dad. The Lecelerc’s are yet to arrive.
You slip into comfortable conversation with your family, Mom is right, you aren’t avoiding any of them. You help her out in the kitchen, get yelled at for tasting the sauce, chase your niece around the house, fulfill your duties as the fun aunt, sneak her candy from the jar in Dad’s office and swear just enough that she might call the dog a bitch.
Arthur and Pascale get there first, before Lorenzo and Charles. They’ll be here late, Pascale says to someone, not you. “My brother is an idiot.” Arthur says when you greet him with a tight hug. You haven’t seen him since Monza, either.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” You say. You haven’t seen him, but you’ve spoken to him, congratulated him on moving to F2, offered to take him out to dinner the next time your schedules lined up. Drama with Charles wasn’t going to stop you from celebrating the closest thing you’ll have to a baby brother.
You almost forget he’s coming. Almost, and then he’s knocking and walking through the door with a small, gift-wrapped box and an expensive bottle of wine, charming smiles onto everyone’s face with just his easy presence. He looks good. He always looks good, but damn, he looks good in that sweater and those jeans and his glasses–he should wear his glasses more, you’ve always thought. He doesn’t hug anyone, and you wonder if it’s so he doesn’t have to hug you. Instead, he hoists Gigi up into the air and steals her seat on the sofa. It’s his seat, unassigned, but assigned by years of occupying it at every family function. Gi wants to lay claim to it, but she’s just as happy on Charles’ lap as she is curled up in the corner seat of the sectional.
You keep meeting his eyes, snapping them back to the ground every time. It’s sad, if you think about it too long. You were right,the two of you are too entangled. There’s no separating you, not with ties that run so deep, not when you and Charles are just pieces of a giant web of people. There are a million invisible strings and unseen connections that intertwine every member of your family and every last one of your friends.
You’re painfully cordial. He helps your mom serve dessert, hands you a plate with a corner piece of cake and your favorite ice cream, doesn’t have to ask you like he does everyone else. You don’t even know how he knows your favorite flavor of ice cream, why he remembers that you love the corner piece of cake.
You thank him, tell him the wine he brought is good and overpriced. I’ve missed being judged for every purchase I made He said, and you told him he couldn’t get rid of you that easily. It’s weird, the weirdest, because he did get rid of you pretty easily.
“I’m going to F1. Sauber.” He told you in his kitchen while the two of you were washing dishes. You dropped the forks into the dishwasher with a spattering of clangs.
“Really?” You asked, a glaring absence of excitement in your voice. You knew it was coming, everyone knew it was only a matter of time, a talent like his is destined to get to the top. You knew it was coming, but, still, you selfishly and silently hoped it wouldn’t work out. He was yours, and you wanted to keep him to yourself, hated how much you already had to share him with the rest of the world. Gone for nine months of the year, away from home and away from you, it will be so lonely.
He’s happy to leave you behind, overjoyed, even, and you struggle to come to grips with it, struggle to separate the emotions he’s feeling about achieving the dream versus the ones he feels about leaving you. It feels like the end of the world to your young and naive heart, like nothing is ever going to be the same, like you’re losing another person you love more than life.
– –
It was the beginning of the season, he hadn’t been home in almost two months, was in the middle of a double header, China and Azerbaijan, you think. You were just trying to survive to Monaco. He’d never been so busy, you’ve never missed him so much.
Your roommates were having a party, and you were working late. When you got home, his favorite song was playing through the apartment. You don’t know the name, aren’t even sure about the artist, but you know every word, learned them all against your will. Listened to him sing it under his breath while he cooked and scream it during long car rides and blast from his headphones so loud you were worried he’d have hearing damage. He was always, always, singing this song, and you were always, always, asking him to turn it off.
You wished he was here right now, singing it out of tune and thinking he’s a popstar. You wish you could begrudgingly sing it with him. Instead, you grab a snack from the pantry and lock your bedroom door and put in your headphones, play your music so loud you can’t hear the party on the other side of the door. Tune it out, turn off your longing for him with it.
You can’t wait until you graduate, until you can pack everything up into a little suitcase and spend all of your money and follow him around the world, can’t wait until you never have to miss him again.
Come see me. He texted, a month after your Dad’s birthday, right before pre-season testing in Bahrain. He’s already there, or so you can piece together from the text, from the attachment in the subjectless email he’d sent you. Plane ticket, two, actually. Nice to Dubai, Dubai to Muharraq. Both first class.
No. You replied. Get a refund.
See you tomorrow night. You hated the cockiness of the reply, hated more that you were already packing a suitcase. He didn’t even ask if you were working, didn’t check to see if your schedule was clear or if it was even something you wanted to do.
I’m not your booty call.
Trust me, I know. He said. Ma vie serait tellement plus simple si tu l'étais. Well, he’s not wrong about that one.
Your sister drives you to the airport. “I think I’m in too deep.” You told her. You two have never done shallow, she said. You promised to protect yourself, to prioritize yourself, and to text her updates whenever you had them.
You wished your life was as simple as hers, a good job and a husband and a perfect baby girl. Big family parties and plenty of babysitters for date night and a village that loved and supported everything they did. She had the perfect family, had all her ducks in a row and her shit situated. “I love living vicariously through your insane life.” She said, and you kissed her cheek goodbye.
– –
You follow his instructions, feel like you’re on a delusional scavenger hunt. Board the plane, land in Dubai, board another plane, land in Muharraq, get on the bus, talk to Azim at the front desk of the hotel, he knows you’re coming. Azim isn’t there. He works the night shift, apparently.
Azim is not here. You texted your sister.
Who is Azim?
They call Azim, he answers, and it’s all sorted out when the day-shift manager hands you a key. You wonder what Charles had told Azim. There’s a girl coming, be discreet. It doesn’t seem like him, none of it seems like him. Azim, I’m drunk and tired and invited my best friend, who claims to need space from me, to my room. Please let her in. That felt like more of a possibility, felt like it would confirm your suspicions, that he doesn’t want you here. He wants you, of last year, here. You, of France, likely.
You’re not having sex with him. Not happening, you won’t fold, not even if he asks nicely. It would solve nothing, and has already fucked up enough of your relationship. If you suck his dick again, you won’t be able to be cordial at birthday parties, he’ll forget what kind of ice cream you like, and neither of you will ever be seen at the christmas cabin again.
When you get to the room, the suite, you find there’s two bedrooms. Maybe he wasn’t looking for France, maybe he got into the room and saw there was another room and had a momentary lapse where he thought, you know who would enjoy being here? He bought the tickets, sent the text, and by the time he realized what he’d done, it was too late to back out.
You’re replying to emails on the couch when he walks through the door. That redesign deal, after months and months of back and forth about something as small as the shade of one pixel versus another, is finally launching this weekend. You’re trying to make sure everything is in order, putting the final bows on the project and making sure no ends are left loose.
“Hi.” You call out, in case he forgot he invited you.
“Hi.” He says, appears in the lamp-lit room all comfy in that one sweatshirt you’ve always loved on him. “Are you watching L’Atalante?” He asks, moving past you and into the kitchen. It’s too normal. Eerily so, the plane might have passed through the z-axis or something and now you’re in an alternate timeline where none of it ever went sour.
“No.” Everytime you watch it you think of him. Not in the cheesy, God, I love him and he is such the main character in this love story, way. In the God, I love him and wish he was here to make fun of me for loving this movie, way. “Haven’t watched it in a while.”
“Shame.” He says. “I liked that movie.”
You don’t feel like humoring him about this again, vividly remembering exactly where it got you the last time. Really, you could blame all of this on that fucking movie. If you never watch it, he never asks to come in, you never have sex, and everything is happy-go-lucky between the two of you. “How’s the car this year?”
“Don’t know yet.” He says, pulls a bottle of water from the fridge, the seal snapping when he turns the cap. “Why aren’t you watching L’Atalante?” He takes a drink.
“I told you.” You say quietly, unfocused on your words, fingers rapidly moving across your keyboard.
“No, you told me you haven’t watched it.” He says, flops down onto the couch. “I want to know why.”
“I don’t know, because I haven’t felt like it.” You tell him, a little more annoyed this time. You haven’t watched the movie. A lot of people don’t watch their favorite movie all of the time. “Why do you care so much? Did you call me out here to play anything but?”
“I called you out here because I miss my best friend.”
“You don’t know me, anymore.”
“It’s been a few months, not a few lifetimes.” Even then, he’d probably still remember the corner piece of cake and his hand would probably still hover behind you protectively and find you in the dark rooms and the crowded rooms. You know no amount of time could make you forget his favorite song, or at what point in his day he gets nervous, what he needs when everything is going wrong, and the way he can sober you up with one look. “I still know you. I still love you.” You sympathize with it, relate to it, because nothing is as hard as trying to unlove another person, you’ve come to learn. “I miss my best friend.”
Don’t break. I still love you, Charles. Don’t break. I miss my best friend, too. Don’t break. Don’t break. “We can pretend for a weekend.” He says. “Just, be normal again. Be us again.” Us. There is no us. Don’t break.
It’s not like it’s an argument you can just apologize and move on from. He can’t apologize for loving you, for needing to vocalize it. You can’t apologize for loving him, for not being able to take the leap. Normal, normal sounds so good.
Can we go back to normal after this?
Yeah. Back to normal.
You never should have let yourself believe him. You wonder if he loved you, then. If he knew when he said it that it was a lie. You can’t remember when you knew you loved him, like really, really loved him. It was gradual, you suppose, a combination of time and sweetness and jealousy, of grief and joy and innocence. At some point, you were forced to face the sobering reality, but, you don’t know how long you’ve loved him like this. Does he remember a moment, or was it gradual for him, too?
“Back to normal.” You said. The ultimate game of anything but, the final boss of your friendship. “Just for the weekend?”
“Whatever you want.” He says. “We can do whatever you want.”
Don’t break. Do not break. “Okay,” you crack, and then, with the force of your entire heart, “yeah.” You break.
A long time ago, before the gradual realization, you thought Charles and you were platonic soulmates. Today, can you go back to that? To the platonic love. Was there ever a fork in the road, a wrong turn, a path where you end up somewhere else, or have you always been destined to end up like this, in a hotel room, in a foreign country hiding from the rest of the world and pretending everything is light and breezy and comfortable when it’s far from.
– –
It’s Monday morning, and your weekend together is over. It was a shorter adjustment period than you could have predicted, like relatives who don’t see eachother but once a year. It’s awkward hellos and bombed small talk until suddenly one of you makes a joke and it’s like you were apart for minutes instead of months.
You go to this tourist attraction together, the Tree of Life. It’s a four-hundred-year-old tree that’s like, ten meters tall or something. It sits alone in the middle of the desert and nobody knows how it’s still alive. It’s a spectacle, according to Google, and was nominated to be another wonder of the world. Someone says its roots run fifty meters deep, and it sticks with you, the idea that there’s so much beneath the surface. You wonder if the tree had a companion four hundred and some odd years ago, if it always imagined spending every day with the companion tree, if their roots were tangled fifty meters below the surface. The tree is gone, now, but maybe its roots are still there, fifty meters down, all tangled up in the roots of this tree.
It’s probably not from the Garden of Eden like they claim, and there’s surely a scientifically sound explanation for where the tree is getting its water from in the middle of the desert in a rain-less country. It’s just a big tree, destined to dry up and fall over and burn with the rest of the planet. It’s just a big tree, unless it isn’t.
Does the tree know if it’s special or if it’s just that? You don’t know if what you and Charles have is something special or if you’re just something, but, then again, you aren’t a tree. Maybe the tree knows. Maybe you know. How does a person know that they know?
Charles seems to know, to think you’re worth his unrelenting patience, deserving of the corner slice and the color green, of the stars and the sand and everything in between. He understands you, and he still seems to know, to declare with confidence in the rush of a sports bar in the middle of Texas that he loves you. He’s sure enough that he skips Christmas because you thought space would make everything better, doesn’t tell you that you’re wrong even when you so obviously are, doesn’t stop loving you when you push him in the opposite direction.
You’ve never been that sure about anything, you think.
“Looks a bit lonely, doesn’t it?” He offers into the dry air, taking a picture with his phone. You hadn’t thought of it as lonely until he said something, viewed it as possessing an other-worldly strength and unmatched level of determination. The tree never told its companion it loved it, the tree kept to itself and eventually, learned to live alone in the sand.
You shook your head. “It’s strong.”
“You can be both.” The tree can be both, he’d meant to say, because the Tree of Life is not a metaphor. It’s just a tree.
– –
The weekend, the game of anything but, the avoidance of the World’s biggest elephant, is over. It’s Tuesday, now, breakfast from room service in the suite, awkward tension filling all the available space, compromising each molecule at an atomic level. He’s wearing a red t-shirt, because he always is, and it sits on him so nicely, looks so comfortable on his skin. You’re wearing a yellow pajama top and the silky material is charged with static and clings to you in all the spots you wish it wouldn’t.
How do you know when it’s real? You had texted your sister in the middle of the night prior, two-twenty-three if you remember correctly. You couldn’t sleep, had a bad dream–couldn’t decide what was worse, the nightmare while you sleep or the nightmare when you wake.
You don’t. She replied at a normal hour, when normal people wake up after going to sleep at a normal time. You never know for sure.
That’s fucked.
“I booked a flight home last night.” You told him, picking at the plate of eggs in front of you, the fork scraping on the ceramic plate like nails on a chalkboard, your teeth clinking against the metal everytime it was in your mouth. Just, wrong. In every possible way.
“Why?” He asks, takes a drink of orange juice, a new quirk, you think. He always used to complain about the pulp getting stuck in his teeth. Don’t be such a princess, you’d tell him and he would roll his eyes, drink the remainder of the glass just to prove he could do it without complaining.
“The deal was a weekend.” You say, pretend you’re not conflicted, regretting buying the ticket, admit you’re running away again. “The weekend is over.”
“You’re just going to leave again?” He nods, reassures himself through the sentence, wipes his mouth with a cloth napkin. “Not even going to talk about it?” You stay quiet, teeth clicking against the fork. “I–you are. God, you are so–”
“–Anything but.” You invoke it like a constitutional amendment, like a prophecy, like an unbreakable law.
“Oh, va te faire foutre.” Your head rears back, but you don’t let it sting, know you deserve it. “We’re not doing Anything-fucking-but.” It’s been a long time since he was angry with you, openly like this, cussing you out. He’s scary when he’s angry at you, because he’s always calm about it. Raises his voice, maybe, but never yells at you. You wished he’d scream sometimes, it would be easier to read.
“This weekend was really great, Charles. I don’t want to ruin it.”
“I just. I don’t understand.” He runs his hand over his stubble, deep in contemplation, trying to analyze you, make sense of you. Good luck, you want to tell him. “I love you. I really, really fucking love you. Je sais que je ne suis pas fou. Vous le sentez aussi.”
A single, heavy tear falls from the corner of your eye. You wipe it with the rough cuff of your jacket before it can trail down your face. The inside of your cheek is bleeding, you think, because you can’t feel the pressure from your teeth but you can taste copper. “I’m scared.” There, you said it. You admitted it, exhaled it with the weight of the world, vomited it into his lap.
His lips are tight in their frown, eyes red and glossy like he’s going to cry, too. He laughs, though, a sad and defeated chuckle. “You think I’m not scared?” He asks, voice fighting against itself not to crack. “I’m scared as hell to want you.”
He’s scared? But, nothing scares him. He’s fearless, you’re frightened. Unflinching and hesitant. Gutsy and cowardly. Nothing scares him, not even his own mortality. You’re supposed to believe that you, of all people, you, scare him? Impossible, you think.
“I didn’t tell you for fun.” He continues. “I told you, because it was eating me alive. I was so scared to tell you, thought I would ruin us. Mais tu partais, et je ne pouvais pas te perdre. Je ne pouvais pas.”
Why, why, why is this so fucking hard for you. Sixteen-year-old you, twenty-year-old you, twenty-five-year-old you. Every version of you is screaming at you, we’ve loved him forever, this is all you’ve ever wanted from him. They kick your shins and gut-punch the breath from your lungs and scrape their nails behind your eyes. They are furious, because for longer than you can remember every wish–shooting stars, birthday candles, fountain pennies, fallen eyelashes, dandelions, and ladybugs–they’ve all been for the same thing. The very thing being served to you on a desert platter, all you have to do is pick up the fork.
“Tu as peur?”
“Pétrifié.”
Pick up the fork. Eat the corner piece of cake and savor every bite. Be scared. Be terrified that the world is going to take something pure and wreck it. Be scared, but do it together. Pick up the fork.
“I love you, too.”
You feel strangely out of place with someone else to look after in the paddock. Ferrari hospitality had been your home away from home for years now. The paddock was always different, but maintained a comfortable familiarity, recognizable faces, names, buildings and colors. He was wide-eyed and curious and you smiled at the way the sun bounced off his hair, the excitement he couldn’t contain when amongst the chaos you’d become accustomed to.
“Ask before you touch, please.” You told him, his hand in yours, the same warning Charles had given you the first time he brought you through a garage.
He is heard before he is seen, a loud laugh, a familiar voice calling out your name as soon as he turned the corner. “Hi.” You beam.
“Hi” He says, kisses you, runs his hand through the boy’s hair. “Quoi de neuf, Crevette?”
“Il fait chaud, papa.” He says, with poor enunciation and the dramatic waving of a little hand, fanning himself. Charles nods, hoists the little man onto his hip, whispers something in his ear. A private conversation between the two of them, you don’t dare intrude. “Dis-sa.” Charles says, repeats it when he’s met with a giggly belly laugh.
“We go.” He says, in little, butchered english with a thick french accent. It’s easier to decipher a babble.
Charles laughs, quirks his brows at you, shrugs. “We go.” He backs away from you slowly.
“We go, where?” You say, laughing, too, because you can’t not laugh at your little boy’s giggle. It’s too pure, cracks even the toughest exteriors. Charles looks to his mini-me. “Où allons-nous mon amour?”
“La crème glacée.” He says, beams at his father.
“You coming for ice cream, Maman?” Charles asks, holds out his free hand because it’s a rhetorical question. He’s looking at you with the eyes that make you sober and find you in any crowd, but he doesn’t have to have eyes on you to know you’re coming. “Do you think they have Maman’s favorite flavor?” He asked.
“Ouais. Ils l'ont eu."
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