Full Throttle

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"Ah! There she is! Our racing driver!" Beth squealed when she saw me emerge from the terminal exit at Stansted Airport, where she, Lexi, and Jacob were picking me up from.
"Hey, guys!" I grinned, barely containing my excitement. Lexi pulled me into a hug and the other two shrouded me as well.
"Need. Air," I croaked.
"How was Australia?" Lexi asked, letting me go and swatting away Beth for a second.
"It was good, hot on the Friday, but it cooled down afterwards. And no, before you ask, there weren't any massive spiders in my hotel room, and I didn't have to check under the toilet seat for snakes. I did, however, see a fucking enormous spider at the track on Saturday. Massive thing, probably bigger than my hand!"
"Ew," Jacob said, "spiders give me the creeps. You make any friends?"
"Yeah, actually, Lando Norris, and I would consider George Russell to be my friend as well. Of course, Alex Albon and I already got on well, but I also think that Daniel Ricciardo is an ally of mine, as well as, you'll never guess who, Max Verstappen. Well, I don't think he's a friend, but he's a colleague that I trust. And he basically told an annoying reporter to shut up or leave the press conference."
"Did he really?"
"Yeah! And he was one of the driving forces to get that guy who asked me about Dylan kicked out."
"Wow," Lexi said, amazed.
"We should probably move, guys. I'm also pretty tired and I just want to go to sleep. I forced myself to stay awake on the flight over."
Jacob grabbed my suitcase and Lexi took my duffel bag, and we headed out to the car.

"How's Michael, by the way, Beth?"
"He's alright. He's with mum at the moment. He keeps waking me up in the night still but Doc said he should start sleeping through the night soon."
"That's good. He probably isn't sleeping because he can't wait to see his Auntie Jessie," I said in a funny voice. Michael was Beth's son. He was almost a year old and, to me, he was utterly adorable. Michael's dad had left Beth the day she told him that she was pregnant, and then three months later she met Lexi, who was now her girlfriend. I'd known Lex since I was about 11. She did Karate at my gym and so I met her when I was at training for karting. Beth and Jacob had been my friends since primary school, and they used to come to almost every single race of mine, even when I was in Formula Two. Although, Beth stopped when she found out she was going to have a kid. We'd all raised Michael; Beth of course was 'mummy' to him, Lexi was 'mama', Jacob was 'Uncle Jakey', and I was 'Auntie Jess Jess'.
"How's your schedule for this week then, Jess?" Jacob chirped from the back seat.
"Busy, as usual. Got tomorrow off, tomorrow is Monday, right?"
"Yeah," Lexi said.
"Okay cool, yeah, I've got tomorrow off to catch up on the jet lag. Then training starts again on Tuesday through to Friday. I've got to get the plane over to Faenza on Saturday and then I'm staying in my apartment there, going in to work with the team, and doing training until the Wednesday when I fly over to Bahrain for the race."
"Why can't you fly over to Bahrain on Thursday instead?"
"Track walk exists, you know?"
"Oh yeah, I forgot."
"It sucks that you have to keep flying over to Faenza every weekend that you're home," Beth said.
"It would be a lot easier if I lived over there permanently, to be honest. But I don't want to leave dad or you guys. Although, it looks like me living there might be an inevitability, I need to be close to the HQ so I can get much better. Formula One is so much more intense with everything," I sighed. I already knew that I'd have to move over to Italy soon, I already had the date planned and everything, but I wanted to ease everyone into the prospect first so that they weren't completely shocked when I announced that I was going. Beth pulled into my street and Dad was outside the house. I jumped out of the beat up green VW Polo and ran to him, crashing into his open arms.
"I am so proud of you," he whispered to me. He took my shoulders and pushed me backwards, examining my face.
"No tan then?"
"Course not," I laughed.
I said goodbye and went inside to lug all of my things up to my room and then go down to the kitchen to fetch the brew dad had just made for me and collapsed onto the worn-out, faded red sofa.
"Lovely tea, dad."
"That's alright. So, tell me everything."