Sunday, September 2nd, 2018- Monza, Italy
Italian Grand Prix, the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza
It hadn't taken you particularly long to track down GP and Kaia, especially once Daniel had made his excuses, something about needing to find Michael to get in the right headspace for race day, and had gone his separate way, taking with him the vast majority of the distractions that had been plaguing you.
You lingered as Daniel made his departure, standing in the same spot he'd left you in with your eyes locked on his retreating figure and your feet remaining rooted to the spot until he was lost in the swathes of people that roamed around the paddock. You didn't know why you'd felt the sudden need to pause, to watch until he was completely out of your line of sight, his dark head and team branded attire now swallowed up by the crowds, but you'd listened to the urge regardless.
For whatever reason, once he was gone, the inside of your head now blissfully calm, like it's not quite as bogged down in the memories of everything that had happened this weekend as it had just a few moments prior. With your thoughts no longer overwhelmed by Daniel's presence or oversaturated by Max's, you find that it's actually quite easy to focus on the moment at hand, the task of hunting down Max's daughter and his race engineer not feeling quite as daunting as it had been before.
On autopilot, like your body has a mind of its own, you weave your way through the maze of buildings and passageways that make up the paddock, the layout of the Red Bull camp forces you to cut through the public thoroughfare, since here at Monza, or at least during this season's layout, there's no direct path from Red Bull hospitality to the garages along the pit lane.
After poking your head into the team's garage, which at present is sparsely populated and vastly less so than it will be in just a matter of mere hours, it takes you no more than a second or two to ascertain that GP and Kaia aren't here. Wanting to cause as little disruption as humanly possible, you only ask a handful of people if they'd seen either of them today or knew where they might be, not feeling particularly surprised when all you get back is one clipped, terse 'no', one after the other.
About ten or so odd minutes later, when you finally track them down, your reward takes the form of the sight that greets you, of the little mismatched pair placidly sat in the conference room where the morning briefing had been held, their two chairs positioned directly across from one another. The scene is made all the better by their body language and placement, casually mirroring the other like it's somehow escaped both their notice as the silence is interrupted only by the occasional rustling of papers or the scratch of a pen in motion.
Not knowing what else to do, you join the two, pulling out the chair next to Kaia's, smiling back at the little girl when she briefly peers up at you, grinning brightly before returning her attention to her current work of art, the wooden surface of the table already littered with similar looking drawings.
You exchange a nod in greeting with GP, who returns the gesture before glancing sideways at Kaia, his eyes narrowed in scrutiny as he carefully assesses her little face, clearly checking in on her, not permitting a single detail of her features to escape his notice, only returning to the papers he'd been pouring over once he's verified that she's perfectly fine.
Leaping at the opportunity to catch up on some of the work you'd fallen behind on after the insanity of the last day and a half, you decide to capitalize on the moment, for however fleeting it may be. Feeling eternally grateful that you'd thought to bring your bag with you today, you pull your laptop out and open it, as ready as you ever will to start working your way through the seemingly endless flood of emails that sit unread and unanswered in your overflowing inbox.
