𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗹 | 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗿𝗰

Chapter 8

After last night, there was no question in it that I was tired when I was woken up at 9 by Lily, who was clueless to the fact i'd even been out. I felt like a zombie when I finally pulled myself out of bed. Charles was in a hotel room by himself so I was hoping he'd woke up to his alarm and not slept in as the drivers had practice 3 in an hour or so.

Within half an hour I was freshened up and ready to leave the hotel to meet mine and Lily's parents, who once again were already ready to go way before we were. In fact, they were ready way before I'd even woke up. As we left the hotel, the taxi we had ordered was already waiting outside and waved us over. The taxi driver tried their best to speak english with us, every now and then getting words mixed up and not understanding our responses very well. I looked outside the window and watched the shops and bars pass by as we drove past them, which reminded me that tomorrow night I was going out and hadn't even asked Lily about it yet.

"Tomorrow night, how do you feel about going out?" I asked Lily, not saying who with just because I was too tired to explain how I'd ended up being asked in the first place. "As in to a bar by the way" I made sure she knew what type of out I meant as you could say out and mean to a restaurant but I was meaning out out.

"Sounds good, random but I won't say no to a night out before we go back home" she said thankfully. I was going to go either way of course but I preferred Lily bring there so Charles wasn't the only person I knew personally.

The taxi dropped us off outside the gate of the paddocks and we gave him some money for our trip. I made sure to say thank you to him in his language as I believed it was respectful to try and make an effort to speak others languages when they made an effort to speak yours. We entered the paddocks and our parents were there to greet us, well our mamans were, I had no idea where my papa or Lily's had gone. My maman soon answered the question for me as she pointed towards the food stand, where they were ordering food. Typical. That was where me and Lily got it from.

We spent some time with our parents as Practice 3 took place. My favourite thing to do was watch the facial expressions of people as their favourite drivers either went up or down in positions after every corner. Some people would be smiling whilst others were nervously chewing on their lip but all their eyes would be fixated on the screens in front of them. Me and Lily kept watching a certain person whose facial expressions were so funny as you could tell the amount of passion they had for the sport behind them. One moment they'd be smiling and laughing and the next they had their head in hands and was shaking their head in disbelief.

Practice 3 finished with Verstappen in P1, Charles in P2 and Perez in P3. That meant that those three drivers would start feeling the most comfortable for the qualifying session later on in the day. As practice 3 had finished our parents wanted to go out for a bit and go shopping as they wanted a bit of a walk about before qualifying sessions but me and Lily decided to stay as we preferred keeping track of what was going on.

We made our way through the paddocks as we had done the day before and Lando made his way over to us again as if  it was normal for this to happen now. "Hey Lils and Alena". Lils?? Wow he just fully stole my nickname for her. "What are your guys plans for tomorrow night?" he asked. I knew what was coming so I knew that Lily was now going to find out who we were joining at the bar tomorrow.

"Oh, we are going out" Lily answered with a big smile on her face. "It's a place next to our hotel we are going to"

"Who asked you before me?" he laughed "that's what I was going to ask, if you guys were coming out tomorrow after the race with all us guys", guys referring to him and the other drivers. Thanks Lando just drop me in it I thought to myself. Of course Lily turned to me with the face of you clearly have something to tell me but I liked to act oblivious to that face.