Rêveries

Chapter 59.

Mom and Dad dropped us off at the airport and we flew back to Nice, where Lorenzo was the one to pick us up. He asked us how my parents were, not bothering to ask us how our trip was because I'm pretty sure Lorenzo always will care more about my parents than about any of the rest of us. I told him they were fine and then he went on to ask us what we had done in Sweden, where I just told him the parts that involved my parents because I know that's the only part he wants to hear from that trip.

When we walk through the door, Pascale comes to greet us and Arthur skips into the hallway to hug me. It almost shocks me how happy he seems to see me. He squeezes me tightly and I nearly choke. I've been gone for ten days, but before that, he was in Germany for racing reasons, so I haven't really seen him in almost three weeks.

"Je ne t'ai pas vu depuis une éternité," I haven't seen you in forever, he sighs as he lets me go. I laugh and shake my head, watching him greet his brother a lot less enthusiastically.

"Tu m'as vu deux fois par an pendant un moment," You saw me twice a year for a while, I point out, because he survived that, didn't he?

"Mais maintenant j'ai l'habitude de t'avoir de l'autre côté de la maison," But now I'm used to having you on the other side of the house, he argues as he grabs my suitcase and takes it with him through the house, walking in the direction of my bedroom.

I greet Pascale properly and then Charles goes up to his room to simply repack his bag, as he's going directly to Maranello before flying to England. I went up to unpack my own back, thinking I have to do some laundry before packing for Silverstone. Arthur sits on my bed asking all kinds of different questions about France, Germany and Sweden since I managed to go to all of those places since I saw him last. Then I listen to all his crazy stories of the shit he's doing with his teammates when he's away, except for practicing.

Charles comes in to kiss me goodbye before leaving, and then Arthur and I go to help Pascale with dinner while Lorenzo sets the table for the four of us. I'm kind of upset that Charles couldn't stay for dinner at least, but it's a long drive to Maranello and he doesn't want to get there too late if he has to be up early for simulator tomorrow.

The first practice back with Elliòtt was awkward to say the very least. He did end up apologizing for what he said and I told him not to worry about it, but I also made sure to tell him that we're just going to get it through the season, and then I don't want to continue this, which he seemed to agree on. I also made sure to tell him that I want to be able to take weekends off. I need to know when I can be off from practices and I need to know I can go somewhere without worrying about disappointing my dance partner all the time.

We practice Monday through Friday and then I have the weekends off, no matter if I'm going to a Grand Prix or not. If we have work to do, we'll have to make sure to work harder during the weeks. Elliòtt didn't seem to like it, but he had no right to tell me no.

So we worked on our next number, trying to say as few words to each other as possible. The next round was in Hungary and we had less time to prepare now than we'd had previously, but it's not like we're doing crazy new choreography every time, so it's not going to be too hard if we actually work hard enough during the weekdays.

I spent my time out of the studio with Arthur. We went to the beach, he came shopping with me, we got ice cream and we just spent time together at home. We'd watch movies or some TV show or just talk to Charles on Facetime. One of the evenings where we were on Facetime with Charles, I started teaching Arthur how to dance and we showed Charles while I told him how easy it had been to teach Arthur compared to teaching him.

I went to the Silverstone race, where I could literally watch the race from our hotel room as we could see the track right from our balcony, but Charles dragged me to the paddock every day. He got p3 in that race which was his fourth podium in a row, and while he wasn't that happy about them not being victorious, I was so proud of him.