Call you mine - Charles Leclerc

Chapter 6

April 24th, 2022

Ali had spent the entire weekend avoiding Charles. After her talk with George she was regretting putting him in that position, even though he told her he didn't care. She loved George, and being friends with him most of her life made him an important person in her life, and didn't want to risk their relationship. She was internally debating how she could get out of dinner.

That was until his race ended bad. He had done good all weekend in Imola, until he spun chasing Perez, and ended the race in P6. Without even realizing it she was making a beeline for the Ferrari motor home where she saw him with his back to her talking to his preformance coach Andrea.

"Hi" She said placing her hand on his biceps, with a sympathetic smile as he turned around towards her, a frown on his face.

"What are you doing here?" He asked with annoyance. He was upset about how the race turned out, and al his friends had made the trip this weekend, and that just made it worse. And on top of that, the girl in front of him had ignored all his text, and every time he had seen her, she had turned around.

"I wanted to make sure you were okey." She said trying to ease the tension between them, and frankly hoping he hadn't noticed her behavior over the weekend.

"Te ne do due al minuto". (I'll give you two a minute) Andrea told Charles who just nodded.

"Well as you can see, I am okey." He told her, gesturing for her to give him a better reason  for coming to see him. She could see he clearly wasn't impressed by her showing up, and quickly realized coming here maybe wasn't the best idea. 

"How about I let you cool off, and do what you need to do before you can leave, than you can call me if you still want dinner with me before we go out?" She waited for an answer, but the look on his face told her everything she needed to know. She turned around to  walk away.

"Why have you been ignoring me?" He asked before she could walk far.

She stopped in her tracks, of course he would ask her straight out, problem was she didn't know what she was supposed to answer. Now it was her turn to keep quiet. Before she could decide what to answer he walked up behind her, and turned her gently around by her shoulder.

"Why?" He asked again, pressing the matter. Looking her straight in the eye. The annoyance now gone, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what vibe he was giving off.

"I don't know how to do this" was all she could mutter out.

"Do what?" He asked not understanding what she meant, and by the look she was giving him, she probably didn't fully understand herself.

"I was in a relationship I thought would be endgame, and after that ended I don't know how to properly move on. Everybody expects me to just go back to being carefree and single, but I just don't know if that's me anymore. And you seem to bring that side out of me, so I guess I just stepped away before I could actually let myself be that person again" She said before she could even comprehend what she had said.

"What changed?" He said with no clear emotion showing.

"You had a bad race." She said cause honestly she didn't know what changed, she didn't even know if anything actually had.

"You changed your mind because I had a bad race?" He asked with an amused chuckle, one she couldn't tell if was laced with sarcasm.

"I changed my mind because my first instinct when you had a bad race was to see if you were okey. I don't want to overthink, I want to go with the flow." She surprised herself with her answer. She knew that was the reason, just saying the words out loud made her realize that she was okey with figuring out her new normal along the way.