renegade / cs55

nine

cut the headlights, summer's a knife
🎶 cruel summer by taylor swift

INEZ

THE MINUTE I arrive back in Monaco, coming home to Lando's empty apartment, I throw my stuff into my room and get changed. Once the soles of my running shoes hit the pavement in rhythmic beats, intermingling with the rev of a Ferrari around the corner, the tension in my body finally uncoils.

It has been a stressful few days. Ever since Eleanor slapped me in the face with a—probably healthy—dose of reality, I decided I'd been doing enough moping around. Although my therapist would probably tell me to not be so harsh on myself, Eleanor's words did sting, badly.

I did have a job, one that I was currently on sick leave from, but the reality was that at some point or the other, I had to decide whether I wanted to return to that job. And somewhere along the line, I'd realised that maybe it wasn't just my mental state keeping me from working, it was the job.

The only issue was, I had no idea what to do with that knowledge. I'd gone back to London to check up on the apartment and make sure all was in place, but I'd also returned to meet my brother for lunch. While that conversation could not have gone better and he was incredibly supportive of my situation, one where I was still not cleared by my therapist to work, I still felt a heavy weight of guilt on my shoulders for leaving him to run the business on his own.

When my parents passed away, they'd left us both an equal share of their wealth, and my brother had used his to fund his accountancy firm. My parents had always wanted him to become successful, had always believed in his ambitions. I'd always been the dreaming, wandering child that didn't know where she wanted to end up.

After their deaths, I didn't know what to do with my life. I was only seventeen, but my brother, who was twenty-four at the time and fresh out of his MA degree, stepped up and offered me a job with little to no experience. I worked my way up from serving coffees and taking notes during meetings to working alongside him after completing a BA next to a part-time position. I wouldn't be where I was today without my brother.

And so, to even entertain the idea that accountancy wasn't making me happy... it riddled me with guilt. Fear, too, because I didn't know what my brother would say. Would he be supportive? Or would he feel betrayed?

So I set out to do what I always did when I couldn't get my thoughts straight—I pull on my running shoes and let the sound of my feet hitting the pavement drown them out.

The change of scenery from dreary grey London to sunny skied Monaco does me wonders. I feel my lungs expand with each smogless breath, my tight chest slowly but surely relaxing. I love this place.

I'm sweaty and panting by the time I reach my favourite viewpoint, the famous Tête de Chien. It overlooks the entirety of Monaco and a crescent of land beyond it: Cap Martin.