Heard it through the grapevine

Chapter 10

Singapore had been the last time that Charles and Helena had talked outside of work.

She hadn't heard from him after she saw him with Lando in the hotel reception in Singapore. The next time she'd seen him had been media day in Japan, but no apologies had been exchanged between the two. On the contrary, every time their eyes met, his eyes would look at her with a cold and distant look before quickly tearing away from her eyes again. The apparent radio silence between them had hurt Helena, and she was still confused as to why he was acting this way towards her. She kept thinking that perhaps it was her who had done something to trigger it, but she could not think of anything that could have caused it. 

With her sudden lack of distraction in the workplace, she'd found herself immersing herself completely in her work, and she was really starting to love it. Media day was rough, but it was also her favourite day, knowing how everything had to move smoothly, executed to perfection, in order for them to get all the media material they needed. And she still loved working together with Carlos and the rest of the team, they had been nothing but nice to her, and she saw herself slowly beginning to become an integral part of the team. 

Kika had called Helena a few days after leaving Singapore. She'd heard what had happened, no doubt because Charles had told Pierre. "Charles can be a self-centered prick sometimes", she'd told her which had made Helena chuckle slightly. But Helena had made sure to tell Kika that she was the one that had pulled the plug, and it would be hypocritical of her to be angry with him now. 

"Yeah but still, it was pretty heartless of him." Kika was right, it was. But it had also not been his intention for her to find out the way that she did. She wasn't making up excuses for him, but feelings and rationale were two different things. While she felt hurt, his actions were also justified. But it just also meant that Helena was done with him. There was no point in pining after someone, or trying to make their friendship work, when he'd disregarded her and their friendship so quickly. Although she didn't tell Kika that, she had spent the past two weeks trying to forget about him as much as possible, while still working together. They'd not known each other for more than two months, but trying to get rid of her feelings had turned out more difficult than she'd planned. 

Everything had been going relatively well until the last day in Japan. Helena had tried to act civil around Charles, not wanting to let it affect their working relationship. She was still hurt, but she figured that they could work through it like adults. That had not been the case though. Charles had suffered a DNF on Sunday as a result of an engine failure. On the 52nd lap. He'd come out of his car fuming, and Helena had actually felt bad for him. She knew how badly he wanted it. However, that pity was quickly turned into anger when he'd looked over at her, still fuming, rolling his eyes at her. She felt herself seeing red, and she'd following him to his dressing room. He'd tried to slam the door shut but she'd caught it just in time, slamming it right open again, making it slam against the wall. 

One thing was to ignore her, another was to direct his anger about his performance towards her. She didn't think that it was okay for him to make it difficult for them to work together. He could ignore her all he wanted outside of work, but she couldn't deal with him making it difficult for her to do her job properly. 

"What do you want from me, Helena?"  he'd said as he'd noticed her entering the room after him. "I'm not in the mood for this right now." 

"No, clearly not."  He'd stopped what he was doing and looked up at her. His face did not show any other emotion than anger as he looked at her. She was completely dumbfounded, not understanding for a second why he was directing his anger towards her.

"Look, I'm sorry that the race went shit, but please don't take it out on me." He scoffed and went to pick up his water bottle in the other side of the room. 

"What do you want from me, Helena?" It was weird to hear him say her name again, she hadn't heard that in a while now.