Loud and Clear (F1 x CL16)

9. Reset

The penthouse was beautiful. It was definitely worth the price I had to pay. And Pierre thought the exact same thing. The moving company had just arrived after us, they were so stuck in traffic that they had four hours of delay. But we were now unpacking everything after all the stuff got carried upstairs. The couch was already placed together with my bed. And we were now prepping the living room.
"I can't believe that we packed this all yesterday. It's crazy how much we did." Pierre said.
I raised my hand. "What I did, you mean. You did like two boxes." I said.
"Hey I did help this morning with getting everything on the truck!" He denied.
"And I had people to do that, I paid them. You could've just stayed in your room and wait until we would go ourselves." I said back. This was a useless argument.
"I was just trying to be ni—" Pierre got interrupted by a knock on my door.
I didn't invite anyone? "Will you open the door?" I asked Pierre but he shook his head.
"I need to pee. Go check it out yourself." And he left to go to the bathroom.
I rolled my eyes and stood up from the couch. The apartment was huge and I could only hear the soft knock because it was so reverberating in the house. Probably because there were no furnitures yet.
I opened the door and my heart stopped beating when I saw the person at the other side of the door. I wanted to slam the door shut, yell, anything. But I just stood there.
"Hey..." Charles said and in that moment my thoughts came back to me.
"How the hell did you get here?" I asked. How did he know where I lived? After moving in an hour ago.
"Pierre... gave me an address to pick him up later today. I kinda put one and two together." Charles said with a small smile and my heart started to hurt again. Even one little smile was enough to make me feel weird.
"I'm going to kill him." I gritted my teeth.
"May I come in?" Charles asked and I nodded, opening the door for him. Why? I don't know. I walked in after him and looked at him as he was checking out my new house. He whistled when he saw the view. "You sure got a good place." He said. And he was right. This was an amazing place.
I wanted to ask Charles why he was here when I heard Pierre opening the bathroom door.
"Hey, Brie, when is Ferrari posting your contract?" Pierre asked, not aware of the Ferrari driver in the room. He was just staring at his phone, until he noticed the silence.
I turned to Pierre, who stared at me, then to the man behind me. 
"You're signing with Ferrari?" Charles said and I immediately turned around to the man who was going to be my teammate next season.
"Uhm... surprise?" I said and gave him a weak smile.
He didn't return a smile. His face was just one big conflicted expression and I couldn't tell how he felt about this big news. "How? What? Who's leaving Ferrari?" His questions made it clear. He was scared to lose his seat.
"Seb is retiring. Ferrari had a contract for me as long as I drove good this season. And I did. Until you crashed into me and ruined my possible first win!" The words just came out. I didn't want to say it to him. But on the other hand I did want that. I had these conflicting feelings inside of me for too long.
"I crashed into you? At karting? I thought we had sorted this out... and why did you ignore me for two whole weeks!" Charles was fuming.
"No! You crashed into me in Hungary! You ruined everything, Charles." I spoke my heart out.
"That was Seb!" Charles almost yelled at me. "Haven't you watched a replay of the start?" He asked, this time in a normal tone.
I skimmed through my memories. No. I didn't watch it. "I didn't..." I said softly and looked at my feet. "I'm so sorry." I meant it.
"So that's why you ignored me for the whole summer break? Because you thought I crashed into you?" He asked and all I could do was nod, and I did not meet his eyes. I couldn't bring myself up to do that.
"Can we maybe talk about you two being teammates next year? More exciting than talking about a situation that did not happen, right?" Pierre interrupted the moment and I could just kiss him right now. He always knew when to step in to an argument.
I turned to Pierre. "I don't know if that's really exciting, Pierre." I said as I locked my eyes on him. He was my comfort in those moments. But in the meantime I still wanted to beat the shit out of him because of him leaking my address to Charles.
"Don't you want to be teammates, Brigitte?" Charles asked and I turned, finally meeting his eyes.
"I do. I just... how can we be teammates if we hate each other? Because I was planning to ignore you before we started to talk..." I spoke the truth. I was thinking about ignoring him. Teammates weren't supposed to be friends necessarily, I just liked to have a good relationship between me and my teammate. But we hated each other at the beginning of this season. And when I first talked with Ferrari I still hated him. And I made clear that I would just ignore him at all times necessary. But now that I started to feel something else than hatred towards him I didn't want to ignore my teammate.
"Do we?" Charles said and he stepped towards me. "Because I certainly don't hate you." His words shocked me, but I did know he didn't hate me. He cared about me. He had texted me every day to ask how I was doing. Only I had closed myself off from him.
"I don't hate you... I thought I hated you for the crash. But that was wrong." I was really pouring my heart out. But I also stopped my heart from going further. Because Charles was coming insanely close to me.
"I forgive you. And I'm really excited about us being teammates." Charles said and I had to smile. He looked down at me and was about to stroke my cheek with his fingers when I stepped away.
"Right. Teammates. I'm happy we can be on good terms again." I closed myself off for him, entirely. My heart was screaming against my mind. My mind was saying this to him. My heart was trying to get the better of me and deny everything I just said.
Charles took a step back as well. "Alright, teammate." He looked at Pierre. "Wanna go to my place, or are you going to help my future teammate first?" He asked Pierre.
"I'm sorry, I promised her to help until everything was unpacked. I'll text you when we're done." Pierre said.
Charles nodded. "Sure. Good luck then." He said and walked to the door.
I followed him to the door. "I'm going to apologise for one last time. So, I'm sorry for assuming that you crashed into me." I gave him a weak smile, which this time was answered with a slight smile from himself.
"I forgive you, Brigitte. Just don't ignore me again. That's not what friends do, right?" He said what I made clear to him. But deep in my heart I just wanted more.
"Right. I'll see you at the next race I guess?" I asked him. But I kinda hoped he would stop by some more now that I lived here.
"Of course. And maybe I'll come by this week to see the house when it's finished." He smiled at me and then left. My heart was racing. He really had an effect on my heart.
I got back into the room and saw a grinning Pierre sitting on the couch. "Did you do this on purpose?" I asked him, now not so friendly.
"What? Noooo." He said and I immediately did not believe him. "I mean it. I only wanted you to talk to him. Not him finding out about Ferrari!" Pierre threw his hands in the air, making a scene of his denying. "I thought he would come by later."
I sat down next to him. "I really want to hit you right now, but for once I'm letting my heart speak. So thank you." I hugged him and he hugged me back.
This new friendship with Charles was the one thing that needed to happen. Because right now all my worries were washed away. It felt like this summer break reset my mind.
It reset my heart.

I was sitting with Pierre and Charles in my new house. It was only a few days before we would get back to racing after the summer break. I wasn't sure about inviting Charles over, but I had to work on our friendship, it would make next season a lot easier. And my heart wanted to be close to him. My mind on the other hand was completely different. It was telling me to keep my distance, which made it easy to stay away from him as long as we still got to be friends.
"Why did you invite us over?" Pierre asked as we all sat down on the sofa on the balcony.
"Because Ferrari is going to post the announcement any minute now and I wanted to celebrate it with you two!" I had picked three champagne glasses and a big bottle of champagne.
"Oh of course! How is it going with Toro Rosso though? I saw the announcement this morning." Charles said, he sat opposite me, while Pierre sat next to me.
"Fans are freaking out, they don't know where I'm going of course and Seb hasn't told anyone about his retirement yet." Social media was going crazy. Assumptions were made about me leaving Formula One, and even me being pregnant... like come on! I did have to laugh at some of them. But some were just wild.
"Did you see the one where they thought she was pregnant? They clearly misunderstood the situation." Pierre said to Charles. They both had to laugh.
"I can't even have a baby now, I'm only leaving at the end of the season." I had to laugh with them.
"They clearly read the post wrong. But I think everyone will be really excited to see you at Ferrari next season." Charles smiled at me and I smiled at him.
"I hope so." I said. And at exactly that point a notification came in on my phone.
Instagram: Scuderiaferrari tagged you in a new post.
O my god! It was happening. I was freaking out. Charles got the same message and we opened the post on Instagram.
It was a picture of me and Charles together, that one time where we celebrated my very first pole position in Hungary. He had lifted me in the air while he hugged me. The picture was beautiful.
'Scuderiaferrari our driver line up for 2020! We're excited to see number 84 on our car next year!'
The message was sweet and I couldn't help but smile at it. "I'm really excited about next year." I said as I put my phone down again.
"Me too. I got an incredible teammate now!" Charles was super excited about us being teammates, he made that clear after he texted me like ten times about it.
"Yeah watch out, I'm going to beat you two next season." I pointed at the two men sitting on my sofa and they grinned.
"Just keep dreaming." Pierre said and I rolled my eyes at him.
Next season was going to be awesome. Now this season just had to end. And I hoped that I still had a chance to win.