Turbulence [𝗠.𝗩.]

♦ Belgium, Pre-Race ♦

"You can't ease off at that corner, but if you go too slow, you'll have a car up your rear. You're damned if you do, damned if you don't."

⸻

BELGIUM
12TH RACE WEEKEND OF THE SEASON TOMORROW - 3RD SPRINT WEEKEND
JULY

It's tomorrow. The day when I truly face a fear I've been pointedly ignoring because it was easy to ignore. Until we touched down in Belgium, I could pretend I wasn't bothered by it. I had all the time in the world to ignore it, other races to focus on and so many things happening between them that there wasn't enough time for more than a fleeting moment of terror after the odd nightmare.

Jahsica (Me);
Coffee?

I don't have to wait for more than a minute to get a reply to my coded question.

Vershtoppan (Max);
Thirty seconds.
I'll run.

He takes a few minutes to get to my hotel room. When I open the door to his persistent knocking, I'm knocked back by a tight hold. Max knows. I don't have to tell him. He gets it. He doesn't judge me. He isn't on my team. He isn't someone that might say something to Oliver or Mateo or hell, even to Claire; she's been on me like a mother hen as it is.

"Want to go somewhere?" He finally says as he lets me go, kicking the plain white door shut behind himself.

I'm in another boring monochrome hotel room. The lack of colour is draining... but the thought of going outside is suffocating. I shake my head, hands tugging at his to get him to follow me to the oversized bed. He flops down ungracefully, lying at an angle. I join him, crawling into his side. I feel stupid. I feel weak. I feel like the little girl who had a karting accident and cried over her scraped-up skin because that was the scariest thing ever.

If only I'd known back then that it could be worse. Maybe I wouldn't be so... so unpredictably emotional, or whatever the right word is. It's one of my biggest flaws. It's frankly one of any racer's biggest flaws. But I feel like for me, it's far more obvious. My confidence is sky high, or rock bottom.

"It was a pretty shit day. Tons of rain." I want to talk about it. Claire knows what happened. Mick's seen the footage. But I think after realising I've got to face it tomorrow, no matter how my mind tries to make me think I can back out, I need to give life to the memory so that I can kill the fear. "We started behind the safety car, and the rain let up a little, so we were told we'd be racing."

Max makes a small sound as his fingers idly trace patterns on my arm. With my head on his chest, I can hear the steady and sure thumping of his heart. It keeps me grounded.

"Anyway, it all goes to shit midway. I hit that standing water at Raidillon all wrong. You know how it is: it's a coin flip. You keep your downforce or you go aquaplaning. The car was already turning, so I couldn't do a damn thing. Then I get a nice shunt. Fucking scared the life out of me."

It's the moment where I think my fear was sparked. I had no control, and then I had my first bad smash. It would've just been any other normal day if I hadn't been hit right after that loss of control. Hell, if I'd gone into the barrier from the aquaplaning alone, I think I would've been fine. I'd hit barriers before. They were always nothing to fear.

"I go for a spin, right into a barrier, with this car following me, basically wedging the front of mine into the barrier. Or just the front right. I can't remember exactly. My head feels like a mess, and I'm sat there in the car just... frozen. I just sit there, until I can smell it. The acrid smell of machinery on fire behind me. It's pissing it down and somehow my car is on fire underneath the engine cover." I can feel my brows rising in the remaining disbelief of it all. I gesture vaguely with a hand as I'm talking, because it's still wild to me that my car managed to find a way to try to go up in flames in the pouring rain. "I freak out; because apparently all the training in the world goes out the window once you have your first real crash."

"But you got out."

"I did. And I know I should be less of a fucking coward about this—"

The fingers stop tracing; his hand grips my arm. I look up to see determined blue eyes holding me in a stare that makes fear spark inside my chest.

"You're not a coward. That was your first bad one, right?" He sounds mad. I hope he's not mad at me. "Your first proper one will scare the shit out of you. Anyone who says theirs didn't is a liar."

"Uh-huh." It's all I can say. I'm still held by his gaze. By his hand on my arm that's going to cut circulation if he grips any tighter.

"Good." He relaxes, eyes back up to the textured ceiling, hand letting go of me. "You really should have had one sooner, to get used to them, but you have it when you have it..."

"At least I didn't have one like Räikkönen's. I think that one is easily worse. And shit, I walked away, there are people that—"

"You can't rank these things, Jess. You have to accept them as they are."

Maybe I've not helped myself by trying to do that. Shit, maybe Esteban was right in his attitude months ago: it is what it is.

I sigh softly, patting his chest gently. "You're right. I'm sorry. I keep having confidence and then it disappears at the first hint of doubt."

"So tell the doubt to fuck off."

"Easier said than done, Max."

I feel him shrug at my words. "Tell it to fuck off. Literally, tell the turn it can fuck off."

"Is that what you do?"

"Every time I have any fear."

I tilt my head to look at him properly. His eyes are still focused on the ceiling, but there's something about his expression that tells me there's more he wants to say. But he's not. My hand on his chest moves up, to his shoulder, as I try to curl up further against his warm body.

"What if I crash again?" My voice is nowhere near as confident as I was hoping for it to be. I sound like a terrified little girl.

"You get out of the car, and you walk away from it." The sentence seems harsh, but that vulnerability is still there, an underlying hint of it that gently wobbles his firm tone. "You walk away from it and prove everyone - and yourself - wrong."