SO AMERICAN | max verstappen

four.

Shit.

I rolled over in my bed, shaking Ella awake. We'd fallen asleep watching a movie together last night, wanting to spend as much time together as possible while I was still in America.

"What?" she groaned.

I'd been woken up by a text from Taylor with my plane ticket confirmation. "My flight is today, not tomorrow!"

Ella sat up quickly, knocking her head against mine. We both groaned in pain, holding our hands to where our heads had collided.

"Fuck," she breathed out, probably from both the pain and the news I had just dropped. "I thought you weren't getting to Bahrain until tomorrow?"

"I'm not." I sighed, handing her my phone while actively trying to ignore the pain in my face. "But the trip is nearly a whole day, I leave at 6pm tonight and get there at 8pm tomorrow Bahrain time - I've got two connections."

"Damn, well, I guess we should get our last day of fun started now and then get you to the airport."

We both rolled out of bed and headed to our respective bathrooms to get ready for the day. When I looked at the mirror I couldn't believe it, I have a fucking black eye. Ella's head hit mine so hard it had given me a black eye. Thankfully, it didn't look too bad at the moment, the swelling not too bad.

Ella and I spent the day wandering around our city, hitting all of our favorite places before we couldn't anymore. Coffee, lunch, ice cream, book stores, we decided to go to all of the, wanting to make the most of our now shortened day.

"I'm going to miss you." I could tell Ella was trying not to cry as we stood in the airport, but the sound of her sniffles meant she wasn't doing too great of a job.

It hurt to cry due to the black eye, but that wasn't stopping me. Saying goodbye to Ella felt like a piece of me was being taken away. "I'll arrange for you to come visit, don't worry."

And with a few more parting words and at least three more hugs, I left, heading toward security. A long day of travel was ahead of me and there wasn't even going to be relief on the other side, but duty calls.

~~~~~

"Two suitcases? We're gone for like two weeks."

Max was waiting by his car at the curb outside the airport. He didn't even bother coming inside to help me with my bags. This asshole let me lug two gigantic suitcases from baggage claim to the curb.

He was going to get it when we were in the car. I couldn't risk being even remotely sassy when there was paparazzi around.

I nodded, trying to hide my annoyance for him, "Well, I had to move across the world and shipping boxes across the world can be expensive... some of it came with me."

It was only when the two suitcases toppled and almost knocked me over that Max came to help. In the whole event, my sunglasses even fell off my face, hitting the ground and breaking.

"Great." I mumbled to myself, squatting down to pick up the broken pieces, luckily I had another pair in my bag.

When I stood back up, Max had already started loading my bags into the trunk of his SUV. I guess he had to trade in his sports car for a family car when he got Lili fulltime.

"Those are fucking heavy-" He paused when he turned to look at me, a sudden - and very much unexpected - concerned look showing on his face.

"What?"

Max took a step toward me, "What happened to your eye?"

Oh, fuck.

My sunglasses had done a good job hiding the black eye that was too sensitive to apply makeup to last night when I left Wilmington – I was trying to leave makeup off of it until I had to apply it for my time in Bahrain. Now, the injury was on full display. It probably looked like I had gotten into a nasty fight or jumped on the street.