COLLISION COURSE - Lando Norris [ff]

Fourteen

The glass in his hand weighed heavy. He had gotten himself a single drink after Christina had stormed away from the party to God knows where, and the liquor still swirled in the expensive looking crystal glass.
Still, he did not quite understand what had happened. After Nyck’s sudden outrage, she had come for him and Lando did not get why. She had accused him of being the reason for all of it, but he was not aware of having done anything wrong and picking his brain became more and more painful with the alcohol slowly flushing his system.

“Are you okay?” Someone approached him from behind.
Tom popped a hand onto his shoulder the same way the Brit had tried to with Christina. Usually, the Frenchman was not the kind of person to have serious talks with, but he seemed worried for once.

“What?” Lando looked up from the glowing city in the dark. “Yeah, I am good.”

He knew about Tom’s and Christina's kiss on New Years Eve, and he had also heard about the two of them sharing the bed a couple of times. However, the media never found out about them. Probably because everyone knew that it would not turn out to become something serious, so it was not worth talking about it. The photographer he had started working with a couple of years ago was not the kind of guy to limit himself to one partner only. Not even for someone like Christina.

Tom leaned against the railing next to him and asked, “What happened?”

“Nothing important. Nyck just misunderstood what he had seen, and Chris got mad at me for taking it that far,” Lando made up a believable explanation for his heated conversation with the American from earlier.

His friend just nodded and looked him up and down, gently smiling. “Are you sure that you should be here?”

The Brit looked up. “What?”

“Shouldn’t you go after her?” Tom specified his question and watched the McLaren driver widen his eyes. He looked shocked, almost as if he was a deer caught in the headlights of a car getting closer quickly.

“We aren’t-“ Lando tried to get away from the uncomfortable conversation, but the Frenchman just chuckled, “I know.”

Before he could desperately continue to try to find the right words for their odd relationship, Tom had already left him behind. Again, he was alone on the balcony while the party behind his back had picked up speed again. The incident of their short fight was already long forgotten.

Tom’s words stuck to the inside of his head like a tough chewing gum would stick to pavement. He was not in a romantic relationship with Chris, and he was not responsible for her in any kind of way, but did he want to be? Did he want to be with her?

A long train of thoughts rushed through his brain without stopping at any station. Suddenly, everything inside of his mind orbited around Christina and their increasingly confusing connection.
He grabbed his glass with the Gin Tonic tighter, hoping it would give him some piece of mind, but the alcohol did not seem to be useful for his already dizzy head.

What was Chris to him?

His feet carried him back inside where he squeezed past the many people laughing and having fun around him.
He emptied his nearly empty drink with one big gulp, put down the glass on the kitchen counter bordering the living room which had turned into a temporary dance floor and grabbed his and Christina’s coat he had seen her arrive at the party in. It was not like he had stared at her in awe, but he had stared at her enough for Carlos and Charles to give him playful, snide remarks about it. Lando lifted the black cloak up to his nose to smell her perfume. It gave him the confirmation that it was exactly what he wanted- be with her. Right now. And with an undefined ending out of sight.