Religiously ° Charles Leclerc

one

Pretending.

Faking it.

Acting as if everything was fine when it was far from it.

Whatever you preferred to call it had been something that Valentina Rossi had become a master at over the last two years...

That's how long it had been since her childhood best friend, her first love, who she would have confidently said was the love of her life, had ended their four-year relationship and shattered Val's entire world, in favor of furthering his career in racing... the very career that she had supported from the very start, she was always the loudest to cheer him on and was at every single race that she could be at. She never understood what had brought that on, it seemed to her almost like someone else was putting words into her then boyfriend's mouth, which wouldn't be a far stretch, but we will touch more on that later.

Since then she had pretended to despise anything Formula 1 and Motorsports related, which she would learn was very difficult when her best friend Malina whom she had met when she moved from Monaco to Los Angeles her birthplace after the break-up, though she grew up in Monaco where she had lived with her father, was one of the biggest F1 fans known to man.

Yet the younger brunette was unaware of her best friend's past with a certain Ferrari driver, since they were pretty private about their relationship both being in the spotlight because of their jobs, it was something for just them and their friends to know the extent of when they were together.

Val had stumbled upon an old photo album on her phone titled 'Amore mio <3' (my love) it was just photos of her and him or just random photos she had taken of him... she closed her eyes and blew out a breath, she may put on a brave face and act as if she's moved on from him but the truth was that even two years after he shattered her heart that she was still in love with him. She could never bring herself to delete the photos for that very reason.

Like I said she had become a master at pretending.

"Val?" came the voice of Malina, through their shared Vegas apartment, they moved in here together about a year ago, and though they both traveled a lot this was home for them, (though Val's 'true' home would always be a tiny country off the coast of France. That was a place that she thought she could never truly return to because it would serve as a reminder of the worst day of her life.)

She shook her head, "Yeah Lina, in the living room what is it?"

The hopeful look on her best friend's face made her realize that she probably wouldn't like what she was about to say... "What did you do Lina?"

"Well, I may have been invited by McLaren to the Las Vegas Grand Prix next weekend, and they included two Paddock passes and I said that you would be coming with me..."

Val froze, registering the words before she shook her head, "Lina I can't do that." She knew that if she was inside the Paddock again that she could run into him which was the last thing she wanted to do. She also knew that a few other drivers would recognize her because they were friends when she was with him.

"Val come on... it's one weekend and my favorite team invited me and a friend to watch the race as special guests from the garage. I want to experience this for the first time with my best friend... I know you hate everything related to the sport but please just this once put it aside and experience this with me... yeah I've been to races before but never got to watch from a team garage like this and I've never asked you to go to a race with me before, so please?"

Val blew out a breath not having it in her to burst her bubble that she'd seen several races from the garage view because that would mean telling her about him and everything else and that was not something that Val wanted to do anytime soon,  "fine." she reluctantly agreed.