Il Predestinato | Charles Leclerc | Vol. 1 (🇬🇧)

11.0

In the dark

Principality of Monaco,
April 2022

🏎️

Do you know that feeling of feeling at home even if the real one, is miles away? 

It is said that it is not the house itself, but it is the people who make you feel like you don't have to come back.
That feeling of lightness, but also of fullness that allows you to be at peace.

I had never been to Monte Carlo, never used to that kind of luxury, very expensive cars, houses twice as much, everything had nothing to do with me. Yet I had never felt better than this.

On the evening of arrival in the Principality, we had decided to sleep, doing absolutely nothing, the accumulated fatigue of the previous three days, made us fall asleep instantly. 

The light that penetrated through the window, forced me to open my eyes and cover them by the power of the rays, I forced myself to get up and move the curtains a few centimeters.
Turning in the direction of the bed I found it empty, no trace of Charles, I put on a pair of socks so as not to walk barefoot on the floor and went to the kitchen.

After checking the huge house and shouting its name a couple of times, I decided to sit on the couch, taking my phone out of my pocket to check notifications.

I opened Instagram and noticed how in a short time I had reached a million followers, I decided to post a story from the previous afternoon, mentioning my boyfriend.

A noise made me jump, making me turn towards it. The Monegasque entered through the front door, with a bag in his right hand and his house keys in the other.

"Good morning, I've had breakfast." He approached me to give me a kiss on the lips, so I held him longer than I should.

We set the table that overlooked the balcony and he warned me that he would go and get the glasses, a few moments later he returned. An Instagram notification made me open the app again, someone had mentioned me in a photo.

The name of the number 16 appeared and opening the image, I noticed that it must have been taken a few moments earlier.

"Charles Leclerc, you don't take pictures secretly." I giggled as I called him and turned around to find him behind me smiling. The photo showed our table and a me taken to look out at the landscape.

"Too beautiful not to be immortalized." He replied by observing me insistently.

The view was spectacular, the whole city was and seeing it with Charles by my side made it different. Different, because some things, if observed with certain people, make you feel such strong emotions that you will remember them forever.
Only a city with only one person can become the best memory you can have, if it's with the right one, and he was for me. 

"You and I here... If they had told me on the first day in Maranello, I wouldn't have believed it." I giggled looking into his eyes and reaching out on the table to take his.

"And why not? That's all I hoped for." He smiled at me, holding it to me.

"I saw you, I heard you talk, I heard how people talked about you... I wanted you. I saw you and knew it was you. It seems trivial or perhaps embarrassing but I would have done anything just to talk to you." The Monegasque continued, leaving me speechless.

"Maybe I wouldn't have believed it at first, but this one," I pointed to the two of us with one hand, "That's worth a lot more." I tried to explain myself, finding myself without an explanation.

The bad thing about strong feelings is that they are so simple to live, but so complicated to explain. Feelings are never easy to concretize in a speech, there are "I love you", "I love you", but is it enough? Are two or three words enough to describe how we feel? The answer is no, never.

What I was feeling watching Charles was so fucking clear, that I couldn't have known in words how to explain how I felt. But one thing was certain, if initially I felt in the corner of the photograph, now I was in the foreground, alongside the predestined.

"What do you say, will you show me the city?" I asked, getting up from my chair and going towards his.

"Oui, ma belle." He pronounced with the accent I liked so much, making me sit on him and the Principality of Monaco had to wait.

We found ourselves in bed in silence, even if our eyes screamed a thousand words, neither of us could stop looking at each other or loving each other. The hands discovered, knew and fell in love, continuously, as if we were so deep that we could not stop knowing each other. 

Some would say that love should be made in the dark, to keep flaws safe and grow courage, but how do those who want to hide find out who the other really is? 

In the end the city would have to wait until the next day... When you find someone who is the complementary color to yours, who completes you, you realize that by approaching him you become whole, definitive, finished. 
Perhaps the best part came later, when we remained embraced until the evening, almost as if we wanted to force our skins not to be able to be without each other.

A movie and take-away food accompanied the evening, full of smiles and mischievous looks, but we didn't really see television, we continued to know each other as the first time.

"I wish I could do this every day of my life... And by that I mean to be with you." He corrected himself, caressing my face with his fingertips. 

A few hours later I finally picked up the phone, which had been lying on the table all day. I found a message from Kyla advising me that her boss would be publishing her article in the next few days and this could only make me happy for her, at least I could see her more often at the Grands Prix.

I warned Charles of the matter and asked me if he could meet my childhood friend next time, since Carlos had already done so, even if in passing. 
I promised that we would have lunch or an outing for dinner for the event and I told Kyla about my boyfriend's request.  

The next morning we didn't wake up early, but we decided to go running together anyway. Many stopped to ask him for a photo and someone was very happy to see me too, which surprised me a lot. He showed me the seafront and we walked the route of the Monaco Grand Prix, with every now and then some indication from the Monegasque on the difficulty of some corners.

We went home to change and clean ourselves from the sweat, in the evening there would be a small charity event in which Charles had been invited and he advised me that in the afternoon we would go and buy something to wear. 

I found out once in the shop that there was a chance that there was some other driver, since they lived here in Monte Carlo without my knowledge. I bought a simple black dress, which the boy did not allow me to pay for and once we returned to the apartment we realized that it was already time to get ready. I took out my shoes, put my dress on the bed and started putting on makeup, seeing the predestined one buttoning his shirt behind me from the mirror. 

I put on the dress, put on my heels and let my hair down, wearing two locks behind with a small clasp. I looked at myself in the reflection and my silhouette was joined by that of the boy, who was adjusting the cuffs of his jacket.

This became the norm for me, he became my normality, so much so that I forced myself to ask for a few more days of leave at the end of the week.

🏎️

Ire