When die-hard Formula 1 fan Alice attends the Monaco Grand Prix thanks to a contest she won, she expects thrilling races and breathtaking views, but she never imagines catching the F1 prodigy, Max Verstappen. Amidst the glamour and high stakes of th...
Yet, when I came back to my hotel room, I decided to call Max. I knew that if I didn't, I would regret this. Even though it might hurt somewhere along the line, it felt good and right, for now. And it would satisfy my ever-growing curiosity.
He was surprised by my call. He thought that it would take longer for me to call, that he was going to have to woo me on Friday during free practice, which made me laugh. If there was one thing I understood about him so far, it was that he took everything as a competition for him to win. And in this game of his, I was the prize he wanted. This was both frightening and exhilarating. I had never been treated like something to earn before, by any man. Usually, I was the good friend, the sexual conquest or the way to get the girl they actually wanted. I had never been 'chased' before and it made me like Max a little bit more, even though my brain was screaming at me to be careful and not to get attached.
We spent over two hours on the phone and we even switched to a video call at one point. We talked about everything: his career and mine, our childhoods, our tastes in music, our favourite cities... We even had an argument about football since we were both supporting different teams. It was actually nice to get to know the real him and not Max Verstappen, the wonder kid. He really wasn't this hot headed man the media made him out to be. He was surprisingly modest about all his achievements in F1, telling me that his wins were mostly due to his engineer and the crew behind him.
Our conversation made me like him as a person, and that was exactly what I didn't want at first. Because I knew I would get invested. I had always been told that I got attached too fast, that it was always 'too much, too soon' with me. I usually blamed my romantic side for this. I wanted to live those great love stories I would read about. I wanted to live the kind of love I would see in a painting that I had to write about in my job. I desperately wanted someone to love me for me. That was maybe why I was so reluctant to Max's advances this morning. Because he made me feel wanted.
And unfortunately, I knew it was only a matter of time before he turned his attention elsewhere, to someone of his league—something I was definitely not. He was supposed to date a supermodel like every other successful athlete his age. He was not supposed to be wanting a 24-year-old intern in journalism... and I really needed to keep that in mind as to not get my heart broken at the end of this.
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SATURDAY.
For the next two days, we spent all our evenings on the phone with one another. It was like a daily habit. A habit you didn't want to shake off. The minute I stepped into my hotel room, I was always anxiously waiting for his call, praying that he wouldn't ghost me all of a sudden.
Whilst my first call on Thursday night went immediately through, he actually had a lot of stuff to do in the evenings: drivers' briefing, reunions with the engineers, meeting with the team principal. So we agreed for him to call me first once he was done with all of his work. And he always called me the second he got back into his room, sometimes even in the elevator. That put my mind and heart at ease, knowing that he was as eager as I was to have each other on the phone.
