I'M YOURS, lewis hamilton

04

Maybe Lewis was right. Maybe he was her lucky charm.

Or, more likely, was that they had new management. Because Arsenal had begun winning again, like, all the time now. And she was actually playing again, unlike how it was before Arteta was their new coach.

They had played with the man for almost a month now. But even if the new management was working for most of them, it didn't mean that everyone found him agreeable. Bitterness might be the better word for it. The lineup had changed, players switched with others that he found to be a better fit. That he found better just in general. And it definitely created tension among the team.

The only positive she found from it was that it wasn't just because of that she was playing. Before that was arguably the biggest reason for the tension among the team. Many didn't like that she got to play since most of them believed themselves to be better. Because she was a woman and a woman can't be as good as men. Yeah, yeah. The conversation and argument was older than anyone she's ever met and at this point, it was rather boring.

The only reason she was allowed to play in the male leagues at all, like the Premier League and the Champions League, was only because of all of the tests she had done prior to joining the National Men's team in 2018. It had all seemed so random at the time, all the tests of her strength, her speed and her endurance. But now looking back at it the pieces just kind of fell into place.

How she didn't connect the dots when Luigi di Biago contacted her ten days after the last test had been run baffled her when she looked back at it. Like, it was so obvious and her only thought had been 'huh, how strange but okay, cool'.

Now when she thought about it, it kind of made sense that her friends called her oblivious. Maybe it actually had some truth to it.

Mirabella would be acting like it doesn't though, because it was never said without judgement.

It wasn't her fault that she couldn't take a hint. She remembered once that there was a guy who apparently liked her. She had absolutely no clue, but he was—according to her friends at the time—very obvious and it was shocking that she never noticed.

For, to her, it wasn't obvious, but she had learned that she needed to be fed everything on a silver platter or else it would just go right over her head.

A good example of that was how she thought a certain Formula One team was just commenting on some of her posts on Instagram for no reason.

It had happened more regularly, but it was common knowledge that Mercedes got good publicity from when she was invited to Monza. So her thought process was that they were trying to get some good publicity, which she didn't blame them for. It wasn't a stupid idea. It worked, making the fans of the sport talk about something other than how much of a disappointment the team had become over the years. Instead, they were gossiping about a possible link-up between her and her favourite team.

In her eyes that wasn't likely to happen. Why would Ferrari invite her? Yeah, sure, she's Italian and, yeah, she won the World Cup, but to her that wasn't a good enough reason.

Or maybe you're just undermining yourself.

Maybe, but there was safety in expecting the worst. Or just not expecting anything at all. So when she gained something—something positive—it felt even better.

Not to say that she didn't have determination or ambition. Don't get it twisted. Mirabella refused to not work hard to achieve all she had gained and wanted to gain. She just didn't expect to get anything for the work and then when—or if—she gained them, the joyous feeling was multiplied, making it feel so much better at the end.