Driving Miss Catherine

It's Just Coffee...right?

Cat canceled her plans the next day, claiming she had a headache, but really she just wasn’t ready to face her driver yet. She was supposed to see Heikki, whom she had completely forgotten about when she learned Seb’s true identity. She suddenly saw everything: the subtle worry lines in his forehead, the tiredness hidden behind the glint in his eyes, the sad, forlorn look he sometimes got when he thought no one was looking. These were his battle scars, the remnants of a past life he wished he could forget about and hide from. They were the reminders of everything he lost; everything he’d worked so hard for, lost in a single afternoon, a split second of indecision.

The one thing Cat couldn’t get over was what happened to the other diver involved. Seb walked away from the crash, but the other driver, his best friend, was left clinging to his life. It had been several moths and it still was not known if he would survive or not, or even how severe his injuries were. What little Cat knew about car racing and F1, she knew that was a bad crash. She also thought it was ironic that the car Seb had bought to replace the old Lincoln was a Ferrari. Very ironic.

The next day she again tried to stay home, but her dad insisted she not miss this appointment. He almost called it a date, but he didn’t want to push the fact that he would be more than happy if Cat and Heikki had some kind of relationship.

“Can’t I just drive myself?” Cat complained over breakfast.

“Nonsense, Sebastian will be here in thirty minutes. Besides, since when do you know how to drive?” Albert eyed his daughter curiously. Raised in the city, and with a chauffeur always available, he never felt it necessary for her to take driving lessons.

“Seb’s been teaching me to drive; I’m actually getting good enough to maybe pass my driver’s test,” Cat smiled up at her dad, though she knew he was unhappy. This was the last thing he wanted to hear: his daughter was getting diving lessons from a disgraced racecar driver. 

“No, Mr. Vettel will drive you…and please don’t call him ‘Seb.’ It makes it sound like you two are friends or something,” her father replied, giving her one last concerned look, before leaving her alone, a look that said ‘don’t you dare think of becoming friends with (or something more than friends) with this guy’. Completely unready to face Seb (Cat was not going to call him Mr. Vettel), she took her time eating breakfast, and rushed to get dressed and brush her teeth before he arrived. When she finally skipped down the front steps, she found him waiting in the Ferrari. Cat had a sudden flash of the pictures and articles she’d read a few days before, the sight of the crashed and mangled Ferrari F1 car still haunting her memory. She carefully slipped into the passenger seat next to Seb and tried not to look at him.

He seemed tense. They were quiet for a few minutes. “So, you’re going on a date.” He stated, more than asked.

“Is that what my dad called it?” Cat tried to laugh it off, but she couldn’t hide the uneasiness in her tone. “It’s just coffee with Heikki, nothing special.”

“That blond guy you played golf with the other day?” Seb sounded slightly judgmental, but tried to sound conversationally curious.

“Yes, he’s in the Finnish Navy; I’m not sure how long he’s on leave, but I think he said he had a few months off. He was much better at golf than I expected, but I guess I assumed that he didn’t get many opportunities to play golf if he was always on a boat, or out on the ocean,” Cat realized she was gushing and stopped. Seb seemed even less amused than he had been before.

“Yes, well, guys like that tend to have those kinds of skills: golfing, tennis… I bet he goes shooting on the weekend, too,” He replied.

“What do you mean ‘Guys like that?’ You mean because he’s in the Navy?” Cat turned to face him, noticing his annoyed expression for the first time, and immediately regretted asking him that. He looked like he might snap at her.