That's Racing Baby | Lando Norris

Chapter 42: Race Eleven

This chapter is really long like way over 7000 words but stay with it. It's worth it ;)

"Wake up babe, it's race day." Lando mumbled his voice full of sleep after the alarm just woke him up.

"Can we stay in bed?" Emilia asked rolling over to face Lando.

"No we've got to race." Lando brushed the hair in Emilia's face behind her shoulder with his hand. Two weeks ago, she was the opposite. She'd been excited to race and lights out couldn't come soon enough. Now, she didn't want to go anywhere near her car and he hated that.

"Twice I've only ever not wanted to race." Emilia sighed. "Monza 2019 and today." Lando pondered on Monza. He was trying to work out why. Emilia was in F2 then and the race previous had been Spa. There was the answer.

"You were close with him?" Lando questioned. They'd never discussed what happened on that day in Belgium. Emilia had never mentioned that she was close with Anthoine but she hadn't wanted to start a conversation about him.

"I became friends with Tatiana because she was the only other girl in F2 at the time. She introduced me to him and we got on so well together. We made each other laugh until our bellies hurt. He was just such a nice guy. Anthoine told me I shouldn't date that engineer and that he was toxic but I didn't listen. I realised he was right too late and I never had the chance to tell him." Emilia felt her eyes begin to well up. This probably wasn't the best thing to talk about on the morning of her home race but she never had the opportunity to speak about her friendship with Anthoine. She didn't want to randomly drop it into the conversation but if the option came to talk about it, she would.

"I had no idea you were so close." Lando wrapped his arms around Emilia and wiped the tears from her face.

"I remember passing his car and thinking the absolute worst. I was at the back because I crashed in qualifying and I passed the accident after the red flag knowing that it was not good. I wanted to get out the car then and run to him but my engineer told me I had to come back. I miss him so much. We spoke before the race in the pitlane and I had no idea that the race would turn out like that. We never really told each other we loved one another even though it was friends and I would give anything to tell him how grateful I was to have him as my best friend." Emilia sobbed. Lando hadn't known any of this. It was the year after he'd been in F2 and was concentrating solely on F1. Of course, he'd try and pay attention to some of the races and had noticed Emilia there but he'd never picked up on how close she was to the French driver. He felt guilty that she'd been holding all of this in having not been able to talk about it.

"Emi, it's okay. He knows that." Lando reassured. "He'll be up there watching you as well. He'll be there sharing lunch with Fred and your Grandma. The result doesn't matter to them, it never has. They're proud of you racing." Lando pressed a kiss to her temple. "It's going to be okay today. I'm proud of you for deciding to race. I'm not worried about where you finish today. Points would be amazing but if you don't, that's okay. We all understand what you've been through these past few weeks and it's a lot so everyone gets that you are trying your best in these circumstances. I love you no matter what." Emilia didn't have words to express how lucky she was to have Lando but she tried.

"I don't know what I would do without you. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. I love you so much." Emilia kissed Lando gently on his cheek. "We need to get up, I don't want to be too late."

Emilia struggled with motivation to get ready that morning. To the point that she was going to be really late. Lando hurried her up and offered to drive her as she would mope around the house more and end up arriving by the time the race had started. Maybe that was the point.